Various

“ He was a pet pupil of Ethel’s, this wee boy Lenny, or Leonard Mudge by name, as being one of those rare learners who seem to thirst after the fountains of knowledge towards which others have to be cajoled or driven. Day after day had the new school-mistress seen Lenny in class, the readiest to come, the least eager to leave, his bright large eyes intent upon the face of his instructress. ”

“ But poor Ethel became very tired as she wandered on under the aimless guidance of Betty Mudge, who was herself tired, and who could but guess, and that wildly, in which direction home might lie.
‘Ware!’ she cried, as Ethel was about to plant her foot unsuspectingly on an inviting patch of emerald turf. ‘Yon’s bog, yon is, deep enow to suck down a horse to the saddle-laps. Never trust the green, and the greener the softer, miss. ”

“ I’ve heard of moormen straying round and round, and lying down to die in a drift within gunshot o’ their own house-door. But we were on the hard path just now, so if we can but strike it again, we’re safe.’
They started, Betty Mudge perched sideways on the pony, which the keeper led; while Ethel, in spite of her protestation that she could walk unaided, was glad to avail herself of the support of Lord Harrogate’s arm. It was not all plain sailing, for so dense was the fog that even the experienced keeper was puzzled for a time, until his sharp ear caught the well-known babble of a brook. ”

“ And then, while Lady Maud eagerly told how jelly and hothouse fruit and port wine had been despatched from High Tor to the moorland cottage for the benefit of little Lenny Mudge, and how the parish doctor spoke hopefully of his small patient, Jasper looked at Ethel Gray with a sort of wonder, as at the most beautiful woman that he had ever seen, and the most thoroughly a lady, not even excepting Lady Gladys De Vere. But he said nothing, and lounged carelessly off with the party when adieus had been exchanged with Miss Gray. ”

“ On a bright cold day in April 1719, a travelling carriage with three postillions dashed, full of the importance which always attends a fashionable well-built vehicle, into the famous but not progressive town of Innsbruck. The carriage contained four persons, said to be going to Loretto on pilgrimage‒the Comte and Comtesse de Cernes, with the brother and sister of the comtesse; and as the aristocratic party alighted at their hotel, they created some sensation among those who clustered round the porch in the clear sharp twilight. ”

“ There are landscape painters‒even aspiring young Associates, newly elected, of the Royal Academy‒whom it would have greatly gratified to have been on the moor that day, and to have seen the fluctuating hues of the mist, here fleecy snow, there translucent silver, elsewhere such pearly grays as the colour-box fails to render, while sunwards a faint pale shimmering streak of tender opal stretched, like Jacob’s ladder, almost from heaven to earth. ”

“ But it would be impossible to conceive an accurate idea of Betty Mudge without constructing an ideal portrait of her that should depict her as gawky and lanky, a large-boned, freckled, well-meaning young creature, willingly accepting the responsibilities of a life of hard work and contented ignorance.
Ethel Gray, on the other hand, was a very beautiful girl. Beauty, as we know, is independent of its surroundings, and there is no reason why a village schoolmistress should not possess that dangerous gift. ”

“ The party walked on together thus chatting until they reached the village. The young people of the two great houses, High Tor and Carbery Chase, had naturally been well acquainted with one another from an early period; and the two elder of the De Vere girls were disposed to pity Jasper rather than to blame him for the recklessness that had brought about his exile from the haunts of fashion. But the captain knew that Lord Harrogate and he were uncongenial spirits. He did not like Harrogate, and he had a shrewd idea that Harrogate despised him. ”

“ We have said nothing of home Messengers, those who carry despatches to and fro within the limits of the British Islands. Nor indeed is there much to say concerning them. They are fewer in number, and less handsomely paid than those employed abroad. Under the system which prevailed before the reforms effected eight or nine years ago, each home Messenger had quite a medley of emoluments‒so much fixed salary, so much board wages, so much excess or surplus above actual travelling expenses of all kinds. ”

