Now, what is it that Catholics complain of, except that the state has supported, and does support, “institutions of learning” mixed “with sectarian, pagan, and atheistical dogmas”?

There is no doubt about this fact. Protestants insist upon having the Bible read in the public schools, lest they become irreligious. Catholics maintain that the version used is garbled, and that, even if it were not, no one has a right to teach it, except those who have compiled it, and are to-day the only responsible witnesses to its true meaning. The Jews maintain that the New Testament part of it is not true. Infidels deny it altogether. What right has any school board, or any other purely human institution to decide this controversy; and what right has any man under the Constitution to enforce his religious views or his denial of religion upon others? It is an outrage. It is an inconsistency, which cannot be stated in any terms without transparently manifesting its absurdity. Under the Constitution, and according to the spirit of our government, all men are equal. Under the present system of common schools, and, according to the spirit of those who uphold them, men are not equal, and there is no such thing as regard for conscience; but every majority has a right to enforce upon any minority, no matter how large, its peculiar ideas of instruction, involving, as this always does, the question of religion itself. We have repeated our protest, until we are almost sick and tired of hearing the outrage mentioned; we have never seen our position manfully approached within beat of drum; and, yet, we have constantly been forced to ask ourselves, “Will the American people never see this? Can it be that our enemies are, as some of them hold themselves to be, totally depraved?”

Some time ago, after considerable agitation, the Chicago School Board prohibited the reading of the Sacred Scriptures in the public schools of that city.

Undoubtedly the protest of Catholics had something to do with this. But the action of the board was certainly based upon the idea, that the reading of the Protestant Bible made the schools Protestant, “sectarian” institutions, and therefore unjust towards all other religious bodies. Let it be thoroughly understood, that we fully appreciate the desire of our Protestant fellow-citizens, to hallow secular instruction. But the reading of the Scriptures as a public ceremony is as distinctive to them, as the celebration of Mass would be to Catholics. No one can evade the argument which forces this conclusion. “Such schemes are glass; the very sun shines through them.” And yet it is not a little remarkable, how slowly the light breaks in upon the seat of the delusion.

It is a satisfaction, however, to note the few acknowledgments, tardy and incomplete as they are, of the principle which we have always maintained. Prof. Swing, alluding to the action of the Chicago School Board to which we have referred, gives voice to the following observations of common sense:

The government, then, according to the professor, has no rights in the spiritual domain—a proposition which we have been condemned to universal derision for maintaining, and yet one that is self-evident to any person who will pause for a moment to consider our institutions.

An ardent advocate of what are called liberal principles, commenting upon the position of Prof. Swing, very properly styles it the only one defensible. The purpose of the Liberal League is, unquestionably, to procure the complete secularization of our public schools, which would, of course, be as unjust towards Catholic tax-payers as any other system. This class is no less hostile to justice and true liberty than any other set of meddlers. Nevertheless, it is not a little amusing to see the unmistakable fear with which it regards the issue of the present anti-Catholic policy. It waves, as its flag of hostility to the Catholics, the threadbare pretext, that we are secretly opposed to all education. It is not necessary for us to repeat the indignant denial and protest, with which we have ever met this gratuitous calumny. We quote from the Boston Index of Oct. 28:

When the avowed heathen, who reap the fullest harvest, fear for the destruction of our present unjust system of education, on the ground that it is too iniquitous to last, is it not time, for people who call themselves Christians, to give a moment’s heed to the petition, which we have for years addressed to them, as most advantageous to all of us, and as doing injustice to none?

It appears, however, that this idea has infiltrated into other minds. Zion’s Herald, a Methodist journal, quoted by the liberal paper to which we have referred, says:

In the face of this growing acknowledgment of the “sectarian” character of our public schools, and knowing that they must give religious instruction or else be “pagan and atheistical,” we are pleased to hear the demand that “neither the State nor nation, nor both combined,” shall support such schools.

The fact is, that a people cannot wholly escape from its national traditions, without forgetting its language, or undergoing some violent revolution. If our fellow-citizens will study the meaning of the terms which they habitually use, they will not lose their traditions of freedom and equal rights, nor will they throw themselves into a violent, perilous departure from them. But we hasten to comment upon another sentence, which is frequently quoted from the President’s oration:

“Leave the matter of religion to the family altar, the church, and the private school supported by private contributions.”

Precisely so. If it must come to this; if no arrangement can be made, by which religion and morality can be taught in the public schools, then, leave the matter to the family altar and the church, and allow it to be done by private contributions.

In other words, either furnish the people with that which you pretend to tax them for—viz., a fair and equitable system of public schools—or allow them to provide for themselves. But, whatever you do, keep your hands off the sacredness of the “family altar.” Do not set foot into the hallowed precincts of the domestic sanctuary. The family, though subordinate, is not to be violated by the state. Parents have rights, which no government can usurp. You have no more right to force the education of their children out of their hands, than to define the number of offspring by law. You have no more right to establish a system, to which you will endeavor to secure their conformity by violent measures, than you have to establish public wet-nurseries, or, require that voters shall be brought up on government pap and be fed out of a government spoon.

Keep from meddling with religion; you have no authority to teach it.

What a bitter rebuke these words of the President contain for that party, small and contemptible in itself, but powerful by reason of the times, which has ever sought to widen the gulf between us and our true-hearted countrymen! It is not enough that we should be estranged by the traditions of three hundred years. It is not enough to whisper into the popular ear every stale and loathed calumny. It is not enough to bring our holiest rites and beliefs into the obscene literature now circulating amongst the depraved youth of our country. It is not enough to drown with a thousand noisy, insolent tongues, every attempt we make at explanation. It is not enough for this malignant, persecuting power to drop its poison into every crevice of our social and religious system, from the parlor to the sewer, from the temple to the lupanar; but the nation must be organized against us. Our religion must, in some way or other, be dragged into politics. For shame! we cry, with the President. In a country of such varied religious beliefs as ours, there is but one way to order and peace—“Keep the church and the state for ever separate.”

To sum up: We agree with the President:

1st. No “sectarianism” in our common schools; and, therefore, “not one dollar” to our present system of schools, because they are sectarian.

2d. “Not one dollar” to “pagan” schools, in which God is ignored.

3d. “Not one dollar” to “atheistical” schools, in which God is denied in the name of “science falsely so-called.”

We now turn to consider the prophecy in which the President warns the American people of its future dangers:

What is meant by superstition?

Formerly it meant seeking for power or knowledge, by dealing with the impure spirits.

Does the President mean to warn us against the delusions and uncleanness of modern spiritism? If so, we are agreed.

But we do not really suppose that the President means any such thing. What does he mean?

