I am sorry to have caused you or yours any annoyance. Good-night to you.-Fall in, men! And away they went. But my Grandfather Thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.' A man's duties and every-day work would in many gave up the trade after that and sold the cementing friendshiases preclude him from lugger. Grandmamma paused, and looked at Grandpapa with a smile. 'And did you never see the lieutenant again after that?' inquired a bright girl of fourteen, with long brown hair, probably like what Grandmamma's once was. 'My dear,' said Grandpapa, 'I was the lieutenant.' A WORD OR TWO UPON FRIENDSHIP. FRANCIS BACON closes his essay on Friendship by saying that 'where a man cannot fitly play his own part, if he have not a friend, he may quit the stage. We cannot conceive a more wretched existence than to be entirely without friends. Unhappy indeed must that man be whose life has become so depraved and selfish, that in counting up all his acquaintance, the reflection forces itself on him: 'I have not a friend in the world.' Well indeed may Bacon say he may quit the stage.' He that would have friends, must show himself friendly; and therefore, if it chance that any read this who are inclined to say, 'I have no friends,' let them be sure that the fault is, as likely as not, entirely theirs, and not that of the multitude around them. such a Men are too apt to lament over the fickleness of friendship, which indeed is deeply to be deplored; yet in nine cases out of ten, if inquired into, it will be seen that this was due to their own fault in choosing such a friend, or to their own indiscreet actions subsequently. The first and most important step is in the choice of friends; and for this, it is very necessary that one should consider the object of friendship, and prove slowly-step by step-that there is communion of feeling and unity of purpose as can alone make friendship firm and lasting. If we desire to form a friendship for some particular object that we have in view, but cannot otherwise obtain, then our motive is unworthy, and we must not be surprised at finding a sudden cessation of the friendship before that object is gained. As friendship is slow in its growth, so it should be tough and lasting in its endurance; and there should be the greatest charity and forbearance on both sides ere one link of the golden chain which binds it is rudely snapped asunder. * I The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, ab Grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel; But do not dull thy palm with entertainment Of each new-hatched, unfledged comrade. Friends should be few-that is, those whom we would retain as bosom-friends; and they should be those on whom we can depend, for some firm and solid reason other than a mere sentiment, which may be changed and altered by more powerful motives; for any feeling that is based on sentiment only, and has no solid reasons to support it, must in time alter as that fact becomes apparent. There are few who can enter into the deep and earnest friendship which David so feelingly describes as between him and Jonathan: so close and sacred a character. Time or opportunity might not admit of his communicating and interchanging thoughts, feelings, and ideas which would be necessary to insure and foster them. But he may be on terms of friendship in different stages and degrees with every fellow-creature with whom he comes in contact. It is not too much to say that there is some spark of goodness even in the most degraded of our race, and therefore it should be the anxious endeavour of everyone desirous of obtaining friendship to find the common ground of association between himself and his fellow-man; to claim it and cherish it, and gain a friend on that one ground, if all beside should proclaim rather an enmity-but which a friendly nature would be careful not to declare in an unfriendly way. So in all our troubles and cares, our anxieties and misfortunes, our pleasures, our joys, our successes, we would have a multitude of sympathising friends; and they would be real friends in the degree that we have thoughts in common; and by the common tie and feeling we could always claim them. We should not mistake as friends mere acquaintances of whom we know nothing; or familiar faces. The chances are that there are many whose names we do not even know, more firmly united to us in friendship by the bonds of common feeling, hopes, and inspirations, than those to whom we are accustomed to bid good-morrow. True friendship is a noble thing, and there are many instances of its perfection. We Some one may say: But what is the use of friendship? It is this--the intermingling of ideas and affections with each other, which, if fully carried out, would bind humanity with an encircling cord, rendering wars and tumults impossible, and the diffusion of the arts of peace and domestic comfort more practicable. In the narrower sphere of individuals, as Bacon says, "It is the ease and discharge of the fullness and swellings of the heart, which passions of all kinds cause and induce; for as there are diseases of stoppings and suffocations most dangerous to the body, so are there also to the mind. take medicine for the