Chapter XII: My Confessions as a "reformer." (2)

"Bang! Another blow!! This time I receive the enemy's blow--as an
Englishman should--in front. It brings me up standing--I see it
all! The monkeys are boys; the cages are practising nets; and the
balls come off the bats! A nurse in charge of five children is
under fire--in terror that some of her little ones may be hit and
killed--and it is a wonder they are not. I gallantly cover her
retreat, for no park-keeper is to be seen. Then I turned my
attention to what I thought--when half-dazed, but not altogether
wrong--was a corner of a low race-meeting, or gipsy encampment.
Here is a sketch, sir, made on the spot. It certainly was like
both--dirty unfinished tents, casks, rubbish and rags, something
boiling, and some people brawling, the grass all worn, and the walk
cut up! An eyesore, a disgrace, sir!

"A somewhat artistically-built kiosk stands a hundred yards or so
away. If the mass of cricketers want another, by all means let them
have it, and drive the unsightly tent-jobbers out of the Park.

"If this sort of thing is allowed by officials in charge, then,
sir, I venture to think the sketch heading this letter, 'What it
will come to,' will be an actual illustration of fact.

"Yours truly,
"STURMIE STUMPS."

Unfortunately my more recent attack on "Lord's," and my letters and articles on various other public matters, have not met with the same success. Even domestic annoyances have been ventilated by me, and I fondly hope have had some effect.

_A propos_ of the foregoing, I may here make full confession of how

I FOUND A SNAKE IN REGENT'S PARK.

The following incident may prove interesting to the public in general and naturalists in particular:

While taking an early walk in Regent's Park on Saturday, June 12th, 1894, I captured, not the proverbial worm, but a specimen of a rare species of snake, which was indulging in a constitutional on one of the broad paths. "What a gigantic worm!" was my first thought, but on my using my stick to arrest its further progress it rose in the orthodox snake-like fashion at my cane, throwing itself into an attitude of defence and hissing with anger. The park-keeper, park-labourers who were mowing the grass close by, and divers members of the British public, from the piscatorial street arab with his minnow-ensnaring thread and bent pin to the portly merchant wending Citywards, were soon on the spot, and really that diminutive reptile caused more consternation than would have been the case had it been instead an Anarchist bomb. I sent over to the cricket pavilion for a tin canister wherein to cage _pro tem._ the wily stranger, and excitement waxed high as preparations were made to accomplish the fearsome feat. This was safely managed by the aid of a newspaper, which naturally enough, considering the events of the week, proved to be of a sporting character, and the viper, probably anxious as to the result of the Oaks, glided to the column containing that news, whence it was expeditiously shaken into the canister, which I perforated at the top, and walked off with my tinned snake to the Zoological Gardens hard by, where its roaming propensities were kept in check within the walls of the reptile house.

I was somewhat startled to learn that my captive had not escaped from the Gardens, which did not contain one of its species, and Mr. Bartlett gave it as his opinion that there must have been a number more wherever this one came from. This new danger further enhanced the charms of Regent's Park, which on Saturdays is a perfect pandemonium, the pedestrian having to exert a great deal of agility to dodge the whizzing cricket balls and avoid being maimed for life. Now that we have had snakes in the grass we may expect vultures in the air, and who knows that in time to come we may not be shooting big game in the jungles of the north-west!

The above is the substance of a letter I wrote to the _Times_, the publication of which caused no little consternation in some papers and no little chaff, at my expense, in others. The London evening papers appeared with startling contents bills and sensational headings:

"_LIKA-JOKO, THE SERPENT HUNTER._"

"SNAKES IN REGENTS PARK!"

"THE TALE OF THE SERPENT," "SNAKES ALIVE!" &c.

The _Westminster Gazette_, "In the hope of gleaning some valuable information about this newly-discovered fearful reptile which lies in wait for wayfarers in the wilds of Northern London," sent a representative post-haste to interview Mr. Bartlett, the superintendent of the Zoological Gardens. This report in the _Westminster_ is headed:

"He thought he saw an elephant
Upon the mantelpiece;
He looked again, and found it was
His sister's husband's niece,"

and then proceeds to throw doubt upon my veracity.

