Various

“ Let him be civil to all the world, but let him love me.'
'Quite so; that is only fair, I think,' says the widow, but she looks immensely amused; and Cissy seeing her expression, feels her wrath rising. 'I quite thought—judging from appearances—that you and Captain Halkett were very good friends,' goes on Mrs Leyton unwisely, and regrets her speech a moment later.
'I beg you will not judge me from appearances,' says Miss Mordaunt haughtily. 'A woman of the world as you are, Mrs Leyton, ought surely to know that people for the most part do not always feel everything they may look. ”

“ Watch the movements of the paddle-wheels of a steamer; the water thrown back from them is covered with foam of dazzling whiteness, the intensity of the white increasing with the rapidity of the wheel's motion.
In all these cases, and in multitudes of like kind, the froth seems to result from agitation; a quiescent liquid seldom presents symptoms of this nature. But agitation alone would not do it. Supposing it were possible for human beings to live, or for pints of ale to exist, without air, there would be no such thing as froth. ”

“ Aunt Isabel, at the head of the table, is radiant as usual, and dispenses roast turkey and smiles with equal alacrity. She is carving with even more than her customary vigour and well-known proficiency, while at the same time she is listening to and adding a word here and there to every topic under discussion. She is, however, particularly attentive to Miss Lobin, who sits beside her, and who is as deaf as a post; though no trouble to any one except herself, poor lady, as she seeks not for conversation, and as long as she gets a bit of everything mentioned in the menu, is perfectly content. ”

“ Cissy bites her lip, and asks no more questions; but Mrs Leyton notices the action of the white teeth, and ponders.
'There is a great charm in Frank's manner, I think?' she says interrogatively.
'Is there? Most men nowadays are charming, as acquaintances,' replies Cissy carelessly. 'And Captain Halkett is too universal a favourite to be altogether charming to one.'
'Poor Frank!' laughs the widow lightly. 'He is unfortunate; or at least has found some one who cannot appreciate him. ”

“ Without love, life is a mistake, an unutterably stupid gift. That is how I think; but then I am Irish, and therefore of course unreasonable.'
'O no,' says Mrs Leyton graciously. 'The Irish are the most charming people in the world—so light-hearted, so quick to sympathise. Though I have been here only two days, and have asked no questions, I knew you to be Irish before you told me. Most of my friends come from your land; even Captain Halkett is half Irish, his mother being from Galway.'
'Yes?' says Cissy. ”

“ There was not a moment to lose: a hole was bored in the bottom, to let out what water it contained, then quickly plugged; and all ten squeezed themselves in hurriedly, put on the lid, and awaited their fate. In a quarter of an hour after they were thus packed, the ship sunk under them. They first whirled round, and then floated off freely, and felt themselves rolling and tossing about frightfully on a stormy sea. The weather was intensely cold, so much so that icicles had hung from the rigging of the sunken ship the day before ”

“ I dragged myself towards the dressing-glass, thrust the damp hair from my brow, and stared at my face with miserable mocking eyes, as I reviled it for its want of loveliness, and taunted myself with not being able to keep a good man's love. ”

“ The colour of a liquid (not its froth) is determined by the transmitted light, not the reflected. If liquor be contained in a transparent glass vessel held between the eye and the light, and we look through it, the eye receives the light transmitted by the liquid, and deems the colour of that light to be the colour of the liquid itself; but if we pour the liquor into an open vessel, and look obliquely at the surface, we shall find that the colour does not deviate much from whiteness, whatever the transmitted colour may be. ”

“ An hour later I slipped noiselessly in at the cottage door, which stood hospitably open for me, passed the parlour, where I could hear Mrs Tipper and Lilian talking together, and stole up to my own room. Gusts of wind and rain were beating in at the open window. I afterwards heard that a terrible storm had swept over the country that night, laying waste the crops and spoiling the harvest in all directions; I only knew of the storm which had devastated my hopes. ”

