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suddenly, irrelevantly, and gratuitously informing the company, in a loud and defiant voice, that he would find a young smith, not twenty-one, who should fight the best man in that room for a hundred pound a side.

Much as I was flattered by this proof of my friend's confidence, I was glad no one came forwards. The auctioneer concluded.

"Now whom can I tempt with this lot? Can I tempt you, Mr. Dawson ?"

"Yes, you can, sir," retorted the still angry Mr. Dawson. "And I'll have this lot, sir, and my friend Mr. Burton shall have the next, sir, if it cost fifty thousand pound, sir. Now. And, if any individual chooses to run this lot up out of spite, sir, whether that individual has red hair or green hair, sir, I will punch that individual's head immediately after the termination of these proceedings, sir, and knock it against the blue stone and mortar which compose the walls of this court-house. Now, sir.

However, nobody, I suppose, caring to get his head punched for a whim, the lot was knocked down to him, and immediately afterwards my father stepped forward looking as white as a sheet.

"Now we come to lot 68, commonly known by your fellow-townsmen as the Burnt Hut lot; exactly similar to lot 67, just knocked down to the Hon. Mr. Dawson, as a site for his new country house. Now who would like to have our honoured legislative councillor for a neighbour? What gentleman of fortune can I tempt with this lot? The lot is up. At one pound an acre. Will any one bid one pound an acre."

"I will," said my father, in a queer, hoarse voice. I saw that he was moistening his dry lips with his tongue. I began to grow deeply interested, half frightened.

"Going at a pound. Come, gentlemen, if any one is going to bid, be quick. It is the last lot."

There were but few left: and no one of them spoke. The hammer came down, and I saw Mr. Dawson clutch my

If

"The land is yours, Mr. Burton. you'll be good enough to step up and sign, I'll be able to get on as far as Stawell to-night. There is a good deal of snow-water coming down the Eldon this hot weather, and I don't like that crossing place after dark."

Thanks to James Oxton's excellent conveyancing bill, lands with a title direct from the Crown were transferred to the purchaser in about ten minutes. In that time my father was standing outside the court-house, with his papers in his hand, with Mr. Dawson beside him.

"Where's Trevittick?" almost whispered Mr. Dawson.

"Go seek him at home, Jim, and fetch him here," said my father in the same tone.

I went quickly home with a growing awe upon me. Every one was behaving so queerly. My awe was not dissipated by my finding Trevittick, with his head buried in the blankets, praying eagerly and rapidly, and Tom Williams standing by as pale as a ghost.

"This is the way he has been carrying on this last hour," said poor Tom. "I can't make nothing of him at all.”

I went up to him and roused him. "Trevittick," I said, "father has got the bit of land he wanted."

He jumped up and clutched me by both arms. "Jim," he said, "if you're lying If you're lying. If you're lying

We walked out and joined the two others, and all walked away towards the hill in silence. The boys were bathing, the cricketers were shouting, and the quaint-scattered village bore a holiday look. The neighbours were all sitting out at their doors, and greeted us as we went by but yet everything seemed changed to me since the morning. I almost dreaded what was to come, and it seems to me now that it all happened instantaneously.

We crossed the low lying lands which had been sold that day, and came to our own-a desolate, unpromising tract, stretching up the side of the mountain

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WELL! here we be, woonce mwore at leäst,
A-come along, wi' blinkèn zight,
By smeechy doust a-vlee-en white
Up off the road, to Lincham feäst,
Bwoth maïd an' man, in dousty shoes,
Wi' trudgèn steps o' trampèn tooes,
Though we, that mussen hope to ride,
Vor ease or pride, have fellowship.

Poor father always tried to show
Our vo'k, wi' hands o' right or left
A-pull'd by zome big errand's heft,
And veet a-trudgèn to and fro,
That rich vo'k be but woone in ten,
A-reckon'd out wi' workèn men,
And zoo have less, the while the poor
Ha' ten times mwore, o' fellowship.

An' he did think, whatever peärt
We have to play, we all do vind
That fellowship o' kind wi' kind
Do keep us better up in heart;
An' why should workèn vo'k be shy
O' work, wi' all a-workèn by,

While kings do live in lwonesome steätes,
Wi' nwone vor meätes in fellowship?