"Mr. Harry Furniss has been suffering from a delusion very similar
to that of the subject of Mr. Lewis Carroll's nonsense-verse. Mr.
Bartlett is a man of few words, though what he does say is both
interesting and humorous. Without replying"--(the _Westminster_
representative required him to tell him all he knew about my
snake)--"he took up his pen and, on the back of a visiting-card
which lay before him, he drew a circle as large as the card would
hold, the ends of which did not quite meet. 'There,' he said, 'that
is about the actual size of Mr. Harry Furniss's snake. You see its
size is not alarming, and its nature is not venomous. In fact, it
is absolutely harmless.'

"'But it is of rare variety, is it not?'

"'The variety is not common, certainly, though I have known it for
the last eighteen or twenty years. It is known as the small crowned
snake (_Coronella laevis_), and is occasionally found in Hampshire
and in one or two other counties. The first specimen I had was
brought to me from Hampshire by a friend of mine, a young officer.
As he pulled it out of his hand-bag in this room I saw it biting at
his fingers. I thought it was a viper; but, of course, on examining
it I soon saw what it really was. It has no fangs, and it is, as I
said, quite harmless. At its full size it may measure from fourteen
to sixteen inches. As for its rarity, here is a fairly long list of
the specimens we have had, and we have several at present. But come
along to the reptile house and see it for yourself.'

"Arrived, at the reptile house, Mr. Bartlett called the keeper, and
in solemn tones and with a grave countenance requested him to 'show
this gentleman Mr. Harry Furniss's serpent.' The man looked puzzled
for a moment, and then gradually a broad grin spread over his face
as he replied: 'Oh, yes, sir, if I can find it, but I am not sure
about that,' However, he removed the lid from a glass case
containing several lively little creatures just about as large as a
fresh-water eel at the age at which it is known to the small boy
who tries to catch it in his hands as the 'darning needle.' After
groping about in the sand at the bottom of the case he found the
specimen required and handed it over to Mr. Bartlett, who held it
in his hand and allowed it to make savage darts at his fingers.
'You see,' he said, it is a lively little thing--extremely
spiteful, but quite powerless to hurt me.' After it had been put
back and carefully secured, lest it should make another descent
upon London, Mr. Bartlett gave his theories as to how it might have
got into Regent's Park. 'There are two ways in which it might have
come here,' he explained. 'I imagine it has been brought in some of
the plants or shrubs which have been provided for the Park
gardeners; or else somebody may have brought a female with young
ones from the country and carelessly allowed this one to escape.
But stray animals like this are almost sure to come to us sooner or
later. Whenever people find anything unusual, they think it must be
an escaped specimen and forward it here. Why, when the great
explosion on the canal occurred in 1874, the glass in our aviaries
was shattered. Of course a great number of our birds escaped, but
it was in November, and most of them were glad enough to return to
the warmth and to the food provided for them. But people were
continually sending us birds for a long time, and, in fact, more
birds were sent here than had actually escaped.'

"'Then, as a last question, Mr. Bartlett, what does the fuss which
has been made about this snake mean?'

"Mr. Bartlett looked more solemn than ever as he suggested: 'Well,
Mr. Harry Furniss is fond of a joke--Lika-Joko is a capital name
for him; he may have been serious, or he may not."

I was serious, and so was dear old Mr. Bartlett, whom it was my privilege to know well, but he did not let the representative of the _Westminster_ see this.

I replied to the above article:

"On reading your descriptive interview with Mr. Bartlett _a propos_
of my finding a reptile in Regent's Park, I was, believe me, far
more surprised than when I captured the primary cause of your
representative's journey to the Zoological Gardens. You endeavour
to sum up the incident and my veracity by quoting the following
lines of Mr. Lewis Carroll's:--

"'He thought he saw an Elephant
Upon the mantelpiece;
He looked again, and found it was
His sister's husband's niece,'

"Now it seems to me that another extract from the same work would
have lent itself better to your requirements:

"'He thought he saw a Rattlesnake
That questioned him in Greek;
He looked again, and found it was
The Middle of Next Week.
"The one thing I regret," he said,
"Is that I cannot speak!"'"

