Chapter IV: Part 4

"I never could understand the craze that some people have for prisoners. For instance, in New York and Chicago, the young ladies have a society for giving flowers to murderers. Whenever a man is convicted of murder and sentenced to be hung, the girls begin to heave flowers into his cell till he can't turn round without upsetting a vase of roses, or a big basin full of pansies, and getting his feet wet. I once knew a murderer who told me that if anything could reconcile him to being hung it would be getting rid of the floral tributes that the girls lavished on him. You see he was one of the leading murderers in that section of country, and consequently he received about a cartload of flowers every day.

"I had a neighbour when I lived in New Berlinopolisville who was the President of the Society for Ameliorating the Condition of Prisoners, and he was the craziest man on the subject that I ever met. His name was Hoskins--Colonel Uriah Hoskins--and he was the author of the Hoskins Bill that attracted so much attention when it was before the Legislature, though it never became a law. The bill provided that every prisoner should have a sitting room as well as a sleeping room, and that it should be furnished with a piano, a banjo, a library, a typewriter, a wine cooler, and a whist table; that the prisoner should be permitted to hold two weekly receptions, to which everybody should be allowed to come, and that he should be taught any branch of study that he might care to take up, books and masters being, of course, supplied free. Colonel Hoskins used to insist that the only thing that made a man go wrong was the lack of kindness, and that the sure way to reform a criminal was to treat him with so much kindness that he would grow ashamed of being wicked, and would fall on everybody's neck and devote the rest of his life to weeping tears of repentance and singing hymns of joy.

"While Colonel Hoskins was fond of all styles of criminals, burglars were his particular pets. According to him, a burglar was more deserving of kindness than any other man. 'How would you like it,' he used to say, 'if you had to earn your living by breaking into houses in the middle of the night, instead of sleeping peacefully in your bed? Do you think you would be full of good thoughts after you had been bitten by the watch-dog and fired at by the man of the house, and earned nothing by your labour except a bad cold and the prospect of hydrophobia? There is nothing more brutal than the way in which society treats the burglar, and so long as society refuses to put him in the way of earning an easier and less dangerous living, he cannot be blamed if he continues to practise his midnight profession.'

"I must say this for Colonel Hoskins. He did not confine himself to talk, like many other philanthropists, but he was already trying to carry out his principles. He really meant what he said about burglars, and there isn't the least doubt that he had more sympathy for them than he had for the honest men of his acquaintance. When people asked him what he would do if he woke up in the night and found a burglar in his house, and whether or not he would shoot at him, he said that he would as soon think of shooting at his own wife, and that he would undertake to reform that burglar then and there by kindness alone. Once somebody said to Hoskins that he ought really to let the burglars know his feelings towards them, and Hoskins said that he would do it without delay.

"That same day he drew up a beautiful 'Notice to Burglars,' and had it printed in big letters and framed and hung up in the dining-room of his house. It read in this way: 'Burglars are respectfully informed that the silver-ware is all plated, and that the proprietor of this house never keeps ready money on hand. Cake and wine will be found in the dining-room closet, and burglars are cordially invited to rest and refresh themselves. Please wipe your feet on the mat, and close the window when leaving the house.'

"Colonel Hoskins took a good deal of pride in that notice. He showed it to everyone who called at the house, and said that if other people would follow his example, and treat burglars like Christians and gentlemen, there would soon be an end of burglary, for the burglars would be so touched by the kindness of their treatment that they would abandon the business and become honoured members of society--insurance presidents, or bank cashiers, or church treasurers. He didn't say how the reformed burglars were to find employment in banks and insurance offices, and such, but that was a matter of detail, and he always preferred to devise large and noble schemes, and leave the working details of them to other men.

"One morning, Colonel Hoskins, who was an early riser, went down to the dining-room before breakfast, and was surprised to find that he had had a midnight visit from burglars. Two empty wine bottles stood on the table, and all the cake was eaten, which showed that the burglars had accepted the invitation to refresh themselves. But they did not seem to have accepted it in quite the right spirit. All Hoskins's spoons and forks lay in a heap in the middle of the floor, and every one was twisted or broken so as to be good for nothing. The window had been left open, and the rain had ruined the curtains, and on a dirty piece of paper the burglars had scrawled with a lead pencil the opinion that 'Old Hoskins is the biggest fule, and the gol-darndest skinflint in the country. You set out whiskey next time, or we'll serve you out.'

"Hoskins was not in the least cast down by the rudeness of the burglars. 'Poor fellows,' he said, 'they have been so used to bad treatment that they don't altogether appreciate kindness at first. But they will learn.' So he laid in some new spoons and forks, and added a bottle of whiskey to the wine that he kept in the closet for the burglars, and was as confident as ever that the next gang that might break into his house would be melted into tears and repentance, and would call him their best and dearest friend.

