Chapter I: Part 1

“_Familiar in their Mouths as HOUSEHOLD WORDS._”—SHAKESPEARE.

HOUSEHOLD WORDS.
A WEEKLY JOURNAL.

CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS.

N^{o. 9.}] SATURDAY, MAY 25, 1850. [Price 2_d._

THE SICKNESS AND HEALTH OF THE PEOPLE OF BLEABURN.

IN THREE PARTS.—CHAPTER I.

It was not often that anything happened to enliven the village of Bleaburn, in Yorkshire: but there was a day in the summer of 1811, when the inhabitants were roused from their apathy, and hardly knew themselves. A stranger was once heard to say, after some accident had compelled him to pass through Bleaburn, that he saw nothing there but a blacksmith asleep, and a couple of rabbits hung up by the heels. That the blacksmith was wholly asleep at midday might indicate that there was a public house in the place; but, even there, in that liveliest and most intellectual spot in a country village of those days,—the ale-house kitchen—the people sat half asleep. Sodden with beer, and almost without ideas and interests, the men of the place let indolence creep over them; and there they sat, as quiet a set of customers as ever landlord had to deal with. For one thing, they were almost all old or elderly men. The boys were out after the rabbits on the neighbouring moor; and the young men were far away. A recruiting party had met with unusual success, for two successive years—(now some time since)—in inducing the men of Bleaburn to enter the king’s service. In a place where nobody was very wise, and everybody was very dull, the drum and fife, the soldierly march, the scarlet coats, the gay ribbons, the drink and the pay, had charms which can hardly be conceived of by dwellers in towns, to whose eyes and ears something new is presented every day. Several men went from Bleaburn to be soldiers, and Bleaburn was declared to be a loyal place; and many who had never before heard of its existence, spoke of it now as a bright example of attachment and devotion to the throne in a most disloyal age. While, throughout the manufacturing districts, the people were breaking machinery—while on these very Yorkshire hills they were drilling their armed forces—while the moneyed men were grumbling at the taxes, and at the war in Spain, whence, for a long time, they had heard of many disasters and no victories; and while the hungry labourers in town and country were asking how they were to buy bread when wheat was selling at 95_s._ the quarter, and while there were grave apprehensions of night-burnings of the corn magazines, the village of Bleaburn, which could not be seen without being expressly sought, was sending up strong men out of its cleft of the hills, to fight the battles of their country.

Perhaps the chief reason of the loyalty, as well as the quietness of Bleaburn, was its lying in a cleft of the hills; in a fissure so deep and narrow, that a traveller in a chaise might easily pass near it without perceiving that there was any settlement at all, unless it was in the morning when the people were lighting their fires, or on the night of such a day as that on which our story opens. In the one case, the smoke issuing from the cleft might hint of habitations: in the other, the noise and ruddy light would leave no doubt of there being somebody there. There was, at last, a victory in Spain. The news of the battle of Albuera had arrived; and it spread abroad over the kingdom, lighting up bonfires in the streets, and millions of candles in windows, before people had time to learn at what cost this victory was obtained, and how very nearly it had been a fatal defeat, or anything about it, in short. If they had known the fact that while our allies, the Spaniards, Portuguese, and Germans, suffered but moderately, the British were slaughtered as horribly as they could have been under defeat: so that, out of six thousand men who went up the hill, only fifteen hundred were left standing at the top, the people might have let their bonfires burn out as soon as they would, and might have put out their candles that mourners might weep in darkness. But they burst into rejoicing first, and learned details afterwards.

Every boy in Bleaburn forgot the rabbits that day. All were busy getting in wood for the bonfire. Not a swinging shutter, not a loose pale, not a bit of plank, or ricketty gate, or shaking footbridge escaped their clutches. Where they hid their stock during the day, nobody knew; but there was a mighty pile at dusk. It was then that poor Widow Slaney, stealing out to close her shutter, because she could not bear the sound of rejoicing, nor the sight of her neighbours abroad in the ruddy light, found that her shutter was gone. All day, she had been in the loft, lest she should see anybody; for the clergyman had been to tell her that her son Harry had been shot as a deserter. She had refused to believe it at first; but Mr. Finch had explained to her that the soldiers in Spain had suffered so cruelly from hunger, and want of shoes and of every comfort, that hundreds of them had gone into the towns to avoid starvation; and then, when the towns were taken by the allies, such British soldiers as were found, and were declared to have no business there, were treated as deserters, for an example. It was some comfort that Mr. Finch did not think that Harry had done any thing very wicked; but Mrs. Slaney could not meet any one, nor bear the flaring light on her ceiling; so she went up to the loft again, and cried all night in the dark. Farmer Neale was the wonder of the place this evening. He was more gracious than anybody, though there was nobody who was not, at all times, afraid of him. When he was seen striding down the steep narrow street, the little boys hid themselves. They had not been able to resist altogether the temptation of dry thorns in his fences, and of the chips which had still lain about where his winter felling had been done, and they concluded he was come now to give them a rough handling: but they found themselves mistaken. He was in high good-humour, sending such boys as he could catch with orders upon his people at home for a tar-barrel and a whole load of faggots.