“ When an enemy's ship is seen to be passing just over the torpedo, a shock is sent from shore, and the demon of mischief explodes. A self-exploding torpedo has the disadvantage of destroying one's own ships occasionally, by a mishap; while the others are with difficulty coaxed to explode just at the desired instant.
Six or eight years ago, the public were a good deal mystified about Captain Harvey's torpedo, what it was and what it was intended to accomplish. It was described as an oblong box, to be towed beside a steamer by means of a long rope. ”

“ Everything about the cottage bears the stamp of ordinary home-life; nothing is institutionised. Every natural social feeling is fostered and developed in this Home life, so that when the time arrives for a girl to go into service, she carries with her into her new home not only a practical knowledge of the duties expected of her, which fits her to hold her own among her fellow-servants, but the firm conviction that she has only to do well to get on ”

“ In pouring out ale or other liquid, the falling stream becomes mingled with a portion of the atmospheric air which surrounds us; and it also buries, as it were, the air contained in the apparently empty glass: the result is, a mixture of ale and air, instead of ale only. Under ordinary circumstances, liquids contain as much air as they are capable of absorbing; the additional quantity is expelled. But how? It cannot rise in a body to the surface, but divides into minute spherical portions or air-bubbles, which ascend to the top of the liquid on account of their levity or comparative lightness. ”

“ The rooms in which the girls sleep are plain and homelike. Small iron bedsteads painted green, and covered with a counterpane bearing the name of the Village, woven in the centre, occupy the corners; a washing-stand with basin and jug and soap-dish of simple ware, is placed on one side, to enable the girls to learn to use and lift such breakable articles without fear or awkwardness; combs and brushes are kept in a drawer, and a square looking-glass hangs on the wall, that there may not be any excuse for untidy appearance. ”

“ Family interest is encouraged in every cottage; the girls are taught to regard each other as adopted sisters; individuality of character is carefully studied by the head of the household, and as far as lies in her power, is trained into usefulness for the benefit of the whole community.
Every day, in each household one or two stay from school for an hour or so, in order to learn the art of cooking the simple dinner partaken by their sisters when they come home. ”

“ Porter, ale, tea, coffee, champagne, water, differ very considerably in colour; yet in all of these, when froth is produced it is white. This appears to be due to the reflection of the light from the outer surface of the several bubbles. When the surface is thus broken up, we have a cluster of little spheres, each of which presents a reflection to the eye from some part of its surface; and as there may be tens of thousands of these in a very small space, the effects become united, and are recognised as a whiteness. It is simply an aggregation of small effects to produce one more conspicuous. ”

“ The school-room education is sound and practical, and suited to the position the girls will occupy on leaving the Village.
An animated scene met our view as we turned into the square around which stand the various Homes. About a hundred girls, from fourteen years old down to babies only just able to toddle, were laughing and chatting merrily as they hurried along the broad pathway, and gathered in clusters in front of each cottage, glancing shyly at the visitors walking behind ere they disappeared indoors like bees returning to their hives. ”

“ When half-past seven chimes out, and the solemn retainer of the House of Mordaunt announces dinner as being served, both Major Blake and Captain Halkett make a hard fight of it to take Miss Cissy down; but Fate, in the person of Sir Thomas Lobin, interferes, and balks them of their prey. Halkett, however, may be said to have the best of it, as he succeeds in seating himself directly opposite his Irish divinity, and so can watch the changes of her beloved face, and perhaps edge in a word or two, addressed particularly to her, during the repast. ”

“ Nothing is done in the Home by forced routine. The older girls take it in turn to help to cook the dinner, to lay the cloth, to keep the house in order, and to imitate Mother in everything she does. Each small domestic duty is performed over and over again, till each child learns to be quite an adept at cooking potatoes, or cleaning out a room, or washing and dressing a younger one ”

“ Children sometimes ask, and men and women need not be ashamed to ask, why is froth always white or nearly white, whatever may be the colour of the liquid underneath it? To answer the question, we shall have to determine what froth really is in itself, and how it is formed. ”