We find in the dictionary four other meanings of the word which he has used. Superstition means “an excessive reverence or fear of that which is unknown or mysterious.” But, we observe no such phenomenon among our people; if anything, rather the reverse. Or it means “The worship of false gods.” We see no signs of this except in the “Joss Houses” of San Francisco. Nor do we behold any great belief “in the agency of superior powers in certain extraordinary or singular events, or in omens, or prognostics.” Nor, further, do we behold any “excessive nicety or scrupulous exactness,” as an alarming feature of our present moral condition. There remains but one meaning (and this, we are persuaded, is the sense which the President intended to convey): “Especially, an ignorant or irrational worship of the supreme Deity.”

An ignorant worship of God is one which knows not what to believe concerning him, or one which is unable to state what it does believe; or, further, one which can give no conclusive reason for believing anything. But, outside the Catholic Church, there is no religious body which can tell precisely what it ought to believe, or precisely what it does believe, or precisely why it ought to believe anything. Again, an irrational belief in God is one which recognizes his existence, and, at the same time, denies his attributes. For instance, it is an irrational belief in God, which denies his wisdom; which asserts, that he has not chosen means adequate to accomplish his ends; which represents him, when he has made a revelation to man, as leaving his divine truth in scattered and mysterious writings in an obscure language, requiring men to find them, collect them, and believe their true meaning in order to be saved; or which fancies that reading daily a few pages from these writings, to little children, will be sufficient to prepare them for the duties of life. It is an irrational belief in God which represents him as immoral, as creating man simply to damn him, or, which denies his justice, by wickedly imagining that he will not punish oppression and calumny and those who sow discord in the midst of a free and happy people.

Here again we agree with the President in denouncing such impiety, and in predicting that, if the liberties and institutions of this republic are soon to be jeopardized, it will be by irreverence towards God and the contempt of charity and justice towards men, ever practised by this “ignorant and irrational worship of the supreme Deity.”

Another item of danger which the President foresees in the near future is “ignorance.” Here, again we find him sounding the note of warning, to which we have always given voice. His Excellency says: “In a republic like ours, … where no power is exercised except by the will of the people, it is important that the sovereign, the people, should foster intelligence—that intelligence which is to preserve us as a free nation.” The liberties of this republic will not be maintained, we say, by an ignorant, debauched, and corrupted generation. Our common people must be educated. They must possess “that intelligence which is to preserve us as a free nation.” They must know something more than simply how to read and write and “cipher.” Nor will it be sufficient, to add to this a knowledge of music. They must have a sound and thorough moral training. Their conscientious convictions must be grounded on truth daily taught and daily enforced. They must be daily taught to control their passions; they must be taught honesty, and be required to give back that which is unjustly gotten. They must be taught the true purpose of life.

But this training, as the President affirms, belongs not to the state, but to the “family altar and the church.” Either assist all families and all churches, or else encourage them to help themselves. These are our sentiments. But when sectarian bigotry has gotten hold of a system of the falsely so-called “common schools,” and with obstinate purpose, and clamorous intensity and ever-swelling declamation, manifests its resolve to maintain this system, even though it conflicts with the conscientious rights of millions of the people of our country; when, further, it is determined to force a large minority to accept this state of things, or to go without instruction, we, as American citizens, denounce the system as tyrannous; in the full sense of the word, as a reckless and immoral oppression. We assert that those who uphold it, do not desire intelligence, but prefer ignorance; that their aim is not to promote knowledge, but to destroy the religious convictions of our children, and to keep us from growing in the land. We affirm that such self-delusion originates in ignorance, is perpetuated by ignorance, tends to still deeper degradation of ignorance; and we predict that it will bring forth the fruits of ignorance, not only in morality, but in the lower sciences.

We, for our part, will never relax our efforts to show up the dishonesty of this party; we will never withdraw our protest, until justice has been done; and knowing to what lengths men can go when they start without principle, we fully share in the alarm of our chief magistrate, as to the danger of “ignorance.” Have we not, therefore, reason to hope that, in the midst of the struggle, which his sagacious mind perceives to be at hand, we shall find him on the side of patriotism and intelligence, with all true Americans, against that “superstition” and “ignorance,” whose aim is to destroy the “security of unfettered religious sentiments and equal rights” of his fellow-citizens?

There is another item of the future contest, which, according to our President, is

“Ambition.” What is ambition?

A man has been elected to the highest office in the gift of a free people, the limits of which have been fixed by a custom handed down by the fathers of the nation, and which, to the minds of true patriots, has the force of law. When such a trust does not satisfy the honored recipient, and he, yielding to personal motives, strains every nerve, and seeks by every means at his command, to break down all barriers to continuation of power, thereby abusing the dignity of his post and the confidence of the people—that is ambition.

We do not fully share the apprehension with which the President foresees this threat to the “near future” of our national welfare. But if it be true, we fully agree with him when he says: “Now, the centennial year of our national existence, I believe, is a good time to begin the work of strengthening the foundations of the structure commenced by our patriotic forefathers one hundred years ago at Lexington.”

“Language,” according to a great diplomatist, “was given to man, in order that he might conceal his ideas.” But this maxim has never been accepted by honorable men. In examining, thus briefly, the “Des Moines speech,” we have followed that other canon of criticism, which requires that words shall be interpreted in their literal sense, as far as possible. Submitted to this just criticism, the language appears to us immortal, and worthy of the high place which is even now being prepared for it. Some may marvel, and may wonder how the President came to be filled with so high a degree of the prophetic spirit. Like Balaam, the son of Beor, he was expected to curse us; unlike Balaam, he was not stayed, but rather urged on by the faithful servant with whom he previously conversed. But there is no mystery about it. He has grown up with the instincts of a true American, and he has spoken accordingly. Not only are the words on which we have commented true, but they are in accordance with sound Catholic principles. We are ready to take him at his word, and his words in their true meaning. To those who will join us we say, without disguise or reserve: “Gentlemen, you will never regret having trusted us, and dealt fairly with us, according to the laws and Constitution of this country.” We believe with the President, that, if the only honest meaning of his language be as honestly carried out, “the battles which created the Army of the Tennessee” (which, by the way, a Catholic general once commanded and in whose ranks hundreds of Catholic hearts bled)—we believe, we say, that these battles “will not have been fought in vain.” The children of the soldiers of the Union will at least be the peers of those whom their fathers overcame. The nations’ heroes will not look down, to see their heirs defrauded of equal rights in “the Union and the free institutions for which they died.” The President will yield to his comrades in arms, at least as much as he is so ready to accord to his late opponents. And as for our countrymen throughout the Union, we are prepared to wait, trusting that when fully enlightened, they will agree to our obtaining, independently of all political agitations or party organizations, our just and equal rights as American citizens.