I very much regret that it--the snake--cannot speak, for were it
gifted with articulate power your representative could hold a _viva
voce_ interview with his snakeship, and therefore become
enlightened as to the real facts of the case. The reptile might
also disclose the locality he hails from, as that important point
is still shrouded in mystery.

"As soon as I had read your article, which deals somewhat
frivolously with a very serious subject, I went forth to the Zoo in
quest of Mr. Bartlett, but that gentleman had left town. Perhaps
the article in question had something to do with his departure. Why
I sought to see him was to put to him the following questions to
test the accuracy of your statements:

"1. How comes it that you informed me on Saturday that the snake
was a foreigner, while according to the _Westminster Gazette_ it is
English?

"2. Did you not give it to me as your opinion that it must have
come in fruit? You are now made to say that it must have been
brought in plants or shrubs, and if that is so, why did the Park
gardeners declare that they had never seen anything like it before?

"3. Did you not say it was only a week old, and also that where it
came from there must be a number more?

"4. Did you not emphatically declare that you had no specimen of
the kind in the Gardens, and was it not for this reason I made you
a present of this one? How do you reconcile that with the following
passage in your interview with the representative of the
_Westminster Gazette_: 'As for its rarity, here is a fairly long
list of the specimens we have had, and we have several at present'?
And did you not give as a reason the reptile could not have strayed
from the Gardens the very cogent one that you had none of the kind
in your collection? And may I ask whether you really have any or
not? For if you have, and the one in question has escaped, what is
to prevent rattlesnakes and cobras and other venomous specimens
from escaping also?

"5. If, as you say, you doubted my seriousness, why was the snake
duly entered in the books of the Zoological Society, from whom I
received a formal letter of thanks for the presentation?

"6. Would you not rather handle a snake, however dangerous, than
the special interviewer of a London evening paper?"

This I followed with another letter, which explains the conflicting information received at the Zoo:

"Since writing to you it has struck me that probably your
representative saw Mr. Bartlett senior, whereas I deposited my
snake into the care of, and received my information from, Mr.
Bartlett junior (the present superintendent). This may account for
your representative describing in his article Mr. Bartlett drawing
a circle the size of my snake on a visiting-card, and that, too,
without the two ends of the circle coming into conjunction. This is
so utterly absurd that it is evident Mr. Bartlett could not have
seen the reptile at the time. The exact measurement of my baby
serpent is seven and a-half inches in length--nearly an inch longer
than the word 'Westminster' at the top of your front page--and it
is _still growing_!"

So did the story grow--in correspondence, in prose, in verse, and in picture. Mr. F. C. Gould treated the subject in Japanese-Lika-Joka spirit, and from quantities of verse I select the following from the _Sketch_ as the best:

"PICKED UP NEAR THE ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS.

"'I am the snake of Regent's Park;
I lie in wait for men of mark.
I'd gladly give my latest breath
To fright a funny man to death.
So when from ambush I espy
A comic artist passing by,
I think there is no joy like this--
To stand upon my tail and hiss.
For it is quite a novel charm
To see him start in wild alarm
And haste to tell the awful crimes
Of Horrid Serpents in the _Times_.
It used to be a bitter pang
That I was born without a fang,
That Nature made me as a toy
For any silly idle boy.
But now the humble snake may pass
For lurking cobra in the grass,
While people think that Regent's Park
Is Kipling Jungle after dark!'"

