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A Damsel in Distress (Saturday Evening Post serial)/Part 1

NASAMUCH as the scene of this story is that historic pile, Belpher Castle, in the county of Hampshire, England, it would be an agreeable task to open it with a leisurely description of the place, followed by some notes on the history of the Earls of Marshmoreton who have owned it since the fifteenth century. Unfortunately, in these days of rush and hurry a novelist works at a disadvantage. He must leap into the middle of his tale with as little delay as he would employ in boarding a moving street car. He must get off the mark with the smooth swiftness of the Californian jack rabbit surprised while lunching. Otherwise, people throw him aside and go out to picture palaces.

I may briefly mention that the present Lord Marshmoreton is a widower of some forty-eight years; that he has two children—a son, Percy Wilbraham Marsh, Lord Belpher, who is on the brink of his twenty-first birth day, and a daughter, Lady Patricia Maud Marsh, who is just twenty; that the chatelaine of the castle is Lady Caroline Byng, Lord Marshmoreton”s sister, who married the very wealthy colliery owner, Clifford Byng, a few years before his death—which unkind people say she hastened; and that she has a stepson, Reginald. Give me time to mention these few facts and I am done. On the glorious past of the Marshmoretons I will not even touch.

Luckily the loss to literature is not irreparable. Lord Marshmoreton himself is engaged upon a history of the family, which will doubtless be on every bookshelf as soon as his lordship gets it finished. And as for the castle and its surroundings, including the model dairy and the amber drawing-room, you may see them for yourself any Thursday, when Belpher is thrown open to the public on payment of a fee of one shilling a head. The money is collected by Keggs, the butler, and goes to a worthy local charity. At least that is the idea: but the voice of calumny is never silent and there exists a school of thought, headed by Albert, the page boy, which holds that Keggs sticks to these shillings like glue and adds them to his already considerable savings in the Farmers and Merchants' Bank on the left side of the High Street in Belpher village, next door to the Odd Fellows' Hall.

With regard to this, one can only say that Keggs looks far too much like a particularly saintly bishop to indulge in any such practices. On the other hand, Albert knows Keggs. We must leave the matter open.

Of course appearances are deceptive. Anyone, for instance, who had been standing outside the front entrance of the castle at eleven o'clock on a certain June morning might easily have made a mistake. Such a person would probably have jumped to the conclusion that the middle-aged lady of a determined cast of countenance who was standing near the rose garden, talking to the  gardener and watching the young couple strolling on the terrace below, was the  mother of the pretty girl; and that she was smiling because  the latter had recently become engaged to the tall, pleasant-faced youth at her side.

Sherlock Holmes himself might have been misled. One can hear him explaining the thing to Watson in one of those lightning flashes of inductive reasoning of his: “It is the only explanation, my dear Watson. If the lady were merely complimenting the gardener on his rose garden, and if her smile were merely caused by the excellent appearance of that rose garden, there would be answering smile on the face of the gardener. But, as you see, he looks morose and gloomy.”

As a matter of fact the gardener—that is to say, the stocky, brown-faced man in shirt sleeves and corduroy trousers who was frowning into a can of whale-oil  solution was the Earl of Marshmoreton and there were two reasons for his gloom. He hated to be interrupted while working, and, furthermore, Lady Caroline Byng always got on his nerves, and never more so than when, as now, she speculated on the possibility of a romance between her stepson Reggie and his lordship's daughter Maud.

Only his intimates would have recognized in this curious corduroy trousered figure the seventh Earl of Marshmoreton. The Lord Marshmoreton who made intermittent appearances in London, who lunched among bishops at the Athenæum Club, without exciting remark, was a correctly dressed gentleman whom no one would have suspected of covering his sturdy legs in anything but the finest cloth. But if you will glance at your copy of Who's Who and turn up the M's, you will find in the space allotted to the Earl the words “Hobby—Gardening.” To which, in a burst of modest pride, Lordship has added “Awarded first prize for Hybrid Teas, Temple Flower Show, 1911.” The words tell their own story.

Lord Marshmoreton was the most enthusiastic amateur gardener in a land of enthusiastic amateur gardeners. He lived for his garden. The love which other men expend on their nearest and dearest, Lord Marshmoreton lavished on seeds, rose and loamy soil. The hatred which some of his order feel for socialists and demagogues, Lord Marshmoreton kept for rose slugs, rose beetles, and the small, yellowish-white insect which is so depraved and sinister a character that it goes through life with an alias, being sometimes called a rose hopper and sometimes a thrip. A simple soul, Lord Marshmoreton, mild and pleasant. Yet put him among the thrips and he became a dealer-out of death and slaughter, a destroyer of the clan of Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan.

Thrips feed on the underside of rose leaves, sucking their juice and causing them to turn yellow; and Lord Marshmoreton's views on these thing were so rigid that he would have poured whale-oil solution on his grandmother if he had found her on the underside of one of his rose leave sucking the juice.

The only time in the day when he ceased to be the horny-handed toiler and became the aristocrat was in the evening after dinner when, egged on by Lady Caroline, who gave him no rest in the matter, he would retire to his private study and work on his history of the family, assisted by his able secretary, Alice Faraday. His progress on that massive work was, however, slow. Ten hours in the open air make a man drowsy, and too often Lord Marshmoreton would fall asleep in mid-sentence, to the annoyance of Miss Faraday who was a conscientious girl and liked to earn her salary.

The couple on the terrace had turned. Reggie Byng's face as he bent over Maud was earnest and animated, and even from a distance it was possible to see how the girl's eyes lit up at what he was saying. She was hanging on his words. Lady Caroline's smile became more and more benevolent.

“They make a charming pair,” she murmured, “I wonder what dear Reggie is saying. Perhaps at this very moment”

She broke off with a sigh of content. She had had her troubles over this affair. Dear Reggie, usually so plastic in her hands, had displayed an unaccountable reluctance to offer his agreeable self to Maud, in spite of the fact that never, not even on the public platform which she adorned so well, had his stepmother reasoned more clearly than she did when pointing out to him the advantages of the match. It was not that Reggie disliked Maud. He admitted that she was a “topper,” on several occasions going so far as to describe her as “absolutely priceless.” But he seemed reluctant to ask her to marry him. How could Lady Caroline know that Reggie's entire world—or such of it as was not occupied by racing cars and golf—was filled by Alice Faraday? Reggie had never told her. He had not even told Miss Faraday.

“perhaps at this very moment,” went on Lady Caroline, “the dear boy is proposing to her.”

Lord Marshmoreton grunted, and continued to peer with a questioning eye into the awesome brew which he had prepared for the thrips.

“One thing is very satisfactory,” said Lady Caroline. “I mean that Maud seems entirely to have got over that ridiculous infatuation of hers for that man she met in Wales last summer. She could not be so cheerful if she were still brooding on that. I hope you will admit now, John, that I was right in keeping her practically a prisoner here and never allowing her a chance of meeting the man again either by accident or design. They say absence makes the heart grow fonder. Stuff! A girl of Maud's age falls in and out of love half a dozen times a year. I feel sure she has almost forgotten the man by now.”

“Eh?” said Lord Marshmoreton. His mind had been dealing with green flies.

“I was speaking about that man Maud met when she was staying with Brenda in Wales.”

“Oh, yes!”

“Oh, yes!” echoed Lady Caroline, annoyed. “Is that the only comment you can find to make? Your only daughter becomes infatuated with a perfect stranger, a man we have never seen, of whom we know nothing, not even his name—nothing except that he is an American and hasn't a penny—Maud admitted that. And all you say is 'Oh, yes!'”

“But it's all over now, isn't it? I understood the dashed affair was all over.”

“We hope so. But I should feel far safer if Maud were engaged to Reggie. I do think you might take the trouble to speak to Maud.”

“Speak to her? I do speak to her.” Lord Marshmoreton's brain moved slowly when he was preoccupied with his roses. “We're on excellent terms.”

Lady Caroline frowned impatiently. Hers was an alert, vigorous mind, bright and strong like a steel trap; and her brother's vagueness and growing habit of inattention irritated her.

“I mean speak to her about becoming engaged to Reggie. You are her father. Surely you can at least try to persuade her.”

“Can't coerce a girl!”

“I never suggested that you should coerce her, as you put it.

“I merely meant that you could point out to her, as a father, where her duty and happiness lie.”

“Drink this!” cried his lordship with sudden fury, spraying his can over the nearest bush, and addressing his remark to the invisible thrips. He had forgotten Lady Caroline completely. “Don't stint yourselves! There's lots more!”

A girl came down the steps of the castle and made her way toward them. She was a good-looking girl with an air of quiet efficiency about her. Her eyes were gray and whimsical. Her head was uncovered and the breeze stirred her dark hair. She made a graceful picture in the morning sunshine, and Reggie Byng, sighting her from the terrace, wabbled in his tracks, turned pink, and lost the thread of his remarks. The sudden appearance of Alice Faraday always affected him like that.

“I have copied out the notes you made last night, Lord Marshmoreton. I typed two copies.” Alice Faraday spoke in a quiet, respectful, yet subtly authoritative voice. She was a girl of great character. Previous employers of her services as secretary had found her a jewel. To Lord Marshmoreton she was rapidly becoming a perfect incubus. Their views on the relative importance of gardening and family histories did not coincide. To him the history of the Marshmoreton family was the occupation of the idle hour; she seemed to think that he ought to regard it as a life work. She was always coming and digging him out of the garden and dragging him back to what should have been a purely after-dinner task. It was Lord Marshmoreton's habit when he awoke after one of his naps too late to resume work to throw out some vague promise of “attending to it to-morrow”; but, he reflected bitterly, the girl ought to have the tact and sense to understand that this was only polite persiflage and not to be taken literally.