SONNETS IN MEMORY OF THE LATE SIR AUBREY DE VERE, BART.

A MESSAGE.

Is there anything more tantalizing than to be caught with a toothache and swelled face just at Christmas time, when one’s hands are full of work that must be finished, of plans that have been begun in time and carried on prosperously to within a few days of their fulfilment? This is just what befell Mr. Stephen Walpole on the 20th of December in the year of grace 1870. You remember what a terrific winter that was? How the bleak north wind blew over ice and snow, and added tenfold horrors to the poor soldiers fighting in that terrible Franco-German war—how all our hearts shuddered in pity for them, as we sat stitching and knitting in their service by the glow of our Christmas fires! This 20th of December was, perhaps, the bitterest day of the whole season. The snow was deep on the ground, the ice hung in long spikes from rails and roofs, and the east wind blew cruelly over all. Stephen Walpole ought to have been out breasting it, but, instead of this, he sat at home moaning, in a voice that sounded like a fog-bell at sea, through poultices, wadding, and miles of flannel that swelled his head out of all human proportions.

“To think of a man being knocked down by a thing no bigger than a pin’s point!” he grumbled. “A prick of that miserable atom one calls a nerve turns the seat of one’s intellect into a monster calf’s head, and makes one a spectacle to gods and men. I could whip myself for being such a milksop as to knock under to it. I’d rather have every tooth in my head pulled out than play the woman like this.… Och! Whew!”

“Serves you right, sir, for your impertinence!” protested Nelly Walpole, bridling up and applying a fresh hot poultice to her brother’s cheek, which she bade him hold; but Stephen, in his manly inability to bear the toothache with composure, dropped the soft mess under a sudden sting that jerked it out of his hand.

“What an unmanageable baby it is!” cried Nelly, catching the poultice in time to save her pretty violet cashmere dress. “I told you to hold your cheek while I fastened the bandage; make haste now before it cools.”

“O my unfortunate brother! Ill-fated man! Is this how I find you, bound and poulticed in the hands of the Philistines?”

This was from Marmaduke, Nelly’s younger brother, who entered while the operation was going on, and stood surveying the victim in serene compassion.

“Yes,” cried Stephen, “and all the pity a poor devil gets is being bullied for not holding his jaw.”

“Oh! come, you’re not so bad, since there’s vice enough in you for a pun!” said Marmaduke. “How did you catch the thing?”

“What thing—the pun?”

“The toothache.”

“It caught me,” said Stephen resentfully.

“Then it caught you in some of those villanous cut-throat places where you go pottering after beggars and blackguards and the Lord knows what!” said Marmaduke with airy contempt, drawing his slim, beringed fingers gracefully through a mass of remarkably fine curls that clustered over his high, white forehead, and gave a boyish look to his handsome young face, and added to its attractions. He was extremely prepossessing, this perfumed, patent-leather-booted young gentleman of two-and-twenty. You could not look at him without liking him. His eye was as clear as a child’s, his smile as frank, his laughter as joyous and catching. Yet, as it sometimes happens with the graces of childhood, these things were a deceptive promise. The frankness and the joy were genuine; but there was a cold gleam of contempt, a cold ring of selfishness, in the bright eyes and the merry voice that were very disappointing when you found them out. But people were slow to find them out. Even those who lived with Marmaduke, and thus had ample opportunities of judging, remained under the spell of his attractive manners and personal charms until some accident revealed their worthlessness. A false coin will go on passing current through many hands, until one day some one drops it to the ground, and the glittering sham is betrayed. He had not a bad heart; he was kind even, when he could be brought to forget himself for a moment and think of others. But it required a shock to do this; and shocks are, happily, rare in every-day life. So Marmaduke slept on undisturbed in his egotism, hardening unconsciously in self-absorbed enjoyment. He had never taken trouble about anything, made a genuine effort of any sort except for his amusement. He had just the kind of brains to enable him to get through college with a decent amount of success easily—tact, ready repartee, a quick, retentive memory that gave the maximum of result for the minimum of work. He would pass for clever and well informed where an awkward, ugly youth, who had ten times his intellect and studied ten times harder, would pass for knowing nothing. Stephen was eight years older than he, and had not yet discovered his brother’s real value. Perhaps this arose partly from Stephen’s not being of a particularly observant or analytical turn of mind. He took people pretty much at their own valuation, as the world is rather apt to do. Marmaduke set a very high price on his handsome face and limited attainments, and his brother had never dreamed of disputing it. He would sometimes naïvely express his surprise that people were so fond of Duke when he did so little to please them; and wonder how popular he was, considering that he never gave himself the smallest trouble to oblige or humor people.

“I suppose it’s his handsome face that mankind, and womankind in particular, find so taking,” Stephen would remark to Nelly. “He certainly has a wonderful knack for getting on with people without caring twopence whether they like him or not. I wish I knew his secret. Perhaps it’s his high spirits.”

Nelly would sometimes suggest that Marmaduke’s fine temper might count for something in the mystery. And Stephen never contradicted her. His temper was not his best point. He had a heart of gold; he had energy, patience, and endurance to any extent—except in case of toothache; he was unselfish and generous; but he was sensitive and exacting. Like most persons who dispense liberally, he was impatient of the selfishness and ingratitude of men who take all they can get and return nothing. Marmaduke had no such accounts to square with human beings, so he never felt aggrieved, never quarrelled with them. Stephen was working hard at his profession—he was an engineer—and so far he had achieved but moderate success. Marmaduke had been called to the bar, but it was a mere formality so far; he spent his time dawdling about town, retailing gossip and reading poetry, waiting for briefs that never came—that never do come to handsome young gentlemen who take it so easy. His elder brother laid no blame on him for this want of success. He was busy all day himself, and took for granted that Marmaduke was busy on his side. The law was up-hill work, besides; the cleverest and most industrious men grew gray in its service before they made a name for themselves; and Duke was after all but a boy—he had time enough before him. So Stephen argued in his brotherly indulgence, in ignorance of the real state of things.

