text:
The Smart Set/Volume 61/Issue 4/The Problem That Perplexed Nicholson

VERY serious young man, was Nicholson. I have never met anyone so concerned, so morbidly concerned with abstract principles. I have the most vivid memories of him in those days before the. war—days so immeasurably distant!—tramping along at my side, talking interminably about “ethics.” It was his passion. He would call at my office and wait for me almost any length of time, if in the end he might be rewarded by walking home with me, to discuss what he called “an interesting point or so.” He would have in his pocket little items he had cut out of the newspapers, cases that had come up in the police courts, and so on, which he wanted to analyze.

I rather dreaded him and his “ethics,” and yet I never had the heart to cut short his lengthy propositions. I used to listen to him and even argue with him, very much as one might oblige a chess fiend by playing a game with him. Because the poor devil was so solitary and alone in the world; he hadn't, never had had, another friend, and he was always so outrageously sure of being welcome to me.

A lean, dour young Scot, he had made his own way in life, against every sort of obstacle; he had studied law and been called to the bar, and was then waiting for clients, living in a decent sort of poverty. He wasn't pitiful, in spite of the bleak youth behind him, and his equally bleak present, because he was so confident of success and so absolutely the sort to whom success is inevitable. He had no pleasures, no recreations of any sort; never even read a novel, nothing but these ethical discussions.

The one thing that saved him was his utter lack of egoism. His ethical problems were never personal ones; he didn't even appear to be interested in himself. His questions were always general, and I must admit that his immense and guileless seriousness, combined with this lack of self-consciousness, touched me. And his ingenuousness. He was very fond of quoting judicial decisions and then, at great length, comparing what he called the legal with the ethical aspect. Myself a lawyer twenty years his senior, I never confounded the two.

Even the war, when it came, presented itself to Nicholson as an impersonal problem in ethics. Whether the situation justified the extreme measures he observed being taken?

“It's not a thing to think about,” I told him. “One has to be satisfied with feeling. A question of the temperature of the blood, my boy; it doesn't concern the head.”

“It's not that I'm—bloodless,” he answered, gravely, “simply that I wish to see the right of the thing. I don't intend to be carried away by rash sentimentality.”

Rash he surely was not: for weeks and weeks he came to me almost daily, to argue the ethics of war, until I revolted. I called him morbid, unwholesome, abnormal, said he was unfit, couldn't adjust himself to an actual world. That shut him up. He had nothing to say in his own defence. He kept his ethical doubts to himself for some time.

In the end I suppose he came to some general conclusion satisfactory to himself, for he no longer questioned the war. He said that we must win it, at any cost. And then, of course, came the personal problem. Ought he to enlist?

He discussed that with me, candidly. Could he serve his country better by remaining at home and pursuing his profession, for which he had been preparing for years and years, or by going to fight? I let him talk; he never asked for advice, and wouldn't have got it anyway. It was certainly not for me to argue for or against the indispensability of lawyers.

I could see that he was very much distressed, and he caused me no little distress, too, for he came to my office in season and out of season, sitting patiently in the outer room until I had time for him.

It disturbed me beyond measure to know he was waiting there, with his problems. He had always plenty of cases to cite—things he had read—about conscientious objectors. Were they conscientious? he wanted to know. And only sons, fathers of dependent families, and so on, who were prompt to enlist, were they ethically justified in so doing?

“The question is,” he insisted earnestly, “how can one serve one's country best?”

“The country may thank its fate that all its men aren't so squeamish,” I said.

“Squeamish!” he repeated, hurt and surprised. “I don't think it's that.”

“That and the other complaint of your generation,” I went on. “A strained anxiety to stand out from the herd. I'll wager you'll decide on the unpopular course as the ethical one, just because it is unpopular.”

“You're wrong,” he assured me, solemnly, “altogether wrong. Simply, I don't care to be swayed by enthusiasm instead of guided by reason.”

“I'd go,” I said, “if I weren't too old to be taken.”

“Ah!” said he, “but, you see, you are too old. You haven't any problem. It's been settled for you.”

In the due course of time he solved his problem, decided that, ethically, he ought to volunteer, did so, and was accepted. Evidently that relieved him; he seemed even cheerful in a sober way.

He went through his training well enough. I had postcards from him now and then, and I gained an impression of him, solemnly busy and as friendless as ever.

Then he was sent to the front, and came to say good-bye to me. In his uniform, lean and stiff, with the air of sober satisfaction, he had a sort of Cromwellian look about him. A good fighter, I fancied he would be, inclined toward fanaticism.

I felt sorry for him; not afraid so much that he would be killed or wounded, but that his orderly and inquiring young mind would be overwhelmed by what he was to see. He would find it very difficult, I thought, to discover what was the ethical course to pursue, and when he had found it, he would no longer be free to follow it.

It is so very rarely that we can watch people change. They live and live; nothing happens; external events harass without compelling, nothing occurs furious enough to compel a soul. People grow a little, intensify, become more and more themselves. Thus, in the usual course of events, would Nicholson become more Nicholson; I expected nothing different. Unless his soul were to be maimed or stupefied in that inferno to which he had gone.

from him now and then, post-cards, to thank me for tobacco and papers, quite impersonal things which gave me no sort of clue as to what the war was doing to him. I thought of him often enough, and not without anxiety; I imagined painful ethical struggles.

As soon as he got his first home leave, he came directly to me, walked into my office and sat down, quite in the old way to wait until I wasn't busy.

No evolution there. He was absolutely unchanged.

Yes, he said, he'd seen some fairly rotten things, but what could you expect? A fellow wasn't a schoolgirl. Yes, the life was pretty crude, but you got used to that. Couldn't say he'd been exactly frightened, but confoundedly nervous and shaky. Glad to be home—poor devil without any sort of home—but it wasn't altogether a bad sort of life out there. He confessed that it was rather a relief to have no ethical decisions to make; you simply did as you were told.

“It's restful,” he said, “and yet it isn't demoralizing as it would be if you voluntarily let go.”

He was unable to describe this new existence; he told me what he did, but he couldn't convey the flavour. And he preferred to talk about home affairs, the ethics of conscription, of hoarding, of rationing. He thought a great deal about such things, he said.

He went back quite cheerfully. He had an idiotic sort of optimism, of courage, whichever you please. He wasn't resolved to endure anything that might happen; he was simply sure that nothing could happen to him.

He wrote once or twice, and then stopped; didn't answer my letters or acknowledge packages sent him. His name was not among the wounded, missing, or killed, and I didn't care to risk annoying him by writing for information. I could only wait with an anxiety a little surprising, for I hadn't realized what a place he held with me. There wasn't a day that winter when I shouldn't have been glad, remarkably glad, to discuss ethics with him.

Suddenly he appeared; came walking into my room at dusk on a wretched April afternoon. It was too dark to see well, but his grave salutation was enough.

“By Jove!” I cried, with the irrational irritation one always feels when there wasn't any cause for worry after all. “What's been the matter? I haven't heard a word...”

“I know,” he interrupted, sombrely, “I'm sorry. I'm very wet and chilly. Anything to drink....”

I rang for hot water, and lighted the gas. Nicholson had sat down in my particular chair near the fire, but he kept his head averted. There was something strange about him, his voice even....

I hesitated to question him, but while he was swallowing his steaming toddy, I took a good look at him. And I saw that now he was changed, very much changed. He didn't look ill; he was as lean and tough as ever; it was a sort of shadow that lay over his face, a new, grim look of perplexity, as if he faced an ethical problem beyond his comprehension. I had heard and read of the unaccountable ways in which the war affected men's nerves, and I was half inclined to think that he was struggling with one of those sudden attacks of funk.

He was unusually quiet, sat there, glass in hand, looking into the fire. He asked me, politely, if I'd been well; he had been, he assured me, never better in his life. The weather over there, though, got on your nerves, rain and mud and cold. He apologized for not having answered my letters.

“And I shouldn't have dropped in on you like this,” he said; “it might have been inconvenient, I know.... But, to tell you the truth, I didn't expect to see you this time at all. I—I've been in the city almost a week now.”

I was disproportionately hurt.

“A love affair, of course,” I thought, but he went on.

“You see, I'm here on a—rather wretched business. Have to find a fellow's wife and tell her about his—about how—about his dying.”

“One wouldn't expect that to take a week.”

“I know, only I can't find her. He gave me the address, but she's not there; never has been. One Hundred and Fourteen Andrew Street, he told me. I've gone all over the neighbourhood, looked up all the streets with names anything like Andrew—but it's no good.”

I was moderately sympathetic.

“Mistaken somewhere, of course,” I said, “but she'll have had a notice from the Government by this time, or have read it in the papers.”

“Not the details.... You see—”

He stopped.

“Perhaps she's better off without the details,” I suggested at random, and was surprised at the look he gave me. I shouldn't have been astonished to see him cry. His face was crimson, his eyes full of tears.

“It's not a light matter,” he said, passionately, and after a pause, “you see ... they—it looked as if—they had suspected him of being—that is, not officially, but it was talked of.... They said he deserted.... He was mentioned as missing.”

“He may turn up later.”

“No; he's dead.”

“How do you know?”

He didn't answer that.

I was uneasy, a little annoyed at something inexplicable in the affair. It was, taking his nature into consideration, entirely consistent that he should feel ethically bound to continue his search for his dead friend's wife. But who was his friend, though? He'd never spoken, never written of any friend. A wrong address, a mysterious friend, a still more mysterious death.

“There's something behind it,” I said to myself; “he's done something idiotic.”

He broke a long silence.

“I've found another place to try,” he said. “A 'Miss' Alice Corbett. Very likely it's 'Mrs.' Alice was her name, you know.”

“Have you written yet, or communicated in any way?”

“No,” he answered reluctantly, “I thought—perhaps—you'd care to come with me?”

I agreed, but after that he seemed in no hurry to go. He sat by the fire smoking, very silent. It grew quite dark, and I suggested that if we were to go before dinner...

“I—I—to tell you the truth,” he said, impulsively, “I hate like the devil to do it!”

“A bit harrowing,” I admitted, “although she'll certainly have heard of her husband's death long ago. But look here,” I added, “don't be—an ethical ass. If there's anything unpleasant you think she ought to know, for heaven's sake, keep it to yourself. Leave her in peace, and him.”

“It's nothing of that sort!” he said vehemently, “I want to contradict any unfavourable impression she may possibly have got—or ever may get. You see, I want—I ought, you know, to let her—to tell her that he died like a hero. She'll simply have read that he's missing.”