“They are very rough,” continued Alice, addressing her conversation to the seat of his lordship's corduroy trousers. Lord Marshmoreton always assumed a stooping attitude when he saw Miss Faraday approaching with papers in her hand; for he labored under a pathetic delusion, of which no amount of failures could rid him, that if she did not see his face she would withdraw. “You remember last night you promised you would attend to them this morning.”

She paused long enough to receive a noncommittal grunt by way of answer.

“Of course if you're busy,” ... she said placidly, with a half glance at Lady Caroline. That masterful woman could always be counted on as an ally in these little encounters.

“Nothing of the kind!” said Lady Caroline crisply. She was still ruffled by the lack of attention which her recent utterances had received, and welcomed the chance of administering discipline. “Get up at once, John, and go in and work.”

“I am working!” pleaded Lord Marshmoreton. Despite his forty-eight years his sister Caroline still had the power at times to make him feel like a small boy. She had been a great martinet in the days of their mutual nursery.

“The family history is more important than grubbing about in the dirt. I cannot understand why you do not leave this sort of thing to MacPherson. Why you should pay him liberal wages and then do his work for him I cannot see. You know the publishers are waiting for the history. Go and attend to these notes at once.”

“You promised you would attend to them this morning, Lord Marshmoreton,” said Alice invitingly.

Lord Marshmoreton clung to his can of whale-oil solution with the clutch of a drowning man. None knew better than he that these interviews, especially when Caroline was present to lend the weight of her dominating personality, always ended in the same way.

“Yes, yes, yes!” he said. “To-night, perhaps. After dinner, eh? Yes, after dinner. That will be capital.”

“I think you ought to attend to them this morning,” said Alice, gently persistent. It really perturbed this girl to feel that she was not doing work enough to merit her generous salary. And on the subject of the history of the Marshmoreton family she was an enthusiast. It had a glamour for her.

Lord Marshmoreton's fingers relaxed their hold. Throughout the rose garden hundreds of spared thrips went on with their morning meal, unwitting of doom averted.

“Oh, all right, all right, all right. Come into the library.”

“Very well, Lord Marshmoreton.” Miss Faraday turned to Lady Caroline. “I have been looking up the trains, Lady Caroline. The best is the twelve-fifteen. It has a dining car, and stops at Belpher if signaled.”

“Are you going away, Caroline?” inquired Lord Marshmoreton hopefully.

“I am giving a short talk to the Social Progress League at Lewisham. I shall return to-morrow.”

“Oh!” said Lord Marshmoreton, hope fading from his voice.

“Thank you, Miss Faraday,” said Lady Caroline. “The twelve-fifteen.”

“The motor will be round at a quarter to twelve.”

“Thank you. Oh, by the way, Miss Faraday, will you call to Reggie as you pass and tell him I wish to speak to him.”

Maud had left Reggie by the time Alice Faraday reached him, and that ardent youth was sitting on a stone seat smoking a cigarette and entertaining himself with meditations in which thoughts of Alice competed for precedence with graver reflections connected with the subject of the correct stance for his approach shots. Reggie's was a troubled spirit these days. He was in love, and he had developed a bad slice with his mid-iron. He was practically a soul in torment.

“Lady Caroline asked me to tell you that she wishes to speak to you, Mr. Byng.”

Reggie leaped from his seat.

“Hullo-ullo-ullo! There you are! I mean to say, what!”

He was conscious, as was his custom in her presence, of a warm, prickly sensation in the small of the back. Some kind of elephantiasis seemed to have attacked his hands and feet, swelling them to enormous proportions. He wished profoundly could get rid of his habit of yelping with nervous laughter whenever he encountered the girl of his dreams. It was calculated to give her a wrong impression of a chap—make her think him a fearful chump and what not!

“Lady Caroline is leaving by the twelve-fifteen.”

“That's good! What I mean to say is—oh, she is, is she? I see what you mean.” The absolute necessity of saying something at least moderately coherent gripped him. He rallied his forces. “You wouldn't care to come for a stroll, after I've seen the mater, or a row on the lake, or any rot like that, would you?”

“Thank you very much, but I must go in and help Lord Marshmoreton with his book.”

“What a rotten—I mean what a damn shame!” The pity of it tore at Reggie's heartstrings. He burned with generous wrath against Lord Marshmoreton, that modern Simon Legree, who used his capitalistic power to make a slave of this girl and keep her toiling indoors when all the world was sunshine

“Shall I go and ask him if you can't put it off till after dinner?”

“Oh, no, thanks very much. I'm sure Lord Marshmoreton wouldn't dream of it.”

She passed on with a pleasant mile. When he had recovered from the effect of this Reggie proceeded slowly to the upper level to meet his stepmother.

“Hullo, mater! Pretty fit and so forth? What did you want to see me about?”

“Well, Reggie? What is the news?”

“Eh? What? News? Didn't you get hold of a paper at breakfast? Nothing much in it. Tam Duggan beat Alec Fraser three up and two to play at Prestwick. I didn't notice anything else much. There's a new musical comedy at the Regal. An American piece. Opened last night and seems to be just like mother makes. The Morning Post gave it a topping notice. I must trickle up to town and see it some time this week.”

Lady Caroline frowned. This slowness in the uptake, coming so soon after her brother's inattention, displeased her.

“No, no, no! I mean you and Maud have been talking to each other for quite a long time, and she seemed very interested in what you were saying. I hoped you might have some good news for me.”

Reggie's face brightened. He caught her drift.

“Oh, ah, yes, I see what you mean. No, there wasn't anything of that sort or shape or order.”

“What were you saying to her, then, that interested her so much?”

“I was explaining how I landed dead on the pin with my spoon out of a sand-trap at the eleventh hole yesterday. It certainly was a pretty ripe shot, considering. I'd sliced into this bally bunker, don't you know—I simply can't keep 'em straight with the iron nowadays—and there the pill was, grinning up at me from the sand. Of course, strictly speaking, I ought to have used a niblick, but”

“Do you mean to say, Reggie, that, with such an excellent opportunity, you did not ask Maud to marry you?”

“I see what you mean. Well, as a matter of absolute fact, I, as it were, didn't!”

Lady Caroline uttered a wordless sound. “By the way, mater,” said Reggie, “I forgot to tell you about that it. It's all off!” “What!”

“Absolutely! You see, it appears there's a chappie unknown for whom Maud has an absolute pash. It seems she met this sportsman up in Wales last summer. She was caught in the rain and he happened to be passing and rallied round with his raincoat, and one thing led to another. Always raining in Wales, what! Good fishing, though, here and there. Well, what I mean is, this cove was so deucedly civil, and all that, that now she won't look at anybody else. He's the blue-eyed boy and everybody else is an also-ran with about as much chance as a blind man with one arm trying to get out of a bunker with a toothpick.”

“What perfect nonsense! I know all about that affair. It was just a passing fancy that never meant anything. Maud has got over that long ago.”

“She didn't seem to think so.”

“Now, Reggie,” said Lady Caroline tensely, “please listen to me. You know that the castle will be full of people in a day or two for Percy's coming-of-age, and this next few days may be your last chance of having a real, long, private talk with Maud. I shall be seriously annoyed if you neglect this opportunity. There is no excuse for the way you are behaving. Maud is a charming girl”

“Oh, absolutely! One of the best!”

“Very well, then!”

“But, mater, what I mean to say is”

“I don't want any more temporizing, Reggie!”

“No, no! Absolutely not!” said Reggie dutifully, wishing he knew what the word meant, and wishing also that life had not become so frightfully complex,

“Now this afternoon, why should you not take Maud for a long ride in your car?”

Reggie grew more cheerful. At least he had an answer for that.

“Can't be done, I'm afraid I've got to motor into town to meet Percy. He's arriving from Oxford this morning. I promised to meet him in town and tool him back in the car.”

“I see. Well, then, why couldn't you”

“I say, mater, dear old soul,” said Reggie hastily, “I think you'd better tear yourself away and what not. If you're catching the twelve-fifteen you ought to be staggering round to see you haven't forgotten anything. There's the car coming round now.”

“I wish now I had decided to go by a later train.”

“No, no, mustn't miss the twelve-fifteen. Good, fruity train! Everybody speaks well of it. Well, see you anon, mater. I think you'd better run like a hare.”

“You will remember what I said?”

“Oh, absolutely!”

“Good-by, then. I shall be back to-morrow.”

Reggie returned slowly to his stone seat He breathed a little heavily as he felt for his cigarette case. He felt like a hunted fawn.

Maud came out of the house as the car disappeared down the long avenue of elms. She crossed the terrace to where Reggie sat brooding on life and its problem.

“Reggie!”

Reggie turned.

“Hullo, Maud, dear old thing! Take a seat.”

Maud sat down beside him. There was a flush on her pretty face, and when she spoke her voice quivered with suppressed excitement.

“Reggie,” she said, laying a small hand on his arm, “we're friends, aren't we?”

Reggie patted her back paternally. There were few people he liked better than Maud.

“Always have been since the dear old days of childhood, what!”

“I can trust you, can't I?”

“Absolutely!”

“There's something I want you to do for me, Reggie. You'll have to keep it a dead secret, of course.”

“The strong, silent man! That's me! What is it?”

“You're driving into town in your car this afternoon, aren't you, to meet Percy?”

“That was the idea.”

“Could you go this morning instead, and take me?”

“Of course.”

Maud shook her head.

“You don't know what you are letting yourself in for, Reggie, or I'm sure you wouldn't agree so lightly. I'm not allowed to leave the castle, you know—because of what I was telling you about.”

“The chappie?”

“Yes. So there would be terrible scenes if anybody found out.”

