Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

_From a Photo. by_]

A PEEP INTO THE NOISY ROOM.

[_George Newnes, Ltd._
]

"Please, lady, may I 'ave the fairy doll next time?" pleaded a golden-haired little child, with an earnest, wistful look.

"Yes, if your hands are the cleanest. The little girl with the very cleanest hands shall dress the fairy doll."

There is a buzz of pleased anticipation, and then a small voice is heard:--

"Oh, Kitie Jimes, will your mother lend my mother your kike o' smellin' soap next Tuesday evenin', an' you can 'ave our fryin'-pan?"

_From a Photo. by_]

THE SACK RACE.

[_George Newnes, Ltd._
]

In the girls' noisy room they were playing "London Bridge" and "Kiss-in-the-Ring," but it was tame work in comparison with the uproarious diversions of the stern sex below. When the boys' boxing contest was over they had a sack race, but a small group of youngsters were observed making for the door.

"W'ere you goin', 'Arry?" asked a friend.

"Me? Oh. I'm goin' with Johnson."

"W'ere's Johnson goin'?"

"Darnstairs. Johnson's father's a 'ouse-painter, and 'e knows something, Johnson does. We promised to go an' see Millie White paint in the paintin' room. You orter see 'er dror a 'orse. I promised to 'old her cup an' Johnson's 'oldin' her paints. P'r'aps, if you come, she'll let you 'ave a brush to 'old."

_From a Photo. by George Newnes, Ltd._]

This is gallantry and this is appreciation of art. Five minutes later, after seeing the champion of Byles's Rents again victorious in the sack race, we descend to the painting room to find Miss Millie White (ætat eight), the celebrated animal painter, daughter of Larry White; the well-known Shoreditch navvy, surrounded by her admirers. In another part of the same room we come upon quite an animated group of talented colourists. Some of the designs done by these children of the slums are most creditable, and at least their faces are radiant with happiness, which is the chief thing after all. The articles produced in the toy-making room are vastly ingenious. Out of the most unpromising materials--such as reels of cotton and match-boxes, fortified by cardboard and coloured paper--the most delectable toys are produced.

_From a Photo. by George Newnes, Ltd._]

_From a Photo. by George Newnes, Ltd._]

_From a Photo. by_]

ARTICLES MADE BY THE CHILDREN.

[_George Newnes, Ltd._
]

As the famous chef, Brillat-Savarin, could create an exquisite soup out of a kid glove and a pint of boiling water, so these tiny artisans manage to manufacture butchers' shops, chests of drawers, tables, sofas, Christmas crackers, and luxuriant flowers out of the meanest ingredients. One of the favourite diversions of the smaller children is cutting out and colouring fashion-plates, decapitating the heads and fitting on instead portraits of their favourite "great ladies" of the Happy Evenings Association which they have found in the newspapers. These are afterwards stiffened with cardboard and made to stand up in a group, which at a distance gives a very good idea of a swell reception amongst the "hupper suckles"--if it did not more nearly suggest a wax-work gathering at Madame Tussaud's. Two of these figures we photographed for THE STRAND--Lady Northcote and Lady Margaret Rice--both indefatigable workers of the Children's Happy Evenings Association.

_As constructed by the children._]

And what--the reader may ask at this stage--what is the Happy Evenings Association? Well, it is a body of kind-hearted ladies and gentlemen--numbering some of the highest and noblest names that you will find in "Burke" or "Debrett"--who take a pleasure in going down amongst the slums of London and teaching the slum waifs how to play. For the London guttersnipe doesn't know how to play. As a rule, he or she can maunder about and fight and scream and exchange badinage and throw stones in the gutter, but of true games the gamin is as ignorant as his parents are of _entrées_ or Euclid. Before the association was started in 1891 there was no one to teach them the mysteries of battledore and shuttlecock, sack races, kiss-in-the-ring, picture-books, dolls, and doll dressmaking. As their motto expressed it, the association, whose first efforts began at the Waterloo Road Schools, was "to put a thought beneath their rags to ennoble the heart's struggle."

_As constructed by the children._]

_From a Photo. by Wilkinson & Co., Norwich. Published by the London Stereoscopic Co._]

The gutters were full--the Board schools after school-hours were empty. Why not get permission to use these empty Board schools for the little ones to play in? And so in a modest fashion the first of the Happy Evenings was carried out by Miss Heather Bigg at Waterloo Road Schools in January, 1891. The association grew and workers came forward until now it is one of the most influential, as it is the "smartest," charity in London. It has for its president that mother of so many little children--the Princess of Wales; its chief of council is the Countess of Jersey, and among its helpers are the Marchioness of Zetland, Lady Ludlow, Lady Cadogan, Lady Iddesleigh, Mrs. Bland-Sutton, etc. Moreover, the children of the rich are brought to serve the children of the poor, the example being set by children no less highly placed than the little Princes and the little Princess at Marlborough House, whose dolls and toys find their way into the Happy Evenings gatherings. When little Prince Edward first heard of the Happy Evenings he turned to his Royal mamma and said:--

_From a Photo. by E. W. Evans._]

"Mayn't I give my helmet and breast-plate? It's such good fun to dress up as a soldier. I'm sure those little boys would like it." And so a little gamin was pointed out to us at a Happy Evening, prancing about in the martial and metallic raiment which had lately enclosed the person of another boy--the future King of England.

