"OUR

UR conversation of yesterday afternoon," proclaimed Mr. Scrymgeour, "has given me fresh ideas for the lecture I am going to deliver on Thursday evening."

It was Monday morning, and we were assembled round the breakfast-table at Cedar Grange. Mrs. Beauchamp was engaged in a mysterious operation with sundry glass globes and retorts, as though she had been a chemical experimentalist. She was in reality making coffee on a highly scientific system, into which she had been initiated by the Philosopher, as an essential part of her duty.

When people can be sociable and pleasant at breakfast-time, it promises well for their amiability during the remaining hours of the day, and for their power of getting on well together. True to the traditions of our Scottish holiday, we were usually bright and conversational enough at this time, never silent and stony. However much we quarrelled, it was not at this early meal, when we were accustomed to meet in good humour with ourselves and the world in general. One of the party remarked this trait as an agreeable characteristic of our Symposium, which I now record in a digression.

"Your lecture? What lecture?" inquired Mr. Beauchamp.

"I thought I had told you," answered our host with dignity. "It is one of my Talks to Toilers' -a course of monthly lectures I am delivering to the village people, on such topics as Thrift,' 'Health in the Home,' and the like. Sometimes I get a magic lantern down from London to illustrate any subject capable of such illustration." "And what is your lecture about on Thursday?" we inquired, after suitable compliments.

"Our Daily Work," replied Mr. Scrymgeour. "Some of the examples we mentioned in our talk on 'Growth,' of men who have risen from the ranks, will be very apt. I shall expect you, Beauchamp, to take the chair, and the rest of you to support me in the front seats."

We had not intended to prolong our visit so far; but it would undoubtedly have been a bitter disappointment to our host for us all to depart, so we ended by agreeing to remain over another Sunday.

"I originally gave these lectures on Saturdays,"

After this we expected the schoolroom to be packed on Thursday evening, but truth compels me to state that there was only a thin sprinkling of an audience on the chairs and the forms. Our host, nothing daunted, surveyed us through his spectacles, and harangued away at much length.

My sister and I, as we were walking home in the dark, chanced to overhear the remark

"He's never done a day's work in his life, bless his 'art, and how can he feel for the likes of us? But he's a kind gentleman, and it's the least we can do for him to go and hear what he's got to say."

Mrs. Beauchamp, I must here confess, gently rebuked us, and with reason, for laughing privately at Mr. Scrymgeour. He was our host, and a very kind one, she reminded us, and these lectures had their source in a real wish to benefit the people among whom he lived. Any criticism we had to make-if at our age any were seemly-should be made to his face. We admitted the justice of her reproof, and I chronicle the whole incident, not for the purpose of ridiculing the Philosopher, but for the conversation to which it led.

After the lecture we had a light supper, and lingered in the library round a pleasant wood fire, reluctant to disperse.

"I must say," observed the poor lecturer, "I was disappointed at the scant amount of interest shown. I should have thought the illustrations I gave the people, of men who have risen from the ranks - such as Ben Jonson, Captain Cook, Burns, Hugh Miller, Professor Lee, Gibson, the sculptor, Dr. Livingstone, George Stephenson, Michael Faraday-to go no further-would have roused enthusiasm. Can you account, Beauchamp, for such examples as these falling flat? I would really rather you would be frank," continued the

Philosopher, as I live a very secluded life here, far from any one with whom I can interchange ideas; and you may be able to suggest what may be of real service to me in this course of lectures." Thus emboldened, Mr. Beauchamp replied -"What occurred to me, I confess, was thisthat the majority of your audience might feel the instances flew over their heads. After all, the men who actually can raise themselves right out of their daily work are few, in proportion to the vast number of workers who must do the best they can with their lives as they have them. Perhaps a few words of rather simpler advice as to how this can be done, would have come more home to the people here."

"There may be something in that," owned the Philosopher. "But, as a matter of fact, the vast majority of our young people do go away. They won't stay in the village, but go up to London to 'better themselves,' as they call it. And wretched failures some of them make of it."

"There is nothing for them to do here, I suppose," observed Mrs. Beauchamp. But on this there proved to be a difference of opinion.

Well," observed Mr. Waldegrave, "I hold it as one of my most cherished articles of belief, that a day shall come when no one, man or woman, able and willing to work, shall be without as much work as he can conveniently do. It is a waste to the State when labour, the medium which transforms the desert into the civilised society, is unused; a waste which should be, and ought to be, prevented, for the sake of the community itself, and also for the sake of the would-be worker."

"Not only because enforced idleness means poverty, but also because it means moral degradation," added Mr. Arnold.