Nelly was, as yet, the only person who had found out Marmaduke, who knew him thoroughly. She knew him egotistical to the core, averse to work, to effort of every sort, idle, self-indulgent, extravagant; and the knowledge of all this afforded much anxious thought to her little head of nineteen years. They lived alone, these three. Nelly was a mother to the two young men, watching and caring for them with that instinctive child-motherhood that is so touching in young girls sometimes. She was a spirited, elfin little creature, very pretty, blessed with the sweetest of tempers, the shrewdest of common sense, and an energy of character that nothing daunted and few things resisted. Marmaduke described this trait of Nelly’s in brother-like fashion as “a will of her own.” He knew his was no match for it, and, with a tact which made one of his best weapons of defence, he contrived to avoid clashing with it. This was not all policy. He loved his pretty sister, and admired her more than anything in the world except himself. And yet he knew that this admiration was not mutual; that Nelly knew him thoroughly, saw through him as if he were glass; but he was not afraid of her. His elder brother was duped by him; but he would have staked his life on it that Nelly would never undeceive him; that she would let Stephen go on believing in him so long as the deceiver himself did not tear off the mask. Yet it was a source of bitter anxiety to the wise little mother-maiden to watch Marmy drifting on in this life of indolence and vacuity. Where was it to end? Where do such lives always end? Nothing but some terrible shock could awake him from it. And where was the shock to come from? Nelly never preached—she was far too sensible for that—but when the opportunity presented itself she would say a few brief words to the culprit in an earnest way that never irritated him, if they worked no better result. He would admit with exasperating good-humor that he was a good-for-nothing dog; that he was unworthy of such a perfection of a sister and such an irreproachable elder brother; but that, as nature had so blessed him, he meant to take advantage of the privilege of leaving the care of his perfection to them.

“If I were alone on my own hook, Nell, I would work like a galley-slave,” he protested once to her gentle upbraiding. “But as it is, why need I bother myself? You will save my soul, and pray me high and dry into heaven; and Stephen—Stephen the admirable, the unimpeachable, the pink of respectability—will keep me out of mischief in this.”

“I don’t believe in vicarious salvation for this world or the next, and neither do you, Marmy. You are much too intelligent to believe in any such absurdity,” replied Nelly, handing him a glove she had been sewing a button into.

Marmaduke did not contradict her, but, whistling an air from the Trovatore, arranged his hat becomingly, a little to one side, and, with a farewell look in the glass over the mantel-piece, sauntered out for his morning constitutional in the park. Nelly went to the window, and watched the lithe young figure, with its elastic step, until it disappeared. She was conscious of a stronger solicitude about Marmaduke this morning than she had ever felt before. It was like a presentiment. Yet there was nothing that she knew of to justify it. He had not taken to more irregular hours, nor more extravagant habits, nor done anything to cause her fresh anxiety; still, her heart beat as under some new and sudden fear. Perhaps it was the ring of false logic in his argument that sounded a louder note of alarm and warned her of worse danger than she had suspected. One might fear everything for a man starting in life with the deliberate purpose of shifting his responsibility on to another, setting his conscience to sleep because he had two brave, wakeful ones watching at his side.

“If something would but come and wake him up to see the monstrous folly, the sinfulness, of it!” sighed Nelly. “But nothing short of a miracle could do that, I believe. He might, indeed, fall ill and be brought to death’s door; he might break his leg and be a cripple for life, and that might serve the purpose; but oh! dear, I’m not brave enough to wish for so severe a remedy.”

Two months had passed since this little incident between the brother and sister, and nothing had occurred to vindicate Nelly’s gloomy forebodings. Marmaduke rose late, read the newspaper, then Tennyson, Lamartine, or the last novel, made an elaborate toilet, and sauntered down to the courts to keep a lookout for the coming briefs. But it was near Christmas now, and this serious and even tenor of life had been of late broken in upon by the getting up of private theatricals in company with some bachelor friends. What between learning his own part, and hearing his fellow-actors and actresses theirs, and overseeing stage arrangements, Marmaduke had a hard time of it. His hands were full; he was less at home than usual, seldom or never of an evening. He had come in very late some nights, and looked worn and out of spirits, Nelly thought, when he came down to his late breakfast.

“I wish those theatricals were over, Marmy. They will kill you if they last much longer,” she said, with a tender, anxious look on her pretty little face. This was the day he came home and found Stephen in the hands of the Philistines.

“’Tis hard work enough,” assented the young man, stretching out his long limbs wearily; “but the 26th will soon be here. It will be too bad if you are laid up and can’t come and applaud me, Steevy,” he added, considering his elder brother’s huge head, that looked as if it would take a month to regain its natural shape.

“Humph! That’s the least of my troubles!” boomed Stephen through his poultice.

“Civil! Eh, Nell? I can tell you it’s as bad as any toothache, the labor I’ve had with the business—those lazy dogs, Travers and Milford, throwing all the weight of it on me, under pretext of never having done that sort of thing before.”

“That’s always the fate of the willing horse,” said Stephen, without the faintest idea of being sarcastic. “That’s just what I complain of with those idle fellows X—— and W——; they throw the burden of all the business on me, because, forsooth, I understand things better! I do understand that people can’t get work done unless they bestir themselves and attend to it.”

“I wouldn’t be such an ass as to let myself be put on in that way,” said Marmaduke resentfully. “I would not be fooled into doing the work of three people instead of one.”

“And yet that’s what you are doing at present,” replied Stephen.

“Oh! that’s different; it is only en passant,” explained Marmaduke; “and then, you see, it.…”

“Amuses you,” Nelly had it on the tip of her tongue to say; but she checked herself, and finished the sentence for him with, “It is not the same thing; people cannot make terms for a division of labor, except it be in the case of real business.”

“Of course not,” assented Stephen. Marmaduke looked at his boots, and inwardly voted Nelly “no end of a trump.”

Did she guess this mental vote, and did she take advantage of it to ask him a favor?

“Perhaps Marmy would go and see that poor man for you, Stephen?” she said in the most natural way possible, without looking up from her work.

“I wish he would; I should be ever so much obliged to him. Would you mind it, Duke?”

“Mind what?”

“Taking a message for me to a poor fellow that I wanted badly to go and see to-day.”

“Who is he? Where does he hang out?”

“His name is John Baines, and he hangs out in Red Pepper Lane, ten minutes from here, at the back of the square.”

“Some abominable slum, no doubt.”

“The locality is not Berkeley Square or Piccadilly, but it would not kill you to walk through it once,” rejoined Stephen.

“Do go, there’s a dear boy!” coaxed Nelly, fixing her bright eyes on Marmaduke’s face, with a smile that would have fascinated a gorilla.

Marmaduke rose, stretched his arms, as if to brace himself for an effort.

“Who’s your friend John Baines?” he said. “A ticket-of-leave man?”

“Nothing so interesting; he’s only a rag-and-bone man.”

Marmaduke said nothing, but his nose uttered such an unmistakable pshaw! that Nelly, in spite of herself, burst out laughing.

“What the deuce can make him cultivate such company?” he exclaimed, appealing to Nelly, and joining good-humoredly in her merriment.

“To help them and do them good; what else?” she replied.

“Every man to his taste; I confess I have none for evangelizing rag-and-bone men, or indeed men of any station, kind, or degree,” observed Marmaduke emphatically.

“Then you won’t go?” said Stephen.