_From a Photo. by George Newnes, Ltd._]

Some wag has called these gatherings "Juvenile Parties for Guttersnipes," and although the secretary naturally resents the terms of such description, yet perhaps, on the whole, it gives a fair idea to the average observer of what these gatherings really mean. "We do not, however, aim at making our Happy Evenings a juvenile party. We try and make the pastimes of the children approximate closely to those of a well-ordered nursery or school-room, and the children are encouraged to vary their amusements on their own initiative, and to choose by preference those games which involve co-operation."

_From a Photo. by W. S. Bradshaw & Sons._]

Occasionally the elder children get together and arrange rough-and-ready presentments of historic incidents, such as the Battle of Cressy, the Execution of Mary Queen of Scots, the Indian Mutiny, Alfred and the Cakes, the Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers, etc. The _Mayflower_, in this last tableau, was represented by a large newspaper boat capable of holding the two feet of one child comfortably. The other Pilgrim Fathers apparently preferred to wade.

The picture on page 22 shows a party of East London children in Lady Jersey's play, "St. George of England," and in their brave costumes they certainly compare very favourably with any equal body of children from more fashionable regions.

_From a Photo. by_]

A DAY IN THE COUNTRY.

[_Lady Margaret Rice._
]

But perhaps the greatest event of the whole year for the children of the Happy Evenings occurs in summer, when each branch president invites them for a merry day in the country. Somehow or other the girls manage to rake up cheap cotton frocks for the occasion of various tints and degrees of wear--and the boys are carefully washed, brushed, and patched; and then off to one of the stately homes of England, where they may romp in the grass or in the woods and pick wild flowers to their hearts' content. You would scarcely recognise these half-fed, prematurely old London children in the laughing faces and buoyant forms of this picture taken at Osterley Park.

_From a Photo. by George Newnes, Ltd._]

One other picture taken has a special interest as showing that lessons of loyalty are inculcated at the Happy Evenings. It represents the conclusion of the sports and games; the boys are seen filing before a portrait of His Majesty and the Union Jack and saluting as they pass, while the piano plays "God Save the King."

BY ARCHIBALD MARSHALL.

I.

When young Lord Otterburn vowed before the altar of Grace Church, 114th Avenue, Chicago, to endow Miss Sadie M. Cutts with all his worldly goods, that fortunate young lady obtained a husband of attractive appearance, agreeable manners, and a sweet temper; a coronet, a beautiful but dilapidated castle in Northumberland, surrounded by an unproductive estate, and a share in the family attentions of Aunt Sarah. In exchange for these blessings she brought, as her contribution to the happiness of the married state, a warm appreciation of her husband's good qualities, a dowry which, when reckoned in dollars, touched seven figures, a frank and fearless character, and a total ignorance of the importance of Aunt Sarah in the domestic well-being of the noble house of Otterburn.

She was not left long in ignorance on this point. She had only had time to refurnish the whole of Castle Gide, to instal electric light, to rebuild the stables, adapting part of them to the requirements of a stud of motor-cars, to take the gardens in hand, and to relet most of the farms, when Aunt Sarah was upon the newly-married couple with a proposal for a visit.

"And who is Aunt Sarah, anyway?" inquired Lady Otterburn, when her husband handed her that lady's letter over the breakfast-table.

"Aunt Sarah," replied Otterburn, "is the bane of the existence of all the members of my family who can afford to keep their heads above water."

"Sounds kind of cheering," observed her ladyship. "How does she get her clutch in?"

"She proposes herself for short visits, and has never been known to leave any house where the cooking is decent and the beds comfortable under a month. She is my Uncle Otterburn's widow, and, having been left exceedingly poor, exercises the right of demanding bed and board from members of my family in rotation as often as it is convenient to her."

"If she's poor," said Lady Otterburn, "it won't harm us to give her a shake-down and a sandwich or two as often as she wants 'em. I apprehend she'll make herself agreeable in return."

"That's where you make a mistake," replied Otterburn. "Aunt Sarah has never been known to make herself agreeable in her life. In fact, she prides herself upon doing the reverse. She'll tell you before you have known her two minutes that she always says what she thinks. And she won't be telling you a lie."

"Two can play at that game," said Lady Otterburn. "Most times I say what I think myself."

"But you only think pleasant things," replied her husband. "My flower of the prairie!"

Now, Chicago is not exactly a prairie, but the young Countess of Otterburn was pretty and graceful enough to deserve the most high-flown compliments, and appreciated them when they came from her husband. She therefore graciously accepted his latest flight of imagination, and told him to write to Aunt Sarah and invite her to come to Castle Gide and stay as long as she found it convenient.

Aunt Sarah came a week later with a considerable amount of luggage, but no maid. The motor-omnibus was sent to the station to meet her, in spite of her nephew's warnings.

"She'll arrive as cross as can be," he said. "She hates motors of every description, and I don't suppose has ever been on one in her life."

"Then it's time she tried it," said Lady Otterburn. "There isn't a horse in the place that could draw a buggy fourteen miles to the depôt and back and bring her here in time for dinner."

"Well, you'll see," said Otterburn. "She'll tell us what she thinks of us when she gets here."