"That is very true," said Mr. Beauchamp. "In these days, I think one does need sometimes to go back to the old, true thought that work in itself is not to be hated or dreaded, but is a blessing. It is the exaggeration of it that is the dreadful thing. The leisurely classes are finding this out. Girls at home,' when there were plenty of them and the home was wealthy, used to be the most devoid of occupation of all classes. But look at them now! They are insisting on work, and getting it outside the home, anywhere, everywhere, not for the sake of money, but for the work's sake, rather than be idle."

"Now," said the Philosopher, holding up a warning finger, "I thought you knew that was a subject which was tabooed in my presence. Talk of the Woman of the Future' when I am absent if you like, but do not bring her before me, unless you want to hear some home truths."

We laughed, but were obliged to yield.

"I have had a great deal to do," said Mrs. Arnold, among the class of women-workers who are not voluntary-dressmakers, tailoresses, machinists, factory girls-and I must emphatically say that the average of working life among them is very high indeed. The way in which they parcel out their time, and thriftily utilise the moments, is wonderful; and, if the work is not overwhelming, they are really happy in it."

The Philosopher readily gave permission, and Mr. Waldegrave read as follows:

"Two men I honour and no third. First, the toilWorn craftsman that, with earth-made implement, laboriously conquers the earth and makes her man's. Venerable to me is the hard hand: crooked, coarse; wherein notwithstanding lies a cunning virtue, indefeasibly royal, as of the sceptre of this planet. Venerable, too, is the rugged face, all weather-tanned, besoiled, with its rude intelligence: for it is the face of a Man living manlike. O, but the more venerable for thy rudeness, and even because we must pity as well as love thee! Hardly entreated Brother! For us was thy back so bent, for us were thy straight limbs and fingers so deformed: thou wert our conscript, on whom the lot fell, and fighting our battles wert so marred. . . . Yet toil on, toil on: thou art in thy duty, be out of it who may; thou toilest for the altogether indispensable, for daily bread.

"A second man I honour, and still more highly: Him who is seen toiling for the spiritually indispensable, not daily bread but the bread of life.

...

"Unspeakably touching is it, however, when I find both dignities united: and he that must toil outwardly for the lowest of man's wants, is also toiling inwardly for the highest.""

"It is all very well to say 'Toil on, toil on,'” I ventured to remark, "but how would Carlyle have liked it himself?"

"That is one thought which is significant," said Mr. Beauchamp. "The worker, man or woman, whose time is engrossed in toiling for daily bread, is not distracted by vain wonder as to what is his or her allotted path. There is no casting about for a 'sphere'; there are (if it be a woman) no vapours of a femme incomprise, nor morbid hankerings for some vague destiny. It is always a great comfort for a human being to have it said unmistakably, 'This is the next duty. Do it." And I believe here lies the secret of the cheerful content of the busy people of whom I have been speaking. There is no room in their lives for indecision or spleen."

"I have lately begun reading," said Mr. Waldegrave, "the Journal of Marie Bashkirtseff' What a commentary it offers on your remarks! Constant introspection, speculation, morbid selfexamination, self-centred egotism, outeries after this, that, and the other unattainable! It does one good to turn away from it to, say, the homely diary of a district nurse, where the duty is plain, pressing, evident, and undertaken in the serene assurance that it is of real use."

"Nurses are usually very happy people, I think," said Aunt Hester. "When they feel thoroughly mistress of their work, and are fully absorbed in it, I do not think there is any life that satisfies a woman more completely."

"Let me give you another extract from George Eliot for that," said Mrs. Beauchamp, taking up the "Sayings":

"Here is a duty about which all creeds and all philosophies are at one; here, at least, the conscience will not be dogged by doubt, the benign impulse will not be checked by adverse theory: here you may begin to act without settling one preliminary question. . . . As we bend over the sick-bed, all the forces of our nature rush towards the channels of pity, of patience, and of love, and sweep down the miserable choking drift of our quarrels, our debates, our would-be wisdom, and our clamorous selfish desires. This blessing of serene freedom from the importunities of opinion lies in all simple direct acts of mercy, and is one source of that sweet calm which is often felt by the watcher in the sick-room, even when the duties there are of a hard and terrible kind.'"

"I can fully understand that about nursing," said Mr. Waldegrave. "But I think also that the lives of hospital nurses are sometimes made unnecessarily hard. And with the other avocations of women, such as any kind of sewing, weaving, outdoor work in the fields, farm, or dairy, and factory work of every sort, is there not often undue pressure put on the worker? It often strikes me with horror that below us, so to speak, is a seething mass of wretched, sordid, constant toil."

