Chapter II: Part 2

The trip occupies a very short time, for we have steam at command. Arrived in the Reach, we find five floating buoys anchored in the stream, one forming a centre, and four being disposed at equal distances about it, just as the five pips are placed upon a card—say the five of spades. The good ship to be operated upon is already fast by the head to the centre buoy, and Captain Johnson having mounted her deck, and his assistant, Mr. Brunton, having been rowed ashore, a rope is run out from the ship’s stern and made fast to one of the corner buoys. The Standard Compass being fixed in the proper position which it is to occupy in the ship, neither too high nor too low, and the guns and other iron being round about it, as they are to remain during the voyage, the mooring ropes are adjusted, and the ship’s head is put due north. Meanwhile, Mr. Brunton has set up a compass ashore, and all being ready, Captain Johnson, at a given moment, observes the bearing of a distant object—the Tower at Shooter’s Hill—noting the bearing of the needle on board. At that instant the pennant that floated at the mast-head is hauled down from the truck. This being the concerted signal, at the same second of time the assistant ashore observed the needle of his compass. The two instruments vary, and the deviation of that on board, compared with that ashore, is due to the iron of the ship. The stern ropes are hauled from one buoy to another, and again made fast, the ship’s head now pointing in another direction. The observations and the signals are repeated. Each deviation of the ship’s compass is carefully noted upon a card previously prepared for the purpose. The ship’s stern is then hauled round to the third outside buoy, and the compasses being again examined, she is next hauled round to the fourth buoy. Her head by this time has been north, east, south, west; on each point the deviations of her compasses have been tested, noted, and the card shows their character and proper adjustment. _The ship has been swung._ Science has done its best for her, and the word is given to heave anchor, for she is now truly “Ready for Sea.”

AN EXPLORING ADVENTURE.

The Litany of a Bushman on the Borders might well run, “From native dogs, from scabby sheep, from blacks, from droughts, from governors’ proclamations, good Lord, deliver us.”

The droughts come in their appointed season, and the day will be, when wells and tanks and aqueducts will redeem many a part from the curse of periodical barrenness: the blacks soon tame or fade before the white man’s face; unfortunately the seat of the native dogs, and home-bred or town-bred governing crotchets are more plentiful in long settled than new found countries. At any rate, I have experienced them all, and now give the following passage of my life for the benefit of the gentlemen “who live at home at ease,” hatching theories for our good—Heaven help their silliness!

I had been two years comfortably settled with a nice lot of cattle and sheep, part my own, part on “thirds,” when the people south of me began to complain of drought. _I_ had enough feed and water; the question was, whether it would last.

I called my bullock-driver, Bald-faced Dick, into consultation. He was laid up at the time with a broken leg. Dick strongly advised looking for a new station “to the nor’ard.”

The sheep would do for months, but he thought we were overstocked with cattle. I had a good deal of confidence in Dick’s judgment; for he was a “first fleeter,” that is, came over with Governor Phillips in the first fleet; had seen everything in the colony, both good and bad; had, it was whispered, in early years fled from a flogging master, and lived, some said, with the blacks; others averred with a party of Gully-rakers (cattle-stealers); he swore horridly, was dangerous when he had drunk too much rum, but was a thorough Bushman; by the stars, or by sun, and the fall of the land, could find his way anywhere by day or night, understood all kinds of stock, and could make bullocks understand him. He knew every roving character in the colony, the quality of every station, and more about the far interior than he chose to tell to every one. With all his coarseness, he was generous and good-natured, and when well paid, and fairly and strictly treated, stood upon “Bush honour,” and could be thoroughly depended on.

Having had an opportunity of serving him in a rather serious matter previous to his entering my service, I was pretty sure of his best advice.

The end of it was, for a promise of five pounds he obtained from a friend of his a description of a country hitherto unsettled, and first-rate for cattle. These men, who can neither read nor write, have often a talent for description, which is astonishing.

Having heard a minute detail of the “pack,” and studied a sort of map drawn on the lid of a tea-chest with a burned stick, I decided on exploring with my overseer, Jem Carden, and, if successful, returning for the cattle and drags, all loaded for founding a station.

We only took our guns and tomahawks, with tea, sugar, a salt tongue, and small damper ready baked, being determined to make long marches, starting early, camping at mid-day, and marching again in the evening as long as it was light.

Our first stage was only twenty-five miles to young Marson’s cattle-station. Marson was a cadet, of a noble family, and having been too fast at home and in India as a cavalry subaltern, had been sent out with a fair capital to Australia, under the idea that a fortune was to be had for asking, and no means of expense open in the Bush. What money he did not leave in the bars and billiard rooms of Sydney, he invested in a herd of six hundred cattle; to look after these, he had four men, whom he engaged, one because he could fight, another because he could sing, and all because they flattered him. With these fellows he lived upon terms of perfect equality, with a keg of rum continually on the tap. Then, for want of better society, he made his hut the rendezvous of a tribe of tame blacks.

We found him sitting on the floor in a pair of trowsers and ragged shirt, unwashed, uncombed, pale-faced and red-eyed, surrounded by half-a-dozen black gins (his sultanas), a lot of dogs, poultry, a tame kangaroo, and two of his men. The floor was littered with quart pots, lumps of fat, and damper outside the hut; the relations of the black ladies had made a fire, and were cooking a piece of a fine young heifer. What with the jabbering of the gins, the singing and swearing of the men, and the yelping of the dogs, it was no place for a quiet meal, so we only stayed long enough to drink a pot of tea, so as not to offend, and passed on to camp an hour under the shade of a thicket near the river.