“How did he die then?”

“Oh! A—a sort of accident. I've thought it all out. I'm going to tell her that the snipers got a friend of his, and that he—he went out alone, against orders, to pot a few Boches, as a sort of revenge, and got his. Died at once. Women will believe anything, won't they?”

My legal experience didn't confirm—that idea. I smiled a little.

“She's been very ill,” he went on, “she may not be alive now. But if she is, I want—I ought to give her what comfort I can. Any sort of lie, if it will help the poor woman.”

“But how did he really die?” I insisted.

Nicholson didn't answer. I delayed a moment to turn out the gas, and then followed him to the door. I had my hand on the knob, when his voice sounded abruptly from the darkness of the hall.

“I killed him,” he said.

was exactly like a blow, a physical blow. I wanted to sit down and close my eyes, while I recovered.

“An accident,” I murmured.

“Come on!” he said, “it's growing late!”

I followed him into the rainy street, and he immediately took my arm.

“I'd better tell you,” he said, in a very low voice. “You see—it's almost too much—in fact—one can't always decide—alone. I don't know—can't tell—if it's a—a crime...”

“Go ahead!” I encouraged him.

After a minute he began, very painstakingly.

“I didn't really notice him even when he first came out. Morose sort of fellow—not popular at all—big, dark, heavy chap with long eyes like a weasel. He didn't try to make any friends, kept to himself as much as he could, and was eternally writing letters home. Very slack, too, always in trouble over his equipment, and so on. It wasn't so much laziness; he simply couldn't look decent. You know the sort. Loose kind of figure, always had a—a blurred look.

“All of a sudden he began running after me. Without the least encouragement on my part, I can promise you. In fact, I rather disliked him. I got horribly sick of him, hanging about in his skulking way. I couldn't get rid of him, he was at my heels all the time. I couldn't make it out at all; he didn't want to talk, he never asked me questions or told me about himself. He was like one of those stray dogs that follow you, you know.... Poor beggar! I was sorry for him, somehow....

“One day he sat down beside me and began telling me in a whisper that he wouldn't stand it any longer, he'd have to go home. Lots of fellows feel like that, though, now and then. I didn't pay much attention, but he caught hold of my sleeve and began to mutter:

“'I must go! I must go!'

“'What's up?' I asked him.

“He said his wife was ill, very ill. He'd applied for leave and been refused. I told him the reason for that was that there'd probably be an engagement before long.

“'I must go!' he kept on. 'What can I do?'

“'Nothing!' I told him. 'But buck up and be a man. You have to expect this sort of thing, in war time. Damned hard, of course,'

“He began telling me about his wife then, and it was—really, old man, it was—extraordinary. You wouldn't have imagined him capable of it.... He—he made you fairly see the poor little woman—only nineteen, she was, and there was a baby coming. She wasn't expected to pull through. I've never been—never cared for a woman like that myself, but I can understand it. It was—really a—a beautiful thing, his devotion. She was all he had, all he cared about. He only wanted to see her, once more, and then get himself killed. He said he had no use for life at all if he lost her.

“The next day he showed me letters, one from the doctor, and one from the girl herself. It was the most pitiful thing.... Wanted to see him once more. You could tell that she was afraid to die, although she tried to be plucky. He was almost mad.

“'For God's sake, tell me what to do!' he kept asking me. 'I can't let her die without even saying good-bye to her. Do you think any cause in the world is worth the agony she is suffering?”

“I could understand his point of view, but I couldn't see any way out. There wasn't the slightest chance of his getting leave at that time. All leaves had been stopped, no exceptions, absolutely. Something big in the air...

“I—really, the beastly business—really haunted me. I—it almost seemed as if—it weren't—well, worth it, you know. Made you realize what war did. ... Anything so damnably cruel—you know—didn't seem so—elevating, after all.”

Nicholson was growing incoherent; he saw it, and stopped for a bit.

“But I couldn't help him,” he went on at last. “Tried to cheer him up, and all that. He'd shut me up every time. 'Think of it!' he'd shout. 'That poor little girl, dying alone. That terror and agony, all alone. If she could only hold my hand, she says, she wouldn't mind.' Well, you can imagine.... I hadn't thought much of that side of the thing before—the women at home, you know.... He was really a bit off—raved, absolutely. But you could understand. He told me all about her, what a plucky little soul she'd been. I wish I could make you see him; you could understand the thing so much better. Big, hulking, stupid sort of ass, quite isolated, no one liked him, men or officers. A rotten bad soldier, altogether out of place. No energy, no alertness. He couldn't be trained. And I imagine he'd been the same sort of failure in civil life. There was only this girl. She'd seen something good and—lovable in him, something no one else would ever see.”

He stopped again.

“If I could only make you see—a little,” he continued earnestly. “I'd like you to understand it all, if possible....

“It was one afternoon when I'd been sent to a farmhouse—sort of headquarters back of the lines, with a message, and he came running after me. Said he'd got permission to come along. He was out of breath at first, and I suppose the dust choked him; he held on to my arm and stumbled along without a word for half a mile. Then he said:

“'You've got to do it!'

“'What?' I asked him.

“'You're a first-class shot,' he whispered. 'Shoot me!'

“I was shocked.

“'You want me to kill you?' I said. 'You're mad!'

“'No, not that. But a wound, in the arm, just enough ... so I can get home before it's too late.'

“I shook him off, swore at him, I think. I called him a coward, everything. But he stumbled along beside me, telling me I'd have to do it.

“He made me read another letter he'd got.... He was crying—tears running down his dirty face, and gasping and sobbing....

“I give you my word, you've no idea how that sort of thing upsets you. Then he—actually got down on his knees.... I was disgusted with him—but—awfully sorry for him. In the end I said I'd do it.

“I went on to deliver my message, and told him to wait for me near a marsh I had to cross.... I don't know, to this minute, old man, whether I was right or wrong in consenting. Whether humanity isn't after all a higher—”

“Never mind ethics!” I interrupted. “Let's hear what you did.”

He went on.

“When I came back it was growing dark, and I wanted to put it off. I couldn't see properly. But he wouldn't wait.

“It was a very lonely place—that marsh—with a sort of plank walk across it that made a short cut from one part of the high road to the other; saved almost half a mile. We could have seen anyone coming, a long way off, in that flat country. We stopped there and talked it over. We were going to put it down to snipers. He'd thought out a whole story, very plausible. He showed me the exact spot to be hit on his arm, and he tied a white handkerchief over it, so that I shouldn't miss it in the dusk.

“He was to stand on the high road, where he could see anyone coming along the road behind me, and I was to go a few paces along the plank walk over the marsh, where I could see the road to the trenches. I tried even then to argue with him. I pointed out that the thing might easily be discovered and we'd both be court-martialled. But he said he'd risk that, and that I'd already promised. So—!

“'I'll hold out my arm,' he told me. 'And don't fire too near; there mustn't be any powder burns.”

“My hand wasn't steady; I warned him of that, but he said he didn't care. He was quite cool, all his hysteria gone. He was simply anxious to get it over.

“'Come on!' he kept urging. 'It's growing dark!' and it was. I could see the white handkerchief plainly enough, but the dusty road looked like a blur, and there was a sort of mist over the marsh. It's such a flat country, you know, it—somehow seems lonelier than the mountains....

“There he stood, with his arms stretched out. I couldn't see his face any longer.

“'Quick!' he said. And I fired.

“I don't know how I did it.... I didn't realize at first that I'd missed; I thought it was all right. I called out to ask him, but he didn't answer. He came running forward in a queer, blind way, along the plank bridge toward me. Then all of a sudden he stumbled and fell like a log into the marsh.

“I ran up and got him by the collar, and tried to pull him out, but he was a dead weight.... I must have got him through the lung, I think. He ... he made an awful sound....

“After a bit I got his head and shoulders on the boards, but his legs were sunk deep in the swamp. Anyway it didn't matter; in a minute he was dead.

“I let him slip back and he disappeared in the mud. I went on alone. No one asked me about him....

“That's all,” he added abruptly.

story was finished; he had nothing further to say.

He fell silent, an aloof sort of silence which invited no comment. He wished evidently to meditate on this lamentable history; perhaps he was seeking in it some justification for himself, or for that other fellow.

I am not, I dare say, very different from the mass of mankind; any sort of misfortune irritates me. And while at heart I was sorry for him and for his victim, and for the poor woman, I was not just then conscious of any such emotion. I rebelled against our errand.

“And you're going to tell his wife that he died a hero?” I asked. “It's monstrous, farcical.”

“No,” he answered.. “I've thought it all out. It's the only atonement I can make.”

One had to admire his courage in facing this woman, under the circumstances. There was something in his ethics, after all! I strode along beside him through the rainy streets, resentfully respectful.

We reached the house; he walked briskly up the steps, rang the bell, waited, rang again.

“I hope it isn't too late,” he whispered.

Immediately I had a picture of the unhappy girl lying dead, somewhere in that dark and silent house, or perhaps dying, weak and gasping, at this instant. He didn't grasp at this straw as I should have done, as a chance of relief from an intolerable situation; no, he really wanted to see her, to tell her his flaming lie, to “atone,” as he put it, for his horrible error.

At last the door opened.

“Well!” said a woman's voice, good-humouredly.

Nicholson asked for “Mrs. Frank Corbett.”

“I suppose you mean me, sir,” she answered. “Step in, please.”

And we followed her down a passage to a musty little sitting-room. She turned up the gas.

“Sit down, please, gentlemen,” she said, and herself remained standing in the doorway, looking at us anxiously.

She was an angular, middle-aged woman with a severe face and luminous, patient eyes, one of those faces seen only among the poor, expressing such limitless endurance. Not resistance, not resignation, simply endurance, like a rock on which all the storms beat.

“I'm trying to find Mrs. Frank Corbett,” Nicholson explained. “I'm afraid it's another mistake. I'm sorry we've troubled you—”

“If it's news about Frank—Francis William Corbett, in the Blank regiment,” she said, “I'm his sister. And I got that notice—long ago.”

She was struggling painfully to keep back her tears while she addressed herself to Nicholson's uniform. “If it's a—a last message, gentlemen, I'm the one that's entitled to hear it. I'm his sister, and his next of kin.”

“But I've a—a personal message for his wife,” said Nicholson, gently.