“ Warmth, and that kindliness of manner which women shew more than we do, did much towards bringing Ethel back from that death-in-life which excessive fatigue and chill tend to produce; and when the carriage was, in spite of her remonstrance, ‘ordered round,’ to convey her home to the school, she had strength enough to walk unaided to the door. Lord Harrogate had disappeared. The Earl had not as yet returned from some meeting of magistrates. ‘I will come down to see you, Miss Gray, to-morrow, if I can,’ said Lady Maud, as the carriage drove off. ”

“ I’m main tired myself. And what’s the use? For oughter we know, we may be going round and round.’
Ethel too was weary, so weary that it was with difficulty she could raise her voice to urge on her now desponding companion the expediency of a renewed effort. ‘Surely, surely,’ she said, ‘we shall, if we persevere, come upon some road or see the lights‒for it must be getting late‒in some farm or cottage.’
‘One Tor be terrible like another,’ returned Betty with a sob. ‘I got no more notion whirrabouts we be, nor if I were fresh dropped out of the moon. I’m no use here, and can hardly drag. ”

“ She was anxious on account of the vivacious little man who had formerly been postillion, and who was now riding far behind the carriage with his tall companion, to keep at bay possible couriers, who might soon be hurrying to the border fortresses with news that a prisoner had escaped the vigilance of General Heister at the Castle of Innsbruck. The two gentlemen in the carriage assured her that no harm would happen to two such dashing cavaliers; but perhaps the comtesse thought that to those who are safe it is easy to talk of safety. ”

“ Meanwhile the ‘long-haired page’ was busy at one of the side-doors of the castle, where he was often wont to converse with the sentinel on duty.
‘I don’t envy you your trade, Martin,’ he said, standing within the porch, to the hapless soldier pacing up and down in the keen wind. ‘Glory is one thing and comfort another; but after all, very often no one hears of the glory, whereas the comfort is a tangible benefit. ”

“ It is Miss Gray from{54} the village, if I am not mistaken.‒You must let me see you safely off the moor. I live near, at High Tor; though I daresay you do not know me, Miss Gray. I have seen you at church.’
‘Yes, I know you, Lord Harrogate,’ returned Ethel, trying to rise, but sinking back fainting and giddy on her rocky seat. ‘I am sorry to give you trouble, but’‒‒ Her voice failed her, and her eyes seemed to be darkened. The quick revulsion of feeling, from what was all but sheer despair to the consciousness of being saved, had intensified the effects of great physical fatigue. ”

“ An employé once charged with the message, the instrument has already lost one of its principal advantages, for that employé must read the message, and pronounce it to his correspondent; but if the message is written in a foreign language, the impracticability is evident. Lastly, the telegraph administrations now possess instruments which permit them to send messages with much greater speed than can be attained in sending them by the voice. Those reasons alone, and there are many others, ought then to assure the employés that this new invention will not put in peril their means of existence. ”

“ Engineers who contend that none but neutralised{63} liquid sewage should pass into a river are manifestly in the right. To discharge the solids is a waste as well as a mischief; and if it goes on, the whole of the land will some day be utterly starved for want of nitrogen. Some theorists argue that it won’t pay to attempt to convert the solids into a fertilising material. The answer to this is the experience gained at Aylesbury, where the solid part of the town sewage is separated from the liquid by precipitation ”

“ Ordinary gas is passed as good if it contains not more than twenty-five grains of sulphur to the hundred feet: the quantity in the new gas is less than three grains. We are told that the cost of manufacture is not more than eighteenpence the thousand cubic feet, that it does not require skilled labour, that in consequence of its freedom from smell it could be carried on in a ship or in a house, while its simplicity renders it applicable to villages where at present there are no public lights. ”