Marson having, with the assistance of his black friends, consumed all his stock, has returned home; and, I hear, asserts everywhere that Australia is not a country a gentleman can live in.

Our course next, after crossing the dividing range, lay over a very flat country, all burned up as far as the eye could reach,—a perfect desert of sand. The chain of pools which formed the river after rain, were nearly choked up by the putrifying carcases of cattle, smothered in fighting for water. The air was poisonous; the horses sank fetlock-deep at every stride; the blazing sun was reflected back from the hot sand with an intensity that almost blinded our half-shut eyes. After three hours of this misery, we struck into a better country, and soon after came up to the camp of a squatter, who had been forced forward by the drought. He had marked out about twenty miles along the river for his run,—a pretty good slice, I thought, when, before turning back, he said, “That is all I want.” It was no business of ours, as we had views further a-field. For three days we pushed on, making from thirty to forty miles a day, without seeing anything exactly to our mind. We rode over arid plains, dotted with scrubby brushwood, then up precipitous hills; now leaping, now clambering down and up, and now riding round to avoid dry gullies and ravines; passing occasionally breaks of green pasture, but insufficiently watered for my purpose. Sometimes our way lay along mountain sides, sometimes in the dry bed of a torrent. Sometimes huge boulders interrupted our course, sometimes the gigantic trunks of fallen trees. More than once we had to steer through a forest of the monotonous, shadeless gum, with its lofty, dazzlingly white trunks festooned with the brown, curly bark of the previous year, and its parasol-like but shadeless branches, where crimson, green, and snowy parrot tribes shrieked and whistled among the evergreen leaves. It is impossible to conceive anything more gorgeous than these birds as they fluttered in the sun; but I confess that, “on serious thoughts intent,” during this journey, they were more often associated with my ideas of supper than anything else.

The evening of the third day, we found ourselves obliged to camp down with a scanty supply of brackish water, and no signs of any living thing. The next day was worse; a land of silence and desolation, where it seemed as if mountains had been crumbled up and scattered about in hills and lumps. The dry earth cracked and yawned in all directions. Failing to find water, we camped down, parched, weary, silent, but not despairing.

The next morning the horses were gone.

I cannot find words to describe what we suffered in the subsequent twelve hours. I had walked until my feet were one mass of blisters, and was ready to lie down and die ten times in the day; but somehow I found strength to walk, always chewing a bullet. At length, at nightfall, we found our horses; and, nearly at the same time, to crown our delight—water. At the sight of this, we both involuntarily sank down on our knees to return thanks for life saved.

The next morning, after a scanty breakfast, we set to work, and by dint of cutting away with axe and jack-knife, at the expense of clothes and skin, through a brigalow scrub for half a mile, found our way into a gap through which our track lay, and which we had missed. It led straight to the dividing range.

After crossing five miles from the foot of the range, through a barren tract, our eyes and hearts were suddenly rejoiced by the sight of the wished-for land.

A plain, covered with fine green barley-grass, as high as our horses’ heads, and sprinkled over with the myal shrub, which cattle and sheep will eat and thrive on, even without grass. Such was the delicious prospect before us. A flood had evidently but lately subsided, for lagoons full of water were scattered all about; a river running at the rate of five miles an hour, serpentined as far as the eye could see, from which the water-fowl fluttered up as we passed; the eagle hawks were sweeping along after flocks of quail, and mobs of kangaroos hopping about like huge rabbits. There was not a sign of horn or hoof anywhere, but it was evident the aborigines were numerous, for there were paths worn down where they had been in the habit of travelling, from one angle of the river to another; we could trace their footmarks and of all sizes, and thereupon we unslung our guns and looked at the priming. Altogether I thought I had discovered the finest place for a cattle-station in the colony; I found out afterwards that the first appearance of a new country before it has been stocked is not to be depended on.

We formed a camp in an angle of the river, so as to have protection on three sides, ventured, in spite of the danger, to light a fire and cook some game. Oh, how delicious was that meal! As I lay near the river’s edge, peeping through the tall grass, I saw the horrid emus, that rare and soon to be extinct bird, come down the slopes on the opposite side to drink in numbers; a sure sign that white men were as yet strangers to these plains.

We spent some days in examination, and during the exploration met with adventures with the aborigines, I will not now relate. Having marked a station with my initials, and in returning made out a route practicable for drays, by which I afterwards made my way with a large herd of cattle, although not without enduring more than I could tell in a few lines.

Our horses having picked up their flesh in a fortnight’s spell on the green plains, we got back at a rattling pace, but, before arriving home, met with an adventure I shall not soon forget. It was at the first station we reached after crossing the “barrens” that divided our newly discovered country. A hut had just been built for the Stockman, a big strong Irishman, more than six feet high, a regular specimen of a Tipperary chicken. He had been entertaining us with characteristic hospitality; and we were smoking our pipes round the fire, when the hut-keeper rushed in without his hat, crying—

“Tom! Tom! the blacks are coming down on us, all armed, as hard as they can run. Shut the door! for Heaven’s sake shut the door!” Tom banged it to, and put his shoulder against it, while the keeper was pulling up the bar, and Carden and I were getting the lock-cases off our fire-arms. Unfortunately the door was made roughly of green wood, and had shrunk, leaving gaps between the slabs.

