fit. It had been very ill and had not eaten on the preceding day. My uncle concluded it was dying, and we lifted it off the walk and, the sun being very hot, we stuck some boughs of briars round it by way of arbor. While we walked two turns, it escaped from under the arbor, and by no enquiries could we ever hear any word of it again. Doubtless it had crept into the wooded bank of the river which was at hand in order to die unobserved-a singular provision of nature. . . . We are to have a fancy ball next Thursday. I am told there are to be thirty Queen Marys. Having a suit of court mourning which will pass muster without being much out of the ordinary way, I will be there to see what they make of it. I fear we want wit and impudence to get over such ground handsomely.

Lord bless your old aunt for bring ing you down to the lowlands. I hope when Mrs. Clephane, Williamina, and you come within the magnetism of Auld Lang Syne it will bring you on to Abbotsford. Oureske or Whisk (a terrier given to Sir Walter by Mrs. Clephane) is in great preservation, but hauden down by a very fierce terrier of mine of the Pepper and Mustard breed, hence called Ginger, which flies at it whenever it opens its mouth, and Oureske's Highland spirit being cowed by a luxurious effeminacy of life makes no play for the honor of her native Kintail. Mrs. Maclean Clephane may not like to hear this, but it's very true for all that. Do you know that I have two great faults as a correspondentone, that I never know how to begin a letter; the other, still more formidable, that when I write to those I like I can never end until the paper ends it for me. Like a stone set on an incline, I can never stop till I reach the bottom of the hill.

Sir Walter ever took the strongest interest in the pursuits of his wards, and, in 1824, he wrote at length about the preference shown by the youngest for drawing over music.

I don't approve of Williamina sacrificing music for drawing. The former is much more of a social accom

plishment; besides, excellence in music may be much more easily attained by a mere amateur than excellence in drawing or painting. A song sung with feeling and truth of expression is pleasing to every one, and perhaps more pleasing than a superior style of execution to all but the highest class of musicians. It is different with drawing, where that which falls short of perfection is not so highly valued. Not but what I think sketching from nature is a faculty to be cherished in all cases where nature has given the requisites. It encourages the love of the country and the study of scenery. But figures seldom answer, for how can a young lady acquire the necessary knowledge of anatomy?

Probably Sir Walter's judgment on this point will be questioned by many people. As a matter of fact, Williamina went on with her drawing and with the greatest success. When she was about twenty and living at Rome, Horace Vernet, the great French artist said of her talent, "Ce n'est pas la main d'une demoiselle. C'est un bras de fer." The later letters in the bundle before us are principally on business matters, or speak of episodes in Sir Walter's life with which those who love his memory and are familiar with his history are already well асquainted. The dark cloud of misfortune had fallen upon the evening of his days, and he was making the gigantic struggle to preserve his honor untarnished which was the greatest, if the most melancholy, glory of his glorious career. How his indomitable courage never failed, and how he succeeded in keeping his shield without speck or stain, are known to all, and the sad story needs no repetition or emphasis. In a letter telling the death of his wife, "the companion of twenty-nine years and upwards," he writes with the grief of a sorely stricken man, but with the most valiant patience and composure. In another, the last, dated 1830, he expresses to Miss Clephane all

said, 'Oates, there is a young fellow been over to see me about taking passage in the "Bella" to New York.'"

"'Well,' I said, 'you have a berth, and may as well make a dollar or two for the ship.'

"'Xactly,' said he, 'but the fact is the young fellow has got no money; he says he is well connected, has plenty of rich friends in England, and that a letter of credit is waiting for him at New York. But he has run through all his money here, is heavily in debt, and wants to get quietly away.'

""Well,' I said, 'that's another sort of thing, Birkett,' I says. 'You know well enough what the passage money to be paid at the other end usually comes to. However, bring the young fellow over to breakfast in the morning, and we'll have a look at him.'

"So next morning Birkett and the young fellow came over to breakfast with me, and he told his story. It was impossible to be in his company five minutes without knowing that he was of gentleman stock, and after he was gone I said to Birkett, 'Let him have the passage. If he pays it will be all right, and if he don't it will be only another plate of sole on the table during the voyage, and the owners need not know anything about it.'