Several letters appeared. One from a "Harrow School Boy," in the _Times_, was generally accepted at the time as a solution of the mystery:

"SIR,--I keep snakes as pets, and allow them a wriggle on the grass
every day. Early last week I missed one, a little black chap about
10 to 11 in. long, and have not seen him since. Perhaps the one Mr.
Harry Furniss found on Saturday is my lost pet, carried away, not
by one of the expected vultures, but by a roving Regent's Park
rook."

This soothed some nervous readers' fears; but not all. Another correspondent wrote:

"The tale of the Regent's Park serpent (_Likajokophis
harryfurnissii_), discovered, patented, and greatly improved upon
by the vivacious caricaturist, appears to be even now not told to
its bitter sequel; for I am credibly informed at the Zoological
Gardens that an official of a large hospital in the neighbourhood
was sent there yesterday to enquire how soon it would be safe for
the convalescent patients to resume their daily airing in the
Park, as to the probabilities of further lethal reptilian monsters
lurking within its fastnesses, etc."

The truth of the matter was, several snakes were at the same time found in gardens of private houses close to the Zoological Menagerie. "Mr. A. B. Edwards" wrote, from an address close to the Zoo, to the _Daily Telegraph_, a few weeks after my finding the cause of all the snake sensation:

"This afternoon we were taking tea in our garden when we saw a
snake 2 ft. long frisking on the lawn close to our feet.
Fortunately one of our fowls had got loose from the cage, and came
to pick up the crumbs. When it caught sight of the snake it pounced
upon it, and a great battle was fought between fowl and serpent.
After ten minutes' hard fighting, the snake lay dead. Your readers
may be interested to hear of this, and, being forewarned, they will
be forearmed against snakes in their gardens."

The _Westminster Gazette_, _a propos_ of this:

"'Lika-Joko's' snake may now crawl away into its native
insignificance when it reads of the exploits of its comrade, who
preferred death to captivity."

But my snake did not crawl away; far from it. The man in the reptile house, who "looked puzzled" and grinned, and had to grope about the sand at the bottom of the case to find the snake for the edification of the _Westminster Gazette_ interviewer, did not grin to that purpose for long. Never before in the history of the Zoo was the reptile house so crowded. Day after day people thronged to see the specimen of _Coronella laevis_ found on the path in Regent's Park. Not one looked at the two splendid specimens of the largest and finest and fiercest snakes bought that very week by the Zoological Society, at a cost of three hundred pounds. My snake was valued at anything between sixpence and eighteenpence, but it brought more money to the turnstiles of the Zoo than all the other snakes put together in twenty years.

From an address not half-a-mile from the gates of the Zoological Gardens a gentleman wrote to the _World_ about a snake he found in his garden. A London and North-Western guard found a boa-constrictor, 22 feet long, in his van! "The son of a well-known Member of Parliament" found a huge snake in one of the rooms of his father's London house. In fact, snake-finding became an epidemic, and if I had come across any more of the ophidian brood, I would have feared the consequences. Alas! the British public killed my snake--as it has killed many another celebrity of the hour--by too much attention and flattery. But how the cause of all this excitement got on to the path in the centre of Regent's Park remains a mystery. I feel certain myself it had escaped from the Zoological Gardens through the drains, and the fact that others were discovered in the vicinity of the Park at the same time explains the confusion and mild chaff accepted by the _Westminster_ interviewer as a complete explanation, forgetting that officialism when criticised is much the same all the world over.

"The Harrow School Boy" correspondent--probably a very old boy--is not alone in his strange choice of pets. A lady who had sent her pet snakes to the Zoological Gardens--not by "The Roving Rook Post," but by the usual course of presentation--happened to visit the Gardens at the time that other great attraction was drawing all London, the great Jumbo craze. When she arrived to see the elephant of the hour, the crowd was so dense around his cage that there was no chance of getting a peep, so she marched off to the reptile house and soon returned with one of her pets coiled round her neck. She took her stand close to the people engaged in struggling to pat the trunk of the Jumbo, feed it with the most expensive sweetmeats, decorate it with choice flowers, and weep bitter tears over its impending departure. (The public of the present day can hardly realise the excitement over this favourite elephant.) Struggling at the same time to be prominent in this Jumbo worship, however, the head of a snake appearing suddenly over one's shoulder is too much for some of us. One after another the visitors vanished as the snake thrust its head near them, and soon the ingenious lady had the place and Jumbo to herself.