In the mean time about thirty blacks hurled a volley of spears that made the walls ring again; and then advancing boldly up, one of them thrust a double-jagged spear through the door, slap into Tom’s throat. My back was turned towards him, being busy putting a fresh cap on my carbine. I heard his cry, and, turning, saw him fall into the arms of the hut-keeper. I thrust the barrel of my piece through a hole against a black devil, and fired at the same moment that my man did. The two dropped; the rest retreated, but turned back, and caught up their dead friends. Carden flung open the door again, and gave them the contents of his other barrel. My black put the hut-keeper’s musket into my hand; I gave them a charge of buckshot. Three more fell, and the rest, dropping their friends, disappeared across the river. All this was the work of a moment. We then turned our attention to the stock-keeper. The spear had entered at the chin, and come out on the other side three or four inches. There was not a great flow of blood, but he was evidently bleeding inwardly. He was perfectly collected, and said he was quite sure he should die.

We cut the end of the spear short off, but did not dare to take it out. The hut-keeper got on a horse, leading another, and rode for a doctor who lived one hundred and fifty miles off; he never stopped except to give the horses a feed two or three times in the whole distance, but when he reached his journey’s end, the doctor was out. In the mean time poor Tom made his will, disposing of a few head of cattle, mare and foal, and also signed a sort of dying testament to the effect that he had never wronged any of the blacks in any way. The weather was very hot, mortification came on, and he died in agony two days after receiving his wound.

The outrage was reported to the Commissioner, but no notice was taken of it although we were paying a tax for Border Police at the time.

Not many years have elapsed since we fought for our lives—since I read the burial service over the poor murdered Stockman. A handsome verandah’d villa now stands in the place of the slab hut; yellow corn waves over the Irishman’s grave, and while cattle and sheep abound, as well white men, women, and children, there is not a wild black within two hundred miles.

THE BIRTH OF MORNING.

Pure, calm, diffused, the twilight of the morn
Is in the glen, among the dewy leaves.
Its gentle radiance, more heavenly-born
Than the half-loving sunbeam, never grieves
A nook, unvisited. This Earth receives
The light which makes no shade, as the caress
Of God on his creation, and upheaves
Her soft face, innocent with peace, to bless,
Babe-like, his watchful eye with waking tenderness.

A gate admits us to the Hill we seek;
Through woods a track upon the turf we find;
The trees are dripping dew, their tall stems creak
And rub together when the morning wind
Lightly caresses them. We pause to mind
The note of one awakened bird, whose cry,
Quaint and repeated, is not like its kind.
Our ears are ignorant. Now up the high
And mossy slope we climb, beneath an open sky.

We reach the summit. Earth is in a dream
Of misty seas, and islands strangely born—
The unreal, from reality. The stream
Of wraith-like sights which, ere he can be torn
From peaceful sleep, delights the travel-worn
At slumber’s painted gate, is not more wild
Than the imagining of Earth when Morn
Bids her awaken. So a dreaming child
Looks through white angel wings, and sees all undefiled.

The blessed dream-land fancy of the young,
More truthful than the reasoning of age,
Is like this vision of the morning, sprung
Of earth and air. These lines upon the page
Of Nature have life in them. They assuage
The fevers of the world, they are the dew
Of calm,—and God is calm. How mortals wage
Their wars of weakness Light reveals to view;
Reason fights through the false, but Fancy feels the true.

AN EXCELLENT OPPORTUNITY.

In one of the dirtiest and most gloomy streets leading to the Rue Saint Denis, in Paris, there stands a tall and ancient house, the lower portion of which is a large mercer’s shop. This establishment is held to be one of the very best in the neighbourhood, and has for many years belonged to an individual on whom we will bestow the name of Ramin.

About ten years ago, Monsieur Ramin was a jovial red-faced man of forty, who joked his customers into purchasing his goods, flattered the pretty _grisettes_ outrageously, and now and then gave them a Sunday treat at the barrier, as the cheapest way of securing their custom. Some people thought him a careless, good-natured fellow, and wondered how, with his off-hand ways, he contrived to make money so fast, but those who knew him well saw that he was one of those who “never lost an opportunity.” Others declared that Monsieur Ramin’s own definition of his character was, that he was a “_bon enfant_,” and that “it was all luck.” He shrugged his shoulders and laughed when people hinted at his deep scheming in making, and his skill in taking advantage of Excellent Opportunities.

He was sitting in his gloomy parlour one fine morning in Spring, breakfasting from a dark liquid honoured with the name of onion soup, glancing at the newspaper, and keeping a vigilant look on the shop through the open door, when his old servant Catherine suddenly observed:

“I suppose you know Monsieur Bonelle has come to live in the vacant apartment on the fourth floor?”

“What!” exclaimed Monsieur Ramin in a loud key.

Catherine repeated her statement, to which her master listened in total silence.

“Well!” he said, at length, in his most careless tones; “what about the old fellow?” and he once more resumed his triple occupation of reading, eating, and watching.