“’Tis hardly natural, though, is it?” said Mrs. Billiter to Ann Warrender. “It does not seem natural for any father to rejoice in a victory when his own son has lost his best leg there.”

“Has Jack Neale lost his leg? O! what a thing!” exclaimed Ann Warrender. She was going on, but she perceived that the farmer had heard her.

“Yes,” said he, without any sound of heart-pain in his voice. “Jack has lost his right leg, Mr. Finch tells me. And I tell Mr. Finch, it is almost a pity the other did not go after it. He deserved no more good of either of them when he had let them do such a thing as carry him off from his home and his duty.”

“How _can_ you, Mr. Neale?” burst out both the women.

“How can I do what, my dears? One thing I can do; and that is, see when an undutiful son is properly punished. He must live on his pension, however: he can be of no use to me, now; and I can’t be burdened with a cripple at home.”

“I don’t think he will ask you,” Mrs. Billiter said. “He was none so happy there before as to want to come again.”

Ann Warrender told this speech to her father afterwards as the severest she had ever heard from Mrs. Billiter; and they agreed that it was very bold, considering that Billiter was one of Farmer Neale’s labourers. But they also agreed that it was enough to stir up flesh and blood to see a man made hearty and good-humoured by misfortune having befallen a son who had offended him. After all, poor Jack Neale had run away only because he could not bear his father’s tyranny. Two more of the Bleaburn recruits had suffered—had been killed outright; one a widower, who, in his first grief, had left his babes with their grandmother, and gone to the wars; and the other, an ignorant lout, who had been entrapped because he was tall and strong; had been fuddled with beer, flattered with talk of finery, and carried off before he could recover his slow wits. He was gone, and would soon be forgotten.

“I say, Jem,” said Farmer Neale, when he met the village idiot, Jem Johnson, shuffling along the street, staring at the lights: “you’re the wise man, after all: you’re the best off, my man.”

Widow Johnson, who was just behind, put her arm in poor Jem’s, and tried to make him move on. She was a stern woman; but she was as much disgusted at Farmer Neale’s hardness as her tender-hearted daughter, Mrs. Billiter, or anyone else.

“Good day, Mrs. Johnson,” said Neale. “You are better off for a son than I am, after all. Yours is not such a fool as to go and get his leg shot off, like my precious son.”

Mrs. Johnson looked him hard in the face, as she would a madman or a drunken man whom she meant to intimidate; and compelled her son to pass on. In truth, Farmer Neale was drunk with evil passions; in such high spirits, that, when he found that the women—mothers of sons—would have nothing to say to him to-day, he went to the public house, where he was pretty sure of being humoured by the men who depended on his employment for bread, and on his temper for much of the peace of their lives.

On his way he met the clergyman, and proposed to him to make a merry evening of it. “If you will just step in at the Plough and Harrow, Sir,” said he, “and tell us all you have heard about the victory, it will be the finest thing—just what the men want. And we will drink your health, and the King’s, and Marshal Beresford’s, who won the victory. It is a fine occasion, Sir; an occasion to confirm the loyalty of the people. You will come with me, Sir?”

“No,” replied Mr. Finch, “I have to go among another sort of people, Neale. If you have spirits to make merry to-night, I own to you I have not. Victories that cost so much, do not make me very merry.”

“Oh, fie, Mr. Finch! How are we to keep up our character for loyalty, if you fail us—if you put on a black face in the hour of rejoicing?”

“Just come with me,” said Mr. Finch, “and I can show you cause enough for heaviness of heart. In our small village, there is mourning in many houses. Three of our late neighbours are dead, and one of them in such a way as will break his mother’s heart.”

“And another has lost a leg, you are thinking. Out with it, Sir, and don’t be afraid of my feelings about it. Well, it is certain that Bleaburn has suffered more than is the fair share of one place; but we must be loyal.”

“And so,” said Mr. Finch, “you are going to prepare more of your neighbours to enlist, the next time a recruiting party comes this way. Oh, I don’t say that men are not to be encouraged to serve their king and country: but it seems to me that our place has done its duty well enough for the present. I wonder that you, as a farmer, do not consider the rates, and dread the consequences of having the women and children on our hands, if our able men get killed and maimed in the wars. I should have thought that the price of bread—”

“There, now, don’t let us talk about that!” said Neale; “You know that is a subject that we never agree about. We will let alone the price of bread for to-day.”