She did. The powerful motor-omnibus drew up before the door of Castle Gide--at which Lord and Lady Otterburn were standing to receive their guest--having completed the seven-mile journey from the station in about five-and-twenty minutes. The driver and the footman beside him wore expressions of apprehensive discomfort, and the latter jumped down off his seat to open the door at the back of the vehicle with some alacrity.

There emerged a tall and formidable-looking old lady, with an aquiline nose and abundant, well-arranged grey hair. She wore an imposing bonnet and a dress not of the latest fashion, which rustled richly. There was a cloud on her magnificent brow, her mouth was firmly closed, and she showed no signs of agreeable feeling at arriving thus at her journey's end.

"How do you do, Aunt Sarah?" said Otterburn, hastening down the steps to greet her. "Very pleased to see you again. Hope the old 'bus brought you along comfortably."

"No, Edward," replied Aunt Sarah, rigidly, "the old 'bus, as you term it, did not bring me along comfortably. I had vowed never to trust myself to one of these detestable new inventions, and I am surprised at your sending such a contrivance to meet me. This, I suppose, is your wife. How do you do, my lady? I shall probably be able to tell better how I like your appearance when I have recovered from the perilous journey to which I have been subjected. I should like to be shown at once to my room. I am much too upset by my late experience to think of joining you downstairs to-night."

"Why, certainly," said Lady Otterburn. "I'll take you upstairs, and you shall have your supper just when and how you please--right here and now if you prefer it. I want that you should make yourself at home in this house."

Aunt Sarah transfixed her with a haughty glare.

"Considering that this house was my home for five-and-thirty years," she said, "I think I can promise to do that. Thank you, Lady Otterburn. I will not detain you any longer. This was the third best bachelor's room in my day; I know my way about it well. No doubt you have other more important guests for whom the better rooms are reserved. I will wish you good-night."

"My!" said the Countess of Otterburn, on the other side of a firmly-closed door. "She's a peach!"

II.

The most consistently disagreeable people are not without their moments of relenting, and Aunt Sarah came downstairs about noon of the following day in a far better humour than she had carried to her room on her arrival at Castle Gide. In the first place she had discovered that the erstwhile bachelor rooms had been converted into a perfect little suite, with the appointments of which even a luxury-loving old lady determined to find fault with everything could hardly quarrel. During her voluntary seclusion she had been made as comfortable and waited on as well as if she were a rich woman in her own house, and the little dinner which had been served to her in the privacy of her own bijou salon was far superior to any meal that had ever been served to her before in Castle Gide, even when she had been mistress of it. Morning tea, therefore, found Aunt Sarah mollified, a dainty breakfast served to put her almost into an attitude of peace and goodwill towards mankind, and a glass of pale sherry and a dry biscuit after her toilet had been made and the morning papers read sent her downstairs with the definite intention of being civil to her nephew's wife, whom she had come to Castle Gide prepared cordially to hate.

This frame of mind lasted for several hours. Lady Otterburn devoted herself to the old lady's entertainment, and, to her husband's unconcealed astonishment, roused more than once a grim chuckle of amusement, as she rattled her clever Transatlantic tongue across the luncheon-table. Aunt Sarah pleased! Aunt Sarah laughing! Aunt Sarah allowing someone else to monopolize the conversation! He had known her all his life, but such a spectacle had hitherto been denied him.

"My dear, you're a marvel," he said to his American countess when luncheon was over and Aunt Sarah had retired to her own apartments, still in high good-humour. "You bowled me over the first time we met. That was nothing. But Aunt Sarah! I couldn't have believed it possible. I wish I had asked all my uncles and aunts and cousins to see it."

"You don't know enough to run when you're in a hurry," replied Lady Otterburn. "You'd find her a real beautiful woman if you all took her the right way."

"Well, we shall see," said Otterburn. "You've had a grand success so far, but the experience of years teaches me that seasons of calm in Aunt Sarah's life are not lasting. Much depends on the afternoon nap."

Alas! Aunt Sarah's afternoon nap was a troubled one. It may have been the lobster salad, of which she had eaten too largely; it may have been the iced hock-cup, of which she had drunk too freely, that disturbed her slumbers. Whatever it was she came down again what time the tea-table was spread in the hall with her usual inclination to make herself disagreeable strongly in the ascendant, and, if possible, augmented by the reaction from her previous state of amiability. The first audacious sally made by her hostess, which would have been received with tolerant amusement at the luncheon-table, only drew a scandalized glare from Aunt Sarah, and the ominous words: "I must ask you to remember in whose presence you find yourself, if you please."

Lady Otterburn may have been surprised at this sudden change of atmosphere, but she seemed entirely unconcerned, and took no notice of her husband's surreptitious kick underneath the tea-table, which said as plain as speech, "I told you so." She talked with gay wit, but gave no opportunity for a further rebuke. But Aunt Sarah's twisted temper was not to be softened by the most searching tact, and her next contribution to the sociability of the occasion was the remark, "This tea is positively not fit to drink. In my day Withers would not have dared to keep such stuff in his shop."

"He don't keep it now," answered her hostess. "I have it bought in China and shipped overland. It costs four dollars the pound."

"I have no doubt it is expensive," retorted Aunt Sarah, "although there is no occasion to poke your money down my throat. It is the way it is made. No servant can be trusted to make tea. I always have two teapots and make it myself. I find it is never fit to drink unless I do so."