"A week or two later Mrs. Hoskins was awakened by a noise in the dining-room, and, after waking up her husband, told him that there were burglars in the house, and that he must get out of the back window and go for the police. He told her that he was sorry to see her manifest such an unchristian spirit, and he would show her how burglars ought to be treated. There was not the least doubt that there were burglars in the house, and they were making a good deal more noise than was strictly consistent with the prospect of rising in their profession, for no able burglar ever makes any unnecessary noise while engaged in business, unless, of course, he falls over a coal-scuttle, and then he naturally uses language. St. Paul himself would probably say something pretty strong in similar circumstances. Hoskins was sincerely delighted to have the opportunity to meet his burglarious friends, and he lost no time in dressing and descending to the dining-room.

"He wore his slippers, and the burglars--there were two of them--did not hear him until he was fairly in the dining-room. They were seated at the table, with their feet on the damask tablecloth, and the bottle of whiskey was nearly empty. The Colonel was much pleased to see that they had not damaged his silver-ware, and he was just about to thank them when they saw him. They started up, and one of them caught him by the throat, while the other held a pistol to his head, and promised to blow out his brains if he made the slightest noise. Then they tied him hand and foot, gagged him, and laid him on the floor, and then sat down to finish the whiskey.

"Both the burglars were partly drunk, which accounted for the unprofessional noise they had been making. They talked in rather a low tone, but Hoskins could hear everything they said, and it was not particularly encouraging to a gagged and bound philanthropist. They agreed that he was a fool, and a stingy fool, or else he would have kept money in the house, and would have set out lemons and sugar as well as plain whiskey. They said that any man who treated poor working men in that way wasn't fit to live, and that Hoskins would have to be killed, even if it was not necessary--as it plainly was in this case--to kill him in order to prevent him from appearing at any future time as a witness against them. They admitted that the whiskey was not bad of its kind, but they were of the opinion that Hoskins had left it in their way so that they might get drunk and be caught by the police.

"Colonel Hoskins listened to this conversation with horror, and the prospect that the drunken rascals would be as good as their word, and kill him before they left the house, was only a little more painful than the conviction that his method, appealing to the better nature of burglars, had failed for the second time. When the whiskey was exhausted the men rose up and looked at Hoskins, and a happy thought struck one of them. 'Thishyer idiot,' he said, 'may not have any money in the house, but he's bound to have some in the bank, and he's going to write us a cheque for a thousand dollars, provided we let him off, and don't kick his brains out this time.' The other burglar, who was in that benevolent frame of mind that Irish whiskey and conscious virtue sometimes produce, agreed to the suggestion, and Hoskins was therefore unbound and seated at the table, and told to draw a cheque at once if he had the least regard for his life. As he was gagged he could not explain to the burglars the kind feelings that he still had towards them, and the fact that they could not draw the money on the cheque without being captured by the police. So he simply signed the cheque, and groaned to think that the poor burglars were so slow to be reformed in the way that he had hoped they would be.

"When this business was over, the burglars tied Hoskins's wrists together again, and then tied him in a chair. Then they set to work to do all the damage they could do without making too much noise. They tore the curtains and hacked the piano with knives, and poured a jug of golden syrup over the carpet. Then they plastered Colonel Hoskins's face with raspberry jam, and emptied a sack of flour over his head, and went away, telling him that if he ever again ventured to trifle with the feelings of poor but self-respecting men, they would put him to death by slow tortures.

"Hoskins sat in the chair for a couple of hours, till his wife timidly crept downstairs and released him. It took him a good hour to get the jam and the flour out of his hair and whiskers, and as Mrs. Hoskins said that he was in no state to enter a decent bedroom, and made him wash at the pump in the back yard, he found it a rather cold operation. Perhaps it was the remarks that Mrs. Hoskins addressed to him during the operation that irritated him, for she intimated very plainly that he was no better than a professional idiot, and when a man's hair is stuck together with jam remarks of this sort from the wife of his bosom seem to be lacking in tenderness. However that may be, Colonel Hoskins had no sooner got himself into what his wife condescended to call a state of comparative decency, than he took down his 'Notice to Burglars,' and tore it into a thousand pieces. That day he had an electric burglar alarm put into his house; he bought the savagest dog that he could find, and he stopped the payment of the cheque, which, however, was never presented. He continued to be the President of the Society for Ameliorating the Condition of Prisoners, but he steadily refused to ameliorate a single prisoner convicted of burglary, and while he was always a lunatic in regard to other criminals, he openly maintained that a burglar was the worst of men, and that kindness was utterly thrown away upon him. He never had any more burglars in his house, though the dog now and then lunched off warm leg when some stranger to that part of the country ventured into the Hoskins's premises at night. Hoskins was very fond of the animal, which was quite right, but his practice of leaving a bottle of whiskey, with an ounce of strychnine in it, on the dining-room table every night, in case a burglar should succeed in getting into the house, was, in my opinion, going a little too far. Antimonial wine would have been much more humane and sufficiently effective. But there is no man who is more severe than a philanthropist who has been turned sour."