one; but no receipt openeth the heart like a true friend, to whom you may impart griefs, joys, fears, hopes, suspicions, counsels, and whatever lies upon the heart to oppress it, in a kind of civil shrift or confession. The loss of fortune often is the forerunner of the loss of 'friends,' so called, but who in reality are none; merely attendants on fortune, and for whom, if we acted wisely, we should have no other feeling except of pity. And to guard against such disaster, let us remember that it is not the fawning professor who is most likely to prove the friend in need.' Friendship real and true is that which suffers even death for its friend; that no hardship or trial or adversity can shake off, using plain and outspoken admonitions and warnings in prosperity, and kind and gentle advice and assistance in adversity. Printed and Published by W. & R. CHAMBERS, 47 Pater noster Row, LONDON, and 339 High Street, EDINBURGH All Rights Reserved. CHAMBERS'S JOURNAL OF POPULAR LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART. CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS. No. 986.-VOL. XIX. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1882. INFERIOR SOCIETY. WE suppose there are few persons who do not believe in the deteriorating influence of inferior society. Even the thoughtless, if made for a moment to think, and the vain, who love to be associated with flatterers, would, if urged to confession, admit the evil they often so heedlessly encounter. But what is inferior society? That is the question which has to be considered, detached from all its surroundings, and finally answered, before we can arrive at definite conclusions to help us forward. Certain democratic writers of fiction are rather fond of choosing for their heroes and heroines low-born persons, often the mere waifs of society, endowing them with almost superhuman virtues, and a strength of purpose and of innate rectitude which enables them to triumph over all evil temptations, and win for themselves an exalted and honourable position. Far be it from us to say that there have not been such careers as these novelists indicate, bright examples of what can be done under difficulties; but if they were the ordinary rule of circumstances, there would be little need of schools and reformatories, and of the elaborate machinery which governments and individuals put in force to educate and civilise and elevate a nation. Perhaps only those who have been brought into contact with that most forlorn of all created things, 'a neglected child,' can estimate how much we all owe to early training, to the fostering of good instincts, and the crushing out of evil ones, and can comprehend the terrible disadvantage at which the very ignorant are placed. But the ignorant man or woman who has sense enough to be aware of his or her ignorance, and who eagerly takes advantage of every opportunity of enlightenment, ought not to be classed with those who exert a deteriorating influence when brought into contact with their superiors. On the contrary, such individuals often stimulate for good those to whom they look up for guidance. There could be no learning or moral progress in the PRICE 1d world, if there were not a certain association of teacher and pupil, of the wise and the foolish, the good and the bad. Now, as in most lives a vast amount of knowledge is almost unconsciously acquired, and surrounding influences go far to mould character, the mingling of different orders of mind to which we have alluded is a great boon to the inferior ones-it is their chance of moral and mental improvement. But there is a danger to the socalled superiors, if their superiority is more apparent than real. Every one has heard the story of the parrot which, having learned on board ship a number of oaths and vulgar phrases, terribly shocked the lady to whom it had been consigned as a present. But the bird was a beautiful creature; and the owner desiring that it should be trained to speak with propriety, sent it to keep company with a more carefully educated parrot belonging to a friend, in the hope that the stranger would forget its oaths and sailors' jargon and acquire a different vocabulary. Alas for the result! The new arrival quickly contaminated the other bird, which learned the objectionable phrases that were so much deplored, without imparting its own pretty little speeches and snatches of song to the culprit. Perhaps if the indecorous bird had been introduced to two or three properly conducted parrots, instead of to only one, the good influence would have been strong enough to prevail, and the offender might have become a reformed character, instead of the corrupter of another. This old story of the two parrots has always seemed to us to point a moral, and show how necessary it is that in organising our society, the good, when necessarily brought into contact with the evil, should, in numbers or in strength, prevail over the bad. Few families are so fortunate as never to have experienced the evil of a vicious influence operating on some of its members. It may have been speedily apparent, and speedily vanquished accordingly; or it may have been subtle and specious, and have done great mischief before it