"I'd just love to have you make some for yourself," said Lady Otterburn. "I'll ring the bell for two more teapots. It's too bad you shouldn't have it as you like it."

Aunt Sarah, who was secretly rather ashamed of having mistaken caravan-borne tea for that sold by the village grocer, suffered herself to be softened again, and became almost amiable when her hostess insisted upon drinking from the fresh brew which was presently made, and declared that it was a great improvement on the old.

"I think it _is_ better," admitted Aunt Sarah. "I may say that I have never yet met anyone who could make tea as I can. You will excuse me for having commented on yours, but, as Edward knows, I always say what I think."

Edward did know it to his cost. But again he was astonished at the sight of Aunt Sarah charmed back to good-humour when apparently in one of her most relentless moods, and with further astonishment he reminded himself that his experience did not afford a precedent for her apologizing for any word of blame that may have fallen from her lips. But he had no time to ponder on these things. Developments were proceeding.

"You find it a good plan always to say what you think?" asked Lady Otterburn, sweetly.

"It is the only honest plan," replied Aunt Sarah. "If everybody would do it instead of telling lies on all occasions, great or small, there would be a good deal less hypocrisy in the world than there is now."

"Well, I guess you are right," said Lady Otterburn. "I guess I'll commence right away and follow your example. And so will Edward. Now, mind, Edward, don't you dare to say a single word that you don't mean, and just you tell your Aunt Sarah exactly what you think as long as she's with us. And so will I. And all the people who are coming this evening shall be told to do the same."

"Eh? What?" exclaimed Aunt Sarah.

III.

When Aunt Sarah came down into the great hall at twenty minutes to nine that evening she found it full of young men and women who had arrived about an hour before, and whom she had kept waiting ten minutes for their dinner. She did not apologize for her late appearance. That was not her custom. She singled out a young man of the company and said, "How do you do, Henry? I am pleased to see you at Castle Gide again. You used to come here frequently in happier times."

"They were not happier times for me, Aunt Sarah," replied the young man, rather nervously. "My chief recollection of them is that I was generally sent to bed before dinner for getting into mischief."

"Ah!" said Aunt Sarah. "That is the way to treat mischievous boys. And you don't bear malice."

"I am afraid I do," said the young man. "I was treated most unjustly."

"By whom, pray?" inquired Aunt Sarah, beginning to bridle.

"Very occasionally by Uncle Otterburn," said the young man. "Invariably by you."

"Upon my word!" exclaimed Aunt Sarah. "That is a pretty way to talk!"

"He must say what he thinks, you know," said Lady Otterburn. "We are all going to play at that as long as we are together. Anybody who is convicted of an insincere speech is to pay half a crown to the hospital fund. Here is the box. It contains a contribution from Edward, who told Lady Griselda that she was not at all late when she came down five minutes ago. Edward, take Aunt Sarah in to dinner. She has kept us waiting for nearly a quarter of an hour."

"Have I got into a company of lunatics?" inquired Aunt Sarah, as she took her nephew's arm.

No member of the party with the exception of Aunt Sarah had reached middle-age. Most of the men were contemporaries of Otterburn's, the years of whose pilgrimage were thirty. Some of them were married and had their wives with them, but the majority were unattached, and there were several girls, some English and some American. Otterburn's grouse-moors were the ostensible excuse for their finding themselves collected at Castle Gide, but they were so well mixed that they would probably have succeeded in enjoying themselves even if there had been no shooting to occupy the days. There was a regular hubbub of conversation round the dinner-table on this first evening, and loud peals of laughter, rising above the din and clatter of twenty tongues all moving at once, seemed to indicate that Lady Otterburn's game was adding to the gaiety of the occasion.

"No," said a demure young lady, in answer to a request from her neighbour. "I will not play accompaniments for you after dinner. It is quite true, as you say, that I read music extraordinarily well. I have always politely denied it before, but I know I do. Your singing, however, is so distasteful to me that I am sorry I cannot oblige you."

"I have got a good voice," said her neighbour, "and I have studied under the best masters."

"You have not profited by your studies," replied the lady; "and your voice, so far from being good, is very thin and of no quality whatsoever."

"I guess," said a fair American, surveying the company, "that we're a good-looking crowd round this table. And, among all the women, I have a conviction that I go up for the beauty prize. I have had to hug that conviction in secret for a very long time, and now it's out."

Thus and thus was the House of Truth built up stone by stone, and Aunt Sarah's position was pitiable. Hitherto she had made her mark in whatever society she found herself by sheer insistence on her right to be frankly and critically disagreeable. On any ordinary occasion she would have had the whole tableful of young people prostrate under the terror of her biting tongue, and not a whit would she have cared for consequent unpopularity so long as she had made herself acknowledged as the dominating spirit of the assembly. Now she was met and foiled by the dexterous use of the very weapons which she had wielded so long and so unmercifully, and no arrogant speech could she make but its sting was removed by an equally outspoken reply.

Thus, to her right-hand neighbour, a young man with smooth black hair and a preternaturally solemn face: "I don't know who you are, but by your long upper lip I should judge you to be a Mortimer."

"My name and appearance are both undoubtedly Mortimer," he replied, gravely. "My character, I am happy to say, is not."

"Perhaps you do not know," said Aunt Sarah, "that I am a Mortimer?"