Neale might easily forget this sore subject, and every other that was disagreeable to other people, in the jollity at the Plough and Harrow, where there was an uproar of tipsy mirth for the greater part of the night. But Mr. Finch found little mirth among the people left at home in the cottages. The poor women, who lived hardly, knitting for eighteen hours out of the twenty-four, and finding themselves less and less able to overtake the advancing prices of the necessaries of life, had no great store of spirits to spend in rejoicing over victories, or anything else; and among them there was one who loved Jack Neale, and was beloved by him; and others, who respected Widow Slaney, and could not countenance noisy mirth while she was sunk in horror and grief. They were hungry enough, too, to look upon young Slaney’s death as something of an outrage. If hunger and nakedness had driven him into the shelter of a town, to avoid dying by the roadside, it seemed to them that being shot was a hard punishment for the offence. Mr. Finch endeavoured to show, in hackneyed language, what the dereliction of duty really was, and how intolerable during warfare; but the end of it was that the neighbours pitied the poor young man the more, the more they dwelt upon his fate.

As it turned out, Bleaburn made more sacrifices to the war than those of the Battle of Albuera, even before drum or fife was again heard coming over the moor. The place had not been healthy before; and illness set in somewhat seriously after the excitements of the bonfire night. The cold and wet spring had discouraged the whole kingdom about the harvest; and in Bleaburn it had done something more. Where there are stone houses, high winds aggravate the damage of wet weather. The driven rain had been sucked in by the stone; and more wet was absorbed from the foundations, when the swollen stream had rushed down the hollow, and overflowed into the houses, and the pigstyes, and every empty place into which it could run. Where there were glass windows and fires in the rooms, the panes were dewy, and the walls shiny with trickling drops; and in the cottages where there were no fires, the inhabitants were so chilly, that they stuffed up every broken window-pane, and closed all chinks by which air might enter, in hopes of keeping themselves warm; but the floors were never really dry that summer, and even the beds had a chilly feel. The best shoes showed mould between one Sunday and another; and the meal in the bin (of those who were so fortunate as to have a meal-bin) did not keep well. Mr. Finch had talked a great deal about what was to be expected from summer weather and the harvest; but as the weeks went on, there were graver doubts about the harvest than there had been even while people were complaining at Easter, and shaking their heads at Whitsuntide; and when a few days of hot weather came at last, the people of Bleaburn did not know how to bear them at all. The dead rats and decaying matter which had been deposited by the spring overflow, made such a stench that people shut their windows closer than ever. Their choice now was between being broiled in the heat which was reflected from the sides of the cleft in which they lived, and being shut into houses where the walls, floors, and windows were reeking with steam. The women, who sat still all day, knitting, had little chance for health in such abodes; and still less had such of the men as, already weakened by low diet, had surfeited themselves with beer on the night of the rejoicing, and broiled themselves in the heat of the bonfire, and fevered mind and body with shouting, and singing, and brawling, and been brought home to be laid upon musty straw, under a somewhat damp blanket. This excess was hardly more pernicious to some than depression was to others. Those of the people at Bleaburn that had received heart-wounds from the Battle of Albuera, thought they could never care again for any personal troubles or privations; but they were not long in learning that they now suffered more than before from low diet and every sort of discomfort. They blamed themselves for being selfish; but this self-blame again made the matter worse. They had lost a hope which had kept them up. They were not only in grief, but thoroughly discouraged. Their gloom was increased by seeing that a change had come over Mr. Finch. On Sundays he looked so anxious, that it was enough to lower people’s spirits to go to church. His very voice was dismal, as he read the service; his sermon grew shorter almost every Sunday: and it was about everything that the people cared least about He gave them discussions of doctrine, or dry moral essays, which were as stones to them when they wanted the bread of consolation and the wine of hope. Here and there, women said it really was too much for their spirits to go to church, and they staid away; and the boys and girls took the opportunity to go spying upon the rabbits. It was such boys and girls that gave news of Mr. Finch during the week. Every morning, he was so busy over his books in his study, that it was no easy matter to get a sight of him; and every fine afternoon he went quietly, by a bye-path, to a certain spot on the moor, where an ostler from the Cross Keys at O—— was awaiting him with the horse on which he took long rides over the hills. Mr. Finch was taking care of his health.

CHAPTER II.

“Can I have a chaise?” inquired a young lady, on being set down by the coach at the Cross Keys, at O——.

“Yes, ma’am, certainly,” replied the neat landlady.

“How far do you call it to Bleaburn?”

“To Bleaburn, ma’am! It is six miles. But, ma’am, you are not going to Bleaburn, surely.”

“Indeed I am. Why not?”

“Because of the fever, ma’am. There never was anything heard of like it. You cannot go there, I assure you, ma’am, and I could not think of sending a chaise there. Neither of my post-boys would go.”

“One of them shall take me as near as is safe, then. I dare say we shall find somebody who will take care of my little trunk till I can send for it.”

“The cordon would take care of your trunk, if that were all, but—”

“The what?” interrupted the young lady.

“The cordon, they call it, ma’am. To preserve ourselves, we have set people to watch on the moor above, to prevent anybody from Bleaburn coming among us, to spread the fever. Ma’am, it is worse than anything you ever heard of.”