Tall tuns above the high-flown larks,
On houses, lugs in length, an' zights
O' windows, that do gleäre in lights
A-shot up slopes or woodbound parks,
Be vur an' wide, an' not so thick
As poor men's little hwomes o' brick,
By twos or drees, or else in row

But we, wherever we do come,
Ha' fellowship o' hands wi' lwoads,
An' fellowship o' veet on roads;
An' lowliness ov house an' hwome;
An' fellowship in hwomely feäre,
An' hwomely clothes vor daily wear;
An' zoo mid Heaven bless the mwore
The workèn poor wi' fellowship!

CLAUS SEIDELIN: A DANISH APOTHECARY OF THE EIGHTEENTH

CENTURY.

BY ANDREW HAMILTON.

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meant, if ever any on this earthly ball, to live in the harmony and united action of brothers and neighbours), that I venture to beg all who will to turn with me from the present misère of war, wrath, hatred, and all malignity, to a few years of home-baked commonplace, embedded deep in the middle of the last century. The life of an apothecary of that period, in his shop in the quiet grass-grown High Street of a dull little town, or rather village, on a petty island in the Danish waters, will probably prima facie not greatly tempt the curiosity of most English readers. And I do not intend so far to outrage expectation. The fact is, this apothecary was a traveller in his youth, at the age when he had to do his Wanderjahre, and saw, in such proximity as was possible for him, some men and things whose figures have acquired a certain familiarity for us through other mediums than the eyes of a druggist's apprentice. But our apprentice, having healthy vision, took his own impression of what he saw, and, as he was at the pains long after to com

believe we should be unthankful if we refused to profit by his "Recollections."

Several learned doctors have of late years written laborious treatises on the rise and early progress of pharmacy and all things pharmaceutical in Denmark. I have read whatever of the sort I could lay hands on; yet after much reflection I have been convinced that profound ignorance as to how drugs were compounded and where they were sold in, for instance, the fifteenth century, need not interfere with our interest in the travels of a worthy lad who was striving hard to become skilful in the composition of drugs in the eighteenth. The truth is that the origin of what we should nowa-days call an apothecary's shop is, north of Germany, recent enough. Down to a late period, drugs of manifold ingredients were sent to distinguished persons from France and Italy, and, in course of time, stores, or magazines, came into vogue, in which both simples and compounds could be bought, along with wines, and spices, and other outlandish wares. Ladies and monks, as we all know, dabbled much in medicine; and a Dr. Gram has, in our own day, written a book-or, at least, an article-to prove that Paracelsus meant Copenhagen when he says Stockholm, and that the matrona quædam nobilis whom he says he saw or heard of there was Sigbrit, Christian II.'s "lady," who worked so successfully at

putation of witchcraft. It was not till Christian III.'s time, in 1536, that an apothecary became a permanent institution in Copenhagen. His predecessor, Frederick I. had twice over vainly applied to Parliament for the necessary grant. Once introduced, however, the institution spread rapidly. At first, the letters-patent granting the privilege limited it to the holder's lifetime; but before the middle of the sixteenth century such property had become freehold -it could be bought and sold, and transmitted from father to son, or from husband to wife. Hence the need of frequent inspections on the part of the medical faculty. Hence, too, the necessity that one son at least in a family should follow the father's profession.

Nothing could well lie further from the world's great highways than the petty island of Falster. It is situated to the south of Zealand, separated by a strait just broad enough to cut it off even from such claims to publicity as the mother-island may think herself in possession of. The population at the present day may be about 20,000, and the chief town is what we should call the village of Nykjöbing, although the geography-book says it has seven streets. Yet the islanders were not wholly denied the blessing of an occasional glimpse of some of those exalted forms which fill earth's high places. Nykjöbing and the country round it were a royal demesne, and had for ages been the prescriptive appanage of dowager-queens, where they were wont to pass their villeggiatura; and we may well fancy that the annual arrival of widowhood, in all its majesty, must have solemnized the natives not a little. There was also, as we shall see, at the period of which I am going to speak, an utterly unhoped-for glimpse of an even greater personage. such exceptions, life in the little markettown passed with fewer events, with bigger rumours, and with greater contentment, probably, than in most places.

With

Claus Seidelin was a native of Nykjöbing. There he was born; there he was bred; there, after his apprentice

of wandering-among Papists, and French women, and what not-he spent his easy, useful life, and married, and brought up his children; and there, in his seventy-ninth year, he sat down and began to write his "Recollections." In the following year he died. The manuscript is now in the hands of his greatgrandson, a parish priest, who has kindly placed it at the disposal of the Historical Society of Copenhagen, by which learned body it has been recently edited. I have chosen but few passages for translation; they will in great part require no commentary. They will give us glimpses of a certain society of those years, not, indeed, behind the scenes, but from the shilling gallery. Or, rather, they will take us up into the dingy lumber-room of a house now silent and tenantless, and show us Czar Peters and Friedrich Wilhelms, and other motes and midges of the eighteenth century, floating in the quaint sunbeams that straggle through the dusty attic window.