“I didn’t say I wouldn’t. I don’t mind devoting myself for once to oblige you. What’s your message for John Baines? Not a leg of mutton or a bottle of port? I won’t bargain for carrying that sort of article.”

“I don’t want you to carry anything that will encumber you,” replied the elder brother. “Tell him I cannot get to see him to-day, and why, and that I am very sorry for it. Meantime, you can say I have done his commission. See if he wants anything, and, if so I will send it at once.”

“What ails him?” enquired Marmaduke with a sudden look of alarm.

“Poverty: hunger, and cold, and misery.”

“Oh! that’s all! I mean it’s not a case of typhus or small-pox. I should not care to imperil my valuable life by running in the way of that sort of thing,” observed Marmaduke.

“Have no fear. The complaint is not catching,” replied his brother. “Whatever good he may do you, he’ll do you no harm.”

“Dear Marmy! it’s very good of you!” whispered Nelly, as she tripped down-stairs after the reluctant messenger, and helped him on with his fur coat in the hall.

“It’s not a bit good; it’s an infernal bore, and I’m only doing it to please you, Nell,” protested Marmaduke. “What a fool’s errand it is! I sha’n’t know from Adam what to say to the man when I get there. What am I to say to him?”

“Oh! anything,” suggested Nelly. “Say you have come to see him because Stephen is ill, and ask him how he is. You’re never at a loss for something to say, you know that right well; and whatever you say is sure to be right.”

“When I know who I’m talking to; but I don’t know this interesting party, or what topics of conversation he particularly affects. He won’t expect me to preach him a sermon, eh?” And Marmaduke faced round with a look of such comical terror at the thought that Nelly again burst out laughing.

“Heaven forbid! That’s the last thing you need dream of,” she cried. “He is much more likely to preach to you.”

“Oh! indeed; but I didn’t bargain for that. I would very much rather be excused,” protested Marmaduke, anything but reassured.

“You foolish boy! I mean that he will preach to you as the poor always do—by example; by their patience, and their gratitude for the least thing one does for them.”

“I’m not going to do anything for John Baines that I can see; only bothering him with a visit which he would very likely rather I spared him.”

“You will give him Stephen’s message,” suggested Nelly, “and then let him talk. There is nothing poor people enjoy so much as a good listener. They are quite happy when they can pour out their grievances into a willing ear. The sympathy of the rich is often a greater comfort to the poor than their alms.”

“Humph! That’s lucky, anyhow,” grunted Marmaduke. “Well, I’ll let the old gentleman have his head; I’ll listen till he pulls up of his own accord.” He had his hand on the door-latch, when Stephen’s muffled tones were heard calling from the room above. Nelly bounded up the stairs, and was back in an instant.

“He says you are to give Baines half a sovereign from him; he had nearly forgotten it.”

“Where is it?” said Marmaduke, holding out his hand.

“Stephen has not his purse about him, so he begs you will give it for him.”

“Neither have I mine,” said the young man.

“Well, run up for it; or shall I? Where is it?” inquired willing Nelly.

Marmaduke hesitated for a moment, and then said abruptly: “It doesn’t matter where it is; there’s nothing in it.”

“What have you done with your money? You had plenty a few days ago!” exclaimed Nelly in childlike surprise.

“I have lost it; I haven’t a brass farthing in the world!” He said this in a reckless, dogged sort of way, as if he did not care who knew it; and yet he spoke in an undertone. For one moment Nelly looked at him in blank astonishment.

“Lost it?” she repeated, and then, the truth flashing on her suddenly, she cried in a frightened whisper: “O Marmaduke! you have not been gambling? Oh! tell me it’s not true.” She caught hold of his arm, and, clinging to it, looked into his face, scared and white.

“Nonsense, Nell! I thought you were a girl of sense,” he exclaimed pettishly, disengaging himself and pushing back the bolt. “Let me be off; tell Stephen I had not change, so his friend must wait till he can go and tip him himself.”

“No, no; he may be hungry, poor man. Stay, I think I have ten shillings here,” said Nelly; and she pulled out her porte-monnaie, and picked four half-crowns from the promiscuous heap of smaller coins. “Take these; I will tell Stephen you will give the ten shillings.”

Her hand trembled as she dropped the money into Marmaduke’s pocket. He was about to resist; but there was something peremptory, a touch of that will of her own, in her manner that deterred him.

“I’m sorry I said anything about it; I should not if I thought you would have minded it so much,” he observed.

“Minded it? O Marmaduke! Minded your taking to gambling?”

“Tush! Don’t talk nonsense! A man isn’t a gambler because once in a way he loses a twenty-pound note.”

And with this he brushed past her, and closed the hall-door with a loud bang.

Nelly did not sit down on one of the hall chairs and cry. She felt mightily inclined to do so; but she struggled against the weakness and overcame it. Walking quietly up the stairs, she hummed a few bars of a favorite air as she passed the door of Stephen’s sitting-room, and went on to her own room on the story above. But even here, safe and alone, the tears were bravely held back. She would not cry; she would not be seen with red eyes that would betray her brother; she would do her very utmost to rescue him, to screen him even now. While she is wrestling and pleading in the silence of her own room, let us follow the gambler to Red Pepper Lane.

Marmaduke had described the place accurately when he called it an abominable slum. Red Pepper Lane was one of those dismal, frightful dens of darkness and dirt that cower at the back of so many of our wealthy squares and streets—poison-pits for breeding typhus and every social plague that desolates great cities. The houses were so high and the lane so narrow that you could at a stretch have shaken hands across from window to window. There was a rope slung half-way down the alley, with a lantern hanging from it which looked more like a decoration or a sign than a possible luminary; for the glass was too thickly crusted with dirt to admit of the strongest light piercing it. In the middle of the lane was a gutter, in which a few ragged, begrimed, and hungry-looking little mortals were playing in the dirty snow. The east wind whistled through the dreary tenements with a sharp, pitiless cry; the sky was bright outside, but here in Red Pepper Lane its brightness did not penetrate. Nothing but the wind could enter, and that came with all its might, through the crannies in the walls, through the rickety doors, through the window-frames glazed with brown paper or battered old hats—any rag that could be spared to stuff the empty panes. Not a head was seen anywhere protruding from windows or doors; the fierce blast kept every one within who had a roof to cover them. If it were not for the sooty little objects disporting themselves in the gutter, the lane might have been the precincts of the jail, so deserted and silent was it. Marmaduke might have wandered up and down for an hour without meeting any one whom he could ask to direct him to where John Baines lived, but luckily he recognized the house at once by Stephen’s signal of an old broom nailed over the door. He searched for a knocker or a bell; but seeing neither, he sounded a loud rat-ta-ta-tat with the gold knob of his walking-stick, and presently a voice called out from somewhere to “lift the latch!” He did so, and, again left to his own devices, he followed Stephen’s injunctions and went straight up to the second story, where he knocked, and in obedience to a sharp “Come in!” entered.