"I am perfectly aware of it," was the answer. "It would cost me half a crown to congratulate you on the fact."

"And may I ask what fault you have to find with the family whose name you have the honour of bearing?"

"They are insufferably cantankerous and domineering."

"Not all of them," interrupted Otterburn, anxious above all desire for unsullied truth to avert the impending storm which was gathering around him. "You must not take his criticisms as personal, Aunt Sarah."

"Pass the box this way," said the solemn young man. "Otterburn will contribute another half-crown."

Before dinner was half-way through Aunt Sarah was in as black a rage as had ever darkened even her Olympian brow. By the time the ladies left the room she had delivered herself of as many insulting speeches as it usually took her a day to achieve, and her average output was no small one. But it was all to no purpose. Her most ambitious efforts, instead of striking a chill of terror to the hearts of her listeners, were warmly applauded, with an air of the utmost politeness, and from every quarter she received as good as she gave. It took her some time to realize that she was affording considerable amusement to her nephew's guests, but when she did arrive at that state of knowledge she could hardly command herself sufficiently to leave the room without doing bodily hurt to someone.

"I will not stand this insolent behaviour any longer," she said to Lady Otterburn when the door of the dining-room had been closed behind them. "How dare you treat me in this way?"

"Why, bless me, Aunt Sarah," exclaimed Lady Otterburn, in well-feigned surprise, "you said yourself that if everyone spoke the truth always, as you pride yourself on doing, it would be a real lovely thing. We are all speaking the truth under a penalty, and you are speaking it so well that you haven't been fined once."

"Psshtschah!" is the nearest possible orthographic rendering of the exclamation of contempt and disgust that forced itself from Aunt Sarah's lips. "I have had enough of this insensate folly," she continued. "I shall go straight to my room, and if I do not receive more respectful treatment in this house, where I so long reigned as undisputed mistress, I shall leave it to-morrow. Do you understand me?"

"I understand you very well," said Lady Otterburn. "And I will ask you to try and understand me. The respect which you demanded as mistress of this house is now due to me, and I look to receive it from my guests. If you discover that it is not within your power to grant it I shall not press you to prolong your visit."

Aunt Sarah again gave vent to the exclamation indicated above, and sailed up the broad staircase to her own apartments with anger and disgust marked on every line and curve of her figure.

IV.

Aunt Sarah had never been so angry before in her life. She was an extraordinarily disagreeable old woman--disagreeable in a masterly, cold-blooded, incisive way, partly because disagreeable speech was a genuine expression of her nature, partly because she had discovered in the course of years that she gained more by being disagreeable, which came easy to her, than by being pleasant, which did not. One of the weapons of her armoury was the feigning of anger, and few could stand upright before her wrath. But for this very reason she had seldom been opposed in such a way as to make her really angry, and now that this had happened to her she was almost beside herself with rage.

When she reached the cosy little sitting-room which had been devoted to her special use, having closed the door with a bang which re-echoed along the corridors, she found herself surrounded by just that atmosphere of personal comfort in which her sybaritic old soul delighted. A cheerful fire burned in the grate. Before it was drawn up the easiest of easy chairs. At the side of the chair stood a table upon which was a tray containing those refreshments, solid and liquid, with which Aunt Sarah loved best to fortify herself for the hours of darkness, a collection of papers and magazines, and half-a-dozen new books. The gay chintz curtains were close-drawn, and the electric lights behind their rosy shades threw just the right amount of light upon this pleasant interior.

Aunt Sarah had often before left a company of people in displeasure and retired to her own apartment with a bang of the door behind her. But once shut in by herself the expression of her face had usually changed, and with a grim chuckle at her own astuteness, and the remembrance of her effective departure, she had settled herself down with a mind wiped clean of emotion to the enjoyment of her own society.

But to-night Aunt Sarah took no delight in her own society, nor did her angry old face change as she closed the door on the cosy warmth of her room. It is true that she sat down in the easy chair in front of the fire. Women do not pace the room in their rage as is the custom with men. All the same, a consuming rage held her. It had in it a tinge of helplessness, and it shook her wiry old frame like an ague. Aunt Sarah was beaten, and she had the sense to recognise it.

By-and-by she began to feel rather alarmed at her state of mind. Helpless anger is not a soothing emotion, and Aunt Sarah, in spite of her well-nourished vigour, was an old woman. It was very uncomfortable to be so angry, and it was still more uncomfortable to realize that her power of keeping her own personality in the ascendant had been wrested from her by "a chit of a low-born foreigner," as she expressed it to herself.

When her anger had tired her sufficiently the feeling of helplessness increased, and sorely against her will Aunt Sarah began to pity herself. She fought against the feeling of self-pity for some time--she was made of sterner stuff than those who cherish it as a mild luxury--but it overpowered her at last. She suddenly saw herself old and, for all her many relations and acquaintances, friendless--worse than friendless, feared and disliked. She was also, for the time being, homeless. She had let her little box of a house in London for the winter, and had intended to stay at Castle Gide for at least a month. If she carried out her threat of leaving the next morning she had nowhere to go to, and she was accustomed to run things so close that she actually had not the money to take her to some place suitable to her exalted station and to keep herself there for four weeks.