"Into this sinful world was I, Claus Seidelin, born of godly and honourable parents. My late father was the worthy, skilful, and honourable man, Frederick Seidelin, by appointment apothecary to His Majesty for Nykjöbing, in Falster, son of Hans Seidelin, Master of Arts, formerly priest and dean at the Holm's Church in Copenhagen. My late mother was the God-fearing and virtuous matron Karen, youngest daughter of Claus Iversen, sometime alderman in Copenhagen. And Copenhagen. And my birth fell upon the twenty-sixth day of January, anno 1702."

The baptism comes next, with five godfathers and godmothers. Then he goes to school, and gets nine floggings in one forenoon. What follows is pleasanter :

"In my tender years came his late Majesty King Christian V.'s widowed queen, Charlotte Amalie, once in the year to Nykjöbing by the space of three or four months, the palace of Nykjöbing, with what pertained thereto, forming part of her jointure, whereby my late father had occasion to supply

Majesty, as also to her suite. Now it also happened that my revered father did one Sunday permit a lad in our employment to conduct me to the château for my amusement, on which occasion we had scarce entered the outermost guard-room when the queen, rising from table, caused the doors of that apartment to be thrown open, and, followed by her whole court, proceeded to cross the guard-room. I, nowise deterred, ran straightway up to her, kissed her hand and the hands of all her ladies, and then, placing myself alongside of a dwarfwoman whom the queen had, thinking her to be a child like myself, I followed with the rest of the train. My father's lad had well-nigh swooned at his carelessness in not looking better after me; but the queen was very gracious, inquiring whose child that was, and being informed it was the apothecary's child, she opened a little closet in which she kept some orange trees and other fine plants, from which she herself gathered a bouquet-as they call it-and gave it to me, with orders that I should be restored to my father's messenger. When we came home, and related what had passed to my revered father, the lad received a reprimand, and my father said to me, 'It is very well, my son, that the queen has given thee a bouquet, but I had rather she had given thee half a score of ducats.''

"Anno 1712.-On October 18th it pleased God, according to His all-wise counsel, to remove by a happy death from this troublesome world to the glory and blessedness of His heavenly kingdom, my tender and pious mother Karen, Claus's daughter, in child-bearing of my youngest sister, unto the great sorrow and distress of my late father, myself, and my eldest brother, none of my other brothers or sisters being old enough to give much heed thereto. My honoured father was well-nigh inconsolable; for two days he shut himself up in his chamber to give free course to his tears, refusing to eat or drink, or speak with any person, until, by the visits and comforting discourses of our clergyman and

quit his prison, well knowing that it was his duty to submit to God's holy will, and that it lay upon him to convey the remains of the blessed departed unto their resting-place, the which he then set about with all the more diligence, causing them to be interred very honourably in a vault which he had but lately purchased under the choir of Nykjöbing church. He himself chose the text for the funeral sermon, as well as the introductory words, and subsequently begged Magister Zimmer for a copy of the discourse. I doubt not it is yet to be found among the books which I left behind me to my successor on retiring from business."

Two years afterwards the widower found consolation. His "dear brother" wrote to him from Copenhagen, proposing a likely widow there who had already lost an apothecary in the plague, and seemed not disinclined to take another. The negotiation advanced so far that the bridegroom proceeded to Copenhagen to arrange preliminaries, whereupon "their first meeting was very loving." Subsequent meetings must have been less so, for the project was given up; on which "he immediately sought himself another bride, a maid of thirty," and "the wedding took place in the house of his dear mother."

"Anno 1716, we had a visit, at Nykjöbing, from Czar Peter of Russia, called the Great. He came ashore in the middle of the night at a place about two miles from Gjedesbye, and had _Prince Menzicoff and a lot of other Russian princes and generals with him in two or three open boats. They all directly threw themselves on some plough-horses that were going loose in the fields, and rode into the village, where they stopped at the innkeeper's, who was also the village justice. Him and his wife the Czar turned out of their bed, and jumped into it himself, with his boots on, warm as it was. Meantime, the innkeeper had to see about the others as best he could; after which he sent a messenger on horseback to Nykjöbing to give notice of the Czar's arrival, whereupon every

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