“Never mind, dear old soul. I'll risk it! None shall learn your secret from these lips!”

“You're a darling, Reggie!”

“But what's the idea? Why do you want to go to-day particularly?”

Maud looked over her shoulder.

“Because”—she lowered her voice, though there was no one near—“because he is back in London! He's a sort of secretary, you know, to his uncle, and I saw in the paper this morning that the uncle returned yesterday after a long voyage in his yacht. So he must have come back too. He has to go everywhere his uncle goes.”

“And everywhere the uncle went the Chappie was sure to go!” murmured Reggie. “Sorry! Didn't mean to interrupt!”

“I must see him. I haven't seen him since last summer, nearly a whole year! And he hasn't written to me, and I haven't dared to write to him for fear of the letter going wrong. So, you see, I must go. To-day's my only chance. Aunt Caroline has gone away. Father will be busy in the garden and won't notice whether I'm here or not. And besides, to-morrow it will be too late because Percy will be here. He was more furious about the thing than anyone.”

“Rather the proud young aristocrat, Percy!” agreed Reggie. “I understand absolutely. Tell me just what you want me to do.”

“I want you to pick me up in the car about half a mile down the road. You can drop me somewhere in Piccadilly. That will be near enough to where I want to go. But the most important thing is about Percy. You must persuade him to stay and dine in town and come back here after dinner Then I shall be able to get back by an afternoon train and no one will know I've been gone.”

“That's simple enough, what! Consider it done. When do you want to start?”

“At once.”

“I'll toddle round to the garage and fetch the car.” Reggie chuckled amusedly. “Rum thing! The mater's just been telling me I ought to take you for a drive!”

“You are a darling, Reggie, really!”

Reggie gave her back another paternal pat.

“I know what it means to be in love, dear soul. I say, Maud, old thing, do you find love puts you off your stroke? What I mean is, does it make you slice your approach shots?”

Maud laughed.

“No. It hasn't had any effect on my game so far. I went round in eighty-six the other day.”

Reggie sighed enviously.

“Women are wonderful!” he said. “Well, I'll be legging it and fetching the car. When you're ready, stroll along down the road and wait for me.”

When he had gone Maud pulled a small newspaper clipping from her pocket. She had extracted it from yesterday's copy of the Morning Post's society column. It contained only a few words:

 * Mr. Wilbur Raymond has returned to his residence at No. 11a Belgrave Square from a prolonged voyage in his yacht, the Siren.

Maud did not know Mr. Wilbur Raymond, and yet that paragraph had sent the blood tingling through every vein in her body. For as she had indicated to Reggie, when the Wilbur Raymonds of this world return to their town residences they bring with them their nephew and secretary, Geoffrey Raymond. And Geoffrey Raymond was the man Maud had loved ever since the day when she had met him in Wales.

HE sun that had shone so brightly on Belpher Castle at noon, when Maud and Reggie Byng set out on their journey, shone on the west end of London with equal pleasantness at two o'clock. In Little Gooch Street all the children of all the small shopkeepers, who support life in that backwater by selling each other vegetables and singing canaries, were out and about playing curious games of their own invention. Cats washed themselves on door-steps preparatory to looking in for lunch at one of the numerous garbage cans which dotted the sidewalk. Waiters peered austerely from the windows of the two Italian restaurants which carry on the Lucretia Borgia tradition by means of one shilling and sixpenny table-d'hôte luncheons. The proprietor of the grocery store on the corner was bidding a silent farewell to a tomato which even he, though a dauntless optimist, had been compelled to recognize as having outlived its utility. On all these things the sun shone with a genial smile. Round the corner in Shaftesbury Avenue, an east wind was doing its best to pierce the hardened hide s of the citizenry; but it did not penetrate into Little Gooch Street which, facing home and being narrow and sheltered, was enabled practically to bask.

Mac, the stout guardian of the stage door of the Regal Theater, whose gilded front entrance is on the avenue, emerged from the little glass case in which the management kept him and came out to observe life and its phenomena with an indulgent eye. Mac was feeling happy this morning. His job was a permanent one, not influenced by the success or failure of the productions which followed one another at the theater throughout the year; but he felt, nevertheless, a sort of proprietary interest in these ventures and was pleased when they secured the approval of the public. Last night's opening, a musical piece by an American author and composer, had undoubtedly made a big hit, and Mac was glad because he liked what he had seen of the company and, in the brief time in which he had known him, had come to entertain a warm regard for George Bevan, the composer, who had traveled over from New York to help with the London production.

George Bevan turned the corner now, walking slowly and, it seemed to Mac, gloomily toward the stage door. He was a young man of about twenty-seven, tall and well-knit, with an agreeable, clean-cut face of which a pair of good and honest eyes were the most noticeable feature. His sensitive mouth was drawn down a little at the corners, and he looked tired.

“Morning, Mac.”

“Good morning, sir.”

“Anything for me?”

“Yes, sir, some telegrams. Oh, I'll get 'em,” said Mac, as if reassuring some doubting friend and supporter as to his ability to carry through a labor of Hercules.

He disappeared into his glass case. George Bevan remained outside in the street surveying the frisking children with a somber glance. They seemed to him very noisy, very dirty and very young—disgustingly young. Theirs was joyous, exuberant youth which made a fellow feel at least sixty. Something was wrong with George to-day, for normally he was fond of children. Indeed, normally he was fond of most things. He was a good-natured and cheerful young man who liked life and the great majority of those who lived it contemporaneously with himself. He had no enemies and many friends.

But to-day he had noticed from the moment he had got out of bed that something was amiss with the world. Either he was in the grip of some divine discontent due to the highly developed condition of his soul, or else he had a grouch. One of the two. Or it might have been the reaction from the emotions of the previous night. On the morning after an opening your sensitive artist is always apt to feel as if he had been dried over a barrel.

Besides, last night there had been a supper party after the performance at the flat which the comedian of the troupe had rented in Jermyn Street, a forced, rowdy supper party where a number of tired people with overstrained nerves had seemed to feel it a duty to be artificially vivacious. It had lasted till four o'clock, when the morning papers with the notices arrived; and George had not got to bed till four-thirty. These things color the mental outlook.

Mac reappeared.

“Here you are, sir.”

“Thanks.”

George put the telegrams in his pocket. A cat, on its way back from lunch, paused beside him in order to use his leg as a serviette. George tickled it under the ear abstractedly. He was always courteous to cats, but to-day he went through the movements perfunctorily and without enthusiasm.

The cat moved on. Mac became conversational.

“They tell me the piece was a hit last night, sir.”

“It seemed to go very well.”

“My missus saw it from the gallery, and all the first-nighters was speaking very 'ighly of it. There's a regular click, you know, sir, over here in London, that goes to all the first nights in the gallery. 'Ighly critical they are always. Specially if it's an American piece like this one. If they don't like it they precious soon let you know. My missus says they was all speakin' very 'ighly of it. My missus says she ain't seen a livelier show for a long time, and she's a great theater-goer. My missus says they was all specially pleased with the music.”

“That's good.”

“The Morning Leader give it a fine write-up. How was the rest of the papers?”

“Splendid, all of them. I haven't seen the evening papers yet. I came out to get them.”

Mac looked down the street.

“There'll be a rehearsal this afternoon, sir? Here's Miss Dore coming along.”

George followed his glance. A tall girl in a tailor-made suit of blue was coming toward them. Even at a distance one caught the genial personality of the new arrival. It seemed to go before her like a heartening breeze. She picked her way carefully through the children crawling on the sidewalk. She stopped for a moment and said something to one of them. The child grinned. Even the proprietor of the grocery store appeared to brighten up at the sight of her, as at the sight of some old friend.

“How's business, Bill?” she called to him, as she passed the spot where he stood brooding on the mortality of tomatoes. And though he replied “Rotten!” a faint, grim smile did nevertheless flicker across his tragic mask.

Billie Dore, who was one of the chorus of George Bevan's musical comedy, had an attractive face, a mouth that laughed readily, rather bright golden hair—which, she was fond of insisting with perfect truth, was genuine though appearances were against it—and steady blue eyes. The latter were frequently employed by her in quelling admirers who were encouraged by the former to become too ardent. Billie's views on the opposite sex who forgot themselves were as rigid as those of Lord Marshmoreton concerning thrips. She liked men, and she would signify this liking in a practical manner by lunching and dining with them, but she was entirely self-supporting and when men overlooked that fact she reminded them of in no uncertain voice, for she was a girl of ready speech and direct.

“'Morning, George. 'Morning, Mac. Any mail?”

“I'll see, miss.”

“How did your better four-fifths like the show, Mac?”

“I was just telling Mr. Bevan, miss, that the missus said she 'adn't seen a livelier show for a long time.”

“Fine. I knew I'd be a hit. Well, George, how's the boy this bright afternoon?”

“Limp and pessimistic.”

“That comes of sitting up till four in the morning with festive hams.”

“You were up as late as I was, and you look like Little Eva after a night of sweet, childish slumber.”

“Yes, but I drank ginger ale and didn't smoke eighteen cigars. And yet I don't know. I think I must be getting old, George. All-night parties seem to have lost their charm. I was ready to quit at one o'clock, but it didn't seem matey. I think I'll marry a farmer and settle down.”

George was amazed. He had not expected to find his present view of life shared in this quarter.

“I was just thinking myself,” he said, feeling not for the first time how different Billie was from the majority of those with whom his profession brought him in contact, “how flat it all was. The show business, I mean, and these darned first nights, and the party after the show which you can't sidestep. Something tells me I'm about through.”

Billie Dore nodded.