“Not worse than the plague,” thought Mary Pickard, in whose mind now rose up all she had read and heard of the horrors of the great plague, and all the longing she had felt when a child to have been a clergyman at such a time, or at least, a physician, to give comfort to numbers in their extremity.

“Indeed, ma’am,” resumed the landlady, “you cannot go there. By what I hear, there are very few now that are not dead, or down in the fever.”

“Then they will want me the more,” said Mary Pickard. “I must go and see my aunt. I wrote to her that I should go; and she may want me more than I thought.”

“Have you an aunt living at Bleaburn?” asked the landlady, in some surprise. “I did not know that there was any lady living at Bleaburn. I thought they had been all poor people there.”

“I believe my aunt is poor,” said Mary. “I have heard nothing of her for several years, except merely that she was living at Bleaburn. She had the education of a gentlewoman; but I believe her husband became a common labourer before he died. I am from America, and my name is Mary Pickard, and my aunt’s name is Johnson; and I shall be glad if you can tell me anything about her, if this fever is really raging as you say. I must see her before I go home to America.”

“You see, ma’am, if you go,” said the landlady, contemplating the little trunk, “you will not be able to come away again while the fever lasts.”

“And you think I shall not have clothes enough,” said Mary, smiling. “I packed my box for a week only, but I dare say I can manage. If everybody was ill, I could wash my clothes myself. I have done such a thing with less reason. Or, I could send to London for more. I suppose one can get at a post-office.”

“Through the cordon, I dare say you might, ma’am. But, really, I don’t know that there is anybody at Bleaburn that can write a letter, except the clergyman and the doctor and one or two more.”

“My aunt can,” said Mary, “and it is because she does not answer our letters, that I am so anxious to see her. You did not tell me whether you know her name,—Johnson.”

“A widow, I think you said, ma’am.” And the landlady called to the ostler to ask him if he knew anything of a Widow Johnson, who lived at Bleaburn. Will Ostler said there was a woman of that name who was the mother of Silly Jem. “Might that be she?” Mary had never heard of Silly Jem; but when she found that Widow Johnson had a daughter, some years married, that she had white hair, and strong black eyes, and a strong face altogether, and that she seldom spoke, she had little doubt that one so like certain of her relations was her aunt. The end of it was that Mary went to Bleaburn. She ordered the chaise herself, leaving it to the landlady to direct the post-boy where to set her down; she appealed to the woman’s good feelings to aid her if she should find that wine, linen or other comforts were necessary at Bleaburn, and she could not be allowed to come and buy them: explained that she was far from rich, and told the exact sum which she at present believed she should be justified in spending on behalf of the sick; and gave a reference to a commercial house in London. She did not tell—and indeed she gave only a momentary thought to it herself—that the sum of money she had mentioned was that which she had saved up to take her to Scotland, to see some friends of her family, and travel through the Highlands. As she was driven off from the gateway of the Cross Keys, nodding and smiling from the chaise window in turning the corner, the landlady ceased from commanding the post-boy on no account to go beyond the brow, and said to herself that this Miss Pickard was the most wilful young lady she had ever known, but that she could not help liking her, too. She did not seem to value her life any more than a pin; and yet she appeared altogether cheerful and sensible. If the good woman had been able to see into Mary’s heart, she would have discovered that she had the best reason in the world for valuing life very much indeed: but she had been so accustomed, all her life, to help everybody that needed it, that she naturally went straight forward into the business, without looking at difficulties or dangers, on the right hand or the left.

Mary never, while she lived, forgot this drive. Her tone of mind was, no doubt, high, though she was unconscious of it. It was a splendid August evening, and she had never before seen moorland. In America, she had travelled among noble inland forests, and a hard granite region near the coasts of New England: but the wide-spreading brown and green moorland, with its pools of clear brown water glittering in the evening sunshine, and its black cocks popping out of the heather, and running into the hollows, was quite new to her. She looked down, two or three times, into a wooded dell where grey cottages were scattered among the coppices, and a little church tower rose above them; but the swelling ridges of the moor, with the tarns between, immediately attracted her eye again.

“Surely,” thought she, “the cordon will let me walk on the moor in the afternoons, if I go where I cannot infect any body. With a walk in such places as these every day, I am sure I could go through any thing.”

This seemed very rational beforehand. It never entered Mary’s head that for a long while to come, she should never once have leisure for a walk.

“Yon’s the cordon,” said the post-boy, at last, pointing with his whip.

“What do you understand by a cordon?”

“Them people that you may see there. I don’t know why they call them so; for I don’t hear that they do anything with a cord.”

“Perhaps it is because there is a French word—_cordon_—that means any thing that encloses any other thing. They would call your hat band a cordon, and an officer’s sash, and a belt of trees round a park. So, I suppose these people surround poor Bleaburn and let nobody out.”

“May be so,” said the man, “but I don’t see why we should go to the French for our words or anything else, when we have everything better of our own. For my part, I shall be beholden to the French for no word, now I know of it. I shall call them people the watch, or something of that like.”