Then she suddenly realized that in the depths of her queer, twisted heart she was fond of her nephew; also that her nephew's American bride had brought her both deference and entertainment as long as she had treated her with ordinary courtesy. She also discovered that she had a sentiment for Castle Gide, which had been her own home for thirty-five years, that was not wholly dependent upon its capabilities of affording her the degree of luxurious living which she most appreciated. At this point something happened which had not happened for fully half a century. Two large tears trickled down Aunt Sarah's face. She knew herself for a lonely, disagreeable old woman, very, very poor.

When Otterburn came out of the dining-room with the rest of the men he drew his wife a little aside and said to her: "Look here, old lady, I don't think we can carry this on. I am afraid Aunt Sarah will have a fit if we bait her much more. Her eyes rolled most unpleasantly at dinner. Where is she, by-the-bye?"

"She has gone upstairs looking mighty ugly," replied her ladyship. "She is going to express her baggage home to-morrow."

"Oh, she mustn't do that," said Otterburn. "She has always gone on like that, and her bark is worse than her bite. You go and calm her down, and we'll stop this game."

"We've won," said Lady Otterburn. "But I don't feel very spry over the victory. She is an old lady, and I guess we'll just have to let her play by herself as long as she camps here. I'll go up to her right now."

So Lady Otterburn entered Aunt Sarah's room just in time to catch her drying the two tears aforesaid and a few more that had followed them. A wave of compunction passed over her, and she felt that she and her husband and their guests had all behaved with the most unmannerly brutality.

"Dear Aunt Sarah," she said, "I hate that you should be all alone up here while we are enjoying ourselves downstairs. Won't you come down and hear Mrs. Vanhooten sing? They call her the nightingale of Cincinnati in the States."

Now, if Lady Otterburn had followed the impulse that came to her to kneel by the side of the old woman and mix tears, she would almost certainly have been repulsed and would have found Aunt Sarah once more encased in a full suit of prickles; for, however much in a moment of weakness that redoubtable old lady may have pitied herself, she certainly would have permitted no one else to pity her. But Lady Otterburn was a young woman of considerable tact as well as generosity of feeling, and her method of approach proved to be the best she could have chosen.

"Not to-night," replied Aunt Sarah. "I confess to being slightly upset at what has occurred, and I do not feel equal to mixing with your guests at present."

"I guess we must have offended you with our little game," said Lady Otterburn. "But we didn't mean any harm, and we have left off playing it now."

"It has served its purpose," said Aunt Sarah, slowly. "I have been thinking matters over since I came upstairs. It is not easy for a woman of my age and character to confess herself in the wrong, but as far as you are concerned, my dear, I--I--really think that by showing mutual respect and consideration we may, perhaps, get on very well together."

The speech had not ended quite in the manner Aunt Sarah had intended when she began it, but the habits of a lifetime are not changed in a moment, and its underlying meaning was, at any rate, clear. Aunt Sarah had come as near as she had ever done in her life to an unreserved apology for her behaviour.

Lady Otterburn was prepared to meet her a good deal more than half-way.

"Of course, you feel seeing me here in your place," she said. "I don't wonder. But both Edward and I want you to look upon Castle Gide as your home just the same as before." (This was not strictly true so far as Edward was concerned, but it must be admitted to have been generous.) "And I'm new to this country and to a position to which you were born. There are so many ways in which you could help, Aunt Sarah."

"My dear," said the old woman, "any help I can give you you shall have. But I think you are quite capable of holding your own anywhere, and--and of adorning any position."

So the treaty of peace was concluded, and the Countess and the Dowager Countess of Otterburn spent a pleasant hour together talking amicably of many things.

When Aunt Sarah came downstairs the next morning she found everybody very anxious to please her. The general attitude of the party was that of people who had committed a breach of courtesy and were ashamed of themselves. Probably this attitude drove compunction into Aunt Sarah's soul more completely than any other could have done. She met advances with amiability, and exercised her fearless tongue and her undoubtedly sharp intellect to the general amusement rather than to the general terrifying of the company. By the time that the house-party broke up she had discovered, possibly to her amazement, that ascendency could be maintained as completely and far more pleasantly by force of character combined with wit and good-humour than by force of character supported by aggressive arrogance alone.

And thus, fortified by experience of its efficacy, Aunt Sarah's conversion was permanent. This is not to say that from a most objectionable old woman she changed at a bound into an exceedingly attractive one. The simile of the leopard and the Ethiopian still holds good. But there was an all-round improvement in her attitude towards the world at large which, whenever she found herself at Castle Gide, was an improvement which seemed to approach the miraculous.

A year after the events of this story, when the two Ladies Otterburn had been worshipping together for an hour at a cradle shrine plentifully bedecked with lace, the younger of them said to her husband:--

"Dear Aunt Sarah! She has a real loving heart. I guess it was warped by her never having a baby of her own."

_How a Chromo-Lithograph is Printed._

BY L. GRAY-GOWER.

Many readers have no doubt wondered how the vivid and faithful reproductions of celebrated pictures, with which the public has latterly become so familiar, are reproduced. There is a vague idea that it is the result of some occult colour-process that involves several distinct printings, but exactly what that process is remains commonly a sealed book. But there must be many readers who know nothing whatever of lithographic stones and colour-printing. Let us briefly, then, explain the principle.