She was not a professional "snake-charmer," but an eccentric lady of private means; her pet was large, but harmless. Strange to say, about the same time a company of Japanese "snake-charmers" were causing a sensation at a show in the West End of London by their performance with snakes of a well-known dangerous species. Some of the reptiles they performed with fell sick--languid and useless for sensational show-work. They were despatched to the "Zoo" by the manager to be looked after--possibly the climate affected them. They would not eat anything, and were gradually pining away, when it was discovered that their poison-fangs had been extracted, and their mouths were sewn up with silk. Charming, certainly!

Having lived close to the Zoological Gardens for over twenty years, and being a Fellow of the Society, I have spent a great deal of enjoyable time rambling about its ever-interesting collection. The "Zoo" is very like London itself--one never exhausts its interest. There is always a surprise in store for those even most intimately acquainted with it. One suddenly comes across an object of interest that has existed in the place for years, but one has not happened to pass at the moment that object appears. How many visitors to the "Zoo," for instance, have ever seen the beavers at work? To see them, the most interesting animals in the collection, one has to go very late or very early. Knowing old Mr. Bartlett as I did, I frequently saw interesting events, and heard from him interesting tales of the Gardens.

Another letter of mine to the _Times_ took the form of a confession. It was what was described in the Press as "a humorous, yet withal pathetic complaint" (December, 1895) respecting the irritating inconvenience caused by so-called "modern conveniences," which do not always act satisfactorily. I had been driven to "let off steam" (which is better accomplished through a pen than with a pencil) by my experience in one week of the modern inventions which are designed to facilitate business and to benefit the public generally, and I still seriously question if these wonderful inventions and the extra expense incurred by adopting them are not a mistake.

The working of the telephone has become, of course, a farce, and the sooner the Government take it up the better. Several large business houses have given it up, and in the working of the telephone London, which ought to be the most favoured, is probably the most unfortunate city of any in the world. I have tried half-a-dozen times in one day to ring up different people on the telephone without succeeding in getting through, and have had to send notes by hand.

The electric light is another disappointing "improvement." It has gone out four times in one week, and we had to use candles and lamps.

Then the District Messengers' wire, which I had in communication with my house, would not act. I rang up for a cab; no response. I rang up again; nothing came. I sent out for a cab, and was late for dinner. The next day a representative called casually to inform me that we could not use the wire for two or three days, as something had gone wrong.

I then tried the phonograph; but I had more correspondence about it than I had through it.

A plague on these experiments in the advancement of science intended to facilitate our work and add to our comfort! The electric light kills our sight; the telephone destroys our temper; the District Messenger call ruins our dinner; and, conjointly, they waste our time and deplete our purses.

When there was a controversy in the _Daily Graphic_ I wrote in the interests of women to make one confession:

Do women fail in art?

Confession--Certainly not.

In the opinion of many, women fail in nothing, but base man fails in appreciating women in art as in everything else where appreciation of talent is due. The fashion-plate young lady, with her doll's face, her empty head, and her sawdust constitution, monopolises all the attention that selfish man can afford to give outside thoughts about his own sweet self.