“I think I will call them messengers,” said Mary: “and that will sound least terrible to the people below. They do go on errands, do not they,—and take and send parcels and messages?”

“They are paid to do it, Miss: but they put it upon one another, or get out of the way, if they can,—they are so afraid of the fever, you see.——I think we must stop here, please, Miss. I could go a little nearer, only, you see—.”

“I see that you are afraid of the fever too,” said Mary, with a smile, as she jumped out upon the grass. One of the sentinels was within hail. Glad of the relief from the dulness of his watch, he came with alacrity, took charge of the little trunk, and offered to show the lady, from the brow, the way down the hollow to the village.

The post-boy stood, with his money in his hand, watching the retreating lady, till, under a sudden impulse, he hailed her. Looking round, she saw him running towards her, casting a momentary glance back at his horses. He wanted to try once more to persuade her to return to O——. He should be so happy to drive her back, out of the way of danger. His employer would be so glad to see her again! When he perceived that it was no use talking, he went on touching his hat, while he begged her to take back the shilling she had just given him. It would make his mind easier, he said, not to take money for bringing any lady to such a place. Mary saw that this was true; and she took back the shilling, promising that it should be spent in the service of some poor sick person.

As Mary descended into the hollow, she was struck with the quiet beauty of the scene. The last sun-blaze rushed level along the upper part of the cleft, while the lower part lay in deep shadow. While she was descending a steep slope, with sometimes grass, and sometimes grey rock, by the roadside, the opposite height rose precipitous; and from chinks in its brow, little drips of water fell or oozed down, calling into life ferns, and grass, and ivy, in every moist crevice. Near the top, there were rows of swallow-holes; and the birds were at this moment all at play in the last glow of the summer day, now dipping into the shaded dell, down to the very surface of the water, and then sprinkling the grey precipice with their darting shadows. Below, when Mary reached the bridge, she thought all looked shadowy in more senses than one. The first people she saw were some children, excessively dirty, who were paddling about in a shallow pool, which was now none of the sweetest, having been filled by the spring overflow, and gradually drying up ever since. Mary called to these children from the bridge, to ask where Widow Johnson lived. She could learn nothing more than that she must proceed; for, if the creatures had not been almost too boorish to speak, she could have made nothing of the Yorkshire dialect, on the first encounter. In the narrow street, every window seemed closed, and even the shutters of some. She could see nobody in the first two or three shops that she passed; but, at the baker’s, a woman was sitting at work. On the entrance of a stranger, she looked up in surprise; and, when at the door, to point out the turn down to Widow Johnson’s, she remained there, with her work on her arm, to watch the lady up the street. The doctor, quickening his pace, came up, saying,

“Who was that you were speaking to?—A lady wanting Widow Johnson! What a very extraordinary thing! Did you tell her the fever had got there?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“What did she say?”

“She said she must go and nurse them.”

“Do you mean that she is going to stay here?”

“I suppose so, by her talking of nursing them. She says Widow Johnson is her aunt.”

“O! that’s it! I have heard that Mrs. Johnson came of a good family. But what a good creature this must be—that is, if she knows what she is about. If she is off before morning, I shall think it was a vision, dropped down out of the clouds. Eh?”

“She is not handsome enough to be an angel, or anything of that kind,” said the baker’s wife.

“O! isn’t she? I did not see her face. But it is all the better, if she is not very like an angel. She is all the more likely to stay and nurse the Johnsons. Upon my word, they are lucky people if she does. I must go and pay my respects to her presently.—Do look now—at the doors all along the street, on both sides the way! I have not seen so many people at once for weeks past;—for, you know, I have no time to go to church in these days.”

“You would not see many people, if you went. See! some of the children are following her! It is long since they have seen a young lady, in a white gown, and with a smile on her face, in our street. There she goes, past the corner; she has taken the right turn.”

“I will just let her get the meeting over, and settle herself a little,” said the doctor; “and then I will go and pay my respects to her.”

The little rabble of dirty children followed Mary round the corner, keeping in the middle of the lane, and at some distance behind. When she turned to speak to them, they started and fled, as they might have done, if she had been a ghost. But when she laughed, they returned cautiously; and all their brown forefingers pointed the same way at once, when she made her final inquiry about which was the cottage she wanted. Two little boys were pushed forward by the rest; and it transpired that these were grandchildren of Widow Johnson.

“Is she your granny?” said Mary. “Then, I am your cousin. Come with me; and if granny is very much surprised to see me, you must tell her that I am your cousin Mary.”

The boys, however, had no notion of entering the cottage. They slipped away, and hid themselves behind it; and Mary had to introduce herself.