“He never had a wife,” she answered. “I'm the next of kin, sir. I'm really entitled to—the message....”

She had begun to weep quietly.

“Frank never had a wife,” she repeated. “Never anyone in the world but me. If there's any news, gentlemen, I've a right to hear it. Me and no one else. Missing—that's all they've told me....”

“I'm afraid,” said Nicholson, gravely, “that he must have contracted a marriage unknown to you. I've seen letters from his wife—”

The woman shook her head.

“Not my Frank. Not Francis William Corbett in the Blank regiment. Not him, sir.”

And she took a photograph from the chimney piece and held it out to Nicholson. He stared at it with shocked eyes.

“That's he... I'm sorry—very sorry. But in war time—extenuating circumstances...” he murmured. “No doubt it was a very hasty marriage—”

“He couldn't have been married,” she insisted. “Why, he lived in this very house all his life; he never stopped out a single night, nor hardly ever missed a meal. Don't you think I'd have known? And him and me....”

She wiped her eyes roughly.

“And what's more, he never made more than two pounds a week, and he gave it all to me, except it might be two or three shillings he'd keep out.”

We were silent. She waited, then went on:

“I've made up my mind to losing him. This 'missing,' it's the worst of all. I know he's dead, or I'd have heard more. Only, it would do one good to know a bit about it—how it happened.. And that's what you came for, isn't it, sir? That you were going to tell his wife, only he hadn't one?”

“Yes,” said Nicholson solemnly. “He died a hero.”

She was extraordinarily pleased.

“Ah!” she cried. “A hero, was he? Poor Frank!”

Nicholson plunged into his story. He had evidently rehearsed it well, for he was so fluent as to be almost unconvincing; very circumstantial, vivid, a tale of reckless bravery and a memorable death.

“Of course this is unofficial, you know. He'd disobeyed orders so—they couldn't give him any recognition. But I—as his friend—he had mentioned a wife—”

Miss Corbett shook her head and wiped her eyes again.

“I can't think however that got about, Poor Frank! A regular hero ... and me—all the time! It goes to show how easy it is to misjudge others. Poor Frank! I'm sure I never expected it of him.”

Her tears began to flow again, and she pressed her handkerchief against her mouth,

“Oh, gentlemen!” she cried, “I feel—I've been cruel—and now it's too late...! I can't make it up to him, never, never!”

“I'm very sorry,” said Nicholson, feebly, “very sorry. I thought—you see—”

“Oh, I'm glad enough to hear about it!” she interrupted, “and it'll be a comfort to me my life long, that I can be proud of him. But I'd misjudged him so!

“He never was—what you'd call a hero. Always nervous and timid like. Wouldn't take his own part when the other boys'd badger him. You see, gentlemen, I brought him up from a baby ... and it's so easy to misjudge them you know too well.... I'd been fighting that—weakness in him for so many years—

“And when the war came, it seemed he was hanging back. Mrs. Cooke's boy from the next door, he enlisted, and my cousins, too, and the young man from 61—a fair dozen from this street. I was sort of ashamed, Frank being so strong. I was at him day and night. 'Don't you want to serve your King and your country? Where's your manhood?' And he'd put me off, and say he wanted time to think it over.

“Then, one afternoon, he went to Uncle Gibbs's. Their second boy was leaving the next day, and they had wine. Frank wasn't used to it. It must have gone to his head, like, and all the talk about the army.... Anyhow, he came home late, red as a lobster and talking very loud. 'Well,' he says, 'I've done it! I've enlisted!'

“He went through his training, right enough, and started off to the front as jolly as you please. Told me that he liked the life. But as soon as ever he got out there, he wrote me a letter. 'It's—' excuse me, gentlemen, 'it's hell, he wrote. 'I'll lose my mind. I can't stand it. Make an excuse,' he says, 'Write that you're very sick so I can get leave.'

“Well, after a bit, I did, and he came home. He was in a terrible way, so nervous he couldn't sleep nor eat. He owned up, frank enough, that he wanted to desert. But I wouldn't give him any peace. I frightened and I shamed him into going back. 'You'll be caught sure enough and shot,' I told him. 'Isn't that better,' says he, 'than having your—your insides torn out by shrapnel, or half your face shot off?”

“And I—you see, I didn't understand then—I called him a coward and—well, he went back. But he was soon writing again. 'Get me home somehow, for God's sake! Get me home, or I'll go mad!' I wrote him I couldn't and wouldn't if I could. 'Stick it out like a man,' I says. Then one more letter from him—fair crazy, it was—and I never heard again.”

She looked at us with solemn, tearful eyes,

“And he must have made up his mind to make the best of it after all,” she added. “It all goes to show you never can tell what's in a man. Poor Frank a hero!”

Once again she dried her eyes, and turned to Nicholson.

“It'd be a great comfort to me if you'd kindly tell it all to me again, sir,” she said. “You did make it seem so beautiful!”

The poor fellow turned quite pale. I was really sorry for him, having to tell that yarn again, knowing what he knew now. He did it, splendidly, though, and we rose to take our leave.

The poor woman pressed Nicholson's hand fervently.

“Thank you, sir! Thank you!” she said, and had no words to express anything more.

But her luminous, patient eyes told her gratitude, her consolation, her sorrowful, remorseful pride in her hero brother.

were out in the rain again, going home, at a terrific pace set by my ethical young friend. He was silent. I tried to be, but couldn't!

“So there wasn't any wife!” I said, with a sort of malice.

“No,” he answered sombrely. “It seems there wasn't. No; I was—deceived, I suppose.”

“You were!” I assured him, “A lie, the letters, and the pathos, and the devotion, all of it. A preposterous lie, invented by a coward to get himself away from the trenches, to save his own precious skin. But a not very successful device, was it, considering how it ended?”

Nicholson walked on, a bit more slowly.

“Well,” he said, after a very long pause, “it's a very difficult problem.... But—do you know ... I'm damned glad I killed the poor devil....”


text: Talk:The Smart Set/Volume 61/Issue 4/The Problem That Perplexed Nicholson

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
Page:Ten Days in a Mad-House (1887).djvu/60

58 The table reached the length of the room and was uncovered and uninviting. Long benches without backs were put for the patients to sit on, and over these they had to crawl in order to face the table. Placed closed together all along the table were large dressing-bowls filled with a pinkish-looking stuff which the patients called tea. By each bowl was laid a piece of bread, cut thick and buttered. A small saucer containing five prunes accompanied the bread. One fat woman made a rush, and jerking up several saucers from those around her emptied their contents into her own saucer. Then while holding to her own bowl she lifted up another and drained its contents at one gulp. This she did to a second bowl in shorter time than it takes to tell it. Indeed, I was so amused at her successful grabbings that when I looked at my own share the woman opposite, without so much as by your leave, grabbed my bread and left me without any.

Another patient, seeing this, kindly offered me hers, but I declined with thanks and turned to the nurse and asked for more. As she flung a thick piece down on the table she made some remark about the fact that if I forgot where my home was I had not forgotten how to eat. I tried the bread, but the butter was so horrible that one could not eat it. A blue-eyed German girl on the opposite side of the table told me I could have bread unbuttered if I wished, and that very few were able to eat the butter. I turned my attention to the prunes and found that very few of them would be sufficient. A patient near asked me to give them to her, I did so. My bowl of tea was all that was left. I tasted, and one taste was enough. It had no sugar, and it tasted as if it had been made in copper. It was as weak as water. This was also transferred to a hungrier patient, in spite of the protest of Miss Neville.

“You must force the food down,” she said, “else you


text:
Page:Ten Days in a Mad-House (1887).djvu/62

60 watching the scene, and I jumped into the bathtub with more energy than grace.

The water was ice-cold, and I again began to protest. How useless it all was! I begged, at least, that the patients be made to go away, but was ordered to shut up. The crazy woman began to scrub me. I can find no other word that will express it but scrubbing. From a small tin pan she took some soft soap and rubbed it all over me,

even all over my face and my pretty hair. I was at last past seeing or speaking, although I had begged that my hair be left untouched. Rub, rub, rub, went the old woman, chattering to herself. My teeth chattered and my limbs were goose-fleshed and blue with cold. Suddenly I got, one after the other, three buckets of water over my head—ice-cold water, too—into my eyes, my ears, my nose and my mouth. I think I experienced some of the sensations of a drowning person as they dragged me, gasping, shivering and quaking, from the tub. For once I did look insane, I caught a glance of the indescribable look on the faces of my companions, who had witnessed my fate and knew theirs was surely following. Unable to control myself at the absurd picture I presented, I burst into roars of laughter. They put me, dripping wet, into a short


text:
Page:Ten Days in a Mad-House (1887).djvu/63

Rh canton flannel slip, labeled across the extreme end in large black letters, “Lunatic Asylum, B. I., H. 6.” The letters meant Blackwell’s Island, Hall 6.

By this time Miss Mayard had been undressed, and, much as I hated my recent bath, I would have taken another if by it I could have saved her the experience. Imagine plunging that sick girl into a cold bath when it made me, who have never been ill, shake as if with ague. I heard her explain to Miss Grupe that her head was still sore from her illness. Her hair was short and had mostly come out, and she asked that the crazy woman be made to rub more gently, but Miss Grupe said:

“There isn’t much fear of hurting you. Shut up, or you’ll get it worse.” Miss Mayard did shut up, and that was my last look at her for the night.

I was hurried into a room where there were six beds, and had been put into bed when some one came along and jerked me out again, saying:

“Nellie Brown has to be put in a room alone to-night, for I suppose she’s noisy.”

I was taken to room 28 and left to try and make an impression on the bed. It was an impossible task. The bed had been made high in the center and sloping on either side. At the first touch my head flooded the pillow with water, and my wet slip transferred some of its dampness to the sheet. When Miss Grupe came in I asked if I could not have a night-gown.

“We have no such things in this institution,” she said.

“I do not like to sleep without,” I replied.

“Well, I don’t care about that,” she said. “You are in a public institution now, and you can’t expect to get anything. This is charity, and you should be thankful for what you get.”

“But the city pays to keep these places up,” I urged,


text:
Page:Ten Days in a Mad-House (1887).djvu/64

62 “and pays people to be kind to the unfortunates brought here.”

“Well, you don’t need to expect any kindness here, for you won’t get it,” she said, and she went out and closed the door.