Experiences of a 'Varsity Oar.

BY AN "OLD BLUE."

(F. C. DRAKE.)

ILLUSTRATIONS BY ERNEST PRATER.

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Rowing in the University Boat Race is not a thing to be undertaken lightly. To begin with, it involves great muscular exertion; but this is not unpleasant, and, as I shall presently show, is not dangerous. Further, it ties the aspirant to his oar for at least ten weeks, which is perhaps its greatest disadvantage; and it involves intense application and a pretty good temper under remarks from the "coach" that are sometimes almost more than caustic. But against these drawbacks are to be set the pleasure of gratified ambition, the healthy life, and, best of all, the sensation of the flight of the boat driven by eight men, of whom none are really bad oarsmen, and some are uncommonly good. Putting these side by side, no one need wonder that an old Blue should look on the time he spent at Putney as one of the best in his life.

I will pass over the preliminary work at the University, for it contains nothing novel or interesting, and is mainly consumed in settling the crew who are finally to row, and in getting the men "hard" by long, steady work, to get rid of fat and replace it by muscle. The real interest begins when the crew has been settled, and the men have had their colours given them, and are looking forward shortly to leaving the home waters. By this time they are fairly "fit," and, as they have in all cases of doubt had the very best medical opinions, they are not very likely to go wrong. There is a good deal of nonsense talked about the dangers of this race to health. No man who is not absolutely sound in wind and limb is allowed to begin training at all, for the obvious reason that the captain does not want one of his men to fail him at the last moment. It is about as probable that a man should go tiger shooting without looking to see if his rifle is loaded, as that the President of a University Boat Club should select an oarsman who is likely to "crock up."

It is when the crew leave the home waters that the really enjoyable part of the training begins. The Cambridge crew generally, and the Oxford men not infrequently, go straight to Putney, but a far more pleasant plan is to spend a week or so on the up-river waters before going to the Metropolitan course. Everyone knows Cookham in its summer dress, with a plentiful crowd of holiday-makers on the water; but in the very early spring, before the foliage has begun to appear, and when the light-hearted champagne bottle still nestles in its straw, it has also a very great charm of its own. The fresh air, and the change to new scenes, together with the strong stream caused by winter rains, make the men feel like young bullocks, and the boat moves with twice the spring it had before. The jolly lounging life in between whiles, diversified with songs, saloon-pistols, and the like, the pleasant walk over the hills on Sunday, and the total freedom from all thoughts and cares, beyond the beating of a record over the course next day, all go to make up an Elysian life.

Every now and then the amusement is varied by the rather boisterous humour of the elements. Some five years ago the state of the tide at Putney rendered it necessary to do most of the work early in the morning. It was freezing hard, with occasional showers of snow, and the coxswain absolutely was able to stand his coat up when he took it off. It had got drenched, and was frozen stiff! I have several times been in a boat when we had to land and empty out the water, that had broken over the bow oars in such quantities as almost to sink us. Occasionally, boats have quite sunk from the same cause, while the men stuck to their thwarts, presenting a comic appearance as they rowed away, seated, as it seemed, in the water.

A great consideration in estimating the happiness of such a time as this is the question, "What did you have to eat?" But the answer to this has been given so many times that it would be merely wearisome now to detail the various dishes that are or are not "good for training." Enough to say that, as everybody knows, the old rigorous system of raw beef and beer is a thing of the past--except the beer. Nowadays, it is considered sufficient to banish all very unwholesome things from the table, while keeping as nearly as possible to each man's ordinary diet. In point of quantity there are practically no restrictions, unless the Captain considers that any man does not know when he has had enough (which, alas! may occur); in which case he may remonstrate with him gently, but firmly. I have seen a man eat for breakfast a sole and a half, three chops, a poached egg, and some watercress; but I confess that this was regarded as a work of genius. The ordinary man in training eats only about twice as much as any sane person, or perhaps a little more; and as, of course, the system needs recuperating under the great strains that are put upon it, this trifling excess has its justification.

However, the result of this wear and tear and repair of the muscular tissue is that the activity of the mind decreases in inverse proportion to that of the body; and during a hard course of training the rowing man is generally rather sleepy and unintellectual. This matters all the less that studies are forbidden--not a very difficult rule to enforce--during the latter part of the time. But training once over, the strength and health accumulated can certainly do no harm either physical or mental, and a healthy body is the best guarantee for an active mind (see Latin authors and copybooks _passim_).