was even suspected. In either case, the sort of 'inferior society' at which we are glancing is quite as likely to have been on what is called a social equality as not. Low-toned people, who corrupt morals by their bad example and evil communications, belong to all stations of life. and perhaps even more closely allied, and we feel that we cannot be too particular as to the intimacies we may form.' They were wise words; for the hasty, ill-considered, unfortunate intimacies of youth are often found to be a clog all through life. How often does it happen that a plausible acquaintance establishes a footing of intimacy with some young person, and without planning any special injury, achieves it nevertheless. There are so many by-paths of alluring aspect in life, but which lead to misery, that we all, and the young especially, are in constant need-but often circumstances arise which develop of the controlling sense of duty to keep us in the high-road. Woe be to those who have a tempter at hand to lure them astray, and to teach them to confound pleasure with happiness, if such tempter wears the mask of friendship, and has won their regard! Those who understand children best, are always alive to the importance attached to the choice of youthful playmates and associates, even from the earliest age. For the exercise of the imitative faculty seems instinctive with most children, and biographies of eminent people, especially autobiographies, constantly reveal the last ing influences set in motion in quite infantile years. Young people whose characters as yet are but partially developed, are very apt to strike up sudden friendships on the basis of some temporary and superficial sympathy which has no real depth. Ardent professions of attachment are made-perfectly sincere for the time being character and change the position of affairs. One mind greatly expands, while the other either stagnates or deteriorates; one moral nature, strengthened by some fiery trial, rises purified; while the other succumbs to some grovelling temptation. It is impossible the tie between the two can remain unstrained, for sooner or later it must be broken. In such cases as these, the lower nature too often reviles the higher for its 'changeableness' and 'caprice,' though probably the change of feeling has been resisted as long as possible, and only acknowledged at last to the conscience with great pain. Well is it if there has been no obligation conferred by the inferior nature on the superior, to be considered a lifelong debt incapable of being cancelled. But the imitative faculty is not extinct when childhood is past, and there is an order of shy people who are particularly exposed to the But there is one sort of inferior society' which temptations of inferior society. What we call is perhaps even more 'deteriorating in its inflashyness is often very closely allied to pride. ence than the companionship of low-toned people. There are people who take little or no pleasure If it be true that Books are the best of all good in any society in which they do not themselves company,' the adage can only apply to good books; shine. They forget the high esteem in which for it is no whit less true that bad books are a patient and intelligent listener is held by the worst of all companions. Many books are good talkers, and feel hurt at seeming of no very subtle in their evil influence, so subtle, that consequence. Such shy people are very apt to the mischief they do is long unsuspected. And fall away from the social circles in which they yet we think there is a test by which we may might find mental improvement and enlighten- know the wholesome from the evil in literature. ment, and gravitate to a lower scale, where they Does the reader feel stronger and wiser-more feel themselves of importance. The worst of the ready for work and endurance, with a higher ideal matter is that such persons are almost always of duty and character, and of the possibilities of self-deceivers, and think their shyness comes from human life, when he lays down the book which has humility instead of pride. Another sort of shy-engaged him? If so, he may be sure that he has ness, springing from another sort of pride, induces people to shun general society altogether; and then they need be on their guard against some baneful individual influence of an inferior sort. This is especially the case with shy young men, who make what are called low marriages, or, what is really morally worse, trifle with the affections of girls in an inferior station, Perhaps at first they mean nothing worse than the gratification of their own vanity; but some of the saddest of sad stories have had this sort of beginning. We once heard a very shrewd sensible woman, the mother of a large family, speak to the following effect: 'My husband and I are very choice in considering the acquaintances we now make, for our children's sake. Our friends' children will, in the natural course of events, be their friends, enjoyed the best of all good company,' and will, moreover, have acquired a distaste for that which is poorer. The subtle bad book, however, leaves a very different impression. The reader probably rises from it discontented and querulous, inclined