A sheet and an oilcloth were under me, and a sheet and black wool blanket above. I never felt anything so annoying as that wool blanket as I tried to keep it around my shoulders to stop the chills from getting underneath. When I pulled it up I left my feet bare, and when I pulled it down my shoulders were exposed. There was absolutely nothing in the room but the bed and myself. As the door had been locked I imagined I should be left alone for the night, but I heard the sound of the heavy tread of two women down the hall. They stopped at every door, unlocked it, and in a few moments I could hear them relock it. This they did without the least attempt at quietness down the whole length of the opposite side of the hall and up to my room. Here they paused. The key was inserted in the lock and turned. I


text:
Page:Ten Days in a Mad-House (1887).djvu/65

Rh watched those about to enter. In they came, dressed in brown and white striped dresses, fastened by brass buttons, large, white aprons, a heavy green cord about the waist, from which dangled a bunch of large keys, and small, white caps on their heads. Being dressed as were the attendants of the day, I knew they were nurses. The first one carried a lantern, and she flashed its light into my face while she said to her assistant:

“This is Nellie Brown.” Looking at her, I asked:

“Who are you?”

“The night nurse, my dear,” she replied, and, wishing that I would sleep well, she went out and locked the door after her. Several times during the night they came into my room, and even had I been able to sleep, the unlocking of the heavy door, their loud talking, and heavy tread, would have awakened me.

I could not sleep, so I lay in bed picturing to myself the horrors in case a fire should break out in the asylum. Every door is locked separately and the windows are heavily barred, so that escape is impossible. In the one building alone there are, I think Dr. Ingram told me, some three hundred women. They are locked, one to ten to a room. It is impossible to get out unless these doors are unlocked. A fire is not improbable, but one of the most likely occurrences. Should the building burn, the jailers or nurses would never think of releasing their crazy patients. This I can prove to you later when I come to tell of their cruel treatment of the poor things intrusted to their care. As I say, in case of fire, not a dozen women could escape. All would be left to roast to death. Even if the nurses were kind, which they are not, it would require more presence of mind than women of their class possess to risk the flames and their own lives while they unlocked the hundred doors for the insane prisoners. Unless there is a change there will some day be a tale of horror never equaled.


text:
Page:Ten Days in a Mad-House (1887).djvu/66

64 In this connection is an amusing incident which happened just previous to my release. I was talking with Dr. Ingram about many things, and at last told him what I thought would be the result of a fire.

“The nurses are expected to open the doors,” he said.

“But you know positively that they would not wait to do that,” I said, “and these women would burn to death.”

He sat silent, unable to contradict my assertion.

“Why don’t you have it changed?” I asked.

“What can I do?” he replied. “I offer suggestions until my brain is tired, but what good does it do? What would you do?” he asked, turning to me, the proclaimed insane girl.

“Well, I should insist on them having locks put in, I have seen in some places, that by turning a crank at the end of the hall you can lock or unlock every door on the one side. Then there would be some chance of escape. Now, every door being locked separately, there is absolutely none.”

Dr. Ingram turned to me with an anxious look on his kind face as he asked, slowly:

“Nellie Brown, what institution have you been an inmate of before you came here?”

“None. I never was confined in any institution, except boarding-school, in my life.”

“Where then did you see the locks you have described?”

I had seen them in the new Western Penitentiary at Pittsburg, Pa., but I did not dare say so. I merely answered:

“Oh, I have seen them in a place I was in—I mean as a visitor.”

“There is only one place I know of where they have those locks,” he said, sadly, “and that is at Sing Sing.”


text:
Page:Ten Days in a Mad-House (1887).djvu/67

Rh The inference is conclusive. I laughed very heartily over the implied accusation, and tried to assure him that I had never, up to date, been an inmate of Sing Sing or even ever visited it.

Just as the morning began to dawn I went to sleep. It did not seem many moments until I was rudely awakened and told to get up, the window being opened and the clothing pulled off me. My hair was still wet and I had pains all through me, as if I had the rheumatism. Some clothing was flung on the floor and I was told to put it on. I asked for my own, but was told to take what I got and keep quiet by the apparently head nurse, Miss Grady. I looked at it. One underskirt made of coarse dark cotton goods and a cheap white calico dress with a black spot in it. I tied the strings of the skirt around me and put on the little dress. It was made, as are all those worn by the patients, into a straight tight waist sewed on to a straight skirt. As I buttoned the waist I noticed the underskirt was about six inches longer than the upper, and for a moment I sat down on the bed and laughed at my own appearance. No woman ever longed for a mirror more than I did at that moment.

I saw the other patients hurrying past in the hall, so I decided not to lose anything that might be going on. We numbered forty-five patients in Hall 6, and were sent to the bathroom, where there were two coarse towels. I watched crazy patients who had the most dangerous eruptions all over their faces dry on the towels and then saw women with clean skins turn to use them. I went to the bathtub and washed my face at the running faucet and my underskirt did duty for a towel.

Before I had completed my ablutions a bench was brought into the bathroom. Miss Grupe and Miss McCarten came in with combs in their hands. We were told soto [sic] sit down on the bench, and the hair of forty-five women was combed with one patient, two nurses, and six combs.


text:
Page:Ten Days in a Mad-House (1887).djvu/68

66 As I saw some of the sore heads combed I thought this was another dose I had not bargained for. Miss Tillie Mayard had her own comb, but it was taken from her by Miss Grady. Oh, that combing! I never realized before what the expression “I’ll give you a combing” meant, but I knew then. My hair, all matted and wet from the night previous, was pulled and jerked, and, after expostulating to no avail, I set my teeth and endured the pain. They refused to give me my hairpins, and my hair was arranged in one plait and tied with a red cotton rag. My curly bangs refused to stay back, so that at least was left of my former glory.

After this we went to the sitting-room and I looked for my companions. At first I looked vainly, unable to distinguish them from the other patients, but after awhile I recognized Miss Mayard by her short hair.

“How did you sleep after your cold bath?”

“I almost froze, and then the noise kept me awake. It’s dreadful! My nerves were so unstrung before I came here, and I fear I shall not be able to stand the strain.”

I did the best I could to cheer her. I asked that we be given additional clothing, at least as much as custom says women shall wear, but they told me to shut up; that we had as much as they intended to give us.

We were compelled to get up at 5.30 o’clock, and at 7.15 we were told to collect in the hall, where the experience of waiting, as on the evening previous, was repeated. When we got into the dining-room at last we found a howl of cold tea, a slice of buttered bread and a saucer of oatmeal, with molasses on it, for each patient. I was hungry, but the food would not down. I asked for unbuttered bread and was given it. I cannot tell you of anything which is the same dirty, black color. It was hard, and in places nothing more than dried dough. I found a spider in my slice, so I did not eat it. I tried the oatmeal and molasses, but it was wretched, and so I


text:
Page:Ten Days in a Mad-House (1887).djvu/69

Rh endeavored, but without much show of success, to choke down the tea.

After we were back to the sitting-room a number of women were ordered to make the beds, and some of the patients were put to scrubbing and others given different duties which covered all the work in the hall. It is not the attendants who keep the institution so nice for the poor patients, as I had always thought, but the patients, who do it all themselves—even to cleaning the nurses’ bedrooms and caring for their clothing.

About 9.30 the new patients, of which I was one, were told to go out to see the doctor. I was taken in and my lungs and my heart were examined by the flirty young doctor who was the first to see us the day we entered. The one who made out the report, if I mistake not, was the assistant superintendent, Ingram. A few questions and I was allowed to return to the sitting-room.

I came in and saw Miss Grady with my note-book and long lead pencil, bought just for the occasion.

“I want my book and pencil,” I said, quite truthfully, “It helps me remember things.”

I was very anxious to get it to make notes in and was disappointed when she said:

“You can’t have it, so shut up.”

Some days after I asked Dr. Ingram if I could have it, and he promised to consider the matter. When I again referred to it, he said that Miss Grady said I only brought a book there; that I had no pencil. I was provoked, and insisted that I had, whereupon I was advised to fight against the imaginations of my brain.

After the housework was completed by the patients, and as the day was fine, but cold, we were told to go out in the hall and get on shawls and hats for a walk. Poor patients! How eager they were for a breath of air; how eager for a slight release from their prison. They went


text: Poems, Chiefly Lyrical/Song (6)

title: Poems, Chiefly Lyrical/Song (6)


text:
Page:TASJ-1-3.djvu/24

On the 15th of July, after feeling the way slowly into the north west corner of Sendai Bay, I found a partially sheltered anchorage in 3 fathoms behind the northern Island of this numerous group, which are clustered together, according to the Japanese numbering 808.

The coast line of the main Bay is here deeply indented, and the group of Islands spreading across the mouth of this bight, forms inside an inner Bay, 8 miles long, by 4 broad, named Matsu Sima, after a village on the main shore. Unfortunately this fine space of protected water is merely a lagoon. At high tide is has about 6 feet of water, pretty uniformly throughout, but at low tide a few boat passages leading through masses of ribbon seaweed, and crossings from the Islands to the mainland are the only open water. The Eastern shores of these Islands (i.e. facing Sendai Bay) are thickly studded with reefs, and rocks, making the approach very troublesome. Probably there are as many reefs under water as there are above.

The highest of these Islands, is about 300 feet, the lowest about 30, generally speaking 60 to 80 feet is their mean height. They are cut up in a wonderful manner by narrow creeks and tiny inlets which frequently almost

title: Page:TASJ-1-3.djvu/24


text: Ten Days in a Mad-House/Chapter 10

title: Ten Days in a Mad-House/Chapter 10


text:
Page:TASJ-1-3.djvu/25

 join, being only separated by narrow ridges. I am unaware what distinguishes an Island from a rock with the Japanese, but considering those that have trees or herbage of some kind on them, as Islands the number 808 cannot be far out.