About three weeks or less before the race a move is made to Putney, where, as a general rule, very comfortable quarters are provided. The pleasantest of all that the Oxford crew have had lately has been the Lyric Club House; but it is not really a good place for the men's health. Lying, as it does, just down by the river, the air is not half so bracing as that of the higher ground. Still, it is undoubtedly very convenient to have a billiard-table or two to while away the men's time in the evening. Without something of the kind time is apt to hang very heavily on their hands. Conversation flags, the chairs feel very comfortable after the day's work, and Morpheus, drowsy god, steals in unawares. Now, this is not only bad hygienically, but is apt to have very awkward consequences of a different kind. One man more wakeful than the rest casts his eye around, seeking for his prey. He spies an unfortunate lapped in profoundest sleep. His hand steals out and clutches a book. He hurls it--and in a moment all is confusion. Each man, starting from his guilty slumbers, springs up to cast the proverbial stone, and in this case usually a book, at his fellow-sinner, vowing that he has been watching the nodding of the victim, and only waiting for the proper moment to visit him with condign punishment. And so, with protestations, objurgations, and such light and cheerful pastime, the hours roll away till the happy 10.30 comes, when all incontinently roll off to bed.

But if the men go to bed early, they make up for it by rising early too; and if they are sleepy at night, they feel delightfully fresh in the morning. A brisk walk over the common sends the human barometer spinning upwards; they feel ready for any fun that comes in their way. And, alas! did not this same buoyancy of spirit not many years ago involve certain respectable oarsmen in a difference with the executive? _Tacenda_, indeed! Yet if a rabbit springs up out of the gorse, and the dogs are off in full cry, can nature in such a mood be stubborn?

In between whiles the men are left almost entirely to themselves, and are free to seek what innocent diversion they please. The choice certainly is not very varied. Beyond paying a visit to the opposing crew, chatting with friends who have come to see the practices, or looking in at the local skittle alley, there is very little to do. But if they lack diversion themselves, they do not fail to cause great delight to the juvenile population of Barnes and Putney. It must be premised, for the benefit of all who are not _habitues_ of Putney, that the crews always wear during their training the coat and cap of their University Boat Club, and flannel trousers. There are reasons which make this a very necessary and laudable practice; but in the juvenile mind it gives rise to the most uncompromising scorn, which finds various ways of expressing itself. "Take it off" is one of the most popular of these, and though it certainly suffers from a lack of originality, it appears to give great satisfaction. Another, more recondite, but perhaps ironical, is "Put it on." "Where's yer trousers?" "Go it, white legs!" "Who's yer hatter?" and many similar cries, all testify to the joyous humour of the riverside youth.

Hardly less amusing are the comments of the crowd as the men pass through to their boat-house. "That's Nickalls," explains the well-informed gentleman as a Cambridge man goes by. Or, as the lightweight hurries past, "Don't look as if 'e could do it," remarks a bystander, "looks to want a day out at grass for them calves." Or, "'Ere, I say, 'e's eat a bit of beef in his day, I know," as the heavy man comes in sight. It is a good-humoured crowd, and if the strong tobacco is a bit offensive when one's not allowed to smoke oneself, things can't be always as we should like them to be.

It is the custom for the Oxford crew to use the London Rowing Club boat-house, while the Cambridge men are accommodated at the Leander Club next door, and there is accordingly a good crowd in front of each at practice times, eager to see the men on whose prowess their own modest half-crowns are staked. Unfortunately, as some of my readers may have experienced, it is not always easy to find out the exact time when the crews are going out. In fact, the Captain is an autocrat on these occasions, who rules alike over crew, critics, and the general public without distinction of persons, and who shows a splendid indifference for the latter's convenience. He launches the boat at all kinds of wondrous times, not shrinking from starting half-an-hour or more before the time he has arranged, and thus disappointing a number of would-be spectators. It is even said that he often chooses parts of the river for doing the hard work where there are no well-known landmarks, so that no clear "line" can be given to the outside public. This may be so. The workings of the Presidential mind are dark and mysterious. But I doubt if the convenience of the public has sufficient weight with him either one way or the other to influence his plans in that manner. And though perhaps this indifference may be carried too far, yet the idea which underlies it is a perfectly just one. The University Boat Race began as a private match, of a more or less impromptu character (those were the days when they rowed from Westminster to Putney in a huge Noah's Ark of a boat, and stopped for beer and biscuits on the way down, and when, it is said, the Speaker of the House of Commons used to leave the chair to let the M.P.'s run out and see the start--but we digress). Then, by degrees, it attained to its present position of a great festive gathering of the many-headed, where only about one in every ten cares to glance at the race as it goes by. But, above all things, the race is, and has been, a purely sporting event. The British lion may put on his holiday suit and gamble to his heart's content on the bank, but the sole concern of the Captain of either crew is to bring his men well up to the scratch, and have a thoroughly good, honest race. He has nothing to do with letting the spectators know the real state of the odds, or helping them to win their money.