The gloom of the lane had prepared him gradually for the deeper gloom of the room, and he at once distinguished a person, whom he rightly surmised to be the rag-and-bone man, sitting at the farther end, near the fire-place, wrapped up in a brown blanket, with his feet resting on the hearth-stone, as if he were toasting them. If he was, it was in imagination; for there was no fire—only the ghost of one as visible in a mass of gray ashes, and they did not look as if even a glow of the late warmth remained in them. He had his back to the door, and, when it opened, he turned his head in that direction, but not sufficiently to see who came in. Marmaduke, as he stood on the threshold, took in the surroundings at a glance. There was a bed on the floor in one corner, with no bed-clothes to speak of, the blanket being just now in requisition as a cloak; a miserable-looking table and two chairs—an unoccupied one and the one Baines sat in; a bag and a basket were flung under the window, and some dingy old utensils—a saucepan, kettle, etc.—lay about. There was nothing particularly dreadful in the scene; it was, compared with many such, rather a cheerful one on the whole; but Marmaduke, who had no experience of the dwellings of the poor, thought it the most appalling picture of misery and desolation that could be conceived. He was roused from the stupor of horror into which the sudden spectacle had thrown him by hearing the figure in the blanket ask rather sharply a second time “Who’s there?”

“I beg your pardon,” said Marmaduke, advancing within a step of the chair. “My name is Walpole; I have come to see if there is anything I can do for you—anything that you … that …” he stammered, not knowing how to put it.

“Oh! Mr. Walpole, I am obliged to you for calling, sir. I want nothing; but I am glad to see you. It is very kind of you. Pray take a chair. You must excuse me for not getting up; my leg is still very painful.”

“I am only the brother of the Mr. Walpole whom you know,” said Marmaduke, surprised beyond measure at the good address of the man. “My brother is laid up with a violent face-ache. He was greatly put out at not being able to keep his appointment with you this afternoon, and sent me to see how you were getting on, and to tell you he had done something that you commissioned him to do.”

“Your brother is extremely kind,” said the man. “I am sorry to hear he is ill. This weather is trying to everybody.”

“You seem to be a severe sufferer from it,” remarked Marmaduke. He had opened his fur coat, and sat back in the rickety chair, in mortal fear all the while that it would go to smash under him. This was the most extraordinary specimen of the rag-and-bone tribe—he could not say that he had ever known, for he had never known one in his life, but—that he could have imagined. He spoke like an educated man, and, even in his blanket, he had the bearing of a gentleman. If it were not for his swollen nose and the glare of his red eye-balls, which were decidedly not refined, there was nothing in his appearance to indicate that he belonged to the very dregs of human society. It was impossible to say how old he was, but you saw at a glance that he was more broken than aged.

“Yes, I am suffering rather severely just now,” he replied in a quiet, conversational way; “I always do when the cold sets in. But, added to my chronic complaint of sciatica, I slipped on the ice some time ago, and sprained my left foot badly. Your brother made my acquaintance at the hospital where I was taken to have it set right.”

“And has it been set right?”

“Yes; I can’t get about easily yet, but it will be all right by and by.” And then, dismissing the selfish subject, he said: “I am distressed, sir, that you should have had the trouble of coming to such a place as this; pray don’t let me detain you longer.”

“I’m in no hurry,” replied Marmaduke, whose interest and curiosity were more and more excited. “Is there nothing I can do for you? It’s dismal work sitting here all day with a sprained ankle, and having nothing to do; would you care to have some books?” It did not occur to him to ask if he knew how to read; he would as soon have inquired if he knew how to speak.

Baines looked at him with a curious expression.

“I don’t look like a man to lend books to, do I?” he said. “There’s not much in common between books and a rag-and-bone man.”

“Quite as much, I should say, as there is between some men and rags and bones,” retorted Marmaduke, meeting the man’s eyes with a responsive question in his own.

Baines turned away with a short laugh. Perhaps it was mere accident or the force of habit that made him look up at the space over the mantel-piece; but there was something in the deliberate glance that made Marmaduke follow it, and, doing so, he saw a faded but originally good engraving of Shakspere hung in a frame against the wall. Repressing the low whistle which rose involuntarily to his lips, he said, looking at the portrait:

“You have a likeness of Shakspere, I see. Have you read his plays?”

“Ay, and acted them!”

“Acted them! You were originally on the stage, then? I saw at once that you were not what you seem to me,” said Marmaduke, with that frankness that seemed so full of sympathy and was so misleading, though never less so, perhaps, than at this moment. “Would it be disagreeable to you to tell me through what chapters of ill-luck or other vicissitudes you came to be in the position where I now see you?”

The man was silent for a few minutes; whether he was too deeply offended to reply at once, or whether he was glancing over the past which the question evoked, it was impossible to say. Marmaduke fancied he was offended, and, vexed with himself for having questioned him, he stood up, and laying Nelly’s four half-crowns on the chimney-piece, “I beg your pardon if I seemed impertinent; I assure you I did not mean it,” he said. “I felt interested in you, and curious to know something more of you; but I had no right to put questions. Good-morning.” He made a step towards the door, but Baines, rousing himself, arrested him by a sign.

“I am not offended,” he said. “I saw quite well what made you ask it. You would have every right to catechise me if I had come to you for help; as it is, your kindness and your brother’s makes a claim which I am in no mind to dispute. If you don’t mind shivering in this cold place for half an hour, pray sit down, and I will tell you my story. I have not a cigar to offer you,” he added with a laugh, “but perhaps you don’t affect that vice?”

“I do indeed very considerably,” said Marmaduke, and, pulling out a handsome cigar-case, he handed it to Baines, and invited him to help himself; the rag-man hesitated just for a moment, and then, yielding to the instinct of his good-breeding, took one.

“It’s not an amusing story,” he began, when they had sent up a few warm puffs from their fragrant weeds, “but it may not be uninteresting to you. You are very young; would it be rude to ask how young?”

“Two-and-twenty next week, if I live so long,” replied Marmaduke.