“Why,” continued Catherine, “they say he is nearly dying, and that his housekeeper, Marguerite, vowed he could never get up-stairs alive. It took two men to carry him up; and when he was at length quiet in bed, Marguerite went down to the porter’s lodge and sobbed there a whole hour, saying, Her poor master, had the gout, the rheumatics, and a bad asthma; that though he had been got up-stairs, he would never come down again alive; that if she could only get him to confess his sins and make his will, she would not mind it so much; but that when she spoke of the lawyer or the priest, he blasphemed at her like a heathen, and declared he would live to bury her and every body else.”

Monsieur Ramin heard Catherine with great attention, forgot to finish his soup, and remained for five minutes in profound rumination, without so much as perceiving two customers who had entered the shop and were waiting to be served. When aroused, he was heard to exclaim:

“What an excellent opportunity!”

Monsieur Bonelle had been Ramin’s predecessor. The succession of the latter to the shop was a mystery. No one ever knew how it was that this young and poor assistant managed to replace his patron. Some said that he had detected Monsieur Bonelle in frauds which he threatened to expose, unless the business were given up to him as the price of his silence; others averred that, having drawn a prize in the lottery, he had resolved to set up a fierce opposition over the way, and that Monsieur Bonelle, having obtained a hint of his intentions, had thought it most prudent to accept the trifling sum his clerk offered, and avoid a ruinous competition. Some charitable souls—moved no doubt by Monsieur Bonelle’s misfortune—endeavoured to console and pump him; but all they could get from him was the bitter exclamation, “To think I should have been duped by _him_!” For Ramin had the art, though then a mere youth, to pass himself off on his master as an innocent provincial lad. Those who sought an explanation from the new mercer, were still more unsuccessful. “My good old master,” he said in his jovial way, “felt in need of repose, and so I obligingly relieved him of all business and botheration.”

Years passed away; Ramin prospered, and neither thought nor heard of his “good old master.” The house, of which he tenanted the lower portion, was offered for sale: he had long coveted it, and had almost concluded an agreement with the actual owner, when Monsieur Bonelle unexpectedly stepped in at the eleventh hour, and by offering a trifle more secured the bargain. The rage and mortification of Monsieur Ramin were extreme. He could not understand how Bonelle, whom he had thought ruined, had scraped up so large a sum; his lease was out, and he now felt himself at the mercy of the man he had so much injured. But either Monsieur Bonelle was free from vindictive feelings, or those feelings did not blind him to the expediency of keeping a good tenant; for though he raised the rent, until Monsieur Ramin groaned inwardly, he did not refuse to renew the lease. They had met at that period; but never since.

“Well, Catherine,” observed Monsieur Ramin to his old servant, on the following morning, “How is that good Monsieur Bonelle getting on?”

“I dare say you feel very uneasy about him,” she replied with a sneer.

Monsieur Ramin looked up and frowned.

“Catherine,” said he, dryly, “you will have the goodness, in the first place, not to make impertinent remarks; in the second place, you will oblige me by going up-stairs to inquire after the health of Monsieur Bonelle, and say that I sent you.”

Catherine grumbled, and obeyed. Her master was in the shop, when she returned in a few minutes, and delivered with evident satisfaction the following gracious message:

“Monsieur Bonelle desires his compliments to you, and declines to state how he is; he will also thank you to attend to your own shop, and not to trouble yourself about his health.”

“How does he look?” asked Monsieur Ramin with perfect composure.

“I caught a glimpse of him, and he appears to me to be rapidly preparing for the good offices of the undertaker.”

Monsieur Ramin smiled, rubbed his hands, and joked merrily with a dark-eyed grisette, who was cheapening some ribbon for her cap. That girl made an excellent bargain that day.

Towards dusk the mercer left the shop to the care of his attendant, and softly stole up to the fourth story. In answer to his gentle ring, a little old woman opened the door, and, giving him a rapid look, said briefly,

“Monsieur is inexorable; he won’t see any doctor whatever.”

She was going to shut the door in his face, when Ramin quickly interposed, under his breath, with “_I_ am not a doctor.”

She looked at him from head to foot.

“Are you a lawyer?”

“Nothing of the sort, my good lady.”

“Well then, are you a priest?”

“I may almost say, quite the reverse.”

“Indeed you must go away, Master sees no one.”

Once more she would have shut the door; but Ramin prevented her.

“My good lady,” said he in his most insinuating tones, “it is true I am neither a lawyer, a doctor, nor a priest. I am an old friend, a very old friend of your excellent master; I have come to see good Monsieur Bonelle in his present affliction.”

Marguerite did not answer, but allowed him to enter, and closed the door behind him. He was going to pass from the narrow and gloomy ante-chamber into an inner room—whence now proceeded a sound of loud coughing—when the old woman laid her hand on his arm, and raising herself on tiptoe, to reach his ear, whispered:

“For Heaven’s sake, Sir, since you are his friend, do talk to him; do tell him to make his will, and hint something about a soul to be saved, and all that sort of thing: do, Sir!”

Monsieur Ramin nodded and winked in a way that said “I will.” He proved however his prudence by not speaking aloud; for a voice from within sharply exclaimed,

“Marguerite, you are talking to some one. Marguerite, I will see neither doctor nor lawyer; and if any meddling priest dare—”

“It is only an old friend, Sir;” interrupted Marguerite, opening the inner door.