After knocking in vain for some time, she opened the door, and looked in. No one was in the room but a man, whom she at once recognised for Silly Jem. He was half-standing, half-sitting, against the table by the wall, rolling his head from side to side. By no mode of questioning could Mary obtain a word from him. The only thing he did was to throw a great log of wood on the fire, when she observed what a large fire he had. She tried to take it off again; but this he would not permit. The room was insufferably hot and close. The only window was beside the door; so that there was no way of bringing a current of fresh air through the room. Mary tried to open the window; but it was not made to open, except that a small pane at the top, three inches square, went upon hinges. As soon as Mary had opened it, however, poor Jem went and shut it. Within this kitchen, was a sort of closet for stores; and this was the whole of the lower floor. Mary opened one other door, and found within it a steep, narrow stair, down which came a sickening puff of hot, foul air. She went up softly, and Jem slammed the door behind her. It seemed as if it was the business of his life to shut everything.

Groping her way, Mary came to a small chamber, which she surveyed for an instant from the stair, before showing herself within. There was no ceiling; and long cobwebs hung from the rafters. A small window, two feet from the floor, and curtained with a yellow and tattered piece of muslin, was the only break in the wall. On the deal table stood a phial or two, and a green bottle, which was presently found to contain rum. A turn-up bedstead, raised only a foot from the floor, was in a corner; and on it lay some one who was very restless, feebly throwing off the rug, which was immediately replaced by a sleepy woman who dozed between times in a chair that boasted a patchwork cushion. Mary doubted whether the large black eyes which stared forth from the pillow had any sense in them. She went to see.

“Aunty,” said she, going to the bed, and gently taking one of the wasted hands that lay outside. “I am come to nurse you.”

The poor patient made a strong effort to collect herself, and to speak. She did not want anybody. She should do very well. This was no place for strangers. She was too ill to see strangers, and so on; but, from time to time, a few wandering words about her knowing best how to choose a husband for herself—her having a right to marry as she pleased—or of insisting that her relations would go their own way in the world, and leave her hers—showed Mary that she was recognised, and what feelings she had to deal with.

“She knows where I came from; but she takes me for my mother or my grandmother,” thought she. “If she grows clear in mind, we shall be friends on our own account. If she remains delirious, she will become used to the sight of me. I must take matters into my own hands at once.”

The first step was difficult. Coolness and fresh air were wanted above everything. But there was no chimney; the window would not open; poor Jem would not let any door remain open for a moment; and the sleepy neighbour was one of those who insist upon warm bedclothes, large fires, and hot spirit-and-water, in fever cases. She was got rid of by being paid to find somebody who would go for Mary’s trunk, and bring it here before dark. She did her best to administer another dose of rum before she tied on her bonnet; but as the patient turned away her head with disgust, Mary interposed her hand. The dram was offered to her, and, as she would not have it, the neighbour showed the only courtesy then possible, by drinking Mary’s health, and welcome to Bleaburn. The woman had some sharpness. She could see that if she took Jem with her, and put the trunk on his shoulder, she should get the porter’s fee herself, instead of giving it to some rude boy; and, as Mary observed, would be doing a kindness to Jem in taking him for a pleasant evening walk. Thus the coast was cleared. In little more than half-an-hour they would be back. Mary made the most of her time.

She set the doors below wide open, and lowered the fire. She would fain have put on some water to boil, for it appeared to her that everybody and everything wanted washing extremely. But she could find no water, but some which seemed to have been used—which was, at all events, not fit for use now. For water she must wait till somebody came. About air, she did one thing more—a daring thing. She had a little diamond ring on her finger. With this, without noise and quickly, she cut so much of two small panes of the chamber-window as to be able to take them clean out; and then she rubbed the neighbouring panes bright enough to hide, as she hoped, an act which would be thought mad. When she looked round again at Aunty, she could fancy that there was a somewhat clearer look about the worn face, and a little less dulness in the eye. But this might be because she herself felt less sick now that fresh air was breathing up the stairs.

There was something else upon the stairs—the tread of some one coming up. It was the doctor. He said he came to pay his respects to the lady before him, as well as to visit his patient. It was no season for losing time, and doctor and nurse found in a minute that they should agree very well about the treatment of the patient. Animated by finding that he should no longer be wholly alone in his terrible wrestle with disease and death, the doctor did things which he could not have believed he should have courage for. He even emptied out the rum-bottle, and hurled it away into the bed of the stream. The last thing he did was to turn up his cuffs, and actually bring in two pails of water with his own hands. He promised (and kept his promise) to send his boy with a supply of vinegar, and a message to the neighbour that she was wanted elsewhere, that Mary might have liberty to refresh the patient, without being subject to the charge of murdering her. “A charge, however,” said he, “which I fully expect will be brought against any one of us who knows how to nurse. I confess they have cowed me. In sheer despair, I have let them take their own way pretty much. But now we must see what can be done.”

“Yes,” said Mary. “It is fairly our turn now. We must try how we can cow the fever.”

SPRING-TIME IN THE COURT.

They say the Spring has come again!
There is no Spring-time here;
In this dark, reeking court, there seems
No change throughout the year:
Except, sometimes, ’tis bitter cold,
Or else ’tis hot and foul;
How hard it is, in such a place,
To feel one has a soul!