“Humph! I was just that age when I took the fatal turn in the road that led to the honorable career in which I am now embarked. My father was an officer in the line. He had no fortune to speak of; a couple of thousand pounds left him by an aunt was all the capital he possessed. When he was still young, he married, and got three thousand pounds with his wife. I was their only child. My father died when I was ten years old, and left me to the sole care of my mother, who made an idol of me and spoiled me to my heart’s content. I was not a bad boy, I had no evil propensities, and I was not deficient in brains. I picked up things with little or no effort, and got on better at school than many who had twice the brains and four times the industry. I was passionately fond of poetry, learned pages of Byron and Shelley by heart, and declaimed with a good deal of power. There could not have been a greater curse than such a gift to a boy of my temperament and circumstances. When I left school, I went to Oxford. My poor mother strained every nerve to give me a university education, with a view to my becoming a barrister; but instead of repaying her sacrifices by working hard, I spent the greater part of my time acting. I became infatuated about Shakspere, and took to private theatricals with a frenzy of enthusiasm. As ill-luck would have it, I fell in with a set of fellows who were drama-mad like myself. I had one great chum named Hallam, who was stark mad about it, and encouraged me in the folly to the utmost. I soon became a leading star in this line. I was sought for and asked out by everybody in the place, until my head got completely turned, and I fancied I had only to walk on to the stage to take Macready’s place and achieve fame and fortune. The first thing that roused me from the absurd delusion was seeing Charles Kean in Macbeth. I felt utterly annihilated under the superiority of his acting; it showed me in an instant the difference there is between ordinary taste and talent and the divine afflatus of genius. And yet an old friend who happened to meet me in the theatre that night assured me that the younger Kean was not a patch upon his father, and that Macready outshone the elder Kean. I went back to Oxford a crestfallen man, and for a time took refuge from my disappointment in real work. I studied hard, and, when the term came for going up for my degree, I was confident of success. It was a vain confidence, of course. I had only given myself to study for a period of two months or so, and it would have been little short of a miracle if I had passed. My mother was terribly disappointed; the sight of her tears cut me up more than the failure on my own account, and I determined to succeed or die in the effort, if she consented to let me make one more. She did consent, and I succeeded. That was the happiest day of my life, I think.” He drew a long breath, and repeated in an undertone, as if he forgot Marmaduke’s presence, and were speaking aloud to himself: “Yes, the happiest day of my life!”

“You worked very hard to pull up for lost time!” observed Marmaduke.

“Lost time! Yes, that was it—lost time!” said Baines, musing; then he continued in his former tone: “My poor mother was very happy. She declared I had repaid her amply for all her sacrifices. She saw me already at the top of my profession, a Q.C., a judge, the chief of all the judges, seated in robes on the woolsack. I came home, and was in due time called to the bar. I was then just twenty-four. We lived in a pretty house on the road to Putney; but my mother thought it now desirable to move into London, that I might have an office in some central neighborhood, where my clients would flow in and out conveniently. I remember that I strongly opposed the plan, not from dislike, but from some feeling like a presentiment, a dread, that London would be a dangerous place for me, and that I was taking the road to ruin by leaving the shelter of our secluded home, with its garden and trees, away from a thousand temptations that beset a young man in the great city. But my mother’s heart was set on it. She was convinced my character had thoroughly changed, that I had broken off for ever from old habits and old propensities, and that I was strong enough to encounter any amount of temptation without risk. Poor mother! It was no fault of hers if she was blinded by love. The fault was all mine. I fed her with false hopes, and then I betrayed them. She gave in so far to my wishes as to consent only to let the house, instead of selling it, as she first intended; so that our removal to London took the appearance more of an essay than a permanent arrangement. I was thankful for this, and set about the change in high spirits. We were soon comfortably settled in a very small house in Wimpole Street. I found it rather like a bird-cage after our airy, roomy abode in the suburbs; but it was very snug, and my mother, who had wonderful taste, soon made it bright and pretty. She was the brightest and prettiest thing in it herself; people used to take her for my elder sister when she took me to parties of an evening. I was very proud of her, and with better reason than she was of me.”

He paused again, looking up at the Shakspere print, as if he saw his mother’s likeness there. The sunken, red eyes moistened as he gazed on it.

“It is a great blessing to have a good mother,” said Marmaduke. “I lost mine when I was little more than a child.”

“So much the better for both of you,” retorted Baines bitterly; “she did not live for you to break her heart, and then eat out your own with remorse. But I am talking wildly. You would no doubt have been a blessing to her; you would have worked like a man, and she would have been proud of you to the end. It was not so with me. I was never fond of work. I was not fond of it then; indeed, what I did was not worthy of being called work at all. I moped over a law-book for an hour or so in the morning, and then read Shakspere or some other favorite poet, by way of refreshing myself after the unpalatable task, and getting it out of my head as quickly as possible. I went down regularly to the courts; but as I had no legal connection, and nothing in myself to make up for the want of patronage, or inspire confidence in my steadiness and abilities, the attorneys brought me no business; and as I was too lazy, and perhaps too proud, to stoop to court them, I began to feel thoroughly disgusted with the profession, and to wish I had never entered it. I ceased to go through the farce of my law-reading of a morning, and devoted myself entirely to my dilettante tastes, reading poetry, and occasionally amusing myself with writing it. My old longing for the stage came back, and only wanted an opportunity to break out actively. This opportunity was not far off. My mother suspected nothing of the way I was idling my time; she knew the bar was up-hill work, and was satisfied to see me kept waiting a few years before I became famous; but it was matter of surprise to her that I never got a brief of any description. She set it down to jealousy on the part of my rivals at the courts, and would now and then wax wroth against them, wondering what expedient could be devised for showing up the corrupt state of the profession, and forcing my enemies to recognize my superiority as it deserved. Don’t laugh at her and think her a fool; she was wise on every subject but this, and I fear I must have counted for something in leading her to such ridiculous conclusions. I held very much to preserving her good opinion, but, instead of striving to justify it by working on to the fulfilment of her motherly ambition, I took to cheating her, first tacitly, then deliberately and cruelly. Things were going on in this way, when one day, one ill-fated day, I went out as usual in the afternoon, ostensibly to the courts, but really to kill time where I could—at my club, in the Row, or lounging in Pall Mall. I was passing the Army and Navy Club, when I heard a voice call out:

“‘Halloo, Hamlet!’ (This was the name I went by at Oxford, on account of my success in the part.) ‘How glad I am to see you, old boy! You’re the very man I’ve been on the look-out for.’

“‘Hallam!’ I cried, returning his friendly grasp, and declaring how delighted I was to see him.

“‘I’ve been beating about for you ever since I came to town, ten days ago,’ he said. ‘I wrote to your old address, but the letter was sent back to me. Where have you migrated to; and what are you doing?’

“I told him the brief history of my existence since we had parted at Oxford, he to enter the army, I to begin my course of dinners-eating at the Temple. He was now on leave; he had just come from the north, where his regiment was quartered, and he was in high spirits at the prospect of his month’s holiday. I asked him what it was he had been wanting me so particularly for.