Her master, on looking up, perceived the red face of Monsieur Ramin peeping over the old woman’s shoulder, and irefully cried out,

“How dare you bring that fellow here? And you, Sir, how dare you come?”

“My good old friend, there are feelings,” said Ramin, spreading his fingers over the left pocket of his waistcoat,—“there are feelings,” he repeated, “that cannot be subdued. One such feeling brought me here. The fact is, I am a good-natured easy fellow, and I never bear malice. I never forget an old friend, but love to forget old differences when I find one party in affliction.”

He drew a chair forward as he spoke, and composedly seated himself opposite to his late master.

Monsieur Bonelle was a thin old man with a pale sharp face and keen features. At first he eyed his visitor from the depths of his vast arm-chair; but, as if not satisfied with this distant view, he bent forward, and laying both hands on his thin knees, he looked up into Ramin’s face with a fixed and piercing gaze. He had not, however, the power of disconcerting his guest.

“What did you come here for?” he at length asked.

“Merely to have the extreme satisfaction of seeing how you are, my good old friend. Nothing more.”

“Well, look at me—and then go.”

Nothing could be so discouraging: but this was an Excellent Opportunity, and when Monsieur Ramin _had_ an excellent opportunity in view, his pertinacity was invincible. Being now resolved to stay, it was not in Monsieur Bonelle’s power to banish him. At the same time, he had tact enough to render his presence agreeable. He knew that his coarse and boisterous wit had often delighted Monsieur Bonelle of old, and he now exerted himself so successfully as to betray the old man two or three times into hearty laughter.

“Ramin,” said he, at length, laying his thin hand on the arm of his guest, and peering with his keen glance into the mercer’s purple face, “you are a funny fellow, but I know you; you cannot make me believe you have called just to see how I am, and to amuse me. Come, be candid for once; what do you want?”

Ramin threw himself back in his chair, and laughed blandly, as much as to say, “_Can_ you suspect me?”

“I have no shop now out of which you can wheedle me,” continued the old man; “and surely you are not such a fool as to come to me for money.”

“Money?” repeated the draper, as if his host had mentioned something he never dreamt of. “Oh, no!”

Ramin saw it would not do to broach the subject he had really come about, too abruptly, now that suspicion seemed so wide awake—_the_ opportunity had not arrived.

“There is something up, Ramin, I know; I see it in the twinkle of your eye: but you can’t deceive me again.”

“Deceive _you_?” said the jolly schemer, shaking his head reverentially. “Deceive a man of your penetration and depth? Impossible! The bare supposition is flattery. My dear friend,” he continued, soothingly, “I did not dream of such a thing. The fact is, Bonelle, though they call me a jovial, careless, rattling dog, I have a conscience; and, somehow, I have never felt quite easy about the way in which I became your successor down-stairs. It _was_ rather sharp practice, I admit.”

Bonelle seemed to relent.

“Now for it,” said the Opportunity-hunter to himself.—“By-the-by,” (speaking aloud,) “this house must be a great trouble to you in your present weak state? Two of your lodgers have lately gone away without paying—a great nuisance, especially to an invalid.”

“I tell you I’m as sound as a colt.”

“At all events, the whole concern must be a great bother to you. If I were you, I would sell the house.”

“And if I were _you_,” returned the landlord, dryly, “I would buy it——”

“Precisely,” interrupted the tenant, eagerly.

“That is, if you could get it. Phoo! I knew you were after something. Will you give eighty thousand francs for it?” abruptly asked Monsieur Bonelle.

“Eighty thousand francs!” echoed Ramin. “Do you take me for Louis Philippe or the Bank of France?”

“Then, we’ll say no more about it—are you not afraid of leaving your shop so long?”

Ramin returned to the charge, heedless of the hint to depart. “The fact is, my good old friend, ready money is not my strong point just now. But if you wish very much to be relieved of the concern, what say you to a life annuity? I could manage that.”

Monsieur Bonelle gave a short, dry, churchyard cough, and looked as if his life were not worth an hour’s purchase. “You think yourself immensely clever, I dare say,” he said. “They have persuaded you that I am dying. Stuff! I shall bury you yet.”

The mercer glanced at the thin fragile frame, and exclaimed to himself, “Deluded old gentleman!” “My dear Bonelle,” he continued, aloud, “I know well the strength of your admirable constitution; but allow me to observe that you neglect yourself too much. Now, suppose a good sensible doctor——.”

“Will you pay him?” interrogated Bonelle sharply.

“Most willingly,” replied Ramin, with an eagerness that made the old man smile. “As to the annuity, since the subject annoys you, we will talk of it some other time.”

“After you have heard the doctor’s report,” sneered Bonelle.

The mercer gave him a stealthy glance, which the old man’s keen look immediately detected. Neither could repress a smile: these good souls understood one another perfectly, and Ramin saw that this was not the Excellent Opportunity he desired, and departed.

The next day Ramin sent a neighbouring medical man, and heard it was his opinion that if Bonelle held on for three months longer, it would be a miracle. Delightful news!

Several days elapsed, and although very anxious, Ramin assumed a careless air, and did not call upon his landlord, or take any notice of him. At the end of the week old Marguerite entered the shop to make a trifling purchase.

“And how are we getting on up-stairs?” negligently asked Monsieur Ramin.

