Chapter II: Part 2

Rachel re-entered the house, and threw herself into the old armchair, stricken with surprise and grief at what she had learned. Since she was a child, she had been taught to believe that she was struggling, beside her grandfather, against poverty. She had been happy in the thought that, although they were needy, nothing divided their affections. She believed that her grandfather was slaving day and night for their sake—slaving to keep the old house over their heads. But what was he slaving for, after all? For gold, it was true; but for gold which he hoarded up in secret places, hiding all from her, as though it were, like a crime, something of a nature to be shunned.

Meanwhile the clocks are striking the small-hours. But Silas Monk does not come home. The candle on the table beside Rachel burns low. The girl grows alarmed, and listens for the footsteps of her old grandfather. She goes out and looks about into the dark night. No one is to be seen, no one is to be heard. Four o’clock—five. Still no footsteps—not even a shadow of the man.

The dawn begins to break in a clear gray light above the sombre houses; the roar of traffic in the streets hard by falls upon the girl’s ear. Another busy day has commenced in the old city. ‘Is it possible,’ thinks Rachel, ‘that her grandfather can still be at his desk, counting and recounting his gold?’

FAMILIAR SKETCHES OF ENGLISH LAW.

BY AN EXPERIENCED PRACTITIONER.

II. PARENT AND CHILD.

Children may be divided into two classes—legitimate and illegitimate; and the liability of a father in respect of his children is widely different in the case of the latter class from the ordinary duty and responsibility of a parent. In order to clear the ground, we will first dispose of the illegitimate class; and throughout this paper it must be understood that the words parent and child, when used without any qualifying terms, refer to those between whom that mutual relationship lawfully subsists.

An illegitimate child, or bastard, is one who is born without its parents having been lawfully married; and in England, a bastard born is illegitimate to the end of his or her life; but in Scotland, such child may be rendered legitimate by the subsequent marriage of its parents, provided that at the date of its birth and of their marriage they were both free to marry. The father of an illegitimate child has no right to its custody; but he may be compelled to contribute to its support by means of an affiliation order. A bastard cannot inherit either real or personal estate from either of its parents, nor from any other person; neither can any person inherit from a bachelor or spinster who is illegitimate. If, however, such a person marries, the husband or wife and children have the same legal rights as if the stain of illegitimacy had not existed.

A legitimate child—with the exception noted above—is the offspring of parents who were lawfully married before the time of its birth. A posthumous child, if born in due time after the husband’s death, is legitimate.

The father has _primâ facie_ a right to the custody of his children while under the age of sixteen years; after that age, if they are able to maintain themselves, they may be emancipated from his control. But a mother can apply to the court for an order that she may have the exclusive care of her children while they are respectively under seven years of age; and after that age, for leave of access to them at reasonable times, in cases where husband and wife do not live together. In case of the divorce of the parents, the court will give directions as to the custody of the children of the marriage, taking into consideration the offence against morality of the guilty parent, but also what is best for the children’s education and upbringing and prospects in life.

A parent is bound to maintain and educate his children according to his station; and if the father should neglect his duty in this respect, the mother—if living with her husband—may, as his agent, order what is necessary, and he would be responsible for the expense thus incurred, which must be strictly limited to what is reasonably necessary. If a child should become chargeable upon the poor-rates, both father and grandfather are responsible for repayment of the cost incurred; the former primarily, and the latter secondarily, in case of the absence or inability of the father. In like manner, a child may be compelled to repay to the poor-rates authorities the cost of maintenance of his parents, if he have the means of doing so.

A child while under the age of twenty-one years cannot enter into a binding contract, even with the consent and concurrence of its parent, except for special purposes. One of these purposes is the acquisition of knowledge which will enable the child to earn its livelihood when it arrives at maturity. Thus apprentices and articled clerks may be bound in such a manner as to render it compulsory for them to serve until they respectively attain the age of twenty-one years; but the binding cannot be extended beyond that age. As soon as an apprentice attains his majority, he may elect to vacate his indenture, and be free from any further compulsory service. This is founded upon the well-known principle, that a minor can only be compelled to perform contracts entered into on his behalf during his minority; and that when he attains the age of twenty-one years, he is free to enter into contracts on his own behalf, which stand upon an entirely different footing, and are entirely inconsistent with the former contract. It may also be mentioned here that a minor, when he becomes of age, is free to elect whether he will perform any other contracts which he may have entered into during his minority. If any such contract be beneficial, he may allow it to stand; and if it be otherwise, he may cancel it; but the other party, if of full age, will be bound by his contract.