“Anybody with any sense is always about through with the show business. I know I am. If you think I'm wedded to my art let me tell you I'm going to get a divorce the first chance that comes along. It's funny about the show business—the way one drifts into it and sticks, I mean. Take me, for example. Nature had it all doped out for me to be the belle of Hicks Corners. What I ought to have done was to buy a gingham bonnet and milk cows. But I would come to the great city and help brighten up the tired business man.

“I didn't know you were fond of the country, Billie.”

“Me? I wrote the words and music. Didn't you know I was a country kid? My dad ran a Bide A Wee Home for flowers, and I used to know them all by their middle names. He was a nursery gardener out in Indiana. I tell you, when I see a rose nowadays, I shake its hand and say: 'Well, well, Cyril, how's everything with you? And how are Joe and Jack and Jimmy and all the rest of the boys at home?” Do you know how I used to put in my time the first few nights I was over here in London? I used to hang round Covent Garden with my head back, sniffing. The boys that mess about with the flowers there used to stub their toes on me so often that they got to look on me as part of the scenery.”

“That's where we ought to have been last night.”

“We'd have had a better time. Say, George, did you see the awful mistake on nature's part that Babe Sinclair showed up with toward the middle of the proceedings? You must have noticed him, because he took up more room than any one man was entitled to. His name was Spenser Gray.”

George recalled having been introduced to a fat man of his own age who answered to that name.

“It's a darned shame,” said Billie indignantly. “'Babe is only a kid. This is the first show she's been in. And I happen to know there's an awfully nice boy over in New York crazy to marry her. And I'm certain this gink is giving her a raw deal. He tried to get hold of me about a week ago, but I turned him down hard; and I suppose he thinks Babe is easier. And it's no good talking to her; she thinks he's wonderful. That's another kick I have against the show business. It seems to make girls such darned chumps! Well, I wonder how much longer Mr. Arbuckle is going to be retrieving my mail. What ho within there, Fatty?

Mac came out, apologetic, carrying letters.

“Sorry, miss. By an oversight I put you among the G's.”

“All's well that ends well. 'Put Me Among the G's.' There's a good title for a song for you, George. Excuse me while I grapple with the correspondence. I'll bet half of these are mash notes. I got three between the first and second acts last night. Why the nobility and gentry of this burg should think that I'm their affinity just because I've got golden hair—which is perfectly genuine, Mac, I can show you the pedigree—and because I earn an honest living singing off the key, is more than I can understand.”

Mac leaned his massive shoulders comfortably against the building and resumed his chat.

“I expect you're feeling very 'appy to-day, sir?”

George pondered. He was certainly feeling better since he had seen Billie Dore, but he was far from being himself.

“I ought to be, I suppose, but I'm not.”

“Ah, you're getting blarzy, sir, that's what it is. You've 'ad too much of the fat, you 'ave. This piece was a big 'it in America, wasn't it?”

“Yes. It ran over a year in New York, and there are three companies of it out now.”

“That's 'ow it is, you see. You've gone and got blarzy. Too big a 'elping of success you've 'ad.” Mac wagged a head like a harvest moon. “You aren't a married man, are you, sir?”

Billie Dore finished skimming through her mail, and crumpled the letters up into a large ball, which she handed to Mac.

“Here's something for you to read in your spare moments, Mac. Glance through them any time you have a suspicion you may be a chump, and you'll have the comfort of knowing that there are others. What were you saying about being married?”

“Mr. Bevan and I was 'aving a talk about 'im being blarzy, miss.”

“Are you blarzy, George?”

“So Mac says.”

“And why is he blarzy, miss?” demanded Mac rhetorically.

“Don't ask me,” said Billie. “It's not my fault.”

“It's because, as I was saying, 'e's 'ad too big a 'elping of success, and because 'e ain't a married man. You did say you wasn't a married man, didn't you, sir?”

“I didn't. But I'm not.”

“That's 'ow it is, you see. You pretty soon gets sick of pulling off good things, if you ain't got nobody to pat you on the back for doing of it. Why, when I was single, if I got 'old of a sure thing for the three-o'clock race and picked up a couple of quid, the thrill of it didn't seem to linger somehow. But now, if some of the gentlemen that come 'ere put me onto something safe and I make a bit, 'arf the fascination of it is taking the stuff 'ome and rolling it onto the kitchen table and 'aving 'er pat me on the back.”

“How about when you lose?”

“I don't tell 'er,” said Mac simply.

“You seem to understand the art of being happy, Mac.”

“It ain't an art, sir. It's just gettin' 'old of the right little woman and 'aving a nice little 'ome of your own to go back to at night.”

“Mac,” said Billie admiringly, “you talk like a Tin Pan Alley song hit, except that you've left out the scent of honeysuckle and' old Mister Moon climbing up over the trees. Well, you're quite right. I'm all for the simple and domestic myself. If I could find the right man, and he didn't see me coming and duck, I'd become one of the Daughters right away. Are you going, George? There's a rehearsal at two-thirty for cuts.”

“I want to get the evening papers and send off a cable or two. See you later.”

“We shall meet at Philippi.”

Mac eyed George's retreating back till he had turned the corner.

“A nice, pleasant gentleman, Mr. Bevan,” he said. “Too bad 'e's got the pip the way 'eas, just after 'avin' a big success like this 'ere. Comes of bein' a artist, I suppose.”

Miss Dore dived into her vanity case and produced a puff, with which she proceeded to powder her nose.

“All composers are nuts, Mac. I was in a show once where the manager was panning the composer because there wasn't a number in the score that had a tune to it. The poor geek admitted they weren't very tuney, but said the thing about his music was that it had such a wonderful aroma. They all get that way. The jazz seems to go to their heads. George is all right though, and don't let anyone tell you different.”

“Have you known him long, miss?”

“About five years. I was a stenographer in the house that published his songs when I first met him. And there's another thing you've got to hand it to George for—he hasn't let success give him a swelled head. The money that boy makes is sinful, Mac. He wears thousand-dollar bills next to his skin winter and summer. But he's just the same as he was when I first knew him, when he was just hanging round Broadway looking out for a chance to be allowed to slip a couple of interpolated numbers into any old show that came along. Yes. Put it in your diary, Mac, and write it on your cuff, George Bevan's all right. He's an ace.”

Unconscious of these eulogies which, coming from one whose judgment he respected, might have cheered him up, George wandered down Shaftesbury Avenue, feeling more depressed than ever. The sun had gone in for the time being, and the east wind was frolicking round him like a playful puppy, patting him with a cold paw, nuzzling his ankles, bounding away and bounding back again, and behaving generally as east winds do when they discover a victim who has come out without his spring overcoat. It was plain to George now that the sun and the wind were a couple of confidence tricksters, working together as a team. The sun had disarmed him with specious promises and an air of cheery goodfellowship and had delivered him into the hands of the wind, which was now going through him with the swift thoroughness of the professional hold-up artist. He quickened his steps, and began to wonder if he was so sunk in senile decay as to have acquired a liver.

He discarded the theory as repellent. And yet there must be a reason for his depression. To-day of all days, as Mac had pointed out, he had everything to make him happy. Popular as he was in America, this was the first piece of his to be produced in London, and there was no doubt that it was a success of unusual dimensions. And yet he felt no elation.

He reached Piccadilly and turned westward. And then, as he passed the gates of the In and Out Club, he had a moment of clear vision and understood everything. He was depressed because he was bored, and he was bored because he was lonely. Mac, that solid thinker, had been right. The solution of the problem of life was to get hold of the right girl and have a home to go back to at night. He was mildly surprised that he had tried in any other direction for an explanation of his gloom. It was all the more inexplicable in that fully eighty per cent of the lyrics which he had set in the course of his career had had that thought at the back of them.

George gave himself up to an orgy of sentimentality. He seemed to be alone in the world which had paired itself off into a sort of seething welter of happy couples Taxicabs full of happy couples rolled by every minute. Passing omnibuses creaked beneath the weight of happy couples. The very policeman across the street had just grinned at a flitting shopgirl, and she had smiled back at him. The only female in London who did not appear to be attached was a girl in brown who was coming along the sidewalk at a leisurely pace, looking about her in a manner that suggested that she found Piccadilly a new and stimulating spectacle.

As far as George could see she was an extremely pretty girl, small and dainty, with a proud little tilt to her head and the jaunty walk that spoke of perfect health. She was, in fact, precisely the sort of girl that George felt he could love with all the stored-up devotion of an old buffer of twenty-seven who had squandered none of his rich nature in foolish flirtations. He had just begun to weave a rose-tinted romance about their two selves, when a cold reaction set in. Even as he paused to watch the girl threading her way through the crowd, the east wind jabbed an icy finger down the back of his neck and the chill of it sobered him. After all, he reflected bitterly, this girl was only alone because she was on her way somewhere to meet some confounded man. Besides, there was no earthly chance of getting to know her. You can't rush up to pretty girls in the street and tell them you are lonely. At least you can, but it doesn't get you anywhere except the police station. George's gloom deepened, a thing he would not have believed possible a moment before. He felt that he had been born too late. The restraints of modern civilization irked him. It was not, he told himself, like this in the good old days.

In the Middle Ages, for example, this girl would have been a damsel; and in that happy time practically everybody whose technical rating was that of damsel was in distress and only too willing to waive the formalities in return for services rendered by the casual passer-by. But the twentieth century is a prosaic age, when girls are merely girls and have no troubles at all. Were he to stop this girl in brown and assure her that his aid and comfort were at her disposal, she would undoubtedly call that large policeman from across the way, and the romance would begin and end within the space of thirty seconds or, if the policeman were a quick mover, rather less.

Better to dismiss dreams and return to the practical side of life by buying the evening papers from the shabby individual beside him who had just thrust an early edition in his face. After all, notices are notices—even when the heart is aching George felt in his pocket for the necessary money, found emptiness, and remembered that he had left all his ready funds at his hotel.