“Worse and worse, my good Sir,” she sighed. “We have rheumatic pains, which make us often use expressions the reverse of Christian-like, and yet nothing can induce us to see either the lawyer or the priest; the gout is getting nearer to our stomach every day, and still we go on talking about the strength of our constitution. Oh, Sir, if you have any influence with us, do, pray do, tell us how wicked it is to die without making one’s will or confessing one’s sins.”

“I shall go up this very evening,” ambiguously replied Monsieur Ramin.

He kept his promise, and found Monsieur Bonelle in bed, groaning with pain, and in the worst of tempers.

“What poisoning doctor did you send?” he asked, with an ireful glance; “I want no doctor, I am not ill; I will not follow his prescription; he forbade me to eat; I _will_ eat.”

“He is a very clever man,” said the visitor. “He told me that never in the whole course of his experience has he met with what he called so much ‘resisting power’ as exists in your frame. He asked me if you were not of a long-lived race.”

“That is as people may judge,” replied Monsieur Bonelle. “All I can say is, that my grandfather died at ninety, and my father at eighty-six.”

“The doctor owned that you had a wonderfully strong constitution.”

“Who said I hadn’t?” exclaimed the invalid feebly.

“You may rely on it, you would preserve your health better if you had not the trouble of these vexatious lodgers. Have you thought about the life annuity?” said Ramin as carelessly as he could, considering how near the matter was to his hopes and wishes.

“Why, I have scruples,” returned Bonelle, coughing. “I do not wish to take you in. My longevity would be the ruin of you.”

“To meet that difficulty,” quickly replied the mercer, “we can reduce the interest.”

“But I must have high interest,” placidly returned Monsieur Bonelle.

Ramin, on hearing this, burst into a loud fit of laughter, called Monsieur Bonelle a sly old fox, gave him a poke in the ribs, which made the old man cough for five minutes, and then proposed that they should talk it over some other day. The mercer left Monsieur Bonelle in the act of protesting that he felt as strong as a man of forty.

Monsieur Ramin felt in no hurry to conclude the proposed agreement. “The later one begins to pay, the better,” he said, as he descended the stairs.

Days passed on, and the negotiation made no way. It struck the observant tradesman that all was not right. Old Marguerite several times refused to admit him, declaring her master was asleep: there was something mysterious and forbidding in her manner that seemed to Monsieur Ramin very ominous. At length a sudden thought occurred to him: the housekeeper—wishing to become her master’s heir—had heard his scheme and opposed it. On the very day that he arrived at this conclusion, he met a lawyer, with whom he had formerly had some transactions, coming down the staircase. The sight sent a chill through the mercer’s commercial heart, and a presentiment—one of those presentiments that seldom deceive—told him it was too late. He had, however, the fortitude to abstain from visiting Monsieur Bonelle until evening came; when he went up, resolved to see him in spite of all Marguerite might urge. The door was half-open, and the old housekeeper stood talking on the landing to a middle-aged man in a dark cassock.

“It is all over! The old witch has got the priests at him,” thought Ramin, inwardly groaning at his own folly in allowing himself to be forestalled.

“You cannot see Monsieur to-night,” sharply said Marguerite, as he attempted to pass her.

“Alas! is my excellent friend so very ill?” asked Ramin, in a mournful tone.

“Sir,” eagerly said the clergyman, catching him by the button of his coat, “if you are indeed the friend of that unhappy man, do seek to bring him into a more suitable frame of mind. I have seen many dying men, but never so much obstinacy, never such infatuated belief in the duration of life.”

“Then you think he really _is_ dying?” asked Ramin; and, in spite of the melancholy accent he endeavoured to assume, there was something so peculiar in his tone, that the priest looked at him very fixedly as he slowly replied,

“Yes, Sir, I think he is.”

“Ah!” was all Monsieur Ramin said; and as the clergyman had now relaxed his hold of the button, Ramin passed in spite of the remonstrances of Marguerite, who rushed after the priest. He found Monsieur Bonelle still in bed and in a towering rage.

“Oh! Ramin, my friend,” he groaned, “never take a housekeeper, and never let her know you have any property. They are harpies, Ramin,—harpies! such a day as I have had; first, the lawyer, who comes to write down ‘my last testamentary dispositions,’ as he calls them; then the priest, who gently hints that I am a dying man. Oh, what a day!”

“And _did_ you make your will, my excellent friend?” softly asked Monsieur Ramin, with a keen look.

“Make my will?” indignantly exclaimed the old man; “make my will? what do you mean, Sir? do you mean to say I am dying?”

“Heaven forbid!” piously ejaculated Ramin.

“Then why do you ask me if I have been making my will?” angrily resumed the old man. He then began to be extremely abusive.

When money was in the way, Monsieur Ramin, though otherwise of a violent temper, had the meekness of a lamb. He bore the treatment of his host with the meekest patience, and having first locked the door so as to make sure that Marguerite would not interrupt them, he watched Monsieur Bonelle attentively, and satisfied himself that the Excellent Opportunity he had been ardently longing for had arrived. “He is going fast,” he thought; “and unless I settle the agreement to-night, and get it drawn up and signed to-morrow, it will be too late.”