They say the Spring has come again!
I scarce believe ’tis so;
For where’s the sun, and gentle breeze,
That make the primrose blow?
Oh, would that I could lead my child
Over the meadows green,
And see him playing with the flowers
_His_ eyes have never seen!

His toys are but an oyster-shell,
Or piece of broken delf;
His playground is the gulley’s side,
With outcasts like himself!
_I_ used to play on sunny banks,
Or else by pleasant streams;
How oft—oh, God be thanked! how oft—
I see them in my dreams.

I used to throw my casement wide,
To breathe the morning’s breath;
But now I keep the window close—
The air smells so like death!
Once only, on my window-sill
I placed a little flower,
Something to tell me of the fields—
It withered in an hour.

Why are we housed like filthy swine?
Swine! they have better care;
For we are pent up with the plague,
Shut out from light and air.
We work and wear our lives away,
To heap this city’s wealth;
But labour God decreed for us—
’Tis man denies us health!

They say the Spring has come again
To wake the sleeping seed,
Whether it be the tended flower,
Or poor, neglected weed!
Then Harvest comes. Think you our wrongs
For ever, too, will sleep?
The misery which man has sown,
Man will as surely reap!

THE PLANET-WATCHERS OF GREENWICH.

There is a morsel of Greenwich Park, which has, for now nearly two centuries, been held sacred from intrusion. It is the portion inclosed by the walls of the Observatory. Certainly a hundred thousand visitors must ramble over the surrounding lawns, and look with curious eye upon the towers and outer boundaries of that little citadel of science, for one who finds admission to the interior of the building. Its brick towers, with flanking turrets and picturesque roofs, perched on the side of the gravelly hill, and sheltered round about by groups of fine old trees, are as well known as Greenwich Hospital itself. But what work goes on inside its carefully preserved boundary and under those moveable, black-domed roofs, is a popular mystery. Many a holiday-maker’s wonder has been excited by the fall, at one o’clock, of the huge black ball, high up there, by the weather vane on the topmost point of the eastern turret. He knows, or is told if he asks a loitering pensioner, that the descent of the ball tells the time as truly as the sun; and that all the ships in the river watch it to set their chronometers by, before they sail; and that all the railway clocks, and all the railway trains over the kingdom are arranged punctually by its indications. But how the heavens are watched to secure this punctual definition of the flight of time, and what other curious labours are going on inside the Observatory, is a sealed book. The public have always been, of necessity, excluded from the Observatory walls, for the place is devoted to the prosecution of a science whose operations are inconsistent with the bustle, the interruptions, the talk, and the anxieties of popular curiosity and examination.

But when public information and instruction are the objects, the doors are widely opened, and the press and its _attachés_ find a way into this, as into many other sacred and forbidden spots. Only last week one of ‘our own contributors’ was seen in a carriage on the Greenwich railway, poring over the paper in the last Edinburgh Review that describes our national astronomical establishment, and was known afterwards to have climbed the Observatory hill, and to have rung and gained admission at the little black mysterious gate in the Observatory wall. Let us see what is told in his report of what he saw within that sacred portal.

In the park on a fine day all seems life and gaiety—once within the Observatory boundary, the first feeling is that of isolation. There is a curious stillness about the place, and the footsteps of the old pensioner, who closes the gate upon a visitor, echoes again on the pavement as he goes away to wake up from his astronomical or meteorological trance one of the officers of this sanctum. Soon, under the guidance of the good genius so invoked, the secrets of the place begin to reveal themselves.

The part of the Observatory so conspicuous from without is the portion least used within. When it was designed by Christopher Wren, the general belief was that such buildings should be lofty, that the observer might be raised towards the heavenly bodies whose motions he was to watch. More modern science has taught its disciples better; and in Greenwich,—which is an eminently practical Observatory,—the working part of the building is found crouching behind the loftier towers. These are now occupied as subsidiary to the modern practical building. The ground floor is used as a residence by the chief astronomer; above is the large hall originally built to contain huge moveable telescopes and quadrants—such as are not now employed. Now-a-days, this hall occasionally becomes a sort of scientific counting-house—irreverent but descriptive term—in which, from time to time, a band of scientific clerks are congregated to post up the books, in which the daily business of the planets has been jotted down by the astronomers who watch those marvellous bodies. Another portion is a kind of museum of astronomical curiosities. Flamstead and Halley, and their immediate successors, worked in these towers, and here still rest some of the old, rude tools with which their discoveries were completed, and their reputation, and the reputation of Greenwich, were established. As time has gone on, astronomers and opticians have invented new and more perfect and more luxurious instruments. Greater accuracy is thus obtainable, at a less expenditure of human patience and labour; and so the old tools are cast aside. One of them belonged to Halley, and was put up by him a hundred and thirty years ago; another is an old brazen quadrant, with which many valuable observations were made in by-gone times; and another, an old iron quadrant, still fixed in the stone pier to which it was first attached. Some of the huge telescopes that once found place in this old Observatory, have been sent away. One went to the Cape of Good Hope, and has been useful there. Another of the unsatisfactory, and now unused, instruments had a tube twenty-five feet long, whose cool and dark interior was so pleasant to the spiders that, do what they would, the astronomers could not altogether banish the persevering insects from it. Spin they would; and, spite of dusting and cleaning, and spider-killing, spin they did; and, at length, the savans got more instruments and less patience, and the spiders were left in quiet possession. This has been pleasantly spoken of as an instance of poetical justice. It is but fair that spiders should, at times, have the best of astronomers, for astronomers rob spiders for the completion of their choicest instruments. No fabric of human construction is fine enough to strain across the eye-piece of an important telescope, and opticians preserve a particular race of spiders, that their webs may be taken for that purpose. The spider lines are strained across the best instruments at Greenwich and elsewhere; and when the spinners of these beautifully fine threads disturbed the accuracy of the tube in the western wing of the old Observatory, it was said to be but fair retaliation for the robberies the industrious insects had endured.