to excuse his own faults, as so much more venial than those of the people in whom he has just been interested; with his ideal of duty and human character lowered instead of raised, and with a general sense of disorder in his mind, that proves the unwholesome food it has been receiving. The present writer has assisted at the burning of more than one thoroughly bad book, and is ready to apply the match again whenever it is expedient to do so. We never know into what hands a bad book may some day fall, or what mischief it may occasion; but when we see the pages Journal yielding to the flames, at least we feel that with regard to that one copy its power is over. Bad books always deserve condign punishment, and there is a consolation in knowing that sooner or later they will find it. Truth alone prevails in the long-run. Truth, that moral truth which through all the ages finds a response in the higher attributes of the human heart, can alone float a book down the stream of time, and render it a delight to succeeding generations. VALENTINE STRANGE A STORY OF THE PRIMROSE WAY. CHAPTER XLV. CONSTANCE! MAYBE GOD WILL NEVER COULD HAVE BEEN IN THIS WORLD.' DAYS before Garling's death, Constance and Val had left Cadiz on their homeward route, and Mary had travelled with them in attendance upon her mistress. Constance had written to her aunt Lucretia, telling her of the new hopes and fears which dwelt about her, and entreating a renewal of her old friendship. The old lady came down, in answer to this letter, to meet her at Southampton, and received her very kindly; but she encountered her ancient favourite Val Strange with inexplicable and inflexible enmity. Don't tell me, my dear,' she said in answer to her niece's remonstrances; he left you alone at the beginning of your sufferings. I know it all. Everybody has talked about it. He was a faithless friend, to begin with, and he's a bad husband; and I will never speak to him again.' 'He is not a bad husband,' Constance answered, weeping. We have had cause for trouble, and we have been unhappy, but never, never, through any want of love on either side! And dear aunt, help us to be happy now. We shall have cause to be happy now." Aunt Lucretia wept with her, and relented partially, for Constance's sake. But against Val she was implacable, and she treated him with a distant coldness which pained him deeply. The elder Mr Jolly met the little party in town, having constrained himself to leave Paris in honour of the expected event; for which, without anybody precisely knowing why, he seemed to appropriate to himself an amazing credit. happiness. I am not without the emotions common to paternity; but I have never been inclined to obtrude my anxieties, and I will not obtrude them now.' Val said 'Yes' and 'No' and 'Of course'-at the right places, for the most part; and Mr Jolly was absolutely satisfied with him, and with himself. When they all left London, he was established in free quarters in Val's house at Brierham; and he felt a pleasurable glow in the fact that this eligible family mansion was henceforth his daughter's home, and that in those days when Paris might seem dull to him, he would find a shelter here. It is perhaps unnecessary to say that had Val been poor instead of wealthy, Mr Jolly's ideas on the moral and sentimental aspect of the elopement might have undergone development in a different direction. Val himself was filled with anxious thoughts; but he too, like Constance, looked for a veritable sacrament of love in the birth of a child. But his emotions were not of that boisterous and thick-skinned quality which can bear to find vent in the presence of strangers; and thus, except in those now rare moments when he and his wife were alone together, he wore rather a morose and preoccupied air. Miss Lucretia set this down to a desire on his part to be away from the place, and charged him in her own heart with a perpetual longing after the fleshpots of a bachelor's Egypt. Not all Constance's faith in her husband's affection, nor Val's own constant presence in the house, could weaken this belief of hers. Women can be amazingly cruel on occasion, and the old maiden lady relented not to Val. He bore everything with patience, even with seeming apathy, strengthened inwardly by new hopes, and chastened by fears new and old. In the midst of all this, news reached him that Gerard Lumby had returned, and had again taken up his residence at Lumby Hall. Before Constance had recalled him to her side, he had fallen into such a mood that he would not greatly have cared had he been called upon to expiate his falsity to friendship with his life. But now he had a reason for living, and he meant to live. He listened anxiously for tidings of Gerard and his manner of living; and such small items of news as reached him were reassuring. The defeated rival seemed at length to have settled down, accepting his defeat. Val had no wish to 'My dear Valentine,' he said, as Val sat moodily remember against him that wild night in the over his wine and a cigar, after dinner, on his Mediterranean. He knew he had given horrible first night in England, it has always been my provocation; and he even looked to his own practice to endeavour