“My dear friend,” he at length said aloud, on perceiving that the old gentleman had fairly exhausted himself and was lying panting on his back, “you are indeed a lamentable instance of the lengths to which the greedy lust of lucre will carry our poor human nature. It is really distressing to see Marguerite, a faithful, attached servant, suddenly converted into a tormenting harpy by the prospect of a legacy! Lawyers and priests flock around you like birds of prey, drawn hither by the scent of gold! Oh, the miseries of having delicate health combined with a sound constitution and large property!”

“Ramin,” groaned the old man, looking inquiringly into his visitor’s face, “you are again going to talk to me about that annuity—I know you are!”

“My excellent friend, it is merely to deliver you from a painful position.”

“I am sure, Ramin, you think in your soul I am dying,” whimpered Monsieur Bonelle.

“Absurd, my dear Sir. Dying? I will prove to you that you have never been in better health. In the first place you feel no pain.”

“Excepting from rheumatism,” groaned Monsieur Bonelle.

“Rheumatism! who ever died of rheumatism? and if that be all——”

“No, it is not all,” interrupted the old man with great irritability; “what would you say to the gout getting higher and higher up every day?”

“The gout is rather disagreeable, but if there is nothing else——”

“Yes, there is something else,” sharply said Monsieur Bonelle. “There is an asthma that will scarcely let me breathe, and a racking pain in my head that does not allow me a moment’s ease. But if you think I am dying, Ramin, you are quite mistaken.”

“No doubt, my dear friend, no doubt; but in the meanwhile, suppose we talk of this annuity. Shall we say one thousand francs a year.”

“What?” asked Bonelle, looking at him very fixedly.

“My dear friend, I mistook; I meant two thousand francs per annum,” hurriedly rejoined Ramin.

Monsieur Bonelle closed his eyes, and appeared to fall into a gentle slumber. The mercer coughed; the sick man never moved.

“Monsieur Bonelle.”

No reply.

“My excellent friend.”

Utter silence.

“Are you asleep?”

A long pause.

“Well, then, what do you say to three thousand?”

Monsieur Bonelle opened his eyes.

“Ramin,” said he, sententiously, “you are a fool; the house brings me in four thousand as it is.”

This was quite false, and the mercer knew it; but he had his own reasons for wishing to seem to believe it true.

“Good Heavens!” said he, with an air of great innocence, “who could have thought it, and the lodgers constantly running away. Four thousand? Well, then, you shall have four thousand.”

Monsieur Bonelle shut his eyes once more, and murmured “The mere rental—nonsense!” He then folded his hands on his breast, and appeared to compose himself to sleep.

“Oh, what a sharp man of business he is!” Ramin said, admiringly: but for once omnipotent flattery failed in its effect: “So acute!” continued he, with a stealthy glance at the old man, who remained perfectly unmoved. “I see you will insist upon making it the other five hundred francs.”

Monsieur Ramin said this as if five thousand five hundred francs had already been mentioned, and was the very summit of Monsieur Bonelle’s ambition. But the ruse failed in its effect; the sick man never so much as stirred.

“But, my dear friend,” urged Monsieur Ramin in a tone of feeling remonstrance, “there is such a thing as being too sharp, too acute. How can you expect that I shall give you more when your constitution is so good, and you are to be such a long liver?”

“Yes, but I may be carried off one of those days,” quietly observed the old man, evidently wishing to turn the chance of his own death to account.

“Indeed, and I hope so,” muttered the mercer, who was getting very ill-tempered.

“You see,” soothingly continued Bonelle, “you are so good a man of business, Ramin, that you will double the actual value of the house in no time. I am a quiet, easy person, indifferent to money; otherwise this house would now bring me in eight thousand at the very least.”

“Eight thousand!” indignantly exclaimed the mercer. “Monsieur Bonelle, you have no conscience. Come now, my dear friend, do be reasonable. Six thousand francs a year (I don’t mind saying six) is really a very handsome income for a man of your quiet habits. Come, be reasonable.” But Monsieur Bonelle turned a deaf ear to reason, and closed his eyes once more. What between opening and shutting them for the next quarter of an hour, he at length induced Monsieur Ramin to offer him seven thousand francs.

“Very well, Ramin, agreed,” he quietly said; “you have made an unconscionable bargain.” To this succeeded a violent fit of coughing.

As Ramin unlocked the door to leave, he found old Marguerite, who had been listening all the time, ready to assail him with a torrent of whispered abuse for duping her “poor dear innocent old master into such a bargain.” The mercer bore it all very patiently; he could make allowances for her excited feelings, and only rubbed his hands and bade her a jovial good evening.

The agreement was signed on the following day, to the indignation of old Marguerite, and the mutual satisfaction of the parties concerned.

Every one admired the luck and shrewdness of Ramin, for the old man every day was reported worse; and it was clear to all that the first quarter of the annuity would never be paid. Marguerite, in her wrath, told the story as a grievance to every one: people listened, shook their heads, and pronounced Monsieur Ramin to be a deuced clever fellow.

A month elapsed. As Ramin was coming down one morning from the attics, where he had been giving notice to a poor widow who had failed in paying her rent, he heard a light step on the stairs. Presently a sprightly gentleman, in buoyant health and spirits, wearing the form of Monsieur Bonelle, appeared. Ramin stood aghast.

“Well, Ramin,” gaily said the old man, “how are you getting on? Have you been tormenting the poor widow up-stairs? Why, man, we must live and let live!”

“Monsieur Bonelle,” said the mercer, in a hollow tone; “may I ask where are your rheumatics?”