In this connection we may notice the Infants Relief Act, 1874. Although primarily aimed at the protection of ‘infants’ from the consequences of their own imprudence, this statute, the operation of which extends to the whole of the United Kingdom, has been found very useful in relieving children against a cruel but not uncommon kind of pressure by impecunious parents, who in many cases induced their children to encumber their expectant property in order to assist them (the parents) when in difficulties. The manner was this: The son would while under age sign a promise to execute a valid charge, which would accordingly be executed the day after he attained his majority; and though the first promise was worthless, the deed was binding. But it was enacted that all contracts entered into by ‘infants’ for the repayment of money lent or to be lent, and all accounts stated with ‘infants,’ should be not merely voidable, but absolutely void; and further, the ratification when of full age of any such promise should be void also, and the ratified promise should be incapable of being enforced.

A parent may lawfully maintain an action on behalf of his child, whether such child be an infant or of full age, without being liable to be prosecuted for the offence of maintenance or champerty. In like manner, a child if of full age may maintain an action on behalf of his parent, even though he may have no personal interest in the subject-matter of the action.

A parent may also protect his child, or a child protect his parent, from violence or assault, in such circumstances as would expose a stranger to the charge of officiously intermeddling with strife which did not concern him.

The power of an Englishman to dispose of his property by will being absolute, the consideration of a parent’s will as affecting his children need not detain us long. The principal peculiarity is this: In case of the death of a child or grandchild of a testator in the lifetime of the latter, leaving lawful issue, any devise or bequest in the will in favour of the deceased child or grandchild will take effect in favour of his issue in the same manner as if he had survived the testator and died immediately afterwards. In similar circumstances, a gift in favour of any other person who died in the testator’s lifetime would lapse, that is to say, it would altogether fail to take effect.

But in Scotland, the power of a father to dispose of his property by will is much more restricted, being confined to what is called the ‘dead man’s’ part—namely, so much as remains after setting aside one-third of the personal property or movable goods for the widow; and one-third for the children of the testator. Or if there be no widow, then the share of the children is one-half, which is divisible among them equally. The rights of either widow or child may be renounced by an antenuptial marriage contract, or for some equivalent provision given in such a contract, or by will; and a child of full age may by deed discharge his claim for _legitim_, as the children’s share of the succession is called.

In case of intestacy, the eldest son is by the common law his father’s heir-at-law, subject to his mother’s dower, if not barred or discharged. But in some localities, special customs exist, such as Borough English—prevalent at Maldon in Essex and elsewhere, by virtue of which the youngest son is the heir—and Gavelkind, which affects most of the land in Kent, where all the sons inherit in equal shares. Returning to the common-law rule, where there are both sons and daughters, the eldest son inherits to the exclusion of his younger brothers, and his sisters whether elder or younger. But if the intestate had no son, but several daughters, they would take as co-parceners in equal undivided shares. It will be understood that heirs and co-heiresses take freehold houses and land; but that leaseholds are personal property, and like money and goods, stocks and shares, are distributable, subject as hereinafter mentioned, among the widow (if any) and relatives of the deceased. Copyhold property is real estate, and the descent is in each case regulated by the custom of the manor of which the property is holden; Borough English and Gavelkind being much more common as affecting copyhold than freehold estates, though even in the case of copyholds the common-law rule is by far the most general.

The personal property of an intestate is the primary fund for payment of funeral and other expenses, costs of administration, and debts. When these have been paid, the widow (if any) is entitled to one-third of what is left; and the other two-thirds are divisible among the children. If there be no widow, the children take all, the collateral relatives having no claim. If any of the testator’s children have died before him, leaving issue, such issue take in equal shares the portion which their parent would have taken if living.

In England, the heir-at-law who takes his father’s freehold estates is not thereby deprived of his share, or any portion of his share, of the personalty. But in Scotland, the heir must bring into account or collate the value of what he has received in that capacity, before he can claim any part of the movables.

If a son or daughter be possessed of real and personal estate, and die unmarried, or widowed without children, and without making a will, leaving a surviving father, he would take the real estate as heir-at-law, and the personal estate as sole next of kin. If he were dead, the mother would take a share of the personal estate with the surviving brothers and sisters, and the eldest brother would inherit the real estate as heir-at-law. If the mother were living, but no brothers or sisters, nephews or nieces, she would have the personal estate, but could not inherit the real estate so long as any heir could be found on the paternal side. The children of deceased brothers and sisters take equally amongst them the share of personal estate which their deceased parent would have taken if living.