The foundation of these Islands is either a yellow sandstone rock of soft texture, or grey grit, closely approaching conglomerate. The stratification is very distinct and horizontal; a few slips and faults I observed, but they were rare. The surface soil is a rich vegetable mould mixed with an arenaceous compost. At the head of most of these creeks, there are a few small paddy-fields; but excepting these patches there is hardly any cultivation. This of course is easily accounted for by the scarcity of inhabitants. The principal village, speaking of this group of Islands and the main shore, in their immediate neighbourhood—in other words the West portion of Sendai Bay, is Ishibama, consisting of about 100 houses, and built on one of the Islands; it has an anchorage capable of holding half a dozen small vessels, between the Island on which it is situated and the one next to it, and is in consequence considered the Port of Sendai. The next most important village is Sabusawa about one mile from Ishibama, consisting of about 150 houses; it is situated on another Island. Siwo Kama with about 600 inhabitants built in the S.W. corner of the lagoon on the mainland, is 5 ri from Sendai, and 2$1⁄2$ from Ishibama, it is the nearest village on the coast to Sendai. From here the produce of that large town and rice district is carried across in small boats to Ishibama and there shipped for further transit in junks and other Japanese craft. Matsu-Sima, a village on the mainland 5 miles west of Ishibama, has a population of about 500. Yöona another village on the mainland, built on a low spit of land, running out from the northern side of the lagoon, produces salt, as well as being a fishing establishment. With the exception of these few insignificant villages, there appears no where else a sufficient number of houses huddled together to deserve that name.

title: Page:TASJ-1-3.djvu/25


text: Ten Days in a Mad-House/Chapter 11

title: Ten Days in a Mad-House/Chapter 11


text:
Page:TASJ-1-3.djvu/26

 The main land on this (W) side of Sendai Bay is hilly, wooded, and wild; but does not appear to be farmed, as in most parts of Japan, and the patches of cultivated ground are few and far apart. In fact I have never seen, except further north in the province of Matsu, a more scanty population, and so little cultivation. Ichinomaki is a dirty, dilapidated town, built on the banks of the river Katikami. It commences at about half a mile from the mouth of this river, and extends in an irregular way for three quarters of a mile up both banks. The population I should judge to be about 7,000, all of a very poor class of people. I did, however, meet one or two rice merchants at the head man’s establishment at another town near here, which I shall mention presently. There is no Government Official at Ichinomaki, merely a head man, an authority found in even the smallest Japanese villages. The Katikami is a fine and swift body of water, having a width abreast of the town of about 300 yards and a depth of 30 feet, but unfortunately like most other rivers failing into an open Bay, has a bar, with only 12 feet of water on it. It is not a tidal river, the body of water being too great and powerful to allow of its being so; it is also clear enough to be drinkable half a mile up. A few large junks were anchored off the town, but the banks, which are piled and rudely wharfed were crowded with large and perfectly flat-bottomed boats, 450 and 60 feet long by 12 and 14 ft. broad; these boats go 50 ri up the river (according to the boatmen) and bring rice from the interior, and when loaded draw about 18 inches of water. When the rice is bring brought down in the autumn, I have no doubt the town will show a little more life, but at the present time (July) a more torpid place I have never seen in Japan. In the extreme north east point of the Bay, three and a half miles from IshinomakiIchinomaki [sic], is a fishing village, named Wadanaha, with a population of about 2,000; and very filthy. The stench from the rotting débris of fish, which covered the wharf, was sickening. Skin disease certainly was evidently prevalent. Ichinomaki depends on its supply of fish from

title: Page:TASJ-1-3.djvu/26


text:
Page:TASJ-1-3.djvu/27

 this village and as I walked back from the former river I met ponies, men and boys laden with bonito. These fish are caught in large set nets, each net has a look-out station attached to it, stuck on poles. The poles, for there are several lashed end, [sic] to end are 80 and 90 feet long, being erected in 12 fathoms. These flimsy-looking look-outs are kept wonderfully steady by large stones made fast to the bottom end of the poles and guyed and steadied at the surface by anchors and cables. There are often as many as half a dozen men on the platform fixed on the top. These things when approaching look like beacons, and even when sufficiently near to make out their real purpose, i.e. fishing, any one unless he knew to the contrary would expect they were on a rock, or at any rate in shoal water.

From Wodanaha, the ceastcoast [sic] of the Bay trends S. E., 11 miles, terminating in the bluff point Amitzhania, and after turning the corner runs along to the north, passing Kin Kasan, within half a mile distance. Along this 11 miles of coast, which is rough, bold and hilly, there are several Bays, but all open and devoid of shelter. A few miserably small fishing villages are scattered about the extreme ends of the Bay. Occasionally a very small patch of cultivation is seen, but the country is almost all perfectly wild and wooded excepting the Cape itself, and a couple of miles back from it, which is clear and covered with short grass; here small herds of ponies were grazing.

Kin moran is entirely covered with old wood, though none of great size. Pine, Cedar and a few deciduous trees form the chief cover. The Temple is quite small and insignificant and, except for some late slight repairs, would be in a ruinous state. It is $1⁄4$ of a mile from the landing place, and from it a path leads to the sharp peak of the Island 1,000 feet high.

Another small ruinous temple and a few rude stone figures of Buddha, some on their heads, some on their shins or on their backs, point to the neglect and little interest now felt by the Japanese in their old customs. Large figures of the same god were lying about down below. I

title: Page:TASJ-1-3.djvu/27


text:
Page:Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons (IA travelsinwestafr00kingrich).pdf/730

 South America and India; therefore the native loses, and when he has cleared the districts reachable by him, the trade is finished there, and he has no longer the wherewithal to buy those things which in the days of his prosperity he has acquired a taste for. The Oil Rivers, which send out the greatest quantity of trade on the West Coast possessions, subsist entirely on palm oil for it. Were anything to happen to the oil palms in the way of blight, or were a cheap substitute to be found for palm oil at home, the population of the Oil Rivers, even at its present density, would starve. The development of trade is a necessary condition for the existence of the natives, and the discovery of products in the forests that will be marketable in Europe, and the making of plantations whose products will help to take the place of those he so recklessly now destroys, will give him a safer future than can any amount of abolitions of domestic slavery, or institutions of trial by jury, &c. If white control advances and plantations are not made and trade with the interior is not expanded, the condition of the West African will be a very wretched one, far worse than it was before the export slave-trade was suppressed. In the more healthy districts the population will increase to a state of congestion and will starve. The coast region's malaria will always keep the black, as well as the white, population thinned down, but if deserted by the trader, and left to the government official and the missionary, without any longer the incentive of trade to make the native exert himself, or the resulting comforts which assist him in resisting the climate, which the trade now enables him to procure, the Coast native will sink, via vice and degradation, to extinction, and most likely have this process made all the more rapid and unpleasant for him by incursions of the wild tribes from the congested interior.

I do not cite this as an immediate future for the West African, but "a little more and how much it is, a little less and how far away." Remember human beings are under the same rule as other creatures; if you destroy the things that prey on them, they are liable to overswarm the food-producing power of their locality. It may be said this is not the case; look at the Polynesians, the South American Indians, and so on. You may look at them as much as you choose, but what you see there will not enable you to judge the African. The African does not fade away like a flower before the white man—not in the least. Look at the increase of the native in the Cape territory; look at what he has stood on the West Coast. Christopher Columbus visited him before he discovered the


text:
Page:TASJ-1-3.djvu/28

 walked up to call on the priest, but he was at Sendai. The chief individual about the place was a little stout old man, in European clothing. He was very civil, and excessively fond of saki, for he kept sipping at a bottle of the strongest alcohol. I gave him some claret to taste but this he hardly appreciated as much as his own burning liquor. There are numerous beautifully clear streams in the Island, of delicious cold water. The coarse sand at the bottom and sides of these water courses is thickly filled with mica. The ancient custom allowed no women to land on the Island, but this is not now enforced. The deer which were grazing about the bare slopes as I landed were of old considered sacred; they are not so now.

I was rather amused when steaming across the Bay, and wanted to communicate with a fishing boat. I stopped, and, as the small craft passed close to the interpreter, hailed the men to come alongside, but, though only a few yards off, they paid not the slightest attention to him: he was dressed as a European. I then steamed after them, and got the boat close alongside, but nothing would induce the men in her to have the slightest communication with him. The fact was they did not believe he was a Japanese. I have observed frequently, that they lose weight and respect among their own people when dressed as foreigners. The natives about this northern part of NiphonNippon [sic] appear to me to be a variety of the true Japanese. They are coarser built, have higher cheek bones, are larger limbed and unmistakably darker, this latter peculiarity I take from the small children and women. The men, of course, being mostly fishermen and exposed to the sun and salt water, would naturally soon become very dark.

The north side of Sendai Bay is a low flat sandy beach: immediately behind this are rice plains running far back into the interior, so far, in fact, that their extent cannot be seen. Some magnificent mountains towered in the extreme blue distance, still retaining a quantity of snow on the grand slopes.

title: Page:TASJ-1-3.djvu/28


text:
Page:The Boston cooking-school cook book.djvu/584

 506 BOSTON COOKING-SCHOOL COOK BOOK

nately with milk to first mixture. Bake thirty minutes in a shallow pan. Spread with Chocolate Frosting.

Chocolate Cake I

1g cup butter 114 cups flour

1 cup sugar 216 teaspoons baking powder 2 small eggs 2 ozs. chocolate, melted

¥ cup milk 1 teaspoon vanilla

Cream the butter, add sugar gradually, and yolks of eggs well beaten, then whites of eggs beaten until stiff. Add milk, flour mixed and sifted with baking powder, and beat thoroughly. Then add chocolate and vanilla. Bake forty minutes in a shallow cake pan.

Chocolate Cake II

~ ¥ cup butter ly teaspoon soda 114 cups sugar 3/ teaspoon cream of tartar 1g cup milk Whites Séggs 217 cups flour 2 squares unsweetened chocolate, grated

Cream the butter; add sugar gradually, milk, and flour mixed and sifted with soda and cream of tartar. Beat whites of eggs, and add to first mixture; then add chocolate, and beat thoroughly. Bake forty-five minutes in a moderate

oven. Chocolate Marshmallow Cake

Follow receipe for Chocolate Cake IJ. As soon as cake is removed from pan, cover bottom with marshmallows pulled apart with tips of fingers, but not quite separated inte halves. ‘The exposed soft surface will quickly adhere to hot cake. Pour over Chocolate Fudge Frosting.