“Gone, my dear friend,—gone.”

“And the gout that was creeping higher and higher every day,” exclaimed Monsieur Ramin, in a voice of anguish.

“It went lower and lower, till it disappeared altogether,” composedly replied Bonelle.

“And your asthma——”

“The asthma remains, but asthmatic people are proverbially long-lived. It is, I have been told, the only complaint that Methuselah was troubled with.” With this Bonelle opened his door, shut it, and disappeared.

Ramin was transfixed on the stairs; petrified with intense disappointment, and a powerful sense of having been duped. When he was discovered, he stared vacantly, and raved about an Excellent Opportunity of taking his revenge.

The wonderful cure was the talk of the neighbourhood, whenever Monsieur Bonelle appeared in the streets, jauntily flourishing his cane. In the first frenzy of his despair, Ramin refused to pay; he accused every one of having been in a plot to deceive him; he turned off Catherine and expelled his porter; he publicly accused the lawyer and priest of conspiracy; brought an action against the doctor, and lost it. He had another brought against him for violently assaulting Marguerite in which he was cast in heavy damages. Monsieur Bonelle did not trouble himself with useless remonstrances, but, when his annuity was refused, employed such good legal arguments, as the exasperated mercer could not possibly resist.

Ten years have elapsed, and MM. Ramin and Bonelle still live on. For a house which would have been dear at fifty thousand francs, the draper has already handed over seventy thousand.

The once red-faced, jovial Ramin is now a pale haggard man, of sour temper and aspect. To add to his anguish, he sees the old man thrive on that money which it breaks his heart to give. Old Marguerite takes a malicious pleasure in giving him an exact account of their good cheer, and in asking him if he does not think Monsieur looks better and better every day. Of one part of this torment Ramin might get rid, by giving his old master notice to quit, and no longer having him in his house. But this he cannot do; he has a secret fear that Bonelle would take some Excellent Opportunity of dying without his knowledge, and giving some other person an Excellent Opportunity of personating him, and receiving the money in his stead.

The last accounts of the victim of Excellent Opportunities represent him as being gradually worn down with disappointment. There seems every probability of his being the first to leave the world; for Bonelle is heartier than ever.

REVIEW OF A POPULAR PUBLICATION.
IN THE SEARCHING STYLE.

THE BANK NOTE. _Oblong Octavo._ London, 1850. _The Governor and
Company of the Bank of England. Price, from Five to One Thousand
Pounds._

The object of this popular but expensive pocket companion, is not
wholly dissimilar from that of its clever and cheaper contemporary
“Notes and Queries.” As the latter is a “medium of intercommunication
for literary men,” so the former is a medium of intercommunication for
commercial men; and surely there is no work with which so many queries
are constantly connected as the Bank Note. Nothing in existence is so
assiduously inquired for; nothing in nature so perseveringly sought.

This is not to be wondered at; for in whatever light we view it, to
whatever test we bring it, whether we read it backwards or forwards,
from left to right, or from right to left; or whether we make it a
transparency to prove its substantial genuineness and worth, who can
deny that the Bank Note is a most valuable work?—a publication, in
short, without which no gentleman’s pocket can be complete?

Few can rise from a critical examination of the literary contents of
this narrow sheet, without being forcibly struck with the power,
combined with the exquisite fineness of the writing. It strikes
conviction at once. It dispels all doubts, and relieves all
objections. There is a pithy terseness in the construction of the
sentences; a downright, direct, straightforward, coming to the point,
which would be wisely imitated in much of the contemporaneous
literature that constantly obtains currency (though not as much). Here
we have no circumlocution, no discursive pedantry, no smell of the
lamp; the figures, though wholly derived from the East (being Arabic
numerals), are distinct and full of purpose; and if the writing
abounds in flourishes, which it does, these are not rhetorical, but
boldly graphic: struck with a nervous decision of style, which,
instead of obscuring the text and meaning, convinces the reader that
he who traced them when promising to pay the sum of five, ten, twenty,
thirty, forty, fifty, one hundred, or a thousand pounds, means
honestly and instantly to keep his word: that he _will_ pay it to
bearer on demand, without one moment’s hesitation.

Strictly adapted for utility, yet the dulcet is not wholly overlooked;
for, besides figures and flourishes, the graces of art are shed over
this much-prized publication. The figure of Britannia is no slavish
reproduction of any particular school whatever. She sits upon her
scroll of state utterly inimitable and alone. She is hung up in one
corner of the page, the sole representative of the P. R. F. P., or
pre-reissue-of-the-fourpenny-piece, school. Neither, if judged by the
golden rule of our greatest bard, is the work wholly deficient in
another charm. As we have just explained, its words are few: brevity
is the soul of wit. And we fearlessly put it to the keenest
appreciator of good things, whether a Bank Note (say for a hundred) is
not the best joke conceivable—except, indeed, a Bank Note for a
thousand.

A critical analysis of a work of this importance cannot be complete
without going deeply into the subject. Reviewing is, alas, too often
mere surface-work; for seldom do we find the critic going below the
superficies, or extending his scrutiny beyond the letter-press. We
shall, however, set a bright example of profundity, and having
discharged our duty to the face of the Bank Note, shall proceed to
penetrate below it: having analysed the print, we shall now speak of
the paper.