Many of us assented in this view of the case. "In the lowest stratum of all I fear it is so," said Mr. Beauchamp, "and our boasted civilisation is too much like the Athenian civilisation, where the culture and leisure, even of a democracy, formed a pyramid whose apex was lofty indeed, but whose base rested on slavery, However, this is improving; the sense of the country, unlike the sense of the Greek republics, is against such a state of things, and the 'sweater' and 'sweating den' meet with universal reprobation We need not discuss those blots on civilisation now, as we are all agreed about their infamy.

"Non ragionam di lor, ma guarda e passa.' ("Let us not speak of them, but look and pass.")

"What we want to realise more I think is this, that the average level of working life need not, as we are apt to think, be low or degraded, but may be and is cheerful, blithe, and dignified with a dignity of its own."

"I think it is not sufficiently recognised," said Mr. Beauchamp, "that the leaders of mankind have been unaided by material wealth. Think of Socrates and Plato: of Epictetus, the lame slave. Homer (if he existed at all), certainly was not rich: David shepherded his flocks on the hills. The heroes of the world have known how to dispense with luxury. The covering of a tent by night, and sufficient frugal fare, were all that Julius Cæsar, that Wellington, that Bismarck demanded."

"Is not this a little beside the question?" asked Mr. Waldegrave, "for after all they had leisure to follow their own aims in life, and the choice of

"But at the same time it is perfectly astonishing," cried Mrs. Arnold, "how much can be, and is, done, even by the very busy, towards the possession of the 'life beyond life.' Let me give you a few items of information from the experience of factory girls whom I have known, taking them as types of a fully occupied class. They have to rise, as a rule, between five and half-past, every morning, and work till half-past five at night. But many of them are possessed of the finest instincts, and know the benefit of a resource in life. One said to me, People forget that we have feelings, desires and aspirations to better things, and that we appreciate the beautiful in Nature as they themselves do.' Another in describing her dinner-hour to me, said: 'In the hour allowed for dinner most of us read and sew. True, my dining-room chair is an inverted weft cane and I have to dispense with such things as Derby china and serviettes, but I have always the best of company to sit down with me; sometimes it is Lord Lytton who keeps up a brilliant talk on old Pompeii; at other times it is good old George Herbert who sings so quaintly and sweetly.' Another, after her day's work is done, described her hours of reading and writing. Many of them attend science and art schools in the evening 'opening quite a new world' one of them said. And to shew that the busiest people do the most voluntary work, many of these girls teach every Sunday." 1

"I should like," said Mrs. Waldegrave, who had not yet spoken, "to describe to you a village I knew well in my childhood, which seemed to me as near Arcadia as even a poet's fancy, though it was associated with work of no imaginary kind.

"Picture to yourself a northern valley, where a river flowed between romantic wooded banks. To the one side of the stream the descent was gradual and undulating, rich in field and forest; on the other the heights rose more steeply, to a fair and beautiful region beneath the sky, where rocks broke through the turf, streams ran red with chalybeate,' wonderful to my childish imagination, and an upland 'glen' full of beauty, cleft the moorland. Shall I ever forget that ravine, with its eddying brown water and overhanging rocks!

thoroughfare stood the church and a row of shops; on the opposite side was a large mill, the raison d'é re of the whole settlement. We always think of a mill as a gaunt and hideous building, but this was nothing of the kind. It was clean and white, and massive and imposing, and it consumed its own smoke!

"What that means in a manufacturing district you can hardly understand. But it meant brightness and cleanliness, and cheerfulness for this village, built by the owner of the mill for his work people. I used to see them at all hours, streaming in and out of the great gates in answer to the bell, the women with shawls over their heads

"And a far more sensible headgear than crushed and battered millinery," cried Mr. Beauchamp.

"What I wanted to emphasise," continued Mrs. Waldegrave, "was, not only the happiness, but the high level of intelligence and activity of the people who lived in this model village.' There was no public-house; there were baths, washhouses, schools, and every aid to decent and respectable living

"In fact, they were made children of, I suppose," snapped the Philosopher, "subservient and servile puppets to the mill-owner."

Mrs. Waldegrave laughed.