Chocolate Nougat Cake

Yy cup butter 3 teaspoons baking powder

1½ cups powdered sugar ½ teaspoon vanilla

lege : 2 squares chocolate, melted

1 cup milk le cup powdered sugar

2 cups bread flour 24 eup almonds, blanched and shredded

_ Cream the butter, add gradually one and one-half cups sugar, and egg unbeaten; wher well mixed, add two-thirds


text:
Page:Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons (IA travelsinwestafr00kingrich).pdf/731

 American Indians. Whaling captains, and seamen of all sorts and nationalities have dropped in on him "frequent and free." He has absorbed all sorts of doctrine from religious sects; cotton goods, patent medicines, foreign spirits, and—as the man who draws up the Lagos Annual Colonial Report poetically observes—twine, whisky, wine, and woollen goods. Yet the West Coast African is here with us by the million—playing on his tom-tom, paddling his dug-out canoe, living in his palm leaf or mud hut, ready and able to stand more "white man stuff." Save for an occasional habit of going raving or melancholy mad when educated for the ministry, and dying when he, and more particularly she, is shut up in the broiling hot, corrugated-iron school-room with too many clothes on, and too much headwork to do, he survives in a way which I think you will own is interesting, and which commands my admiration and respect. But there is nowadays a new factor in his relationship with the white races—the factor of domestic control. I do not think the African will survive this and flourish, if it is to be of the nature that the present white ideas aim to make it. But, on the other hand, I do not believe that he will be called upon to try, for under the present conditions white control will not become very thorough; and in the event of a European war, governmental attention will be distracted from West Africa, and the African will then do what he has done several times before when the white eye has been off him for a decade or so,—sink back to his old level as he has in Kacongo after the Jesuits tidied him up, and as he must have done after his intercourse with the Phœnicians and Egyptians. The travellers of a remote future will find him, I think, still with his tom-tom in his dug-cut canoe—just as willing to sell as "big curios" the débris of our importations to his ancestors at a high price. Exactly how much he will ask for a Devos patent paraffin oil tin or a Morton's tin, I cannot imagine, but it will! be something stiff—like he asks nowadays for the Phœnician "Aggry" beads. There will be then as there is now, and as there was in the past, individual Africans who will rise to a high level of culture, but that will be all for a very long period. To say that the African race will never advance beyond its present culture-level, is saying too much, in spite of the mass of evidence supporting this view, but I am certain he will never advance above it in the line of European culture. The country he lives in is unfitted for it, and the nature of the man himself is all against it—the truth is the West Coast mind has got a great deal tog much superstition about it, and too


text:
Page:TASJ-1-3.djvu/29

 I have little else to say regarding this Bay, except that I expected to find a much more rich and populous country than I did, especially about Ichinomaki. Pheasants and duck must abound in the winter, a few heron, gull (larusLarus [sic] argentatus), oyster catchers, (hœmatopusHæmatopus [sic] ostralegus), ospreys, (aquilaAquila [sic] haliœtushaliætus [sic]) and the common cormorant, were almost the only birds I saw.

On one of the Islands I found a most perfect specimen of the lower part of the trunk of a large tree, petrified in the sand-stone 60 feet below the surface. It was in a small cleft, where the outer portion of rock had fallen out. The large roots were clearly seen, and the position of the tree was evidently such as it had grown in.

A General Meeting of this Society was held on Wednesday evening the 14th October 1874 at the Grand Hotel. There was a good attendance. The Chair was taken by Sir H. S. Parkes, one of the Vice Presidents, shortly before nine o’clock.

The Minutes of the Annual Meeting having been read and approved, it was announced that the following gentlemen had been elected Ordinary Members of the Society since the last General Meeting:—the Rev. D.C. Green, Messrs. Kingdon, C. de Drummond Hay, J. Sichel, G. H. Howell, Hatakeyama, and Struve, B. H. Chamberlain. It was also announced that several valuable donations to the Library and Museum had been made, the principal of which, a model of a gold Mine and Works at the Island of Sado, presented by Erasmus Gower Esq., was exhibited on a side table and attracted considerable attention from those present.

The author being absent, Mr. Wilkin then proceeded to read the first of the two Papers for the evening, being the first of a series on “The Useful Minerals and Metallurgy of the Japanese.” The subject principally treated in this Paper was the manufacture of Iron and Steel.

The Chairman said he was quite sure all the Members and Visitors present would join him in presenting the Society’s best thanks to Dr. Geerts for his very valuable and interesting Paper and they would look forward with much pleasure to the future contributions of the series, which promised to be a very comprehensive one. He was glad to see many members present who were competent to discuss such an important subject and be hoped they would favour the Society with the result of their valuable experience.

title: Page:TASJ-1-3.djvu/29


text:
Page:Everywoman's World, Volume 7, Number 6.djvu/44

 PAGE 42

For Dainty Summer Desserts, use

BENSON'S

CORN STARCH

Don't take chances of spoiling your desserts by using cheap, inferior corn starch. Insist on

having BENSON’S,

Canada’s Standard for more than half a century

Write for a free Recipe Book.

The Canada Starch Co., Limited

Montreal

Fulfills Every Claim

No furnace can do more than satisfy— but the “Sunshine’’ furnace absolutely and invariably does satisfy fully and completely when properly installed. Ask our local dealer to show you this good furnace, or write for free booklet.

M‘Clarys SUNSHINE FURNAC

LONDON RONTO MONTREAL WINNIPEG VANCOUVER i st JOuN, pe HAMILTON on ear: 4

To ae

and we will send you aid a free sample package and just thirty-five large 16 packages to introduce BOYS | im friends. Open your sample package Rerey yourself and ask all your friends to try one. They will like them so much that every one will want a package or two at once. Just a couple of Fairy Berries will purify the mouth, sweet-

ea they

GIVE

BOYS—You don't need to pay the high prices they

il goods.

ing in the stores this Fear for base Weenies waeancees ties | mucimrmemmensieien oe ees heal eslta eather Helder's gloves a well padded wa frill promptly send. you, all charges paid, thecom MeL, ite eat eece'e u dendy pate of baseball shoes | andthe dandy rusbersoled baseball shoes, " ranteed for 7 ‘who earns an outfit. Every piece tp St nad sive optintnntion, wre yours toe you will

every boy thera gute ie faltace andl made ae, quickly advertise and introduce “Fairy Lae the Gew cream candy coated breath perfume whi every THE FAIRY BERRY COMPANY, DEPT. BB. 2

abow your grand get only three of them to sell our goods and earn our did. Write to-day, + Be first Serie on ieee saad see ee

‘TORONTO, ONT, ea

I am unique, and found it cold comfort, (I sometimes pick up Pinky’s books). For the first time, I made the acquaintance of the words neurotic and neurosis and did not care about them; also I got a glimmer on the subject of suggestion. I turned for relief to a treatise on Commercial Fertilizers. We found, by experience, that I could not speak one of these sentences "of intent." If only I could have had an option as to which one to use, the consequence might not have been so awkward. But some sprite of misfortune, some frolic pixy, perhaps one of the mischievous native spirits I met in Pinky’s theosoph magazines, seemed to have charge of affairs. Always it was the wrong sentence! Laughing over it afterward with Pink and Lenny was all that saved me from nervous collapse. Thank heaven for a sense of humour!

MAY say Dr. Ketchum had given out I was suffering from temporary loss of spirits, caused by shock, and needed rest. He murmured the word "aphasia" but Pinky Patterson said that aphasia, either sensory, ataxic, or amnesic, did not describe my case. She also reeled off a long list of words—varieties of diseases affecting the speech by the nerves—that made me dizzy. I can neither spell them nor pronounce them, but as she decided none of them would do, it does not matter.

I had a capable Deputy Registrar of Deeds installed, and, as I was not altogether dependent on the office for my income, I had no financial anxieties.

Three examples of the sometimes exceeding appropriateness—or otherwise—of my remarks, will suffice here; but you who have imagination, can multiply them:

One day Mrs. Billows, who was a most ardent temperance worker, came to solicit funds for a new bell for the Division of the Sons of Temperance, the Crystal Clears, at Billowsville. She had overborne the objections of Jane, my wife (a great feat!), and pushed her way into my private sitting-room. Pinky was in the garden and Len had gone fishing, so I sat defenceless and listened to her flood of argument. I am the most temperate of men and feel quite rakish if I even indulge in too much ginger beer, but she reasoned with me as if I were a rum-soaked profligate. A woman (or man) with a hobby is like a dog with a bone—they never know when to stop chewing.

Hearing a voice, Pinky came quietly into the foom through the open French window. I waved a signed cheque at her and started to say "Please give this to Mrs. Billows," but instead these words dropped like icicles into the air:

"Great Crimson Christopher! She has run amuck!"

Mrs. Billows has never spoken to me since, but she had the presence of mind to take the cheque from Pinky as she bounced out.

One day a rattly, country buggy drove up to our door. It was the mail-carrier from East Plumpty, and when I heard the penetrating voice of his passenger, floating to my window, I had a fit of goose flesh. Well I know the lady. Alas! alas! too well, for long and tedious had been her previous visitations. It was my great-aunt, Annabella Plumpty, who was the leading lady of East Plumpty, and had money.

She jerked into the room, barking her elbow on the door, as usual, as she entered.

"My dear, dear William," she said gushingly, "I have come help take care of you, and to make you a long, long visit."

From force of habit I began to reply, "Delighted, Aunt Annabella!" instead a groan burst from me, "Oh! my poor wife!"

I hear Aunt Annabella has left her money "elsewhere."

After this I refused myself to visitors for several days, but Pinky, Professor Wyse, and Len Briscom enjoyed so much my neat retort to Aunt Annabella, that I cheered up.

NE afternoon my wife's minister, the Reverend Wilberforce Stone, called, and Jane insisted that I see him.

I do not need to describe him, his name just hits him off. I am sure his mother called him Wil-ber-force in his cradle, I did very well that day. I was reinforced by the presence of Pinky and Francis Wyse. I listened to the Reverend Stone's petrifactions and made polite replies on my slate. I was so proud of myself, that my pride was my undoing. Such a wave of relief went over me as he turned his stony back in departure, that I went to sing out for the benefit of my audience, "Come again, Mr. Stone." Instead a clear, cheerful voice rang out, with a touch of banter in it:

"Good-bye, Bill!" and Pink Patterson rushed for a sofa pillow.

I heard Wilberforce said I was very frivolous for one chosen for affliction.

Perhaps Professor Francis Wyse comes in here. He was brought into my room one day by Pinky Patterson, who was looking as sweet as a spray of mignonette in a green sprigged muslin. She had met him at a Tennis Tea and, I judged, had borne him away from all competitors; and not trying one bit either! Girls like Pinky Patterson don't have to try. They just walk off, looking as though nothing nearer than the horizon interested them, and the Francises follow. Such eyes she had, almost equal to Uncle Lens, such apple-blossom cheeks, such a dear she was! I admired the young man's taste.