About a hundred years ago a struggling Bavarian printer, Alois Senefelder by name, having no paper at hand with which to indite his washing bill, used for the purpose a flat slab of peculiarly soft stone which he had in his workshop. The ink he used was a rude and greasy mixture. The appearance of the writing on the stone suggested to him the possibility of reproducing the writing. His experiments were crowned with success, and lithography naturally took its place amongst the great industrial arts of the world.

If you enter any great lithographer's workshop to-day, like that of the Dangerfield Company at St. Albans, you will notice huge slabs of stone, two or three inches thick, ranging in size from that of a large bedstead to that of a small book. All these stones may be said to come from one place--Solenhofen, in the district of Monheim.

At the Dangerfield Company's works the writer seemed to be passing through a miniature quarry, or through a tombstone warehouse. The stones arrive at the works in their rough condition. They are prepared for use by being ground face to face with sand and water.

The broad principles of lithography consist, of course, in the strong adhesion of greasy substances to calcareous stone, the affinity of one greasy body for another, and the antipathy of such bodies to water. When water is applied to the surface of the stone it remains only on such portions as are not covered with grease, so that, if a roller charged with greasy ink be passed over the stone, the ink will only adhere to the greasy portions, while the moist parts will resist the ink and remain clean. In consequence, when a sheet of paper is pressed upon the stone, it only receives an impression in ink from the greasy line. This is the whole theory of lithography.

And now comes in the task of the expert colour-master. There has been growing up of late years a class of experts in colour for whom the entire National Gallery is only a collection of tints on canvas more or less adroitly combined. These men are master-lithographers. For them the most divine creations of Raphael, Titian, Claude, and Turner are workmanlike colour-combinations, which it is their business to analyze and resolve into their separate constituents. To-day the dead walls and hoardings of the kingdom are covered with wonderful posters and the shop windows lined with gorgeous lithographs evolved by men whose chromatic perception is so acute that they can tell you at a glance what the great Turner himself did not know: how many colours go to the making of one of Turner's pictures.

_From a Photo. by_]

[_the Dangerfield Co._
]

There are very few artists who can say exactly how their colour-effects were produced, or precisely what pigments were employed to attain certain tones. They work away, slowly painting and repainting until the end desired is reached.

"We have master-lithographers in our employ," said Mr. Adolphe Tuck to the writer, "who can tell almost at a glance how many colours and shades go to the making of any given picture, no matter how complex."

Take the case of one of the most successful reproductions of one of the old masters, "The Madonna Ansidei," which hangs in the National Gallery. The colour-master of whom we have spoken quickly resolved this picture into eighteen colours, involving the use of eighteen lithographic stones, each printing a separate tint and being of itself almost a separate picture, until by repeated printings the whole masterpiece was gradually built up. This is the example of which we present illustrations in this article, and is the work of Mr. Adolphe Tuck.

But what an eye for colour! What a gift for the realities and essentials of tone to be able, without any mixings of paint or other analytic experiments, to divine straight away just what colours are needed, and prepare stone after stone with the absolute certainty that the combination would produce such a result!

To illustrate the almost marvellous capability of the colour-expert in analyzing the colours of a picture submitted to him, one may mention that the late Sir Charles Eastlake, P.R.A., once ventured to assert that there were sixteen colours or shades visible in a picture by Van Dyck. The lithographic colour-expert declared there were only eleven. Accordingly an accurate copy was painted at the National Gallery of the picture, so accurate that it was difficult to discern a difference between the copy and the original. This was duly analyzed and placed on the stones, eleven in number, and the eleventh printing disclosed an exact facsimile of the copy, and therefore of the original.

Sir Charles Eastlake acknowledged himself beaten, and readily paid tribute to the wonderful analytic powers of an artist, or, rather, of a scientist, who could not paint a picture but could tell just what a picture was made of.

In the case of the Ansidei Madonna, the canvas was copied at the National Gallery under the eye of the Director. The first stage of reproduction was to transfer upon the stone a sort of yellowish-grey base or silhouette of the whole picture (No. 1). It will be noticed that the high lights are upon portions of St. John's and Mary's garments and the mitre of St. Nicholas.

The picture on the next stone, which is to overlay the first, gives more detail.

Gradually these pictures, each done by a separate artist, under the eyes of the colour expert or master-lithographer, assume greater perfection, as colour by colour is added, one from every stone, until in No. 9 one would fain think, as the artist himself may have thought, that the picture was finished, or at least approaching completion. But, as a matter of fact, it is only half completed. It is still lacking many necessary qualities; the reds and the greens and the greys and the gold have yet to be added. What a quaint enigma is presented by Nos. 11, 12, 14, and 15! Taken by themselves they seem meaningless, but combined with their forerunners and successors they are seen to be essential to the finished picture.

In the very final stages the stones are devoted to greys, which by overlaying one another impart a roundness and solidity to the design which it would otherwise lack. It may be mentioned that this reproduction is, according to Mr. Tuck, the most successful, as it is the most elaborate, colour-lithograph ever attempted.

In the case of an ordinary colour-drawing the usual method is to prepare a keystone--that is to say, an outline of the picture, together with the black or grey portions. It is then marked off into colours, each colour requiring, as has been said, a separate stone. Of the uncoloured outline as many copies are printed as there are to be colours in the finished picture, and each of these serves as a key or guide in determining in what position on each stone the separate colour shall be. Each artist then sets to work on his own part of the picture, which is very often, as will be seen by our illustrations, a picture by itself. The master-lithographer knows just how many of these pictures will be necessary to achieve a facsimile. It may be that one colour will frequently have to be printed over another in order to produce the precise effect.