The law of Scotland is not so favourable to the father and mother of intestates. The father does not succeed to real or heritable estate if there be a brother or sister, and in the same event his right is limited to that of one-half the movable estate. When the father has predeceased, and the mother survives, she takes one-third of the movable succession, and the rest goes to brothers and sisters or other next of kin.

Having thus considered the rights, duties, and liabilities of parents with respect to the persons, the necessities, and the property of their children, and the corresponding rights and obligations of children with regard to their parents, we must offer a few remarks on the authority of parents over their children, and the extent to which that authority may be delegated to others.

A parent may control the actions of his children so long as they remain under his roof, and may insist upon his regulations being observed and his commands obeyed. While they are of tender years, he may inflict any reasonable punishment for disobedience or other offence, either by personal chastisement or otherwise; but he must not torture them, nor endanger their lives or health. He may also instruct his children himself; or he may send them to school; in the latter case, delegating to the schoolmaster so much as may be necessary of his power to restrain and correct the children so intrusted to his care. Since compulsory education became law, he _must_ use reasonable means to get them educated. If a child should prove incorrigible, the parent may apply to the justices of the peace to send him or her to an Industrial School; which they have power to do on being satisfied by evidence upon oath that the child is altogether beyond the power of its parent to manage or control; and an order may be made upon the parent to pay the expense of the child’s maintenance and education in such school, if his means are sufficient to enable him to do so.

The liabilities imposed by marriage differ to some extent from the responsibilities of actual parentage. Thus, a man may be compelled to repay the expense incurred by the maintenance of his own father, but not of his wife’s father, in the workhouse. And though a married man is bound to keep his wife’s children, born before his marriage with her, until they are sixteen years of age respectively, if his wife live so long; yet, if she were to die while any of them were under that age, his responsibility would immediately cease. And if any of them were to become chargeable upon the poor-rates when more than sixteen years old, the stepfather could not be required to contribute towards the expense of their maintenance, even though their mother should be still living.

IN A FURNITURE SALEROOM.

A DAY-DREAM.

I just missed by a neck, as they say in steeplechasing dialect—though on second thoughts I think it must have been liker a full horse-length—my lot being cast among second-hand furniture. I believe I was of too philosophic a nature to make a practical auctioneer and furniture-broker of. At least, such was something like the opinion held by my employer—the old gentleman was a bit of a wag—who told my father, when the latter went to see why this knight of the hammer had dispensed with his son’s services, that my mind, like the late lamented Prince of Denmark’s, was of too speculative a character ever to ‘mak’ saut to my kail’ at his profession, and advised him to bring me ‘out for a minister.’ I need not say that this advice was, for divers reasons, never acted upon.

I suppose it must have been my twelve-months’ sojourn in this old worthy’s service which gives me to this day a certain meditative interest in brokers’ shops and old furniture salerooms. I am not at any time much of a stroller about the streets and gazer into shop-windows; but next to looking into the windows of book or print and picture shops, I have a weakness for sauntering into musty old salerooms, and staring idly at the miscellaneous articles of second-hand furniture huddled within their walls, and moralising on the mutability of human hopes and possessions. A spick-and-span new furniture and upholstery establishment has no more fascination for me than a black-and-white undertaker’s. But out of the bustle of the street and the broiling heat of the mid-day sun—which is my favourite time of indulgence—and in the dusty and shadowy corners, festooned with cobwebs, of a broker’s shop or old furniture saleroom, I forget how the time goes, as I join over again the sundered human relationships to the pieces of furniture at which I stand staring in half-reverie. I fancy it must have been this same dreamy tendency which, peeping forth in my boyish career, led my shrewd master to forecast my future with so much certainty to my parent. I care not about purchasing any of the articles that so absorb me. It is not the barren desire of possession which makes me haunt these dusty salerooms. When the place becomes crowded with people, and the auctioneer mounts his little pulpit, I gather my wandered wits together and ‘silently steal away.’

I say I love to linger among the cobwebs and amid the silence of old furniture salerooms—as fruitful a source of meditation to me as loitering among tombs ever was to Harvey. That venerable eight-day clock standing against the wall, behind those slim walnut chairs and couch done up in the bright green repp, its mahogany almost as black as your Sunday hat with age, turns on my thinking faculty just as the ‘auld Scots’ sangs’ moves my guidwife Peggy to tears. I think of all the pairs of eyes that have gazed up at the hands and figures on its olive-tinted face, and wonder how many of them have taken their last look of earth. My imagination transports it to some well-to-do Scottish cottage home, where I see, held up in fond arms, the marvelling youngsters, in striped cotton pinafores, with their wide-open eyes staring at the representatives of the four quarters of the globe, painted in bright dazzling colours on each corner of the dial-plate. Perhaps some of those same youngsters, to whose inquiring and wondering minds the pictures were an every-day exercise, are settled down, old men and women now, in one of these distant quarters of the globe, say America, and are sitting at this very moment in their log-hut in the backwoods, their minds’ eyes reverting to the familiar face of that old clock tick-ticking away in their childhood’s home.