Every year we see some work in the Academy from the easel of a woman which is far better than many of the works exhibited by Academicians, and although when that selfish body was being formed there were not enough men to supply the number of figure-heads required, and two women were requisitioned to launch the ship, all the gratitude shown to the sex has been years of continued insult. Yet there are certain Academicians who paint like women for women, and instead of leaving it to women receive all the honour and remuneration; and those having this feminine art and spirit behave the worst to those whom they copy. The pretty-pretty pictures of conventional coquetries which we have served up year after year by the chefs of this pastry of art might be concocted by the dainty fingers of the lady artist just as well as, or even better than, by the effeminate man who takes her place and robs her of her honours. But after all, are not the women themselves to blame? Art, I hold, is nowadays purely a commercial affair. Burlington House is simply a huge shop, and it is all nonsense to talk for one instant about the encouragement it gives to art, or to take seriously the prosy platitudes which are poured forth year by year at that picture tradesmen's dinner--the Royal Academy Banquet. Women are not invited--women, forsooth, whose works on the walls have done their share towards bringing the shillings to the turnstiles of the Academy. But more ridiculous still is the omission of lady patrons of art, for it is well known that this feast is given with two objects--to advertise the coming show, merely "chicken and champagne" in theatrical phraseology, and to feast Mr. Cr[oe]sus, who buys the pictures of his host.

Now, it is the influence of women that makes the majority of men buy pictures. Few men buy pictures to please themselves; they buy them to please their wives. Why women are not patronised in art is for this simple reason, that women would rather patronise the work of a fool, if that fool be a man, than the work of a genius, if that genius happen to be a woman. I agree with Mrs. Jopling, that "with men success is reached with a fair wind and every favour, while with women those only succeed who have the power of weathering many storms." Quite true. Grace Darling will row out to help some feeble man struggling in the billows of incompetency, but she will sit on a rock and see a woman sink before she will stretch out a helping hand. If women fail in art, it is because women fail to help them, and I hold that but for women we might even to-day find the Royal Academy incapable of forming a quorum without calling in lady artists, as they did before. I see that the two ladies most qualified to speak about this subject disagree on the most essential point. Mrs. E.M. Ward gives it as her opinion that if women studied with the same quiet devotion as the male student they would be more successful; but Mrs. Louise Jopling asserts that young girls show quite as much disposition for art as young men do. I have no hesitation in saying that the latter opinion is the correct one. The male art student vies with the medical student in playing the fool. A friend of mine has recently been driven out of his studio, which was situated next to an art school, by the asinine behaviour of these "quiet devotional students." But in any school I have been through I have noted with astonishment the painstaking sincerity of the lady students.

All that has been written on the subject from time to time seems to me to be quite devoid of common sense. We all know what a delightful poet Mr. Sterry is, and how fondly he sings the praises of women. Probably he has been so engrossed in describing the grace of the girl that he has failed to look for the natural elegance of the boy. Possibly no artist admires the female form more than I do, but any artist will corroborate me when I say it is a matter of the greatest difficulty to find a graceful young female model, while you seldom find a youth who is really awkward. The playground of a girls' school is a conglomeration of awkward figures, awkward running, awkward gesticulating, enough to make an artist shudder, while the cricket or football ground of a college is the best study an artist can possibly have for the poetry of motion. Mr. Sterry cannot be in earnest when he says that girls think the study of anatomy tiresome, drawing from the antique a bore, painting from the nude superfluous, and studies of the old masters uninteresting. An afternoon round the art schools and art galleries will prove to him the very reverse. But then the "lazy minstrel" cannot intend his readers to take him seriously, for he says that women have greater delicacy of touch and facility of manipulation than men, and that their hands are less awkward and their fingers more lissom than those of the sterner sex. In poetry, my minstrel, yes; in reality, bosh. Where are your women conjurors? You say that their brain is not strong enough to second their manual advantage, but that they can "knock off" a pretty water-colour or oil study of flowers, or a graphic caricature! Caricature, indeed! Perhaps no one has seen more caricatures than I have, but I have never seen a caricature by a woman. If women have a failing, it is lack of humour. We poor caricaturists know that; but we also know that whereas women can compete side by side with painters on the line of the Royal Academy, we are not honoured by even a failure in caricature.

It is curious how clever lady artists become when they happen to be the wives of successful painters, but it is a significant fact that while all writers seem to agree that marriage is the cause of obliterating artistic ambition in women, it has in many cases been the birth of genius; and while domestic companionship with an artist will make a woman a painter, no caricaturist has ever succeeded in making his wife a humorist in art, and I shall ask Mr. Sterry what he means by placing "graphic caricature" on a par with "knocked-off" pretty water-colours and the weak studies of flowers by lady amateurs. Mr. Sterry is an artist himself, and this disparagement of a most difficult and most unique art fully qualifies him to be a member of the Royal Academy.

