Various

“ It is a winter morning, but the sky is blue, the air is balmy, and the flood of sunlight gives a Rivieran aspect to the stately mansions and pleasant villas that we pass on our way to the point at which we are to turn off and make our plunge into one of the strangest districts of London, a district of which its rich neighbours have no knowledge, although it lies at their doors. ”

“ Leaving McGill to "tumble to the racket," he walked to the mate's berth and explained to him that henceforth the Star of the South would go about as easy by day as by night.
"Then they're not dead!" cried Semple.
"Not by a jugful," said Ryder, nodding.
"This is very lucky, sir," said the mate, smiling.
"It's confoundedly irregular, too," replied the skipper, as he rubbed his chin. "Are you sure you knew nothing of it, Mr. Semple?"
"Me, sir! Why, I'd look on it as mutiny," said Semple; "rank mutiny!"
"It was Mrs. Ryder's notion, Semple."
"You don't say so, sir! She's a woman to be proud of!" ”

“ A farmer's pretty daughter is no match for a La Hire. And in any case you will not get her, for she is promised to that rascal Simon Mansart, who lives in the château on the hill yonder"; and Vétérin pointed through the unshuttered window, across the village, where the cottages bore a covering of snow, and the frozen road, to where a clump of acacias crowned an eminence. ”

“ I'm sure the palpitations I've had since I've known you are enough to blanch the feathers of any bird."
"But I thought you lived five hundred years," said Robert, "and you've hardly begun this set of years. Think of all the time that's before you."
"Time," said the Phœnix, "is, as you are probably aware, merely a convenient fiction. There is no such thing as time. I have lived in these two months at a pace which generously counterbalances five hundred years of life in the desert. I am old, I am weary. I feel as if I ought to lay my egg, and lay me down to my fiery sleep. ”

“ In Notting Dale the women are the principal wage-earners, and the district is infested with a contemptible set of men, who are loafers or worse. It is a common thing in the Dale for a man to boast that he is going to marry a laundry girl and do nothing for the rest of his life.
It seems difficult to realize that such a scene and such a street can exist within a stone's throw of a quarter crowded with the wealth and fashion of the capital. But wherever you step off the beaten track in London a hundred surprises await you. ”

“ The men were happy, for the fo'c's'le didn't leak, and the galley-fire was kept going every night to dry their clothes. At midnight every man got a mug of cocoa, and those that rose up called Mrs. Ryder blessed, and those that lay down agreed with them. The Star was a happy ship. There was no rule against playing the concertina on a Sunday in her fo'c's'le, and the men were not reduced to playing "blind swaps" with their oldest rags for amusement, as they were in the Battle-Axe. And yet every man in the Star knew his time for growling was coming on, with every pitch and send of the sea. ”

“ It is a novelty born of the desire for change. No longer does the dinner-giver merely prepare, with the aid of his costly chef, the menu for his guests and the viands on it. He—or, more properly, she, because of the present prominence of the fair hostess—tries not only to set a pretty table with flowers and cutlery of gold. The giver of dinners is ever thinking of that which will make the banquet memorable to the guest, and, in some cases, even wonders what the Press will say about it. This means to lie awake at night, and in such nightly vigils many wondrous things have been evolved. ”

“ As soon as our eyes get accustomed to the gloom, which is only relieved by a ray of [pg 546] light filtering through a small, dust-covered window, we notice that a tall woman in faded finery and an astrachan hat, and with some traces of refinement in features and bearing, is standing in the centre and chaffing the others. One or two smile at her jokes, but the majority are wholly indifferent, wearing that air of sullen aloofness which is peculiarly characteristic of a woman's lodging-house. ”

“ I will never yield this girl."
"That is unfortunate, for I certainly intend to win her."
"Be careful!" said La Hire, in such a terrible voice that the mastiffs growled and bared their teeth.
And instinctively, though he meant nothing, his hand groped at the hilt of his sabre.
Mansart half rose from his chair. "You forget my dogs," he snarled.
"And you forget the Prussians, who cannot be far off," replied the other; and when he perceived that the warning had a distinct effect he followed up his advantage. "You will have to take care of yourself here, monsieur, and yet greater care of your gold. ”

“ Oh! how fast imagination travels when left by its enemy, reason, free to roam alone! In my fancy I proudly rejected the princes, I rejected the kings, I refused the pearls and the palaces, and I declared that I was going to be a nun. For in the infinite grey sky I had caught a glimpse of the convent of Grand Champ, of my white bedroom, and of the small lamp that swung to and fro above the little Virgin which our hands had decorated with flowers. ”

“ Years of familiarity with the waters of the world-famed Niagara have caused Guide Barlow to forget what fear is, and he moves about in dangerous places without thinking of possible disaster. He is the oldest and best-known guide at Niagara, and people from many countries have crossed his palm with silver in token of care bestowed upon them, or in return for the kindly information which he is ever ready to give. ”