Over against where it stood in that same old home, between the room door and the end of the white scoured wooden dresser with its well-filled delf rack, I picture to myself the wasted face of a sick woman pillowed up in bed. What weary nights she has listened to its tick-tack, and counted the slow hours as they struck, waiting for the dawn! I know that her head aches no longer, and that she sleeps sound enough now, with the summer breeze stirring the green grass on her grave.

Turning away from the venerable time-keeper, my eye falls on an old-fashioned low-set chest of drawers, with dingy folding brass handles, and little bits of the veneer chipped off here and there, and the ivory awanting in some of the keyholes. Where are now, I ask myself, the ashes of those bright household fires, which have winked in the shining depths of their mahogany in the darkening gloaming, before the blinds were drawn and the candles lit? What secrets and treasures have not these same drawers been the repositories of! I see a pensive female form, in striped shortgown and drugget petticoat, stop while she is sweeping the kitchen floor, and, with palpitating heart, pull out the centre small top drawer to take another look at the golden curl, wrapped in a precious letter, in the corner beside two or three well-worn toys. That bruised heart will throb no more with joy or pain; neither will her tears fall any more like scalding lead on the blurred parchment, as she lifts the bright curl to her lips before wrapping it away out of sight again—till, mayhap, the next day, when the old yearning returns, and she must needs go and unfold her treasure, the sight of which brings the little chubby face—over which the curl used to hang—once more before her brimming eyes.

The little bookcase, with the diamond-shaped panes, on the top of the chest of drawers is an object to me of even nobler regard than the drawers themselves. My venerable uncle, who was an author too, had just such a little bookcase on the top of his drawers, about three-fourths filled with sombre-looking volumes. I remember I never looked up at it as a boy, and beheld the dim dusty books, like gray ghosts, sitting erect, or leaning against one another in the twilight shelves, but I associated it in my fancy with the inside of his own gray head. Already I see the titles on the backs of some of these children of dead brains looming out of the empty gloom through the diamond-shaped panes; and I can recognise many of my own favourites among them. The binding is more faded and worn on the backs of some than others, as if they had been more often in the hand and more dear to the heart of the reader. I am almost tempted to stretch forth my hand and renew their acquaintance. One in particular, in faded green-and-gold binding, looking out from amongst a motley company of fiction, _The House with the Seven Gables_, I have a covetous eye upon.

How I should like to revisit the shadowy chambers of that old puritan mansion, especially that low-studded oak-panelled room with the portrait of the stern old Colonel looking down from the wall; and feel the smell of its decaying timbers, ‘oozy’ with the memories of whole generations of Pyncheons; to see poor perplexed old Hepzibah in the midst of her first day’s shopkeeping, with her wreck of a resurrected brother to care and provide for; and watch—not without reverence, even though we are constrained sometimes to laugh—the miraculously minute workings of her crazed old heart fighting—a kind of comic pathos, as well as rarest heroism in her mimic battling—those troublesome spectres of gentility which she has inherited with her Pyncheon blood.

Alas for this most bewitching of romancers! Well might his friend Longfellow exclaim of him:

Ah! who shall lift that wand of magic power,
And the lost clue regain?
The unfinished window in Aladdin’s tower
Unfinished must remain!

Sitting on the shelf beneath _The House with the Seven Gables_ is the king of all the magicians—the enchanter’s name printed in tarnished gold letters on a faded square of scarlet morocco on its calf back—‘Shakspeare.’

On this hot July forenoon, with dusty smelling streets, when the united heart of our mighty Babylon is panting for the water-brooks, wouldn’t it be a treat just to step into the forest of Arden? You don’t require to change your clothes, or bolt a hurried luncheon, or run to catch a train, or take your place on the crowded deck of a snorting greasy steamboat under a vertical sun; but simply to open out the volume at that most delightful of all comedies, _As You Like It_, and at once fling yourself down ‘under the shade of melancholy boughs,’ and ‘lose and neglect the creeping hours of time’ listening to the moralising of a Jaques

As he lay along
Under an oak, whose antique root peeps out
Upon the brook that brawls along this wood:

or to an encounter of his wits with the sage fooleries of a Touchstone; or the love-sick ravings of an Orlando; or the nimble pleasantries and caustic humours of a Rosalind.