It seems Wyse was Professor of Psychology at Queen's University and was spending his holidays at Harmony Centre, He was extremely interested in my case, as a psychologist, and more interested, as a (Continued on page 44)

JUNE 1917

Garments, fars and other apparel are always nent,

wate and handy when kept in

White Tar Moth Bags

Wrinkling and folding is done away with entirely, and protection against moths, dirt and germs in. sared. Made In the following sizes—each with ® metal garment holder:

Size

Mxexu a0 x 6x40

Lavender Garment Bags easre PE Be, 9X B,...66 $2.0 Ea.

White Tar Moth Paper

in either pine or cedar, is unequalled for wrapping 8, ete. and lining bureaa drawers In roils of twelve sheets, 40 x d= Pine Tar 900., Codar $1.00.

It your dealer docan't carry White Tar, order from us direct, Write for free booklet on Mosh Pra- vention,

The White Tar Company Dept. 13 103 John St., New York

Don’t put your money into any

talking machine until you have fully investigated the Phonola—the machine that is all but human. Plays all disc records—and plays them better—positively without any scratching noises. Proof of Phonola superiority lies in the instru- ment itself—words cannot tell it. Call at local dealers and hear it.

pe pay mo duty. ices range from $15 to $250. Write for free de- scriptive catalog and our new cata- log of records, DEALERS:—

‘We have a fine prop- costion for dealers in

Unrepresented towns, ‘Write for details,

The Pollock Mfg. Company, Ltd., Kitchener, Ontario

Grocer Keeps Dustbane

Great

Sweeping Compound Kills all the dust and harmful germs,

reduces your work, and’ saves your furniture and carpets.

Tf you are not already a Dustbane user,

GET A TIN TO-Day


text:
Page:Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons (IA travelsinwestafr00kingrich).pdf/732

 little of anything else. Our own methods of instruction have not been of any real help to the African, because what he wants teaching is how to work, Bishop Ingram would have been able to write a more cheerful and hopeful book than his Sierra Leone after 100 Years, if the Sierra Leonians had had a thorough grounding in technical culture, suited to the requirements of their country, instead of the ruinous instruction they have been given, at the cost of millions of money, and hundreds of good, if ill-advised, white men's lives. For it is possible for a West African native to be made by European culture into a very good sort of man, not the same sort of man that a white man is, but a man a white man can shake hands with and associate with without any loss of self-respect. It is by no means necessary, however, that the African should have any white culture at all to become a decent member of society at large. Quite the other way about, for the percentage of honourable and reliable men among the bushmen is higher than among the educated men.

I do not believe that the white race will ever drag the black up to their own particular summit in the mountain range of civilisation. Both polygamy and slavery are, for divers reasons, essential to the well-being of Africa—at any rate for those vast regions of it which are agricultural, and these two institutions will necessitate the African having a summit to himself. Only—alas! for the energetic reformer—the African is not keen on mountaineering in the civilisation range. He prefers remaining down below and being comfortable. He is not conceited about this; he admires the higher culture very much, and the people who inconvenience themselves by going in for it—but do it himself? NO. And if he is dragged up into the higher regions of a self-abnegatory religion, six times in ten he falls back damaged, a morally maimed man, into his old swampy country fashion valley.


text:
Page:Ten Days in a Mad-House (1887).djvu/71

Rh noted, by nose as well as eyes, that they were fearfully dirty.

“Who are they?” I asked of a patient near me.

“They are considered the most violent on the island,” she replied. “They are from the Lodge, the first building with the high steps.” Some were yelling, some were cursing, others were singing or praying or preaching, as the fancy struck them, and they made up the most miserable collection of humanity I had ever seen. As the din of their passing faded in the distance there came another sight I can never forget:

A long cable rope fastened to wide leather belts, and these belts locked around the waists of fifty-two women. At the end of the rope was a heavy iron cart, and in it two women—one nursing a sore foot, another screaming at some nurse, saying: “You beat me and I shall not forget it. You want to kill me,” and then she would sob and cry. The women “on the rope,” as the patients call it, were each busy on their individual freaks. Some were yelling all the while. One who had blue eyes saw me look at her, and she turned as far as she could, talking and smiling, with that terrible, horrifying look of absolute insanity stamped on her. The doctors might safely judge on her case. The horror of that sight to one who had never been near an insane person before, was something unspeakable.

“God help them!” breathed Miss Neville. “It is so dreadful I cannot look.”

On they passed, but for their places to be filled by more. Can you imagine the sight? According to one of the physicians there are 1600 insane women on Blackwell’s Island.

Mad! what can be half so horrible? My heart thrilled with pity when I looked on old, gray-haired women talking aimlessly to space. One woman had on a straight-jacket, and two women had to drag her along. Crip-


text:
Page:Ten Days in a Mad-House (1887).djvu/72

70 pled, blind, old, young, homely, and pretty; one senseless mass of humanity. No fate could be worse.

I looked at the pretty lawns, which I had once thought was such a comfort to the poor creatures confined on the Island, and laughed at my own notions. What enjoyment is it to them? They are not allowed on the grass—it is only to look at. I saw some patients eagerly and

caressingly lift a nut or a colored leaf that had fallen on the path. But they were not permitted to keep them. The nurses would always compel them to throw their little bit of God’s comfort away.

As I passed a low pavilion, where a crowd of helpless lunatics were confined, I read a motto on the wall, “While I live I hope.” The absurdity of it struck me forcibly. I would have liked to put above the gates that open to the asylum, “He who enters here leaveth hope behind.”

During the walk I was annoyed a great deal by nurses who had heard my romantic story calling to those in


text:
Page:Ten Days in a Mad-House (1887).djvu/73

Rh charge of us to ask which one I was. I was pointed out repeatedly.

It was not long until the dinner hour arrived, and I was so hungry that I felt I could eat anything. The same old story of standing for a half and three-quarters of an hour in the hall was repeated before we got down to our dinners. The bowls in which we had had our tea were now filled with soup, and on a plate was one cold boiled potato and a chunk of beef, which, on investigation, proved to be slightly spoiled. There were no knives or forks, and the patients looked fairly savage as they took the tough beef in their fingers and pulled in opposition to their teeth. Those toothless or with poor teeth could not eat it. One tablespoon was given for the soup, and a piece of bread was the final entree. Butter is never allowed at dinner nor coffee or tea. Miss Mayard could not eat, and I saw many of the sick ones turn away in disgust. I was getting very weak from the want of food and tried to eat a slice of bread. After the first few bites hunger asserted itself, and I was able to eat all but the crusts of the one slice.

Superintendent Dent went through the sitting-room, giving an occasional “How do you do?” “How are you to-day?” here and there among the patients. His voice was as cold as the hall, and the patients made no movement to tell him of their sufferings. I asked some of them to tell how they were suffering from the cold and insufficiency of clothing, but they replied that the nurse would beat them if they told.

I was never so tired as I grew sitting on those benches. Several of the patients would sit on one foot or sideways to make a change, but they were always reproved and told to sit up straight. If they talked they were scolded and told to shut up; if they wanted to walk around in order to take the stiffness out of them, they were told to sit down and be still. What, excepting torture, would


text:
Page:Ten Days in a Mad-House (1887).djvu/74

72 produce insanity quicker than this treatment? Here is a class of women sent to be cured. I would like the expert physicians who are condemning me for my action, which has proven their ability, to take a perfectly sane and healthy woman, shut her up and make her sit from 6 until 8  on straight-back benches, do not allow her to talk or move during these hours, give her no reading and let her know nothing of the world or its doings, give her bad food and harsh treatment, and see how long it will take to make her insane. Two months would make her a mental and physical wreck.

I have described my first day in the asylum, and as my other nine were exactly the same in the general run of things it would be tiresome to tell about each. In giving this story I expect to be contradicted by many who are exposed. I merely tell in common words, without exaggeration, of my life in a mad-house for ten days. The eating was one of the most horrible things. Excepting the first two days after I entered the asylum, there was no salt for the food. The hungry and even famishing women made an attempt to eat the horrible messes. Mustard and vinegar were put on meat and in soup to give it a taste, but it only helped to make it worse. Even that was all consumed after two days, and the patients had to try to choke down fresh fish, just boiled in water, without salt, pepper or butter; mutton, beef and potatoes without the faintest seasoning. The most insane refused to swallow the food and were threatened with punishment. In our short walks we passed the kitchen where food was prepared for the nurses and doctors. There we got glimpses of melons and grapes and all kinds of fruits, beautiful white bread and nice meats, and the hungry feeling would be increased tenfold. I spoke to some of the physicians, but it had no effect, and when I was taken away the food was yet unsalted.

My heart ached to see the sick patients grow sicker


text:
Page:Ten Days in a Mad-House (1887).djvu/75

Rh over the table. I saw Miss Tillie Mayard so suddenly overcome at a bite that she had to rush from the dining-room and then got a scolding for doing so. When the patients complained of the food they were told to shut up; that they would not have as good if they were at home, and that it was too good for charity patients.

A German girl, Louise—I have forgotten her last name—did not eat for several days and at last one morning she was missing. From the conversation of the nurses I found she was suffering from a high fever. Poor thing! she told me she unceasingly prayed for death. I watched the nurses make a patient carry such food as the well ones were refusing up to Louise’s room. Think of that stuff for a fever patient! Of course, she refused it. Then I saw a nurse, Miss McCarten, go to test her temperature, and she returned with the report of it being some 150 degrees. I smiled at the report, and Miss Grupe, seeing it, asked me how high my temperature had ever run. I refused to answer. Miss Grady then decided to try her ability. She returned with the report of 99 degrees.

Miss Tillie Mayard suffered more than any of us from the cold, and yet she tried to follow my advice to be cheerful and try to keep up for a short time. Superintendent Dent brought in a man to see me. He felt my pulse and my head and examined my tongue. I told them how cold it was, and assured them that I did not need medical aid, but that Miss Mayard did, and they should transfer their attentions to her. They did not answer me, and I was pleased to see Miss Mayard leave her place and come forward to them. She spoke to the doctors and told them she was ill, but they paid no attention to her. The nurses came and dragged her back to the bench, and after the doctors left they said, “After awhile, when you see that the doctors will not notice you, you will quit running up to them.” Before the doctors left me I heard one say—I


text:
Page:Ten Days in a Mad-House (1887).djvu/76

74 cannot give it in his exact words—that my pulse and eyes were not that of an insane girl, but Superintendent Dent assured him that in cases such as mine such tests failed. After watching me for awhile he said my face was the brightest he had ever seen for a lunatic. The nurses had on heavy undergarments and coats, but they refused to give us shawls.