It must be confessed that, in spite of the many pleasures indicated as belonging to this training, one gets very tired of it, just as one might tire of living in Arcadia, if, as is probable, there were no Club or Italian Opera there. It is with considerable joy, therefore, that one hails the approach of the race when it is still a week off; but this feeling is apt to be modified as the days draw on after that. "Funk," of course, attacks everybody more or less; but its violence differs very widely in different men. Many of the most unlikely people are most liable to it; and it would probably astonish a good many people were I to say who is the "funkiest" oarsman before a race that I know. I mean by "funk," not the under-estimating of one's chances--for some of the most nervous men have a very shrewd idea of them--but the irrational excitement which keeps the brain constantly thinking of the impending race, and prevents the sufferer from sitting still or having any comfort, or, in the most serious cases, any sleep, for two or three days before it. It is a real malady, which is most distressing to those who are subject to it, but which, luckily, does not do any harm when once the race is begun.

Of the race itself there is very little to say, except one thing, that could not be said equally well of a hard game of football or a foot race across country. The exertion is, no doubt, considerably greater than is involved in either of these, but the physical sensations are very much the same, and anyone who has entered for any race at all knows the sort of feeling of desperate resolve which is the pleasure that racing gives. Except one thing, I said, and it is that thing which puts boat racing, in many people's minds, far above any other form of sport. It is this, that while in a foot race a man can leave off as soon as he finds the exertion more than the prize is worth, and while in football a man may recover his breath in the scrimmage or justifiably leave the work for a moment to the others, in rowing every man knows that, by a single careless stroke, he may throw the whole boat into a confusion from which they often cannot recover for many hundred yards. Everyone is expected in a boat race, and in a University race as much as anywhere, to row his best and hardest every stroke he takes, and never to slack off at all. If it is considered desirable to save up for a spurt at the finish, the "stroke" will do that by putting in a few less strokes to the minute till the time comes. Every man behind him is bound in honesty to the rest to shove every stroke through "as if there were no hereafter"; and when the "hereafter" comes, as it does about Chiswick Eyot, he will have to rely on the thorough condition he is in to pull him through. It follows that the whole secret of a good crew is that each man rows hard because it would not be fair to his neighbours in the boat if he rowed lightly, not entirely because he wants to win the race. I do not want to disparage other sports in the least degree; pluck enters into them fully as much as into rowing. The difference lies in the incentive.

Boat races, of course, vary very much in the amount of excitement they afford; not differing in this from any other sort of contest. Of the last five races, that of '91 was the most keenly contested, though the '90 race runs it very close. Both of them were ding-dong struggles all the way, now one boat and then the other taking the lead, and neither of them were really won till the post was passed. Closer finishes have been known, though hardly beating these in point of excitement during the race itself. The well-known dead heat of '77 is an instance; on which occasion legend hath it that the ancient umpire had been regaling himself hard by, and arrived on the scene as the boats shot by the post, too flustered to take any very accurate observations. However, as both crews were pretty confident that they had won, his decision displayed no small share of that low cunning that used to make a successful umpire.

But all things have an end. The long training is passed, and you are seated in the boat. The race gets finished, one way or the other, and you are seated at the festive board. The dinner vanishes from the table, and you wake up next morning feeling very glad when you remember you can stop an hour longer in bed. And the vision of an editor is at hand to hint that these reminiscences must not prove an exception to the general rule, but must also come to a conclusion.

THE IDLERS CLUB

Is Childhood the Happiest or the most Miserable Period of One's Existence?

[Sidenote: G. R. Sims says it depends upon the child.]