It was just one of the things he might have expected on a day like this.

The man with the papers had the air of one whose business is conducted on purely cash principles. There was only one thing to be done, return to the hotel, retrieve his money, and try to forget the weight of the world and its cares in lunch. And from the hotel he could dispatch the two or three cables which he wanted to send to New York.

The girl in brown was quite close now, and George was enabled to get a clearer glimpse of her. She more than fulfilled the promise she had given at a distance. Had she been constructed to his own specifications, she could not have been more acceptable in George's sight. And now she was going out of his life forever. With an overwhelming sense of pathos, for there is no pathos more bitter than that of parting from someone we have never met, George hailed a taxicab which crawled at the side of the road and, with all the refrains of all the sentimental song hits he had ever composed ringing in his ears, got in and passed away.

“A rotten world,” he mused, as the cab, after proceeding a couple of yards, came to a standstill in a block of the traffic. “A dull, flat bore of a world, in which nothing happens or ever will happen. Even when you take a cab, it just sticks and doesn't move.”

At this point, the door of the cab opened and the girl in brown jumped in.

I'm so sorry,” she said breathlessly, “but would you mind hiding me, please?”


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 I have so often referred in these columns to the way in which those obnoxious to the party in power are sent to jail or degraded or dismissed or otherwise punished, that I feel I should not ask you, for some time to come at least, for space for further information on the head. Yet I cannot see my way out of mentioning a fact that was pointed out to me the other day in re the Treasury Frands Cases. Jaya Rao is in prison now for countersigning 14 fictitious cheques, while the man whose duty it was to sign cheques after looking into them carefully and who signed these 14 cheques in the first instance is to be promoted. How would you characterise suck justice Mr. Editor?

The local "Hindu Social Club" seem to be a little bit put out by 2 paragraph in one of my letters, with regard to the “Deccan Punch’s” attack on the Raja Murli Manohar Bahadur. They think, I am told, that I have “compromised” the "Club" by my remarks in this connection. I mentioned what 1 know for a fact, and what I said but tended to show that personally the Raja had no grievance to air forth against the Government and no reason to join tie cry of “injustice to the Hindus.” How this could be compromising, I am at a loss to understand. We do not guage the condition of people from the condition of one individual; nor can we judge of the treatment accorded to a class from that given to one of its members. This being so, how can any man think that because the Raja Murli Manohar has personally no grievances against the Government, therefore the whole Hindu community has no grievances against it ?

A recent issue of the “Deccan Punch" has a significant cartoon on the subject of the murder case. It represents Hafiz Ahmed Raza Khan as putting in one pan of the scale of justice a weight too small to balance the other pan with “the box of crime” in it, and Mr. Punch addressing the Judge thus: “Put in more weight, Sir.”

You will be glad to hear that in the Rev, My. Gilder of the Chadarghat Methodist Episcopal Church we have got a well-

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 "I'm certain I saw her. Certain. She was far away across those gardens near here—and before I had recovered from my amazement she had gone! But it was Mary."

He takes my arm. "You know I did not understand this," he says. "I did not really understand that when you said Utopia, you meant I was to meet her—in happiness."

"I didn't."

"It works out at that."

"You haven't met her yet."

"I shall. It makes everything different. To tell you the truth I've rather hated this Utopia of yours at times. You mustn't mind my saying it, but there's something of the Gradgrind"

Probably I should swear at that.

"What?" he says.

"Nothing."

"But you spoke?"

"I was purring. I'm a Gradgrind—it's quite right—anything you can say about Herbert Spencer, vivisectors, materialistic Science or Atheists, applies without correction to me. Begbie away! But now you think better of a modern Utopia? Was the lady looking well?"

"It was her real self. Yes. Not the broken woman I met—in the real world."

"And as though she was pining for you."

He looks puzzled.

"Look there!" I say.

He looks.

We are standing high above the ground in the


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 loggia into which our apartments open, and I point across the soft haze of the public gardens to a tall white mass of University buildings that rises with a free and fearless gesture, to lift saluting pinnacles against the clear evening sky. "Don't you think that rather more beautiful than—say—our National Gallery?"

He looks at it critically. "There's a lot of metal in it," he objects. "What?"

"I purred. But anyhow, whatever you can't see in that, you can, I suppose, see that it is different from anything in your world—it lacks the kindly humanity of a red-brick Queen Anne villa residence, with its gables and bulges and bow windows, and its stained-glass fanlight and so forth. It lacks the self-complacent unreasonableness of Board of Works classicism. There's something in its proportions—as though someone with brains had taken a lot of care to get it quite right, someone who not only knew what metal can do, but what a University ought to be, somebody who had found the Gothic spirit enchanted, petrified, in a cathedral, and had set it free."

"But what has this," he asks, "to do with her?"

"Very much," I say. "This is not the same world. If she is here, she will be younger in spirit and wiser. She will be in many ways more refined"

"No one—" he begins, with a note of indignation.

"No, no! She couldn't be. I was wrong there. But she will be different. Grant that at any rate. When you go forward to speak to her, she may not


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 . This valuation was considered to be equal to the half of the real rent at that period, after deducting all public burdens; but in 1798, when the agricultural survey of the County was published, the gross rental had risen to L. 89,000, collected from upwards of 2700 tenants; and in 1811 the rent of the whole County, of which the Islands might produce about a fifth, amounted to L. 192,073, 14s. 2d. for the lands, and for the houses to. L. 5208, 18s. 10d. The frequent transference of landed property, which has taken place in this County within the last fifty years, and the example and encouragement of the Duke of Argyle, the greatest landholder in it, cannot fail to extend a more beneficial system of rural economy.

Cattle were long the principal source of the revenue of the landholders and tenantry of Argyleshire; and the native breed, which has been improved of late by more careful treatment, is well known to be equal, if not superior, to any other race of cattle in the kingdom. Their number in 1798 was computed at upwards of 50,000, and they are understood to have increased since; for though they are now excluded from the more elevated tracts, which are mare profitably occupied by sheep, the improved management of the lower grounds has, upon the whole, enlarged the means of their subsistence. These cattle are sent from the country in a store condition, commonly when about three years old, and fatted on the pastures of the south, the greater number for the consumption of England. The dairy begins to be an object of attention in the peninsula of Kintyre, where there is a large proportion of arable land, but cannot be extended to the inland and more mountainous districts of the county.

Until the middle of last century, the only sheep in Argyleshire (and their number was inconsiderable), were of the small native race, the same that are still to be found in the Hebrides, and in most parts of the Highlands of Scotland and of Wales. About that period coarse woolled heath sheep were introduced into the higher and more barren districts; and as it was soon discovered that the scanty herbage of these gloomy mountains, could be converted into a much greater quantity of mutton than of beef, besides yielding a valuable article of manufacture,—these hardy animals soon spread over extensive regions, upon which cattle could barely subsist in the summer months: and the income of the landed proprietors, and of the public, was accordingly augmented in proportion. Notwithstanding the outcry of ignorance, and the more mischievous speculations of mistaken philanthropy, the introduction of this species of live stock, now increased to about 300,000, has not, as we shall see immediately, had the effect of diminishing the population of Argyleshire.

In this division of the County, there is a considerable extent of natural coppice woods; probably near 40,000 acres, which are cut periodically, commonly every 19 or 20 years, and are understood to return about 20s. per acre annually. Very extensive plantations have been formed by the Duke of Argyle and other proprietors. About 20 years ago, those of his Grace were reckoned to contain 2,000,000 of trees, then worth 4s. each, amounting to the enormous sum of L. 400,000.

Next in importance to its agriculture, are the fisheries, which, from the great extent of sea coast, and the form of the district, penetrated in almost every direction by arms of the sea, and traversed by extensive lakes, ought to furnish food and employment to the inhabitants, to an extent, perhaps, still greater than their barren territory and ungenial climate can supply. Some notion of their great importance may be formed, when we are told that the herrings caught in Lochfine alone, in the years 1794 and 1795, were computed to be worth more than L. 80,000 (Smith’s Survey, 1798). But the regulations of the revenue laws in regard to salt are universally complained of, as an intolerable grievance; forming an insuperable obstruction to the industry of the lower classes, who have not the means, nor even the knowledge, which a strict compliance with these regulations requires. Whole cargoes of herrings have been thrown into the sea in a putrid state, and others used as manure, in consequence of the inability of the fishermen to find surety for the requisite supply of salt, according to law.

The mainland of Argyleshire is principally composed of primitive rocks, which, in some quarters, are skirted and intermixed with those of the transition class; while flœtz rocks occur very sparingly. No volcanic rocks have hitherto been met with in the mainland of Argyleshire, but those of an alluvial nature abound everywhere. The primitive and transition rocks are stratified, and the general direction of the strata is from NE. to SW. The primitive rocks are granite, gneiss, mica slate, clay slate, limestone, porphyry, sienite, trap, and quartz rock. The transition rocks are greywacke, greywacke slate, clay slate, trap, and quartz; and the flœtz rocks are red sandstone, conglomerate, and rocks of the coal formation. The Islands off the coast of Argyleshire afford highly interesting examples of rocks of the different classes; Isla and Jura of the primitive and transition rocks; Mull of flœtz and primitive rocks; Staffa, Rum, and Cannay, of flœtz rocks; and Coll, Tyree, and Iona, of primitive rocks.

Coal has been wrought for many years near Campbelltown in Kintyre, and lead at Strontian in Sunart; and besides the slate quarries of Eisdale, an Island belonging to this County, others have been opened at Ballachelish in Appin.