But, to speak the truth, I don’t know whether I should not prefer at this moment—to a lounge in the forest of Arden—a meditative ramble and chat with the Wanderer in Wordsworth’s _Excursion_, which I spy leaning against my old friend _The Vicar of Wakefield_, there, on the other side of Shakspeare. How pleasant it would be, after toiling across the bare wide common, baked with the scorching heat, to join that venerable philosopher and retired packman just where the author himself meets him by appointment, reposing his limbs on the cottage bench beside the roofless hut of poor Margaret!

His eyes as if in drowsiness half shut,
The shadow of the breezy elms above
Dappling his face.

But the unceremonious porter is apparently unwilling to gratify me so far, having, in his preparations for the sale, pushed a tall half-tester bedstead right in front of my view of the chest of drawers and bookcase.

This alteration has brought to light an old armchair among a crowd of odd window-poles and bed-bottoms, a kind of bewilderment and shyness in its wrinkled features, as if it hardly felt at home in this nineteenth-century saleroom, rubbing shoulders, so to speak, with pompous old sideboards, and gouty old sofas and stuff-bottomed chairs, and wishing it were back to the earthen cottage floor again. From its shape and the colour of its wood, it looks more than a hundred years old. My Aunt S——, who was a paralytic, had just such a chair, which she sat in for ten years before she died. It had belonged to her mother’s mother; and she took great pride in averring that Burns—who, her own mother told her, was a crony of her father’s—had many a time sat in it. I think I see herself sitting in it at this moment, with her great black piercing eyes, and hear her clever critical tongue wagging as of old.

This ancient armchair, stuffed away amid the dust and lumber of the saleroom, touches my feelings more nearly than any other object joined together with hands. Its low, firm, but narrow seat, its solid curved arms, its straight sloping back with three spars in the centre, recall the tottering gait of silvery-haired grandfathers in knee-breeches and ‘rig-an’-fur’ stockings, and hale old grandmothers with white bordered ‘mutches’ or caps on their heads, and tartan napkins about their stooping shoulders; and old-fashioned Scotch kitchens with eight-day clocks, and wooden dressers, and clean-clayed roomy fireplaces with big-bellied pots hanging from the links on the ‘swee’ or crane.

But what household god is this which is the subject of whispering criticism behind me? Turning round, I observe two women, evidently intending purchasers from their remarks, and not idle dreamers like myself, moving away from a large chest to inspect some dishes they have suddenly caught sight of on a side-table at the further end of the room. This chest I have seen before, especially about the term-time, mounted on the footboard of a cab beside the driver, while its ‘sonsie’ proprietress—unaccustomed as she is to ride in carriages—sits on the edge of the cushioned seat inside, staring apologetically at the foot-passengers on the pavement. It is the same kind of thing thrifty housewives in the country used to keep their blankets in, before the trunks and tin boxes came so much into vogue. It is painted an oak colour, though to my mind it resembles more a musty gingerbread; and it has a black line forming a square on each of its plain panels. Instinctively I lift the lid and peep in. Its white wood is covered with a wall-paper pattern of moss-roses. It has a ‘shuttle’ too, with a little drawer underneath; the same as was in the chest I had when a bachelor. I used to keep all my valuables in that little drawer, such as love-letters. How those epistles accumulated! I remember I had to press them down before the drawer would shut, when I happened to be refreshing my memory with some of their pleasant sentiments. Peg’s portrait used to lie here in a corner of this same charmed sepulchre. If I were to tell my young readers how often I made an excuse to go into my chest for something or other, and never withdrew my head without taking a peep at Peg’s face, they would no doubt call me spooney, though they know quite well they do the same thing themselves.

The bustling old porter, who kept hovering in my vicinity—a kind of astonished interest looking out of his not unkindly gray eyes—here cut short my amorous reminiscences by shutting down the lid of the chest, and, apparently with a view to economise space—for odd customers were beginning to drop in—lifting a cradle on to the top of it. The cradle is one of the old-fashioned wooden sort, with good solid rockers, which used to be seen in the houses of plain folks in my young days, and was usually of some antiquity, being considered an heirloom, and descending from parent to eldest son. I remember another cradle just like this one, in our old home. It was painted a bluish-green colour inside, and a loud mahogany colour outside, interspersed with numberless artificial black knots, more like figures in the hangings, or wall-paper, than the grains of wood. That cradle had rocked no end of generations of my progenitors; and when baby visitors gave over showing their chubby little red pudding faces at our house, my sister and I used to play at ‘shop’ and ‘church’ in it on wet days. On these occasions, though I allowed her—as I no doubt thought became her good-for-nothing sex—the full management of the shop, yet I always insisted on being the clergyman, turning the cradle on its end, and preaching from under its hood, which served as a canopy.