"Birkett took my word and let the young fellow come aboard. The authorities at Rio were very strict at the time, and it was necessary for every one leaving the city to have a passport. Tichborne owing money all about, could not, of course, get his passport, and we had to smuggle him aboard. He came off in a boat the night before, and when the customhouse officers were within sight next day, for the last look round, we put him down in a hole in the cabin floor, underneath the table. The customhouse officers came aboard mustered the crew, and found them all right. "Any one else aboard, Captain Birkett?' says he.

"No,' says Birkett; 'but come down in the cabin and take a cup of coffee before you go.'

"The officer came down and sat at the table with his feet on the plank which covered young Tichborne.

When he had finished his coffee he and I put off. The 'Bella' made sail, and I never saw or heard anything about the ship till a few days later a bit of stern and a portion of the poop floated ashore, and told us she had foundered.

"When this blackguard (the Claimant) was examined in private for the first time, five or six years ago, he knew nothing at all of this. He tried to get out of it by saying he was drunk when he went abroad, and remained in his cabin in a state of delirium tremens up to the time of the wreck, Tichborne being, as I well knew, as sober as I am this minute."

The trip in the submarine took place in the spring of 1905. We were staying at Admiralty House, Portsmouth, the guests of Admiral and Lady Douglas, he at the time Commander-inChief. One day it was proposed that we should inspect a submarine in practice at the mouth of the harbor. Walking through the Dockyard to the Admiral's launch, we passed an interesting spectacle. It was the hull of the submarine "A 1," which, twelve months earlier, met with a fate that sent a thrill of horror and sympathy through the country. Practising under water off the "Nab" lightship in the Channel, she was literally run over by a mammoth ocean steamer homeward-bound. The liner's prow struck her conning-tower, sending her to the bottom of the sea with a crew of nine hands and two officers sealed up in a living tomb. Looking down at the dry dock where the wreck was dealt with we saw the rent in the framework caused by the impact of the great steamer. The Admiral casually mentioned that they were not hurrying forward repairs. There would be no difficulty in obtaining a volunteer crew for the patched up submarine, still retaining a name and identity made memorable by dire disaster. Nevertheless, it was just as well to let

the passage of a year or two blunt the sharpness of memory.

Arrived at submarine "A 2," waiting the signal for descent into the quiet sea, I asked the Admiral's permission to go down with her. He hesitated for a moment. But what was safe for sailors could not be perilous for a landsman. So he nodded assent, and in a few minutes I was snug on board. We had a pleasant, uneventful voyage. The hold, running the full length and breadth of the little craft, was brilliantly lighted by electricity. As in the case of "A 1," there were a crew of nine men and two officers, young lieutenants, in command. During the voyage one stood on the steps of the ladder leading to the conning-tower. The other was in charge below. There was nothing unusual in the atmosphere, fresh air being supplied from chambers storing sufficient for twelve hours. Nor was there anything disturbing in the motion of the boat.

As a matter

of fact the landsman was not conscious of any movement when the boat sank out of sight of heaven and earth. Nor did he know he was speeding under water, confounding the cod, hampering the haddock and other sprinters of the deep by making the record pace of eight knots. The only feeling approaching uncanniness was born of the silence that prevailed, broken now and then by whispered command from the first lieutenant in the conning tower, repeated by the second lieutenant below, and responded to by hoarse "Aye, aye" from the bluejacket lying full length on the floor in charge of the particular piece of machinery that had to be adjusted.