It depends so much upon the child. As a child, my greatest delight was to give swagger dinner parties to my brothers and sisters in the nursery on winter afternoons, when we could not go out. The principal delicacy in these entertainments was an orange _sorbet_ specially prepared by my own hands. Here is the recipe. Squeeze into a small cup the juice of half an orange, fill up with snow, scraped from the outside window sill, and serve cold. Now, although the preparation of this delightful delicacy gave me an immense amount of happiness, I could rarely induce any grown-up people to partake of it. Then there was a wine which always graced the table at our nursery feasts. We called it currant wine, and made it by putting a handful of grocer's currants into a wineglass, filling up with cold water, and stirring the mixture up with a piece of firewood until the liquid was a rich brown. I have often, in later life, paid fifteen shillings for a bottle of champagne, and not felt half so happy over it as I used to be over a teaspoonful of our own home-made currant wine. In these matters childhood _was_ the happiest period of my life. With regard to the enjoyment of "games," I never played many as a child, but as a man I have derived the greatest possible pleasure from them. I never learned to skip till I was thirty, and at thirty-five my greatest delight was a game of battledore and shuttlecock. Now that I am turned forty I have given up violent exercise, and taken to playing with boxes of bricks and tin soldiers. I am sure that I am far happier with them, now, than I was as a child. In my old nursery days I always quarrelled with my brothers and sisters about our toys, and we generally finished up by throwing them at each other. Now I can sit on the floor in the long winter evenings and perform the most wonderful architectural feats with my box of bricks, and nobody thinks of interfering with me. With my soldiers, too, I am much happier. I can place the French and German armies in battle array, and devote my mind entirely to complex strategical operations without having to keep one eye on the armies and the other on the baby. Our baby was always putting my soldiers in his mouth; and, on one occasion, he completely crippled the Russian forces by swallowing their only general at a critical moment. So far as toys are concerned I am sure that childhood was _not_ the happiest period of my life. The real charm of childhood, however, is its lack of the sense of responsibility. It is the sense of responsibility which comes with manhood that destroys the charm of life, and makes us think of our irresponsible childhood with regret. A child hasn't to trouble about the rent, or the butcher's bill, or of what the world will think of it, or of the duties it owes to society, to the family, or to itself. At the cost of a few tears or a sustained shriek it can get almost anything it wants, and it is waited on hand and foot at somebody else's expense. It has absolutely no responsibility beyond being occasionally left alone in the nursery with a little brother or sister, with instructions to see that baby doesn't fall into the fire. This, bar the bother of having to grab the baby violently by the hair to keep it from mischief, is ideal happiness; and I have known some children to whom the hair grabbing was a pleasure rather than a duty. It is the "responsibility" which comes with age which always causes us to compare it unfavourably with childhood. In another matter, manhood compares favourably with childhood. A man can be as naughty as he likes, and there is nobody to whip him unless he is a garrotter. Childhood is _not_ the happiest period for those who like to be naughty, and naughtiness is the general idea of happiness. If it were not so everybody would try to be good. Up to the time of going to press no really popular movement in that direction has been discovered by Reuter or Dalziel, or "our own correspondent."

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[Sidenote: Miss Clo Graves thinks it an unpleasant period.]

The first thing a baby does is to howl. If that child knew that he had got a joyous, gamesome time before him, he wouldn't. He would smile. But one of the most endearing characteristics of childhood is its candour, and the baby knows that croup lies waiting round the corner to seize him by the throat, that thrush lurks in the imperfectly-washed feeding-bottle, that wind-spasms and teething convulsions only wait their opportunity to mark him for their prey, and so he howls:

"Ah! (_A pant._)
Ah-ha! AH! (_A pause to gather forces._)
Ah-ha! Ah-ha! Ah-ha!
Ah! AH! E'EE!"
(_Fortissimo, crescendo_, and _ad libitum_.)

The nurse will be likely to say it is a pin, but it is not. It is because the baby guesses what it has got to go through before it grows up. If ever it grows up at all. There is a period between childhood and maturity of which one doesn't want to write. No man likes to remember that he was once a long-legged, red-wristed hobbledehoy, who drowned his freckles in blushes when girls, who did not happen to be his sisters, looked at him, and shaved surreptitiously with his mother's scissors. No woman cares about looking back to the days when she had thick ankles, which her skirts were not long enough to cover; when she wore her hair in a pigtail, because she was too old to wear it loose upon her shoulders, and too young to turn it up; when the front hooks and eyes of her frock were always bursting off, and her sister's sweethearts used to call her "little girl." A humiliating experience altogether, the period of adolescence. But more humiliating still it is to be a mature, grown-up person, and know how far off you are from being the wonderful creature you intended to be, when you began the world. You did not contemplate being exactly beautiful--it is not for everyone to achieve that--but you meant to be commanding. You were going to do everything well: to succeed gloriously--to be distinguished and brilliant--knock lumps off this poor old globe, in fact. And now--well--you haven't! The clay you're made of is the ordinary kind: not the blue earth diamonds grow in. You might make up for your absolute lack of individuality by a brilliant suicide. But you don't. You're too commonplace. You're contented to go on being nobody. This may be a calm state, but it is certainly not a happy one.

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[Sidenote: But there are exceptions.]

And yet there is a childhood which is, maybe, the happiest period of our existence. Not the time of the shining morning face--of the curled top-knot--for to the excoriating action of the soaped towel was due that facial polish, and the twisting of the damped hair around the long-tailed ivory brush was attended with the shedding of bitter tears of rage and pain. But the second edition of the Book of Infancy, bound in shrivelled yellow leather and printed in faded ink. "The world," say the slippered pantaloon and the mumbling grandame, "was a fine place when we were young." And what is more, they really believe it. He was strong, fascinating and handsome--she was clever and beautiful. Both may say so as often as they like, and everybody credits them--because they are so old. _Comple et amur illam et amemus: plena est voluptatis si illa scias uti_. Come, gentle Dotage! Shade me with thy kindly wing, lend me thy rose-coloured horn-glasses! Let me view the Past, not as it was, but as I would have had it. So shall the children cluster round my knee, and listen, wide-eyed and envying, as I tell them of the golden days of _my_ childhood, and the young people sigh, hearing of the brave and brilliant, beautiful and noble things that never happened in the bygone time when I was young. Only the middle-aged folk look a little doubtful, and Death, leaning over the back of my armchair, laughs outright, and taps me--as a reproving nurse might--on the withered lips with one bony finger-tip. After which I fall asleep, and am carried away to bed.