Manufactures have made little progress in this district, and no attempts to establish them upon a large scale have yet been successful. Mr Dale endeavoured to extend to it some branches of the cotton manufacture, which failed, it is said, from want of water carriage; but a number of weavers in Campbelltown and its neighbourhood, have been employed for some time in working cottons from Glasgow. The late Duke of Argyle, almost 40 years ago, set on foot a woollen manufactory near Inverary, which, notwithstanding very uncommon encouragement given to it by his Grace and the other landed proprietors, has been long in rather a languishing state. There is a bleachfield in Kintyre; tanneries at Campbelltown and Oban; iron works in Upper Lorn and at Rh


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154 public objects; and that thus, by enacting the part of a benevolent tyrant, he will be forgiven for being a tyrant at all, and will attain that most desirable end, of being happy without being envied;—all which is pleasing theory, but perhaps hardly borne out by history.

Several of Xenophon's tracts are on special practical subjects, and of these one of the most interesting is his "Essay on the Revenues of Athens," in which he gives advice for improving the financial position of his country. During the flourishing times of the Republic, the great body of Athenian citizens had been trained to habits of idleness. The state revenues were almost entirely drawn from the contributions of tributary allies, and were largely expended in payments to the citizens for sitting as jurymen (see above, page 96), and performing other unproductive functions, and in the provision of theatrical exhibitions and other pageants.

Xenophon observes that this system was based on a certain amount of injustice towards the allies from whom tribute was exacted, and he proceeds to offer suggestions for rendering Athens more dependent on herself for the means of meeting state charges. These suggestions have not very well borne the test of modern criticism. They are evidently the production of an amateur financier, and not of a practical statesman. One thing particularly strikes the modern reader, and that is—the smallness of the sums in which Xenophon thinks. He speaks of Attica (which, though possessing a silver mine and marble quarries, was still like a small county, with a thin soil) as


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 HYDERABAD, 24th January, 1891.

As promised in a recent letter of mine I shall let you know how a gentleman who has the misfortune to be independent-spirited and to have the courage of his convictions, has been and is being persented here. The gentleman I refer to is no other than Mr. A. C. Rudra, Barrister-at-law. He set foot on this soil about two years ago and he has been a marked man since. The success that greeted him on all sides at the outset and the petty persecution and social "boycotting" that followed it close on its heels, the treatment he has received from the Moglai officialdom ranging from utmost warmth to utmost frigidity, from petting to persecution: these show how very difficult it is for a self-respecting mau to pull on well where factions reign supreme, that sycophaney and time-serving alone can constitute the secret of success in a place where men in power are such as are bent upon self-aggrandisement. Mr. Rudra was received with open arms by every one here at the beginning. How he was shaken by the hand by the official "silk gloves," how Mehdi Hassan "chaperoned" him into the favour of the officialdom, how he in his enthusiastic admiration proposed Mr. Rudra a membership of the Nizam Club and how the Joint-Secretary of the Club seconded the proposal-all Hyderabad knows And how all this favour and friendship turned into antagonistic factors-is equally well known. About the same time that he got into the Nizam Club, Mr. Rudra accepted the correspondentship of the "Pioneer" -and then began his troubles. As the local representative of the "Pioneer" he was not going to act the apologist of the vagaries and the wrong-doing of the officials or their hangers on. In his telegrams to the "Pioneer" which appeared in its issues of November and December 1889, he evinced a spirit of independence and a determination to echo the people's voice at any cost which well-nigh took away the beath of his official friends and admirers. They saw what stuff he was made of, but thought that time would change him and convert him into a blower of their trumpets. They thought wrong-Mr. Rudra's independence


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 (Nâganadì, i. e. Nairañganâ), the nine classes of beings began to entertain hopes of emancipation. Then the removal of Light to the Deer Park (mrigadâva at Benares) brought satisfaction to the religious cravings of the six paths of existence.

As soon as he had begun to set in motion the Wheel of the Law, five persons first enjoyed the benefit of his teaching. Next, he taught the typical virtue (lit. 'the footsteps of Sila') of discipline, and thousands of people bowed their heads before him. Thereupon His Brahma-voice was heard in the city of Râgagriha, bringing salvation (fruit) to numberless souls.

Returning home to requite parental love in the Palace of Kapilavastu, he found numerous disciples who inclined their hearts to his teaching. He began his teaching with (the conversion of) Âgñâta Kaundinya, whose first prayer he accepted in order to reveal the truth.

He concluded his career with the ordination of Subhadra, so that the last period of his life should accord with his original wish (lit. 'tied-up mind, resolution').

Eight decades he lived, founding and protecting the Brotherhood; he preached his doctrine of salvation in the nine assemblages. Any doctrine, however hidden, he expounded in teaching. Even a man of little ability he received without reserve.

When he preached to the lay followers he expressed himself in a concise form, and taught the five prohibitive precepts (pañkasîla) only.


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Rh "qualified by nature to afford very large revenues." And he seems to think it an immense point to add £10,000 or £20,000 to the revenues of the state.

One of the ways by which he proposes to do this is to increase the number of foreigners settling at Athens, and paying a yearly tax of twelve drachmæ (nine shillings) a-head. In Xenophon's time the citizens of Athens, exclusive of slaves, appear to have amounted to only about 20,000. Therefore in order to obtain £10,000 of additional revenue by means of the alien-tax, it would have been necessary to have more foreigners than citizens residing at Athens. To secure this desirable object, Xenophon proposes to give encouragement to foreign settlers by exempting them from military service, and granting them sites for houses—all for the sake of nine shillings per head. The foreigners especially referred to by Xenophon were "Lydians, Phrygians, and Syrians;" and Boeckh, in his 'Public Economy of Athens,' points out that the proposal was similar to what it would be in modern times to encourage the settlement of "Jew traders" in a country, till they outnumbered the original inhabitants, at the same time exempting them from military service, and allowing them to hold land. In any country which was exposed to war, and which had adopted such a policy, it is clear that the citizens would gradually be swept away in battle, while the aliens without patriotic feelings or noble motives would be left in possession of the state.

Xenophon's next idea is, that the commerce of Athens should be stimulated by encouragements, and


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 But in instructing the priests exclusively, he fully explained the purport of the seven skandhas (i.e. groups) of offences. He considered that even the great sins of those who dwell in the existing world would disappear at the advance of morality (sila), and the faults, however small they might be, would be done away with, when his law of discipline (Vinaya) had been clearly taught. Since anger expressed against a small branch of a tree brought, as a punishment, a birth among the snakes, and mercy shown towards the life of a small insect raised one to the heavenly abode , the efficacious power of good or bad actions is indeed evident and indisputable. Therefore the Sûtras and Sâstras were both given to us, and meditation (dhyâna) and wisdom (pragñâ) were established by the Buddha; is not the Tripitaka the net par excellence for catching people? Thus, whenever one came in person to the Great Master, His teaching was of one kind; and when the Master desired to teach and save people according to their abilities, he would lay aside those arguments which were most adapted to another. When we see that the Prince of Mâra bewitched the mind of Ânanda when the latter received the first words of the Buddha at Vaisâlî, and that by the last declaration on the Hiranyavatî (i.e. the


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 {|style="border:1px solid black; margin-left:auto" cellpadding=1 cellspacing=0|
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 Dipak Misra, CJI (For himself and A.M. Khanwilkar, J.)

The beauty of the Indian Constitution is that it includes ‘I’ ‘you’ and ‘we’. Such a magnificent, compassionate and monumental document embodies emphatic inclusiveness which has been further nurtured by judicial sensitivity when it has developed the concept of golden triangle of a fundamental right, it is an expression of judicial sensibility which further enhances the beauty of the Constitution as conceived of. In such a situation, the essentiality of the rights of women gets the real requisite space in the living room of individual dignity rather than the


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166 facilitated as much as possible. It seems to us an odd suggestion that rewards should be offered to those judges who in mercantile suits should give judgment with the least delay; and that those merchants who had brought vessels and goods of great account to the port, should be honoured with seats of distinction on public occasions. Xenophon thinks that the state should directly speculate in ships to be let out on profitable terms, and in lodging-houses, warehouses, and shops; a loan should be raised for this purpose, and our financier assumes that the profit on these ventures would be sure to enable the stock-holders to receive 20 per cent on their contributions. It does not occur to him to ask why, if this form of investment would be so remunerative, private capital should not find its way into it, without passing through the hands of the state.

Another speculation which he recommends to the Government of Athens is the purchase of slaves to be hired out to private individuals, for the purpose of working the silver mines of Laurion, near the southern promontory of Attica. He thinks that the state might gradually collect a little family of ten thousand slaves, and let them out at the rate of an obolus ($1 1⁄2$d.) per head per diem. This would give an annual revenue of a hundred talents, or about £24,000. These slaves would be employed by the citizens, or foreigners, in mining for silver, and one twenty-fourth part of all the ore obtained would be paid to the state as a royalty. The whole calculation is based on the assumption that the silver mines of Laurion were inexhaustible, and


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iv If I have attained to any facility in the use of language, or have gained any fitness of expression, in which to dress my thoughts,—I know not to what writer of the English language, I am more indebted, than to you. And if I have shown—as I have tried to show—a truthfulness of feeling, that is not lighted by any counterfeit of passion, but rather, by a close watchfulness of nature, and a cordial sympathy with human suffering—I know not to what man's heart, that truthfulness will come home sooner, than to your's.