That oldest and ever newest tragedy which we must all, some time or other, be witnesses of, or chief performers in, has been enacted in this hollow little bed ere now. I see the worn and anxious mother seated on a stool bending over the little sufferer in the cradle. She has not had her clothes off for nearly a week, but she will not be persuaded to lie down. She could never forgive herself if those glazed little windows, so set-like now in their deep sockets, under the ashy pale brow, were to be darkened for ever, and she not see the final darkening. She wets continually the livid and senseless little lips, and sighs as if her heart would burst, as she watches, in her own words, ‘the sair, sair liftin’ o’ the wee breist, an’ the cauld, cauld dew on the little face!’ The struggle will not last long now, and the mother’s pent-up feelings will ere long get relief.

Whether desirous of diverting my thoughts from this harrowing scene, or merely thinking it a pity that I should be exercising my mind over a lot of lifeless old sticks, the porter, with a delicacy of insight that I would hardly have credited him with, has brought two pictures, and without a word has put them up against the backs of two mahogany chairs in front of me. If that porter had been my friend the biggest half of his natural lifetime—which, judging from the furrows on his lean face and the whiteness of his scant locks, was already anything but a short one—he could not have selected two works of art more pat to my taste or my present mood; and I inwardly blessed him for his thoughtful trouble, though I had a vague suspicion that there might be a gentle touch of irony in his ministrations.

The largest picture, ‘Crossing the Sands,’ is a gloaming or twilight subject, somewhere, I fancy, on the Ayrshire coast. Its features are as familiar to me as the streets and houses in my native town. It brings to mind the days of my childhood, when the old folks used to hire a garret at the seaside for a few brief—for us youngsters all too brief—days in the summer; and the lonely walks and talks of later years, when the sun had gone down, and the newly awakened winds blew all the stronger and fresher in our faces for their afternoon’s slumber, and our voices mingled with the rhythmic murmur of the waves as they broke at our feet.

The artist, I suppose, has named his picture from the dim outline of a horse and cart, with two figures sitting in it, crossing the darkening sands. The tide is far out, and has left long zigzag shallow pools of water lying in the uneven places on the sands, into which the swift vanishing day, through a break in the dark saffron clouds, is casting wistful looks. The same pale reflection is glimmering faintly along the wave-broken verge of the distant sea; while the denser flood, where it stretches out to meet the gray skyline, wears something of a sad melancholy in its cold blue depth. In comfortable contrast with this lonesomeness, sitting among the deepening shadows on a dark clump of moorland, or bent, on the left-hand corner of the picture, is the dreamiest little hut, with the rarest blue smoke rising out of its crazy chimney, and floating like a spirit among the dark grays and purples sleeping on the hillsides.

The smaller upright picture is a street in Dieppe—the time, evening, from the green tinge in the blue of the sky, and the roseate hue of the low-lying clouds. It is just such an old French street as one would delight in strolling through at that poetic hour, to feast one’s eyes on the bewitching mixture of sunlight and shadow, reclining side by side, or locked in loving embrace among the sombre reds, and rich browns, and warm ochres on the quaint roofs and gables and walls; and to note the leisurely figures of the picturesque women in white caps, blue shortgowns, and red petticoats, chatting in the mellow sunlight at the street corner, or moving along in the shadow under the eaves of the overhanging gables; or the slow cart in the middle of the street, its wheels resting on that streak of sunshine slanting from the old gable at the corner; or the decrepit vegetable-woman at her stand on the opposite side of that gutter, the fresh green colour of her vegetables—all the fresher and greener against the daub or two of bright red—wafting one’s thoughts away to cottage gardens and pleasant orchards.

But I must not tarry any longer in this old French street, or, indeed, in this musty old saleroom, which has thrown off its pensive and meditative humour, and taken on a brisk, practical, and business-like air. Already the auctioneer and his spruce clerk have arrived, and the faces of the knots of people scattered up and down the floor are looking with expectancy towards the little pulpit. It is no longer a place for an idle dreamer like myself, and so I saunter out to the street. The sudden transition from the shadow of the saleroom to the bright white sunshine on the bustling city thoroughfare, together with the sight of the refreshing water-cart, with a group of barelegged, merry children prancing in its cooling spray, instantly dispel my illusions; and in another moment I am as completely in the midst of the living present as I was before in the dead past.

SURGICAL SCRAPS.