At the beginning of the Victorian Era art was at its lowest ebb. The young lady students of the period were copying those impossible lithographed heads which formed the stock-in-trade of the drawing-master, or those fashion-plate Venuses whose necks recalled the proportions of the giraffe, with the eyelashes of a wax doll, and fingers that tapered off like the point of a pencil. These sirens of the drawing-board were invariably smelling a rose or kissing a canary, and always had a weakness for pearls. They used to be drawn upon tinted paper, and when the faces had been duly smeared over with the stump to suggest shadow, and after the drawing-master had endowed the work with artistic merit by the application of white chalk to the high lights, the pearls, the canary's eyes, and the pathetic tear-drops upon the damsels' faces, the immortal productions were ready for framing. The giraffe or swan-necked angel was the keynote for all ideal work, and even the recognised artists of those days, with one or two brilliant exceptions, followed in her train.

Now she rushes into a large oil picture--perhaps a portrait of her brother in riding costume, _et hoc genus omne_. These are caricatures, but, like many of the pictures on the walls of the Royal Academy, they are unconscious ones.

As I am writing about the failure or success of women, I should like to introduce a curious request once made to me.

It is a very common thing for me to receive all sorts and conditions of curious letters from all sorts of people. The following, sent to me from the Colonies, is worth reprinting:

"DEAR SIR,--I have taken the liberty to address you upon a little
matter, and earnestly hope you will exert and use your influence on
my behalf to the utmost of your ability. I am a young man
twenty-three years of age, of good family, handsome, worth in stock
and cash about L18,000. I intend coming to reside in dear Old
England permanently (the land of my birth) as soon as I can dispose
of my property and stock to an advantage here. I came out to Africa
as a youngster, and have remained here ever since. I've not had an
opportunity even of paying a visit to England. Will you be good
enough to try and induce some young lady to correspond with me with
a view to matrimony? I should like to get married upon my arrival,
and live in joyful anticipation of meeting my love at the docks or
station. I am well aware that I am transgressing the rules of good
breeding and etiquette by my familiarity and audacity, but the fact
is I am totally unacquainted in the city and know of no one else in
whom I could put implicit faith and confidence with regard to so
delicate a matter. Pardon me, therefore, dear sir, if I have been
in any way intrusive or have unwillingly offended you. I have had
scores of favourable opportunities to get married here, but, to
tell the plain truth, I would sooner die than marry anybody not of
my own nationality. She must have a lady's blood in her veins, and
born and bred in the auld country, or I'll die a confirmed old
bachelor. The society of these Cape girls is somewhat detestable to
me, and their ways, looks, figure, dress, education, refinement,
and accomplishments are not to be compared to Old England's. Hoping
I've not occupied too much of your valuable time, and trusting to
hear from you at your earliest convenience or opportunity, with
kind regards, I beg to remain,

"Yours truly,
"----."

I was puzzled to know what to do with this letter--I really felt for my correspondent. I therefore printed his request in a London letter I was writing at the time and which appeared in the principal local papers in the United Kingdom, and also in the papers of America and Australia, and added a portrait of the lady I had selected, with the following note:

"Unless the publication of this letter leads to some favourable
offers I shall send my unknown, but hymeneally disposed,
correspondent this sketch of a lady capable of looking after so
young and venturesome a man, seated at the docks waiting his
arrival, for unless he has a sketch or photograph how is he to
identify his 'love' amidst the crowd which greets the
homeward-bound steamer?"

And I have preserved a few out of the scores of letters I received, to hand to this gentleman should I ever have the pleasure of meeting him.

Judging from this, the manager of a matrimonial agency must indeed get a curious insight into the minds of the maids of Merry England. This single experience has been quite enough for me.