The first hanging at which I was present was one of the last under the old barbarous system which brought a mob to the foot of the gallows, clamorous to see a fellow-creature done to death. The convict was a young farm

laborer, who, after attending a Sunday afternoon service in the village church, lured into a wood a fellow-worshipper. a little girl eleven or twelve years old, and cruelly murdered her. In those good old times not only were executions public, affording early morning entertainment for Lord Tom Noddy and sightseers of lower degree, but representatives of the Press were admitted to sight of the awful mysteries of preparation for the gallows. Following close on the footsteps of the governor of the prison and the hangman, I was one of a group who stood by the doorway of the pinioning room, and saw the doomed man bound, not to say trussed. Across the waste of forty years I recall the predominant sensation-one of surprise at his stolidity, his uncomplaining acceptance of the operation as if it were an ordinary part of a morning's toilet. He assisted Calcraft to adjust the belt by removing his handkerchief from the breast pocket of his smock, across which it passed. An ox going to the shambles would have been more resentful.

The gallows were erected outside the county jail, which closely adjoins the railway station. For some hours passengers entering or leaving Shrewsbury by train, looking up at the prison walls, saw a dark object, some five feet ten inches in length, dangling from a rope, "the blue sky over him like God's great pity." It was the mark of civilization cut in the sixth decade of the nineteenth century.

Ten years later Henry Wainwright was hanged at Newgate, the execution being the last scene in what was known as "the Whitechapel Tragedy." He killed a girl of whose charms he had grown tired and whose affection for him had become boring. He was caught wheeling the body through the streets of London, with intent to hide it in the cellar of a house he rented near the Elephant and Castle. The

proceedings at the foot of the gallows were much more seemly than those attendant on the execution at Shrewsbury. The gruesome ceremony was conducted within the privacy of the prison walls. But there were present in Chapel Yard at least a hundred spectators. About a score were, like myself, members of the Press attendant upon an undesirable duty assigned in the turn of a day's work. The rest were there by favor of the sheriffs, who had delegated to Calcraft the duty, incumbent upon themselves by ancient statute, of personally conducting the hanging.

In one corner of Chapel Yard stood a strongly built wooden shed, newly painted in honor of the day. It was gruesomely like a butcher's shop, windowless, with a skirting in front. An iron beam running its full length about a foot below the roof added to the structural similarity. From the beam hung not a row of shoulders of mutton or sides of Christmas beef, but a few links of strong chain finished off by a hook. To the chain was knotted a stout hempen cord. It was looped, the noose thrown with a certain ghastly grace over the hook.

This was the sight that met Wainwright's eyes when, a door opening on the courtyard, he walked out into the cool morning air. Bare-headed and pinioned, he bore himself bravely, even with a certain quiet dignity. By his side strode a warder, leading the procession. On his left, slightly to the rear, with an air suggesting the hope that he did not intrude, came a little wizened man. This was Calcraft.

Many years afterwards the hangman called on me-I don't know why or wherefore and, in my absence from home, left his card. In the circumstances I observed with relief notification that he had "retired from business."

XIX.

"IN JOURNEYINGS OFTEN." Accompanied by Mrs. Lucy, an excellent traveller by sea or land, I have journeyed round the world, with shorter excursions to various points of the compass. Ever I was hampered by the exigencies of the Parliamentary session, whose arrangements not only arbitrarily determined the period of setting forth on a journey, but strictly limited the duration of the expedition.

The first time I crossed the Atlantic was in 1878, being commissioned by the "Daily News" to write a special account of the arrival and reception of the Princess Louise and the Marquis of Lorne, the latter appointed to the Viceroyalty. Here was opportunity of seeing Canada under favorable circumstances. Hardly had the GovernorGeneral and the Princess landed at Halifax, amid the roar of a royal salute and the acclamations of the populace, when I received a telegram from the "Daily News" manager ordering my instant return. War had broken out in Afghanistan. Parliament was hurriedly summoned in order to pass a vote of credit. If I took the first steamer I would get back in time for the opening day. No steamer was immediately sailing from Halifax. By travelling night and day through the snow-clad plains and forests of Canada we could catch a steamer outwardbound from New York. This we did; but it was not a complete or satisfactory way of seeing Canada.

Five years later we set forth on our journey round the world. Crossing the United States we took ship at San Francisco for Yokohama, coming back through India and the Suez Canal. The Parliamentary recess afforded only five months for this journey, a period one might have profitably spent in Japan or India. But it is wonderful what you can see and learn in five months if you keep eyes and ears open.