“ All the lamps are connected by wires overhead or underground; to each burner is fitted an electro-magnet composed of a coil of wire round a soft iron core, and above it hangs a movable magnet. The ends of the connecting wires are attached to or detached from a battery at pleasure. When the gas is to be lighted, a current is sent through the wires; the electro-magnet on each burner is excited; the movable magnet swings round, and turns on the gas; a current from a powerful coil is then sent through the wires, and produces a spark at each burner, and thereby lights the gas. ”

“ A telephone has no advantage over a speaking-tube within the distances where a tube is available. Moreover the needlessly high price at which it is to be sold will be an effectual bar to its general use. To ask thirty-five pounds and twenty-five pounds for an article that could be sold at a profit for so many shillings, is not and ought not to be the way to commercial success. ”

“ We’ll win through it.’
And indeed a short half-hour brought the party to the firm high-road, with the gates of High Tor Park, topped by their stone wyverns, within sight. Betty Mudge, who announced herself as having an aunt in the village at whose cottage she could pass the night, was despatched under convoy to that relative’s abode. But Ethel Grey looked so worn and ill, that Lord Harrogate insisted on her retaining his arm up the carriage-drive leading to the house, where she could receive the attention her state required. ”

“ Complaints that ordinary gas-light is not so brilliant as it ought to be, are often heard, and not without reason. The Pure Carbon Gas Company claim for their gas that it is not open to the objections urged against other gas. The process of manufacture has the merit of being very simple, and free from the usual noxious results. ”

“ I don’t often bore listeners who have never been in India, with the details of my eastern experiences, else I think that the name of Major‒or Captain‒George Willis would be tolerably familiar here.’
That the girls, in their newly awakened interest, should ask questions was but natural. But their father had not very much beyond the substance of his original announcement to communicate. He had, he said, but a vague recollection of Mrs Willis, his friend’s wife, a bride when Sir Sykes returned to Europe, and who had now been dead for some years. ”

“ It leaves behind as waste liquid a large quantity of a certain chloride, which turns out to be excellent for the precipitation of sewage. Hence it appears that nature and science combine to shew how the fertility of the land and the free channels of rivers may alike be maintained. The process has been patented in this country, and if all go well we may hope, in time, to hear that the sewage of London, instead of filling up the bed of the Thames, is increasing the fruitfulness of fields, gardens, and meadows in Essex and Kent. ”

“ He draws attention to the varied qualifications necessary to any one who fills this office: ‘No man, be he who he may, who holds the post of one of Her Majesty’s foreign Messengers, and who must, for the due performance of the constant and arduous duties intrusted to him, be acquainted with foreign languages, but must obtain much knowledge by the wayside, impracticable if not impossible to the holiday traveller’‒which all becomes essentially serviceable to him in subsequent journeys. ”

“ Her only fear was that she should be missed from the castle before she had got clear of Innsbruck. But matters were too well arranged for so speedy a termination of the romance. By two o’clock of the windy spring morning the travelling carriage was ready, the Tyrolese landlord and landlady little suspecting, as they sped their parting guests, that the second lady who entered it in cloak and mask was any other than that sister of the Comtesse de Cernes who had arrived four days before. ”

“ The only explanation, I think, which can be given of so strange an occurrence is that the male mouse, knowing by instinct the condition of his mate, provided for her wants by bringing to her the materials for her nest, which she pulled in through close wires, and supplied her with food, while he allowed all the others‒the non-related captives‒to starve to death. ”

“ In consequence of the accelerated rate of travelling by railway, they are rarely kept out of bed as formerly, for six, eight, ten, or even more nights; and even when they are travelling at night, they are almost always able to enjoy uninterrupted rest, instead of being obliged, as formerly, to be constantly on the alert, in order to stimulate the exertions of postillions and owner.’
The salary was subsequently settled by making the amount five hundred guineas instead of pounds. ”

“ If a well be dug at the spot where the quivering appears, a supply of water will, as is said, there be found. And as regards the influence of trees on moisture, careful observation has confirmed the theory that more rain falls on forests than on open plains; and comparing different kinds of trees it is found that the pine tribe get more water and retain more than leafy trees. ”