“‘I wanted to see you, first of all, for your own sake, old boy,’ he answered heartily; ‘and in the next place I want you badly to help us to get up some private theatricals at the Duchess of B——’s after Easter. I suppose you are a perfect actor—a Garrick and Charles Mathews combined—by this time. You have had plenty of practice, I’ll be bound.’

“I assured him that I had not played since the last time he and I had brought down the house together. He was immensely surprised, and loudly deplored my mistake in burying such a talent in the earth. He called me a conceited idiot to have let myself be crushed by Kean, and vowed a year’s training from a professional would bring me out a better actor than ever Kean was. Amateur acting was all very well, but the finest untaught genius ever born could no more compete successfully with a man who had gone through the regular professional drill than a civilian could with a trained soldier in executing a military manœuvre.

“‘I told you before, and I tell you again,’ he continued, as arm in arm we paced a shady alley of the park—‘I tell you that if you went on the stage you would cut out the best actor we have; though that is not saying much, for a more miserable, ignorant lot of drivelling idiots no stage ever saw caricaturing the drama than our English theatres can boast at this moment.’

“My heart rose high, and my vanity swelled out like a peacock’s tail, pluming itself in this luxurious air of flattery. I knew Hallam meant what he said; but I knew that he was a light-headed young fellow, not at all competent to judge dramatic power, and still less to counsel me. Yet such is the intoxicating effect of vanity that I swallowed his praise as if it had been the purest wisdom. I opened my whole heart to him, told him how insufferably bored I was at the bar, that I had no aptitude for it, that I was wasting my time waiting for briefs that never came—I did not explain what pains I took to prevent their coming—until, kindling with my own exaggerated statement as I went on, I ended by cursing the day I took to the bar, and declaring that if it were not for my mother I would abandon the whole thing and try my luck on the stage to-morrow.

“‘And why should you let your mother stand in your way?’ said Hallam. ‘If she is too unreasonable to see the justice of the case, why, then … well, I can’t for the life of me see why your happiness and fortune should be sacrificed to it.’

“He was not a bad fellow—far from it. He did not mean to play the devil’s advocate. I am certain he thought he was giving me excellent advice, using his superior knowledge of the world for my benefit. But he was a fool—an ignorant, silly, well-meaning fool. Such men, as friends, are often worse than knaves. If he had proposed anything obviously wicked, dishonest, or unprincipled, I should have scouted it indignantly, and walked off in contempt. But he argued with a show of reason, in a tone of considerate regard for my mother’s wishes and feelings that deceived and disarmed me. He represented to me the folly of sticking to a life that I hated and that I had next to no chance of ever succeeding in; he had a score of examples at his fingers’ ends of young fellows teeming with talent, patient as asses, and hard working as negroes, who had gone for the bar and given it up in despair. My mother, like all fond mothers, naturally expected me to prove an exception to the general rule, and to turn out a lord chancellor of the romantic sort, rising by sheer force of merit, without patronage, without money, without any of the essential helps, by the power of my unaided genius. ‘This is simply bosh, my dear fellow—innocent maternal bosh,’ persisted Hallam, ‘but as dangerous as any poison. Cut the bar, as your better genius prompts you to do, and take to your true calling—the drama.’

“‘For aught I know, I may have lost any talent I had,’ I replied; ‘it is two years, remember, since I acted at all.’

“‘That is very easily ascertained,’ said my friend. ‘You will take a part in these theatricals we are going to get up, and we will soon see whether your talent has evaporated or not. My own impression is that it will come out stronger than ever; you have studied, and you have seen something, if not very much, of life since your last attempts.’

“‘My mother has a horror of the theatre,’ I said, unwilling to yield without a show of resistance; ‘it would break her heart to see me take to the stage.’

“‘Not if you succeed; hearts are never broken by success.’

“‘And how if I fail?’

“‘You are sure not to fail,’ he urged. ‘But look here: do nothing rashly. Don’t say anything about this business until you have tried your hand at it in private. We have not settled yet what the play is to be; they left it to me to select, and I will choose one that will bring out your powers best—not tragedy; that never was your line, in my opinion. At any rate, you must for the present confine yourself to light parts, such as.…’

“I interrupted him in high dudgeon.

“‘Why, if I’m not tragic, I’m nothing!’ I exclaimed. ‘Every one who ever saw me in Hamlet declared they had never seen the part so well rendered! And you said many a time that my Macbeth was.…’

“‘First-rate—for an amateur; and I will say it again, if you like,’ protested Hallam; ‘but since then, I have seen real acting.…’

“‘Then mine was not real? I can’t for the life of me see, then …’ I broke in.

“‘Don’t get so infernally huffy,’ said Hallam, shaking my arm with good-humored impatience. ‘If you want to know what real, trained, professional acting is, you must go abroad, and see how the actors of the Théâtre Français, for instance, study and train and drill. If you will start with the English notion that a man can take to the stage as he does to the saddle, give up the plan at once; you will never rise above an amateur. But to come back to our present purpose; we will select a part to suit you, and if the rehearsals promise a genuine success—as I have not a doubt they will—we will invite your mother to come and see you, and she will be so proud of your triumph that the cause will be won.’

“‘My dear Hallam, it was some good fairy sent you in my way assuredly this morning!’ I cried, grasping his arm in delight.

“I was highly elated, and took to the scheme with enthusiasm. We spent the afternoon discussing it. It was settled that the play should be The Taming of the Shrew; the part of Benedict would suit me to perfection, Hallam declared, and I was so subdued by the amount of worldly wisdom and general knowledge of life which he had displayed in his arguments about my change of profession that I yielded without difficulty, and consented to forego tragedy for the present.

“For the next week I was in a whirl of excitement. He took me to the Army and Navy Club, and introduced me to a number of swells, all military men, who were very agreeable and treated me with a soldier-like cordiality that charmed me. I fancied life must be a delightful thing in such pleasant, good-natured, well-bred company; that I was now in my proper sphere; and that I had been hitherto out of place amidst rusty lawyers and hard-working clerks, etc. In fact, I was a fool, and my head got turned. I spent all my time in the day lounging about with Hallam and his aristocratic captains and colonels, and the evenings I devoted to the business of rehearsal, which was carried on at Lady Arabella Daucer’s, the married daughter of the duchess at whose house the theatricals were to be performed. I had been very graciously received by her grace, and consequently all the lords and ladies who composed her court followed suit. I was made as much of as if I had been ‘one of them,’ and my acting soon established me as the leading star of the select company. I suppose Hallam was right in saying that more mature reading and so on had improved my dramatic talent; for certainly it came out with a brilliancy that surprised myself. The artistic, high-bred atmosphere that surrounded me seemed to infuse fresh vigor into me. I borrowed or revealed a power that even my vanity had never suspected. Hallam was enchanted, and as proud of my success as if it had been his own.