Believe me, Dear Sir, it is from no wish to associate my name with the names of the great, that I ask your acceptance of this little token of respect. My aims are humbler than this: I would simply pay homage to the Author, who has wrought our language into the most exquisite forms of beauty; and to the man, who has touched


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 space in an annexeannex [sic] to the main building. That is the manifestation of concerned sensitivity. Individual dignity has a sanctified realm in a civilized society. The civility of a civilization earns warmth and respect when it respects more the individuality of a woman. The said concept gets a further accent when a woman is treated with the real spirit of equality with a man. Any system treating a woman with indignity, inequity and inequality or discrimination invites the wrath of the Constitution. Any provision that might have, few decades back, got the stamp of serene approval may have to meet its epitaph with the efflux of time and growing constitutional precepts and progressive perception. A woman cannot be asked to think as a man or as how the society desires. Such a thought is abominable, for it slaughters her core identity. And, it is time to say that a husband is not the master. Equality is the governing parameter. All historical perceptions should evaporate and their obituaries be written. It is advisable to remember what John Stuart Mill had observed:―


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—said my Aunt Tabithy,—have you not done with dreaming?

My Aunt Tabithy, though an excellent and most notable person, loves occasionally a quiet bit of satire. And when I told her that I was sharpening my pen for a new story of those dreamy fancies, and half experiences, which lie grouped along the journeying hours of my solitary life, she smiled as if in derision.

"Ah, Isaac," said she, "all that is exhausted: you have rung so many changes on your hopes and your dreams, that you have nothing left, but to make them realif you can."


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 Still he flew steadily on. But now he flew slowly, every beat of his wings caused him dreadful pain. He began to hate the sun, this merciless glowing red sphere that would not go down. To give himself courage, he made up a little song, singing it very softly and moving his tired wings in time to its rhythm.

At last, at last, great black shadows fell upon the earth. A refreshing breeze came flying, coolly fanning the weary Sparrow, carrying him gently along on its mighty wings.

As the sun went down behind a blue hill, the tired Sparrow alighted on a large meadow. He lay panting in the tall grass. The soft chirping of the crickets lulled him to sleep; his eyes closed.

Rough, loud voices of men awakened him. Under a knotty old nut tree he saw two ragged, dust-covered men seated. One of them

19


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We are commencing with the aforesaid prefatory note as we are adverting to the constitutional validity of Section 497 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and Section 198 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC).

2.At this juncture, it is necessary to state that though there is necessity of certainty of law, yet with the societal changes and more so, when the rights are expanded by the Court in respect of certain aspects having regard to the reflective perception of the organic and living Constitution, it is not apposite to have an inflexible stand on the foundation that the concept of certainty of law should be allowed to prevail and govern. The progression in law and the perceptual shift compels the present to have a penetrating look to the past.

3.When we say so, we may not be understood that precedents are not to be treated as such and that in the excuse of perceptual shift, the binding nature of precedent should not be allowed to retain its status or allowed to be diluted. When a constitutional court faces such a challenge, namely, to be detained by a precedent or to grow out of the same because of the normative


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 changes that have occurred in the other arenas of law and the obtaining precedent does not cohesively fit into the same, the concept of cohesive adjustment has to be in accord with the growing legal interpretation and the analysis has to be different, more so, where the emerging concept recognises a particular right to be planted in the compartment of a fundamental right, such as Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution. In such a backdrop, when the constitutionality of a provision is assailed, the Court is compelled to have a keen scrutiny of the provision in the context of developed and progressive interpretation. A constitutional court cannot remain entrenched in a precedent, for the controversy relates to the lives of human beings who transcendentally grow. It can be announced with certitude that transformative constitutionalism asserts itself every moment and asserts itself to have its space. It is abhorrent to any kind of regressive approach. The whole thing can be viewed from another perspective. What might be acceptable at one point of time may melt into total insignificance at another point of time. However, it is worthy to note that the change perceived should not be in a sphere of fancy or individual fascination, but should be founded on the solid bedrock of change that the society has


text: A Record of the Buddhist Religion as practised in India and the Malay Archipelago/Names of the Books which are referred to in I-tsing's Works


text: A Record of the Buddhist Religion as practised in India and the Malay Archipelago/A Record of Buddhist Practices sent Home from the Southern Sea


text: A Record of the Buddhist Religion as practised in India and the Malay Archipelago/Letter from the Right Honourable Professor F. Max Müller to Mr. J. Takakusu


text: A Record of the Buddhist Religion as practised in India and the Malay Archipelago/Map


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12 It is very idle to get angry with a good-natured old lady: I did better than this:—I made her listen to me.

Exhausted, do you say, Aunt Tabithy? Is life then exhausted, is hope gone out, is fancy dead?

No, no. Hope and the world are full; and he who drags into book-pages a phase or two of the great life of passion, of endurance, of love, of sorrow, is but wetting a feather, in the sea that breaks ceaselessly along the great shore of the years. Every man's heart is a living drama; every death is a drop-scene; every book only a faint foot-light to throw a little flicker on the stage.

There is no need of wandering widely to catch incident or adventure: they are everywhere about us; each day is a succession of escapes and joys;—not perhaps clear to the world, but brooding in our thought, and living in our brain. From the very first, Angels and Devils are busy with us, and we are struggling against them, and for them.

No, no, Aunt Tabithy,—this life of musing does not exhaust so easily. It is like the springs on the farm-land, that are fed with all the showers and the dews of the year, and that from the narrow fissures of the rock, send up streams continually:—or it is


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 perceived, the spheres in which the legislature has responded and the rights that have been accentuated by the constitutional courts. To explicate, despite conferring many a right on women within the parameters of progressive jurisprudence and expansive constitutional vision, the Court cannot conceive of women still being treated as a property of men, and secondly, where the delicate relationship between a husband and wife does not remain so, it is seemingly implausible to allow a criminal offence to enter and make a third party culpable.

4.We may presently state the nature of the lis.

5.The instant writ petition has been filed under Article 32 of the Constitution of India challenging the validity of Section 497 IPC. A three-Judge Bench, on the first occasion, taking note of the authorities in Yusuf Abdul Aziz v. State of Bombay, Sowmithri Vishnu v. Union of India and another , V. Revathi v. Union of India and others and W. Kalyani v. State through Inspector of Police and another and appreciating the submissions advanced by the learned counsel for the petitioner, felt the necessity to have a re-look at the


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 even Mexican races. To say that the art of writing was kept secret, that the Brâhmans probably kept one copy only of each work for themselves, learnt it by heart and taught it to their pupils, shows what imagination can do in order to escape from facts. The facts on which I base my negative vote are these:—

The inscriptions of Asoka are still the earliest inscriptions in India which can be dated, and the tentative character of the local alphabets in which they are written forms in my eyes a proof of the recent introduction of alphabetic writing in different parts of India. I see no reason to doubt the possibility that the Brâhmans were acquainted with alphabetic writing at an earlier time, and I should hail any discovery like that of Major Deane (if indeed they are Indian inscriptions) as an important addition to the history of the migrations of the Hieratic or so-called Phenician alphabet. But that is very different from asserting that writing was known, or must have been known, whether for monumental or literary purposes, before say 400 B.C. I have still to confess my ignorance of any book having been written on palm leaves or paper before the time of Vattagâmani (88-76 B.C.), or of any datable inscription before the time of Asoka.

But though the works of Chinese pilgrims throw little light on the ancient literature, or even on what I called the Renaissance period up to 400 A.D., they have proved of great help to us in fixing the dates of Sanskrit writers whom they either knew personally or who had died not long before their times. I pointed this out in a paper on the Kâsikâvritti published in the Academy, October 2, 1880.

Professor von Boehtlingk, in the introduction to his edition of Pânini's Grammar (p. iv), referred the Kâsikâ-vritti to about the eighth century A. D., on the supposition that Vâmana, the author of the Kâsikâ,


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Rh like the deep well in the meadow, where one may see stars at noon—when no stars are shining.

What is Reverie, and what are these Day-dreams, but fleecy cloud-drifts that float eternally, and eternally change shapes, upon the great over-arching sky of thought? You may seize the strong outlines that the passion breezes of to-day shall throw into their figures; but to-morrow may breed a whirlwind that will chase swift, gigantic shadows over the heaven of your thought, and change the whole landscape of your life.

Dream-land will never be exhausted, until we enter the land of dreams; and until, in "shuffling off this mortal coil," thought will become fact, and all facts will be only thought.

As it is, I can conceive no mood of mind more in keeping with what is to follow upon the grave, than those fancies which warp our frail hulks toward the ocean of the Infinite; and that so sublimate the realities of this being, that they seem to belong to that shadowy realm, where every day's journey is leading.

It was warm weather; and my aunt was dozing. "What is this all to be about?" said she, recovering her knitting needle.

"About love, and toil, and duty, and sorrow," said I.


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 constitutionality of the provision. At that juncture, the Court noted that:-

That is how the matter has been placed before us.


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 In these seasons travelling priests assemble by thousands in every one of the above places day after day from every quarter, and all travel in the same manner (as described above). Venerable and learned priests of the Nâlanda monastery ride in sedan-chairs, but never on horseback, and those of the Mahârâga monastery do the same. In this case necessary baggage is carried by other persons or taken by boys;—such are the customs among the Bhikshus in the West (India).

must be examined every morning. According as it is found in different places, i. e. in jars, in a well, in a pond, or in a river.

The means also of examining it differ. Early in the morning jar-water is first to be examined. After pouring about a handful of it, by inclining the jar, into a pure bronze cup, a ladle made of bronze, a conch-shell, or a plate of lacquer-work, pour it slowly on a brick. Or, by means of a wooden instrument made for this purpose, observe the water for some moments, shutting the mouth with the hand. It is likewise well to examine it in a basin or in a pot. Insects even as small as a hair-point must be protected. If any insects are found, return the water again into the jar, and wash the vessel with other water twice until no insects


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 6.At this stage, one aspect needs to be noted. At the time of initial hearing before the three-Judge Bench, the decision in Yusuf Abdul Aziz (supra) was cited and the cited Law Report reflected that the judgment was delivered by four learned Judges and later on, it was noticed, as is reflectible from the Supreme Court Reports, that the decision was rendered by a Constitution Bench comprising of five Judges of this Court.