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[Sidenote: Alden philosophises.]

I have not been a child for several years; it is unnecessary to mention the precise number, but I have a clear recollection of the period. My childhood was certainly happy, so far as I was personally concerned, but I will not go so far as to say that it was a source of unmixed happiness to others. As to whether childhood is the happiest or the most miserable part of our existence, there is so much to be said on both sides that I am almost inclined to answer the question in a judicious and statesmanlike way, by saying that I yield to no one in my profound appreciation of the wide-reaching importance of the question, and that the day will certainly come when the awakened conscience of the nation will demand its settlement in accordance with right and justice. When that time arrives I need hardly say that I shall be found on the side of justice, but I am not yet wholly convinced that the time has fully arrived. In the meantime, however, I do not hesitate to say that in those cases where childhood is happier than mature age there can be but little doubt among thinking men of all shades of belief that maturity is, in some respects, at least less demonstrably happy than childhood. Now that would be eminently judicious, but, on the other hand, it would look like an underhanded attempt to introduce politics into the _Idler_. It will be better, therefore, to treat the subject in a philosophic way. The question which the Editors of the _Idler_ ask is, after all, a question as to the relative advantages of Idealism and Realism--spelled with the largest kind of capital letters. The small boy is ordinarily an Idealist, unless, of course, he belongs to the unhappy class of small boys who have to earn their own living when they ought to be at play, and who, having no time for dreaming, become Realists of the most hardened and painful type. In the former case the small boy is happy, for he lives in a world of his own creation, and for the purpose of happiness such a world is far better than the actual world. In the latter case he is generally more or less unhappy, for he is compelled to see the world as it really is, and he finds it not all nice. The realistic small boy can have very little true happiness. Fancy M. Zola's childhood: assuming, of course, that he was then a Realist, which he probably was not, judging from the fact that he is only a Realist professionally at the present day. To the childish Zola, life must have presented itself as a series of human documents. He saw things as they were, not as a small boy should see them. He could have had no genuine longings for a life of piracy, for he saw that the pirate, instead of being a gorgeously-dressed and nobly-chivalrous hero, was only a brutal ruffian travelling on the road to Execution Dock. Tin soldiers could have brought him no happiness, for he knew that they were only lifeless bits of tin, as incapable of fighting as the army of Monaco. It gave him no pleasure to be dressed in a pasteboard helmet and to wear a tin sword, for he knew that grown-up people would not mistake him for a soldier; and that a blue flannel shirt, and a cap with the name of some frigate on a silk ribbon, would not lead foreigners to believe that he was a French admiral at the age of seven. He may have found some little pleasure in playing marbles--not, of course, for the sake of that silly game, but for the reason that marbles are portable property, and that the more marbles a boy wins the richer he is--but for all other boyish diversions he must have felt a profound contempt.

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[Sidenote: And doesn't know.]

Beyond all doubt M. Zola would say that he is happier to-day (with "Nana" in its 150th thousand) than he was in his childhood, but that is because his childhood was devoid of Idealism. On the other hand, if I may be pardoned for mentioning myself in the same paragraph with the greatest novelist of all time, my own childhood was happy because I lived purely in a world of the imagination. There never was a bolder or more truly noble pirate than I was during the hour of the Sunday sermon, when I whiled away the good clergyman's discourse by sweeping the seas in my piratical schooner, and harrowing the Spanish Main. My tin soldiers were flesh and blood heroes, my kites flew nearly to the outer limits of the solar system, and I never quite lost the belief that I could dig a tunnel to China with the kitchen fire-shovel, had the cook only had sufficient scientific zeal to be willing to lend it to me for a few hours. I was very happy then, but I am equally happy now. I have never got over the Idealism of my childhood, and I make my own political and social world to-day quite as irrationally and delightfully as I did eighty--well, when I was a child. I do find, I admit, that one cannot be an Idealist in financial matters, which is, after all, the main source of unhappiness in mature life, but if you ask me whether I was happier in childhood than I am now, I should not know how to answer. All of which goes to show that I might have done better if I had stuck to the safe and judicious in my attempted answer, instead of yielding to the temptation to be philosophical.

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[Sidenote: Miss Florence Marryat thinks it the most miserable.]