“ More and more do the centripetal forces at work in almost every nation make for the growth of the capital at the expense of the rural community. A century ago a million human beings dwelling side by side under a single municipal government was almost of itself one of the great wonders of the world. Men spoke of London with bated breath and wondered where it would all end. Reports of monster cities in China with a population double that of London were dismissed as travellers' tales. Travellers' tales, verily, they have proved to be, seeing that Peking even to-day has fewer than a million souls. ”

“ In pursuance of the plan the society's members are incessantly at war with each other. Advantage is taken of the rivalry that exists between ships in the Navy—and one ship's officers are usually pitted against those of another ship. At other times it is the Navy against the Army; and before now personal enemies have been pitted against each other.
"In cards and games you play for sport, but in war game you must 'play to win,'" is the principle inculcated. ”

“ You may see again and again that broken-down little front garden, with its stunted trees, strewn rubbish, and the little wooden, lop-sided railing that looks as though it no longer thought the patch it once guarded worth standing up for. On the window-sill of the top floor of a score of houses you may see a lonely, empty flower-pot that looks more like a handy missile in an emergency than an adjunct of window gardening. ”

“ High above one of the most notorious streets in the Dale tower the great buildings in which the children are gathered together and educated and taught the principles of right doing.
This is the thought that comes to me as, fresh from our pilgrimage of pain, we stand in the big playground and watch the little ones filing out in the sunshine to go to their homes. Some of them are well clad, the children of honest, hard-working folk who love them and care for them. But many are going back to miserable dens where there is neither love nor care, where there is no respect for the laws of God or man. ”

“ By an ex-Editor.
NE of the most thrilling occupations that a human being could follow in the old days—say a brief generation since—was that of editing a newspaper in a small American town. There was a fulness in the life, a feverish activity in the office and a perpetual spice of danger out of it, that made all other callings seem trivial. Things have changed a great deal in the past few years, but even yet Wild Western journalism can boast a flavour—a tang of its own. There is no other Press in the world quite like it; there is no similar body of men like those who engineer it. ”

“ BERLIN COMPARED WITH LONDON.
Berlin, a mere village a century ago, is the third city of Europe in point of population, and its growth since 1870 has been phenomenal, as we shall see. Yet the technical barriers which enclose the city remain precisely what they were more than forty years ago, and Berlin is still as it was in 1861, compressed within twenty-eight square miles, six miles long and five and a half wide. At the close of the Franco-Prussian War Berlin, now the capital of a new empire, became a paradise for builders. ”

“ The encomiums which Germany—the acknowledged leader of the world in music—has showered on Dr. Elgar have at length been reflected in England, which has awakened to the fact that to him at least that much misapplied word "genius" belongs by right divine. That awakening was marked by the three days' festival in the middle of March, when Covent Garden Opera House reverted to an old custom and for two glorious nights became the home of oratorio, with a concert on the third night. That festival is unique in the history of music, for it is the first time an English composer has been so honoured. ”

“ This is a street of black and battered doors, of damaged railings, and of broken windows. On the doorsteps here and there stand groups of slatternly, unkempt women. From the windows above a tousled head occasionally appears. Many of the houses here are common lodging-houses; but some of them are in the hands of the house-farmers, who let them out in furnished rooms at a shilling a day. We enter a room which is unoccupied and take stock of the furniture. ”

“ In an instant Beppo, a skilful workman, made a small hole in the wet plaster, dropped in the pearl, and with a few touches covered over the aperture once more. It was an admirable hiding-place. No one could possibly find it. But Beppo was condemned to a year's imprisonment, and in the meanwhile his six busts were scattered over London. He could not tell which contained his treasure. Only by breaking them could he see. Even shaking would tell him nothing, for as the plaster was wet it was probable that the pearl would adhere to it—as, in fact, it has done. ”

“ I do not know how long I had been dreaming thus when I heard my mother's voice asking our old servant, Marguerite, if I were awake. With one bound I was back in bed, and I buried my face under the sheet. Mamma half-opened the door very gently and I pretended to wake up.
"How lazy you are to-day!" she said. I kissed her, and answered in a coaxing tone, "It is Thursday, and I have no music lesson." ”

“ The rain-sodden, blackened stucco meets you at every turn, and when you have counted the twentieth cat sitting on a sill or a doorstep washing its shirt to snowy whiteness you begin to wonder why the local influence has not made itself more widely felt. Everybody inside the houses is washing for other people, everything is conducted with scrupulous cleanliness and under official inspection, but there are plenty of streets adjacent to Laundry-Land in which only the cats make themselves conspicuously clean. ”