There is a curious instrument in the _armamentarium_ of the surgeon called a probang, employed for removing foreign bodies which have become fixed in the esophagus or gullet. It consists of a flexible stem, at one end of which is an arrangement of catgut fibres, and at the other end a small handle. By moving the handle slightly, these threads of catgut—which are stretched all round and parallel to the stem at its lower end—can be bent outwards in a radiating manner, which gives the instrument the appearance of a chimney-sweep’s broom in miniature. When a person is so unfortunate as to get a piece of bone stuck in his throat beyond the reach of the surgeon’s hand, the probang is sometimes found very useful. It can be passed down the gullet, in a closed condition, beyond the obstruction, then opened somewhat like an umbrella, and drawn upwards, carrying with it—if all goes well—the foreign body. The passing of such an instrument is far from being pleasant to the patient; but if it be done with ordinary care and judgment, it will not be attended with any harm. Every one who has known the misery attendant upon getting a good-sized piece of bone impacted in the food-passage, will understand that when the operation has proved successful, the patient is likely to consider the pleasure of seeing the offending fragment caught in the meshes of the probang cheaply purchased by the discomfort attendant upon the passage of the instrument.

Another instrument employed for passing down the esophagus is used for a different purpose. When the gullet has been severely burned internally—as, for instance, from the accidental swallowing of corrosive acids—after the ulcer produced has healed, there is a great tendency to contraction in the scar, and consequent stricture of the esophagus. This may threaten life, by tending to close the passage altogether. To prevent this, instruments called bougies are passed through the constriction from time to time. These bougies are simply firm, smooth, slightly flexible rods with rounded ends, and are various in size as regards their diameters. An instance of the passing of these instruments being turned to account in a very curious way, occurred some years ago in one of the London hospitals. A patient was suffering from stricture of the esophagus, brought about in the manner above described; and the tendency to contraction was in this case so great, that it was only by the frequent passing of instruments that it could be prevented from becoming to the last degree dangerous. Now, it was impossible that the man could remain in the hospital permanently; it was therefore decided to teach him to pass the instrument for himself. He proved capable of this, after a certain amount of instruction; and it then occurred to some one about the hospital that the daily performance of this operation might be made the means by which the man could earn a livelihood. Accordingly, the patient was advised to get a bougie made as much as possible to resemble a sword. This he did; and for a long time afterwards was to be seen about the streets of London making money by what looked like the swallowing of a sword. In his case there was really ‘no deception’ as regards the passing of a long instrument down towards his stomach was concerned, the only deception being that the instrument was not the weapon it represented. His daily street performance thus served him in two ways—it supplied him with food, and also kept open the passage by which that food could be conveyed to his ‘inner man.’

The contraction about which we have spoken as taking place in scars formed after burns of the gullet, and which is so dangerous there, also occurs in burns on the surface of the body, and often leads to a good deal of deformity. Burns, indeed, are a great source of trouble to the surgeon in many ways. For instance, if a burn is very extensive, there may be great difficulty in getting a cicatrice to form over the whole of it. Cicatrisation only begins in the immediate neighbourhood of living epidermis, and therefore a burn or ulcer must heal from the circumference to the centre. But the further that the cicatricial tissue extends from the margin of the burn, the more slowly and the more imperfectly is it formed; and indeed it may fail altogether to reach the centre. This difficulty has often been met by a small operation called skin-grafting. A piece of sound skin about the size of a split pea is pinched up—say, on the outside of the arm—and the epidermis snipped off with a pair of curved scissors, the scissors just going deep enough to cut slightly into the second layer of the skin and draw a little blood. A special kind of scissors has been invented for the purpose, that will only take up just the right amount of skin, so that the operation is thus made even simpler still; and if it is skilfully performed, it causes only very trifling pain. The little fragment of skin thus separated is then placed gently, with its raw surface downwards, on the unhealed surface of the burn. The same thing is repeated again and again, till there are many grafts, if the burn is a large one. Isinglass plaster, or some other similar material, is employed to keep the grafts in position and preserve them from injury. In about four days they should have taken root, and then the covering can be removed. There is now a number of foci from which cicatrisation can start; for, as before said, it will begin from where there is an epidermal covering, and thence alone. After a time, a number of little islands of scar tissue may be seen, which go on increasing until at length they coalesce with one another, and also join that extending from the margin of the burn. This is what happens if all goes well; but, unfortunately, there is a very great tendency for a cicatrice formed from grafts to break down and disappear, so that the result is not by any means always so satisfactory as it at first promises to be.