If I am to choose one, or the other, extreme, I should say decidedly the most miserable, and made so by the folly, ignorance, or neglect of parents. Not one-hundredth part of the men and women who marry are fit to become fathers and mothers. Who does not pity the wretched little mortal whom one meets, dressed up in some fantastic or grotesque costume, to gratify the vanity of those who own it, forbidden to run or play, for fear of spoiling the velvet tunic, or silken sash--unable to be comfortable even, on account of buttoned boots and kid gloves? A child is simply a young animal. Give it warmth and food and liberty, and it will be happy and hungry and healthy! To dress it up in the fashion, and let it be dragged at the heels of an indifferent nursemaid along a pavement, is tantamount to confining a puppy by a heavy chain to a kennel. I believe the greatest misery of children arises from their being so culpably trusted to the care of servants. A fashionable mother engages a head-nurse, who is well-mannered, respectful, and experienced, and thereupon delivers over her children to her entire jurisdiction, perfectly content if they appear before her, at stated periods, clean and neat, with smiling faces. She little knows how (in the majority of instances) the poor little creatures are coerced, by nursery discipline, not to betray their real feelings for the woman who has them under her influence day and night.

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[Sidenote: And gives the reason why.]

At one time, when I walked daily in Hyde Park, I constantly met a nurse whose behaviour to the children under her charge excited my greatest indignation. If one of the little ones lagged behind with the nursemaid, or whimpered, because it was cold or tired, the head-nurse would shake it by the arm, or strike it across the head with such violence as to upset its equilibrium, and her voice at all times was harsh and repellent. I knew it would be useless to speak to her, but one day I followed her home to a house in Park Lane, and, sending up my card, asked if I could speak to the mistress of it. The flunky informed me she was Lady--let us say, "the Lord knows who"--and I was presently admitted to her presence. I did not stand on ceremony with "Lady the Lord knows who." I told her I made no excuse for disturbing her, because if she loved her children she would be very much obliged to me for telling her, from my personal observation, that she had (unconsciously no doubt) trusted them to the care of a woman who was not fit to take charge of a dog. Her ladyship heard me to the end, and then, rising grandly, touched the bell for her flunky and said, "Many thanks for the trouble you have taken, but I have the utmost confidence in my attendants." And so I was bowed out again. How many parents live with the little children they have brought into the world? How many teach them, or explain to them, all they want to know? It is too much trouble! All that sort of thing is delegated to hirelings. How often has one heard an intelligent child snubbed for the very questioning which should be encouraged! The bright, eager little brain, just opening, as it were, to all the wonders of living, is bursting to know the why and wherefore of everything it sees, and for answer to its excited enquiries it only gets such rebuffs as "Don't worry!" "Hold your tongue!" "If you don't behave yourself I'll send you out of the room." Which of us who have brains cannot remember the heart-sickening feeling of having in some unconscious manner done wrong by asking questions which our elders were probably too ignorant to answer? And then followed the intense longing to be "grown-up," and independent. Can't we all remember that longing to be "grown-up?" Is it not in itself an answer to the question if childhood is not a miserable period, except perhaps for a favoured few?

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[Sidenote: Phillpotts temporises.]

I fail to see how you can assert or deny upon this question. There are thousands of happy children in the world, and thousands as miserable as any grown-up person. It depends entirely upon those responsible for the individual infant; and a babe's environment is really unimportant, because, before intelligence sets in, a child wants little more than warmth and good food, and general looking after. At that early period the human young are on much the same level as cats and dogs. My dog is just as happy as the Prince of Wales's Pomeranian, because I satisfy him; social distinction has no charm for him; bones and literary society are sufficient for a creature devoid of conscious intelligence. In the same way an infant may be happy at a workhouse, perhaps even more so than in a Park Lane nursery--if there are such things as Park Lane nurseries. But it is when intellect dawns, and a child is able himself to say whether he is happy or unhappy, that he becomes interesting. Then, as before, his measure of joy or sorrow must depend upon those fellow-creatures who form his society. Probably the rule that obtains of men and women holds good of children also: the less brain power the more happiness. Intellect--especially a growing intellect--will give a child lightning flashes of joy denied to his more thick-headed brother; but much sorrow must also result from his extra intelligence. If he rises higher, he will sink far lower, too. The placid, ordinary youth thinks less, and digests his food better, and has a pleasanter time, on the whole. A sensitive child feels with a keen freshness that only years can blunt. To see some fool of a man crushing a clever child is heart-rending. By curious, misguided instincts, children always look up to their full-grown companions; and the result is, that any adult ass can nip in the bud precious childish fancies, or make fatuous and crushing replies to childish inquiries, which show in themselves the trembling dawn of an intellect far superior to his own.

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[Sidenote: And says that clever men loathe childhood.]