For colour-printing the stone is polished. Naturally the order in which the colours succeed each other is very important, and must be carefully considered. But perhaps the great object of the maker of pictures from stones, after the picture in its various phases has been prepared, is to see that each colour falls accurately into its proper place on the paper. Nothing is more common, in a badly done lithograph, than to find in the face of the human subject, say an attractive young lady, the flesh colour overlapping the collar or the hat, or even extruding itself out into space beyond the ear. All this implies bad "registering." The drawing on each stone must be made to fit in, or register, with the preceding one, so that, as the paper is passed through the printing machine, the picture is built up colour on colour, each, however, being allowed to dry before the next is applied.

In preparing the stone to take the picture extreme care has to be exercised, for so great is its affinity for grease that even a finger-mark will become perpetuated. After a drawing on the stone is finished it is a precaution to coat it with a solution of gum-arabic and nitric acid, which fills up the pores of the stone in the unfilled parts and prevents the drawing from spreading.

Having described the manner in which the picture on stone is prepared, we now come to the printing of it. To begin with, there is the "proving-press," which is employed in preparing the stones for the machine. The gummy solution is first washed off, but sufficient remains in the pores of the stones to offer a resisting influence to the ink when the time for printing comes. At this stage the stone is damped and a roller charged with printing ink is passed over its surface, every part of the design being brought in contact with the ink. Accidental grease spots are removed by scraping, polishing, or the application of acid, otherwise they would develop and spoil the result.

When the stone is thus rectified it is subjected to what is technically termed etching; that is, a weak solution of gum and nitric acid is applied, which causes the surface of the bare part of the stones to be gently eroded, and gives a stronger "tooth" to the design. Although the ink of the design itself may now be washed away and the picture be invisible, yet it is there, ready to receive any desired colour which forms the part of the picture. The stones have to be damped and inked before each impression is taken, but nevertheless the printing proceeds with great rapidity, ranging from six hundred to one thousand impressions per hour.

_Sadi the Fiddler._

AN INCIDENT IN THE SIEGE OF STRASBURG.

BY MAX PEMBERTON.

Sadi the fiddler, carrying the little black case under his arm, locked the door of his garret as carefully as though it had contained the wealth of the Cæsars. It was the night of Monday, the twenty-first day of September, in the year 1870. Sadi had not tasted food for twenty hours, and, though he well understood that there was very little to eat in the town of Strasburg, he went forth bravely in quest of it. After all, someone might throw him a bone, even though he were nothing more than a poor, crazy fiddler.

"Heaven knows they have music enough here," he said to himself, as he descended the narrow staircase and came out beneath the eaves of the old houses. This was the thirty-second night since the hated Prussians had come swarming down from Wörth and had invested the city like an army of human locusts. There was scarcely a minute by day or night when the great guns ceased to thunder, or the shots to play havoc with the ancient streets of gallant Strasburg. Even as the fiddler walked away from his own house that night a great shell, thrown from one of the batteries to the north-west, came singing and sighing above him, and then fell with a mighty crash upon the roof next to his own. It was an incendiary shell, Sadi hazarded, and presently a tongue of flame leaping up from the doomed building told him that he had guessed aright. He knew that his worldly possessions, such as they were, would soon be engulfed in that raging furnace of smoke and fire; and he reflected with a sigh, odd fellow that he was, on a picture which he would have given much to save. Sadi wondered now that he had not brought the picture with him. Standing there upon the narrow pavement, while the flames licked about the window of his attic, he remembered the day when Lucy, the daughter of Ludenmayer, the artist from Bad Nauheim, had given the portrait to him and had written the words "In grateful remembrance" upon one corner of it. "We shall never return to Strasburg--never meet again, dear friend," she had said. He knew that it was true, admitted that she could be nothing to him--and yet his eyes were dim when he turned from the burning house and set off to wander aimlessly through the terrible streets.

He had never been a rich man, but the outbreak of the war between France and Prussia robbed him in a day of his employment and left him a beggar. Nero had fiddled while Rome was burning, but no one in Strasburg desired to emulate that incomparable artist; and while there had been days when Sadi might have earned a good dinner by playing the Marseillaise to patriotic hosts, his pride forbade him and his violin was silent. The same sense of the dignity of his art kept him from the public distribution of food ordered by the Mayor and the brave General Uhrich. He, Sadi Descourcelles, had the blood of kings in his veins. A philosophic observer might have remarked that it ran thin and sluggish upon that twenty-first day of September, for he, Sadi, was famishing, ravenous, desperate with the gnawing hunger as of youth and strenuous life. He felt that he could commit any crime for bread. He searched the very gutters with his eyes for any scrap of food that fortune might have cast there. Such lighted windows as showed to him the tables spread for dinner or supper moved him to frenzies of desire. Why should some eat when others were starving? And the Prussians killed all indiscriminately, he said, rich or poor, old and young, mothers and children. What folly resisted the right of Bismarck and the Red Prince? Sadi prayed that the city might fall and bread be given to him; but with the next breath he was cursing the blue-coats and hoping in his heart that Strasburg might never surrender. For he was a patriot in spite of his poverty.