"Nothing of the sort," she rejoined. "They were fearless, sturdy, independent and anything but servile! as you would soon understand if you heard them talk for five minutes together; speaking of their employer and his family by their Christian names ! They earned their 'wage': and how merrily and cheerily it was earned! I had implanted in me very early a reverence and a love for the worker's life-and it was my greatest ambition to possess one of those trim cottages, with its spotless interior, the smell of baking bread in the afternoon, the bright hearth, the homely comfort

.6

"What I have been thinking," said Mrs. Beauchamp, while you were speaking, is this: Your particulars are most interesting, and I can quite imagine that, for those who live in the country, the essentials of a refined and beautiful life are near to their hand. For the truest essentials of happiness cannot be purchased with money. Not only have your work-people the charms of Nature, but there are so many social pleasures, so to speak, for all who lead a country life; the village horticultural show, the care of animals, the charm of bee and poultry keeping, the football and cricket, the rowing on river or lake, all to relieve and brighten the lives even of the poor; but in the towns what can be done of the same kind? More leisure is being demanded, but when this leisure (say in an eight hours' day) is obtained, how is it to be used?"

"You have hit upon a point which needs a great deal of thought," cried Mr. Arnold.

"The

working classes do not want to be always lectured' or 'improved.' They want a chance of escaping from their surroundings to sport and delight. Their simple social pleasures need vast multiplication. After all, now fares are so chear, even young men and women in the heart of London can escape to the outskirts for open air diversion, cricket clubs, and the like, if these are organised by people with sufficient leisure to attend to the detail. How much the bicycle has done to set the toiler free! But yet, how much still needs to be done in the shortening of hours, the lightening of the burden, that will enable the workers to avail themselves of means for recreation! The two reforms in the worker's life must go together more leisure, more ways to occupy : the leisure healthily and well."

We all agreed, and began to discuss one and another scheme for the pleasant employment of the leisure hours we saw in the "good time coming" for the overtaxed shop-assistant and worker of every grade. Clubs for men and women, when those who cared for it, could read, and pass pleasant hours of social converse; local Parliaments or debating societies; local associations of every kind for outdoor amusements, making it easy for members to get out into the country on summer evenings; swimming baths, bicycling clubs, were a few of the suggested improvements. We also recognised the value of social settlements, class mixing with class: for "social intercourse can best express the growing sense of the economic unity of society."

out.

In our desultory and general conversation on this subject of work, several ideas, not perhaps particularly new, but still helpful, were brought The prevailing feeling was that work, in itself, is such a blessing, that the wickedness of turning it into a curse by increasing it to the point of oppression is unspeakable.

"Our life is turned

Out of her course, wherever man is made
An offering or a sacrifice, a tool
Or implement, a passive thing employed
As a brute mean, without acknowledgement
Of common right or interest in the end."

But, when work does not mean this "grinding blindly in the dark "--when there is a sufficiency of the necessaries of existence, and a reasonable amount of leisure the essentials of noble and happy living are within reach. "In order to teach men how to be satisfied, it is necessary fully to understand the art and joy of humble life," says Ruskin. For the enjoyment of the domestic affections, the beauty of the world, the great thought of the ages, cannot be bought with money: and it is the "meek" and not the "rich" who shall inherit the earth.

LILY WATSON.

NTRIES in Latin, found in a note-book amongst records of scientific observations, supposed to be from the hand of Dr. Adrian Perrenot. The beginning without date, but probably written about the month of August, in the year 1577.

"It is needful that I write. There is no other way of getting rid of these people, with their everlasting chatter-meant for consolation! If they see me writing they will think I have returned to my work, and leave me in peace.

"Moreover, if I do not occupy myself in some way, I shall go mad. That would be horrible. I know how madmen are used-And then, to cease to be one's self and yet to continue living is a thing nature shudders at. But I need not fear that; for as soon as I begin to see visions and dream dreams, I shall know my disease, and my remedy. In a book on yonder shelf there is a certain page which holds the secret. Sometimes I ask myself why not take that medicine now?

I have no very distinct answer to give; save this, that it seems a coward's trick.

"It is needful that I write-but what? I cannot think, I cannot observe, I cannot study. I have tried all these-in vain. For lack of aught else, I set down the irritation I feel at the foolish talk of the people round me.

66

They tell me of winged angels, of crowns and harps of gold, of white robes and everlasting hymn-singing. Not in one of these things can I believe; and if I did, I would not care for them. Not a hundredth part of what I care for this little glove, crumpled and worn at the finger ends by Roskě. It is Roskě I want, Roske! Not a pale shadow, nor a dream, nor an angel, but Roskě. And Roskě is not. Those two words say all. If I were to fill volumes with lamentation, I should still have said no more than this-Roskě is not.

"What a mystery it all is! But yesterday, as it were, there was a little being full of life and thought and motion, a soul, a person, a new thing in the world, like a new star. Only stars do not grow, and Roskě was all growth, all promise and