Nearly all night long I listened to a woman cry about the cold and beg for God to let her die. Another one yelled “Murder!” at frequent intervals and “Police!” at others until my flesh felt creepy.

The second morning, after we had begun our endless “set” for the day, two of the nurses, assisted by some patients, brought the woman in who had begged the night previous for God to take her home. I was not surprised at her prayer. She appeared easily seventy years old, and she was blind. Although the halls were freezing-cold, that old woman had no more clothing on than the rest of us, which I have described. When she was brought into the sitting-room and placed on the hard bench, she cried:

“Oh, what are you doing with me? I am cold, so cold. Why can’t I stay in bed or have a shawl?” and then she would get up and endeavor to feel her way to leave the room. Sometimes the attendants would jerk her back to the bench, and again they would let her walk and heartlessly laugh when she bumped against the table or the edge of the benches. At one time she said the heavy shoes which charity provides hurt her feet, and she took them off. The nurses made two patients put them on her again, and when she did it several times, and fought against having them on, I counted seven people at her at once trying to put the shoes on her. The old woman then tried to lie down on the bench, but they pulled her up again. It sounded so pitiful to hear her cry:


text:
Page:Everywoman's World, Volume 7, Number 6.djvu/46

 PAGE 44

reminder Lest you forget that box of

ALGONQUIN PARK

Ontario

A Universal Vacation Territory Grand Trunk Railway System

IDEAL CANOE TRIPS

A PARADISE FOR CAMPERS AN UNSPOILED WILDERNESS 2,000 FEET ABOVE THE SEA FINE FISHING

First class hotel and camp accommodation. Full information and illustrated descriptive fol- ders on application to J. Quinlan, Bonaventure Station, Montreal, or C. E. Horning, Union Sta- tion, Toronto.

¥

PLAN YOUR SUMM VACATION—NOW

Whether Sport or Recreation is your object—either close at home or further afield. The greatest variety of Resorts to suit all tastes and all purses can be reached

CANADIAN NORTHERN ALL THE WAY

For Tickets, Reservations, Literature and Information apply to General Passenger Dep't: Toronto, Ont., Montreal, Que., or Winnipeg, Man.

¢ at the TULLER for value, service, stot home comforts

New Hotel Tuller

DETROIT, MICHIGAN Center of business on Grand Circus Park.

Take

Woodward car, get off at Adams Avenue.

ABSOLUTELY FIREPROOF 2 Rooms, Private Bath, $1.50 Single, $2.00 Up Double. 2 Rooms, Private Bath, $2.00 Single, $3.00 Up Double. 100 Rooms, Private Bath, $2.50 Single, $4.00 Up Double.

1M Rooms, Private Bath, $9.59-$5.0 Single, $4.50 Up Double.

TOTAL 600 OUTSIDE ROOMS All Absolutely Quiet

Floors—Agents’ Sample rooms. New Unique ie "Cates and Cabaret Excellente

man, in my niece. But he was a nice fellow, though he did have such a foolish sounding job. I could not help wishing he was in the boot and shoe business or something I could set him up in in Harmony Centre. However, he seemed to "belong" and got real cosy with Len and me right away. He used to get new light on my case every day, and sometimes twice a day, and felt impelled to come right over from the hotel. Some days he had to come over for the third time and stay all evening, for he was in correspondence with other psychologists (it seems they are as thick as huckleberries) and wanted to read their opinions to Pinky. He used to laugh until he cried, when Pinky told him my latest, and I liked the honest sound of his laugh. Len beamed at him and I suspected Pinky liked him, and that was enough for me.

He encouraged me greatly. He said my body growing stronger every day, would help to release my brain from the dominance of the three Sentences. It was as though the idea that I could say nothing else had worn a groove. The thought needed to be swerved in another direction, but, so far, nothing of a greater impelling interest had occurred. Some day "a more over-mastering thought" would take possession of the brain and when I spoke, the obsession, the compelling, fixed conviction that I was unable to utter anything else would be over.

Well, I hoped so, and the days passed pleasantly enough, Pink and Francis, as I had come to call him, at his own request, were reading Theosophy together. He told me he considered Miss Patterson a most gifted and widely-read young lady—a marvel to find such an advanced person in a country town. One day they were on the subject of Reincarnation, and by Cricky! it was interesting; I think I shall be literary myself. I was supposed to be asleep in my armchair, but, in my dreams, heard him say, "I am convinced, dearest, that we have met in centuries that are past." I thought it time to wake up, so scribbled on my slate, and handed it to Pinky. "I am convinced, dearest, that in our last incarnation Len Briscom and I were twins!"

As newspapers say, the meeting broke up in confusion. The young couple retreated to the garden. I asked my niece, when she came in, what they had been talking about out there, and she said "of course, of our dear uncle," and ran to get tea, a very rosy Pink.

The change of thought came. I knew Providence sometimes comes in strange guises, but never dreamed it would come brindled.

It was like this:

I had gradually got into the habit of going to the office an hour or two every day. The Professor encouraged me to assume, as far as possible, my old habits of life. I had learned, to a great extent, to control the desire to speak. Much of my time, however, I spent in my garden. I draw the salary of a Registrar of Deeds, but on my heart is written the word garden.

AM an authority on early lettuce, strawberry culture, and slugs. Simp Cutter claims to beat me on green peas, but he is untruthful and a Conservative, My garden goes before everything. Jane says I put it before my Creator, because one Sunday evening when my plants were drooping I stayed home from church to water them. I could as easily have gone off and left a child crying for a drink. I told Jane I could worship as I watered. She said this was irreverence, but Pink understood and backed me up by quoting a man named Brown or Browning—I forget which—who it seems was Authority; this bowled Jane over for a minute, but she recovered and quoted Stone, who was her Authority. Here I find it very hard not to digress, almost feel it in me to write a lengthy paper on The Voice of Authority as a Guide for the Individual, but perhaps a pamphlet on the Extermination of Cutworms would be of more benefit to the race.

Even Len has to wait for my garden. Had it been the day to transplant my lettuce, I could have found courage to refuse the fatal invitation. Yes, if even Gabriel came and found me sticking my peas, I should say, politely but firmly, "All right, Gabriel! I am pleased to go, but these peas must be left in order."

I did not know that Good was drawing near. We seldom do. We wait until it gives us a hit, before we are aware of its presence.

I was creeping home in the mizzling rain, from the office, feeling old and blue. Something unpleasant had happened and my three comrades were not with me to laugh it off and my sense of humour was missing. The last straw (although he looked more like a stalk) was an Italian umbrella mender. I had an umbrella—of a sort—he persisted in following me, pointing out that two of the ribs were unsewed. I knew it. I didn't care. I preferred it that way. Nothing in the world looks so abjectly miserable as an umbrella with the ribs sticking out. I enjoyed looking dejected. I glowered at him. I shook my fist at him. He insisted, "Um-brell-a, um-brell-a" in maddeningly musical tones, as though I could not understand him. I went to snap out "I prefer it that way!" but called out lightly, almost banteringly:

"Good-bye, Bill!"

Then, as the boys say, he went tight off the handle. No, this is not a pun; I do not mean umbrella handle. I still cannot understand why this should have made him so mad, nor explain his aversion to the name of Bill. I recall him Singing off his coat, dancing with rage, threatening me with his fists, the gathering of a crowd, the arrival of the policeman and my hasty retreat.

"Is it never to end?" I asked, as I slunk low-spiritedly home, and even then fate was

> OO 0 9 0 0 0 9 eo 0 0 So

E 1917

Have you ever heard of a High Grade Phonograph selling for

$45.00 The Invincible

HIS beautiful cabinet machine, as il-

7% lustrated above, Mahogany finished, 40} inches high, 18 inches wide, 15}

inches deep with a high-grade double spring motor, Universal Tone-arm, and 12 inch turntable, will be ship) to you on receipt of your remittance for $45.00. We ship by express, subject to your exam- ination and approval, and will return your money, if not satisfactory and in every way a8 represented. The “Invincible” plays all makes of disc records. Its full rich tone will be a sur- prise, and a constant source of pleasure to you.

Order early; this is an introductory price, and with the present prevailing conditions in regard to material and labour, we may hot able to continue to supply the “Invincible” permanently at this low figure.

Write now with your remittance to—

Robinson & Co.

77 Adelaide St. East TORONTO

\

The Finest Quality Lamb’s Wool

DER

At all best dealers or will be sent direct on receipt of price und 90 extra to cover postage.

Maurice Levy, 15 W. 38th St., New York City of Famous Creme Societe Hygenique let Products.

Look for Lamb'atace incizebe on all Hyel enol Powder Puff

$19.00 Per Week

Do you want to earn a regular income—see page 50 and write to-day. rik


text: Ten Days in a Mad-House/Chapter 12

title: Ten Days in a Mad-House/Chapter 12


text:
Page:Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons (IA travelsinwestafr00kingrich).pdf/733

 as is the delay and difficulty placed in the way of the development of the immense natural resources of West Africa by the labour problem, there is another cause of delay to this development greater and more terrible by far—namely, the deadliness of the climate. "Nothing hinders a man, Miss Kingsley, half so much as dying," a friend said to me the other day, after nearly putting his opinion to a practical test. Other parts of the world have more sensational outbreaks of death from epidemics of yellow fever and cholera, but there is no other region in the world that can match West Africa for the steady kill, kill, kill that its malaria works on the white men who come under its influence.

Malaria you will hear glibly talked of; but what malaria means and consists of you will find few men ready to attempt to tell you, and these few by no means of a tale. It is very strange that this terrible form of disease has not attracted more scientific investigators, considering the enormous mortality it causes throughout the tropics and sub-tropics. A few years since, when the peculiar microbes of everything from measles to miracles were being "isolated," several bacteriologists isolated the malarial microbe, only unfortunately they did not all isolate the same one. A résumé of the various claims of these microbes is impossible here, and whether one of them was the true cause, or whether they all have an equal claim to this position, is not yet clear; for malaria, as far as I have seen or read of it seems to be not so much one distinct form of fever as a group of fevers—a genus, not a species. Many things point to this being the case; particularly the different forms so called malarial poisoning takes in different localities. This subject may be also subdivided and complicated by going into the controversy as to whether yellow fever is endemic on the West Coast or not. That it has occurred there from time