Another trouble with burns is the great pain which they invariably cause; and numberless are the applications which have been recommended for its relief. The great essential in all such applications is that they should completely exclude the air; for the very slightest irritation to the surface of a burn will give rise to the most excruciating pain. To prevent irritation and to keep the parts at rest is indeed one of the surest ways of relieving pain, not only in the case of burns, but in the treatment of other forms of injury, and also in many kinds of disease. An instance of this is found in the method adopted to relieve the pain in certain joint diseases. Those who have visited the Children’s Hospital in Ormond Street, or indeed any other hospital for children, may remember having noticed that at the foot of many of the beds there was fixed a pulley, over which ran a cord with a weight attached to the end of it. This cord, it may further have been noticed, was fixed at the other end to a kind of stirrup which depended from the patient’s foot. Thus the weight—which consisted of a tin canister partly filled with shot—had the effect of keeping the child’s leg on the stretch continuously. In fact, the little patient looked very much as though he was lying on a kind of rack; and if the visitor could have heard the surgeon order more shot to be poured into the canister, saying that he thought the patient was able to bear more weight, the command would have sounded very like that of a torturer, rather than that of one whose object it was to relieve pain. But the truth is that this rack is a very humane one indeed. It is the rack of modern times, as distinguished from that of past ages; it is the rack of the surgeon, and not that of the inquisitor. The cases in which this apparatus is used are almost always instances of disease of the hip or knee joint. The object of this arrangement of pulley and weight is, by making traction on the foot and leg, to keep the lower of the bones, which go to form the diseased joint, away from the upper, and so avoid the excruciating pain caused by the carious or ulcerated surfaces touching one another.

The benefit in such cases of having a weight drawing on the leg is most marked at night, when the patient wishes to get to sleep. With a good heavy weight, many a patient may sleep comfortably, who would otherwise be in a most pitiable condition through the long watches of the night. The position of such a person without any weight attached would be this. Knowing from past experience what too often followed on his dropping off to sleep, he would endeavour to keep himself from doing so. This, however, would of course be impossible for long, and at last the heavy eyelids would droop, the ward with its long rows of beds would grow dimmer and dimmer, the breathing of the neighbouring sleepers would sound fainter and yet more faint, until sight and hearing failed him, and his long watching ended in sleep. But now that he was no longer on his guard to keep his limb in a state of perfect rest, the irritation of the diseased part would give rise to spasmodic contraction of the neighbouring muscles. This contraction of the muscles would bring the lower bone of the joint, with more or less violence, against the upper; the two highly sensitive ulcerated surfaces would touch, and with a shriek of agony, the child would awake, quivering in every limb. And then, as the pain gradually grew less, again the same terrible drowsiness would begin to oppress him; and after another long spell of watching, he would fall asleep once more, to be once more awakened in the same horrible manner as before. But with a sufficient weight attached, the patient may go to sleep confident of comparative ease; for the weight is too much for the spasmodic action of the muscles to overcome, and the bony surfaces therefore remain separated. And not only does the surgeon’s rack thus save the patient from a terrible amount of pain, but, by allowing him to get good rest of a night, it must increase enormously the probability of ultimate recovery.

IN THE RHINE WOODS.

CUCKOO! CUCKOO!

I hear it again!
An echo of youth from its far sunny shore;
Through the dim distant years it resoundeth once more.
How mingled the feelings that rise with the strain—
The joy and the pain!

I hear it, but not
In the home of my childhood, the glorious and grand,
’Mid the wild woody glens of my own native land.
Ah! dear to me still is each far distant spot,
And present in thought.

I see them to-day!
The glory of Spring-time on valley and hill,
That struck to my heart with a rapturous thrill,
And friends in the sunshine of life’s early ray,
Young, happy, and gay.

All vanished and gone!
Could I see it indeed as in spirit I see,
The home of my youth would be joyless to me;
Like a bird’s empty nest when the tenant has flown,
Deserted and lone.

Soft, softly it rings!
O shades of the buried Past, slumber in peace!
O heart, bid thy sad, tender memories cease!
And welcome the Present, with all that it brings
Of beautiful things.

How often in youth
I have dreamed of this land of the oak and the vine,
This green, lovely land on the banks of the Rhine,
With longing prophetic, that one day in sooth
The dream should be truth.

Now gladly I rest
’Mid its scenes of enchantment with those that I love;
Warm hearts are around me, blue skies are above;
And though distant are some of the dearest and best,
I am thankful, and blest.

The years as they roll
Rob the cheek of its glow and the eyes of their light,
And much we have cherished is lost to the sight;
But one thing remains that they cannot control—
The youth of the Soul.

I. A. S.

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Printed and Published by W. & R. CHAMBERS, 47 Paternoster Row, LONDON, and 339 High Street, EDINBURGH.

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