7.The said factual discovery will not detain us any further. In Yusuf Abdul Aziz (supra), the Court was dealing with the controversy that had travelled to this Court while dealing with a different fact situation. In the said case, the question arose whether Section 497 contravened Articles 14 and 15 of the Constitution of India. In the said case, the appellant was being prosecuted for adultery under Section 497 IPC. As soon as the complaint was filed, the husband applied to the High Court of Bombay to determine the constitutional question under Article 228 of the Constitution. The Constitution Bench referring to Section 497 held thus:-


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Page:The Book of Ser Marco Polo, the Venetian, concerning the kingdoms and marvels of the East (3rd ed) Vol 1.djvu/289

 THE

PROLOGUE.

, Emperors, and Kings, Dukes and Marquises, Counts, Knights, and Burgesses! and People of all degrees who desire to get knowledge of the various races of mankind and of the diversities of the sundry regions of the World, take this Book and cause it to be read to you. For ye shall find therein all kinds of wonderful things, and the divers histories of the Great Hermenia, and of Persia, and of the Land of the Tartars, and of India, and of many another country of which our Book doth speak, particularly and in regular succession, according to the description of Messer Marco Polo, a wise and noble citizen of Venice, as he saw them with his own eyes. Some things indeed there be therein which he beheld not; but these he heard from men of credit and veracity. And we shall set down things seen as seen, and things heard as heard only, so that no jot of falsehood may mar the truth of our Book, and that all who shall read it or hear it read may put full faith in the truth of all its contents.

For let me tell you that since our Lord God did mould with his hands our first Father Adam, even until this day, never hath there been Christian, or Pagan, or


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On a reading of the aforesaid passages, it is manifest that the Court treated the provision to be a special provision made for women and, therefore, saved by clause (3) of Article 15. Thus, the Court proceeded on the foundation of affirmative action.

8.In this context, we may refer to the observation made by the Constitution Bench in Central Board of Dawoodi Bohra Community and another v. State of Maharashtra and another while making a reference to a larger Bench. The said order reads thus:―


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 Tartar, or Indian, or any man of any nation, who in his own person hath had so much knowledge and experience of the divers parts of the World and its Wonders as hath had this Messer Marco! And for that reason he bethought himself that it would be a very great pity did he not cause to be put in writing all the great marvels that he had seen, or on sure information heard of, so that other people who had not these advantages might, by his Book, get such knowledge. And I may tell you that in acquiring this knowledge he spent in those various parts of the World good six-and-twenty years. Now, being thereafter an inmate of the Prison at Genoa, he caused Messer Rusticiano of Pisa, who was in the said Prison likewise, to reduce the whole to writing; and this befell in the year 1298 from the birth of Jesus.

CHAPTER I.

It came to pass in the year of Christ 1260, when Baldwin was reigning at Constantinople,1 that Messer Nicolas Polo, the father of my lord Mark, and Messer Maffeo Polo, the brother of Messer Nicolas, were at the said city of, whither they had gone from Venice with their merchants' wares. Now these two Brethren, men singularly noble, wise, and provident, took counsel together to cross the on a venture of trade ; so they laid in a store of jewels and set forth from Constantinople, crossing the Sea to .2


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 In the light of the aforesaid order, it was necessary to list the matter before a Constitution Bench consisting of five Judges. As noted earlier, considering the manner in which we intend to deal with the matter, it is not necessary to refer to a larger Bench.

9.Sections 497 and 498 of IPC read thus:―


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Rh and rain and everything else comes from Zeus; if we had but known it, he has been dead and buried in Crete this long time!

Then too they erect temples, in order that the gods may not be houseless and hearthless, of course; and they fashion images in their likeness, sending for a Praxiteles or a Polycleitus or a Phidias, who have caught sight of them somewhere and represent Zeus as a bearded man, Apollo as a perennial boy, Hermes with his first moustaclie, Poseidon with sea-blue hair and Athena with green eyes! In spite of all, those who enter the temple think that what they behold is not now ivory from India nor gold mined in Thrace, but the very son of Cronus and Rhea, transported to earth by Phidias and bidden to be overlord of deserted Pisa, thinking himself lucky if he gets a sacrifice once in four long years as an incident to the Olympic games.

When they have established altars and formulae and lustral rites, they present their sacrifices, the farmer an ox from the plough, the shepherd a lamb, the goatherd a goat, someone else incense or a cake; the poor man, however, propitiates the god by just kissing his own hand. But those who offer victims (to come back to them) deck the animal with garlands, after finding out far in advance whether it is perfect or not, in order that they may not kill something that is of no use to them; then they bring it to the altar and slaughter it under the god's eyes, while it bellows plaintively — making, we must suppose, auspicious sounds, and fluting low music to accompany the sacrifice ! Who would not suppose that Rh

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 speedy and easy prosecution of slaves committing capital crimes. In 1723 the governer was authorized, whenever any slave was committed for any capital offence, to issue a special commission of oyer and terminer, to such persons as he should think fit, the number being left to his discretion, who should thereupon proceed to the trial of such slave, taking for evidence the confession of the defendant, the oath of one or more credible witnesses, or such testimony of Negroes, mulattoes, or Indians, bond or free, with pregnant circumstances, as to them should seem convincing, without the solemnity of a jury. No exception, formerly, could be taken to the proceedings, on the trial of a slave, but that proviso is omitted in the act of 1792, and the justices moreover seem bound to allow him counsel for his defence, whose fee shall be paid by his master. In case of conviction, execution of the sentence was probably very speedily performed, since the act of 1748, provides that, thereafter, it should not be performed in less than ten days, except in case of insurrection or rebellion; and further, that if the court be divided in opinion the accused should be acquitted. In 1764, an act passed, authorizing general,


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 instead of special, commissioners of oyer and terminer, constituting all the justices of any county, judges for the trial of slaves, committing capital offences, within their respective counties; any four of whom, one being of the quorum, should constitute a court for that purpose. In 1772 one step further was made in favour of humanity, by an act declaring that no slave should thereafter be condemned to die unless four of the court should concur in opinion of his guilt. The act of 1786, c. 58, confirmed by that of 1792, constitutes the justices of every county and corporation justices of oyer and terminer for the trial of slaves; requires five justices, at least, to constitute a court, and unanimity in the court for his condemnation; allows him counsel for his defence, to be paid by his owner, and, I apprehend, admits him to object to the proceedings against him; and finally enlarges the time of execution to thirty days, instead of ten (except in cases of conspiracy, insurrection, or rebellion), and extends the benefit of clergy to him in all cases, where any other person should have the benefit thereof, except in the cases before mentioned.

To an attentive observer these gradual,


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 and almost imperceptible amendments in our jurisprudence respecting slaves, will be found, upon the whole, of infinite importance to that unhappy race. The mode of trial in criminal cafes, especially, is rendered infinitely more beneficial to them, than formerly, though perhaps still liable to exception for want of the aid of a jury: the solemnity of an oath administered the moment the trial commences, may be considered as operating more forcibly on the mind, than a general oath of office, taken, perhaps, twenty years before. Unanimity may also be more readily expected to take place among five men, than among twelve. These objections to the want of a jury are not without weight: on the other hand it may be observed, that if the number of triers be not equal to a full jury, they may yet be considered as more select; a circumstance of infinitely greater importance to the slave. The unanimity requisite in the court in order to conviction, is amore happy acquisition to the accused, than may at first appear; the opinions of the court must be delivered openly, immediately, and seriatim, beginning with the youngest judge. A single voice in favour of the accused, is an acquittal; for unanimity is not


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, as with a jury, to acquit, as well as to condemn: there is less danger in this mode of trial, where the suffrages are to be openly delivered, that a few will be brought over to the opinion of the majority, as may too often happen among jurors, whose deliberations are in private, and whose impatience of confinement may go farther than real conviction, to produce the requisite unanimity. That this happens not unfrequently in civil cases, there is too much reason to believe; that it may also happen in criminal cases, especially where the party accused is not one of their equals, might, not unreasonably, be apprehended. In New-York, before the revolution, a slave accused of a capital crime, should have been tried by a jury if his master required it. This is, perhaps, still the law of that state. Such a provision might not be amiss in this; but considering the ordinary run of juries in the county-courts, I should presume the privilege would be rarely insisted upon.

Slaves, we have seen, are now entitled to the benefit of clergy in all cases where it is allowed to any other offenders, except in cases of consulting, advising, or conspiring to rebel, or make insurrection;


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 or plotting or conspiring to murder any person; or preparing, exhibiting, or administring medicine with an ill intent. The same lenity was not extended to them formerly. The act of 1748, c. 31, denied it to a slave in case of manslaughter; or the felonious breaking and entering any house, in the night time: or breaking and entering any house in the day time, and taking therefrom goods to the value of twenty shillings. The act of 1764, c. 9, extended the benefit of clergy, to a slave convicted of the manslaughter of a slave; and the act of 1772, c. 9, extended it farther, to a slave convicted of house-breaking in the night time, unless such breaking be burglary; in the latter case, other offenders would be equally deprived of it. But wherever the benefit of clergy is allowed to a slave, the court, besides burning him in the hand (the usual punishment inflicted on free persons) may inflict such further corporal punishment as they may think fit; this also seems to be the law in the case of free Negroes and mulattoes. By the act of 1723, c. 4, it was enacted, that when any Negroe or mulattoe shall be found, upon due proof made, or pregnant circumstances, to have given false testimony, every such offender


text: The Musical Charmer/The unco bit want

title: The Musical Charmer/The unco bit want