“ In other words, ale having a greater specific gravity than water, and also greater viscidity, the bubble formed has a thicker coating, and requires a longer time for its disrupture. Taking the round of all the 'frothy headings,' we find the same rule prevail. In the spray from the paddle of a steamboat, in the froth on the surface of beverages, in the sparkles on a cup of tea, the air is in the first place entangled among the particles of liquid, and thus forms bubbles in the struggle to escape. ”

“ In these Homes every girl has a motive for which to work; she is taught to love truth, to be gentle and modest, and to give and accept the affection to which all have an equal right from Mother down to the youngest in the house. ”

“ A torpedo-vessel called the Lightning has just been built by Messrs Thorneycroft and Donaldson for the Admiralty, to contain two or more of these torpedoes, and to eject them one at a time against an enemy's ships. The idea is, to steam to a distance of a few hundred (less than a thousand) yards from the enemy, and eject a torpedo, with its engine, screw, &c. working, in the right direction; the head of the missile, if it dashes under water against an enemy's ship, will explode, and burst a huge hole in the ship's bottom. ”

“ Here the girls learn laundry-work, from the clean washing and ironing of a coarse towel to the careful goffering and ironing of a lady's ruffle or a gentleman's shirt. They all take their turn in every department of the work, not doing a set piece and then leaving it because the task is done, but taking an interest in the part assigned to them, and each one vying with the other in quickness and thoroughness. The pride with which they exhibited their ironing shewed plainly that it was no forced task, but a labour of genuine pleasure. ”

“ Take a filled ale-jug, or the well-known 'pewter' of a tavern or public-house, and pour out gently into a glass: scarcely any froth is produced. Pour out the self-same liquor from the self-same vessel in a stream several inches high, and you produce a foaming 'head,' which to the eye seems to be a substance quite different from ale or beer. Open a bottle of lemonade or ginger-beer, of soda-water{448} or seltzer-water, and pour out the contents into a glass; the formation of froth is so rapid and abundant that the glass appears full when it really contains but a small quantity of liquid. ”

“ The table is carefully laid; every article in the kitchen is{435} scrupulously cleaned; the rice, if it be rice-day, duly weighed, washed, boiled, and constantly watched by the eager pair of eyes whose duty it is to see that it does not burn; and then, when all, with clean hands and faces, are seated round the table, the little cook of the day has to carry the plates full of rice to Mother, to add the treacle or sugar allowed, according to the wish of each child. ”

“ Froth consists of bubbles, each a tiny globular portion of air, bounded on the upper surface by an exceedingly thin film of liquid; the bubbles retain this position and condition until the struggle ends as a victory for one of the belligerents. The ascensive power of the air within the bubble overcomes the cohesive power of the liquid film or covering, and 'the bubble bursts'—our beverage loses its frothy 'head.' The length of time that elapses before the air escapes by the bursting of the bubble depends chiefly on the viscidity of the liquid. ”

“ One of the special duties of the Mother is to inculcate habits of domestic comfort in a home on a small scale, and so to cultivate the powers of contrivance of each girl as to obtain the greatest possible amount of household pleasure for all. ”

“ On our remarking to the governor that this in itself was a great improvement on the usual habit of keeping the hair cropped, he replied: 'We do all we can to develop nice womanly habits in the older girls, so we make it a rule never to cut their hair, so long as they keep it clean and tidy; and we find the plan succeeds very well, each girl knowing the penalty she will have to pay for slovenliness in this respect; and as you see for yourself, they take care to keep their locks.' The girls are not dressed in uniform, which we consider to be advantageous. ”

“ The Mother gives her a kiss, and tells her to be a good girl, and they will all love her dearly; and in a few days the forlorn little one is transformed into something human and child-like. In order to become acquainted with the internal organisation of this 'Home' training of large numbers of destitute children gathered together from all parts of London, we recently visited Dr Bernardo's 'Village Home' at Ilford, the third and most recently founded establishment of the kind. ”