A narrow stair leads from the unused rooms of the old Observatory to its leaded roof, whence a magnificent view is obtained; the park, the hospital, the town of Greenwich, and the windings of the Thames, and, gazing further, London itself comes grandly into the prospect. The most inveterate astronomer could scarcely fail to turn for a moment from the wonders of the heavens to admire these glories of the earth. From the leads, two turrets are reached, where the first constantly active operations in this portion of the building, are in progress.

At the present time, indeed, these turrets are the most useful portions of the old building. In one is placed the well-known contrivance for registering, hour after hour, and day after day, the force and direction of the wind. To keep such a watch by human vigilance, and to make such a register by human labour, would be a tedious, expensive, and irksome task; and human ingenuity taxed itself to make a machine for perfecting such work. The wind turns a weather-cock, and, by aid of cog-wheels the motion is transferred to a lead pencil fixed over a sheet of paper, and thus the wind is made to write down the direction which itself is blowing. Not far distant is a piece of metal, the flat side of which is ever turned by the weather-cock to meet the full force of the wind, which, blowing upon it, drives it back against a spring. To this spring is affixed a chain passing over pullies towards another pencil, fixed above a sheet of paper, and moving faithfully, more or less, as the wind blows harder or softer. And thus the ‘gentle zephyr’ and the fresh breeze, and the heavy gale, and, when it comes, the furious hurricane, are made to note down their character and force. The sheets of paper on which the uncertain element, the wind, is bearing witness against itself, is fixed upon a frame moved by clockwork. Steady as the progress of time, this ingenious mechanism draws the paper under the suspended pencils. Thus each minute and each hour has its written record, without human help or inspection. Once a day only, an assistant comes to put a new blank sheet in the place of that which has been covered by the moving pencils, and the latter is taken away to be bound up in a volume. The book might with truth be lettered ‘The History of the Wind; written by Itself,’—an Æolian autobiography.

Close by is another contrivance for registering in decimals of an inch the quantity of rain that falls. The drops are caught, and passing down a tube, a permanent mark is made by which the quantity is determined.

The eastern turret is devoted to the Time Ball and its mechanism. Far out at sea—away from all sources of information but those to be asked of the planets, his compass, his quadrant, his chronometer, and his almanack, the mariner feels the value of _time_ in a way which the landsman can scarcely conceive. If his chronometer is right, he may feel safe; let him have reason to doubt its accuracy, and he knows how the perils surrounding him are increased. An error of a few seconds in his time may place him in danger—an error of a few minutes may lead him to steer blindly to his certain wreck. Hence his desire when he is leaving port to have his time-pieces right to a second; and hence the expenditure of thought, and labour, and money, at the Greenwich Observatory, to afford the shipping of the great port of London, and the English navy, the exact time—true to the tenth of a second, or six hundredth of a minute—and to afford them also a book, the Nautical Almanack, containing a mass of astronomical facts, on which they may base their calculations, with full reliance as to their accuracy. Every day for the last seventeen years, at five minutes before one o’clock, the black ball five feet across and stuffed with cork, is raised halfway up its shaft above the eastern turret of the Observatory;—at two-and-a-half minutes before that hour, it rises to the top. Telescopes from many a point, both up and down the river, are now pointed to this dark spot above the Greenwich trees, and many an anxious mariner has his time-pieces beside him, that their indications may be made true. Watch the Ball as you stand in the Park. It is now just raised. You must wait two minutes and a half, and as you do so, you feel what a minute may be. It seems a long, palpable, appreciable time, indeed. In the turret below, stands a clock telling the true time, gained by a laborious watching of the _clock-stars_; and beside the clock, is a man with a practised hand upon a trigger, and a practised eye upon the face of the dial. One minute—two minutes pass. Thirty seconds more, and the trigger has released the Ball. As it leaves the top of the shaft, it is one o’clock to the tenth of a second. By the time it has reached the bottom it is some five seconds later.