to make the best of every-devotion to Constance as one means of appeasing thing. We have proverbs on our side: Love laughs at locksmiths, and All's fair in love and war. And apart from the romantic and sentimental aspect which, to eyes more youthful than mine, the case may wear, I console myself with the reflection that the marriage is a fait accompli. Your proceeding, I presume I may acknowledge without any danger of offence, and certainly without any intention of being offensive, was-er-a little startling. But all that is over; and you are prepared to encounter the commonplace of life, and I presume to stay at home, become custos rotulorum, and discharge the duties of a good landlord. I have always maintained that the one claim a father has to consideration in affairs of this kind is that he is interested in his daughter's Gerard's hatred. He laid plans for the future, and resolved, if things went well with him, that he would migrate to another county. He did himself more justice when he admitted that Gerard would find it unpleasant to have him for a constant neighbour; and since it seemed well that one of them should move to a distance, it seemed well that he should be the emigrant. He had robbed Gerard of enough already. He would not rob him of the house in which his ancestors had lived so long, by poisoning the air about it. Let me say once more that Val Strange was not meant by nature to live disloyally. But fate is just, and his very virtues tore him. Gerard in Cadiz had asked Hiram one question: Is she here?' Mary's unlooked-for presence had dictated this inquiry. 'She is,' Hiram had responded. 'She's goin' to England, and her husband's with her.'-Gerard started, and paled ever so little; but Hiram watched him with glittering eyes which missed nothing. They're going home for a special purpose. I reckon if it turns out a son, that when he's grown up, he'd like to feel he'd been born in the ancestral halls. Anyhow,' added Hiram, 'I guess I should, if I was going to be born over again as a British aristocrat.' Not even Hiram had rightly estimated the purposes which moved Gerard to the reckless and horrible revenge he had once attempted. He was not avenging his own wrongs, but the wrongs done to Constance by her husband's desertion of her. He did not understand, he did not even dream, that the thought of his own sufferings, and their disloyalty to him, had cast the shadow which lay like an impassable barrier between man and wife. To his mind, Val had been doubly a traitor-false to him, and false to the woman he had stolen from him. It was the belief in the second falsity which had stirred him to the contemplation of that crime which it was Hiram's happy fortune to frustrate. It was not likely that Val's return to his old home after so remarkable a disappearance from it, should go untalked of. The general verdict had been unfavourable to him at his going, and it was unfavourable still. Had Miss Lucretia's tongue been less active, it might have been otherwise; for a wealthy, good-looking, good-tempered young fellow, who has the loveliest woman in a county for his wife, is likely to be popular, and to find more serious crimes than a runaway marriage forgiven him. Even the parting at Naples, and Val's extended cruises in the Levant, would have been condoned and forgotten; but it was murmured everywhere that Mrs Strange's aunt knew the naughty secret of their parting-that Val was guilty, and that she was implacable. After the lapse of a year from the date of his tragedy, foolish people felt justified in hinting at these things even in Gerard's presence, and the rumours reached him in a hundred ways. A slow, bitter, awful fire of wrath burned in the young man's heart. By nature and descent, loyal and honest, but by nature and descent disposed to nurse revenge, his native virtue and his native vice of blood alike spurred him to hate his enemy. He said of himself, and it was true, that he would have roasted at a slow fire, rather than have deceived a friend as Val had deceived him. His own purity of honour made Val's dishonour all the viler. Yet even then, had Val continued true to Constance, and had she seemed happy with him, there was enough of heathen valour in the man to have hidden hatred and heartburning for a lifetime. But now, to his distorted gaze, Revenge stood consecrated by Hate and Scorn. He could leave Garling to the vengeance, or even the mercy of heaven, without an inward struggle. But Garling had not sought to rob him of his love; and Garling had missed his own prize, and had grown old on a sudden, and was near death's door, and had but a tottering reason left him; whereas this supreme criminal had succeeded in his crime, and having stolen his treasure, had thrown it away. We know how false the popular talk was; but he did not. It found ready credence with him, and there was no baseness, however unexampled, of which he was not ready to believe that Val Strange had been or would be guilty. But he, like the rest of us, was led by a way he knew not. As the hoped-for yet dreaded time grew nearer in the house at Brierham, Val and Constance grew nearer to each other in confidence and affection. They looked forward, though with certain tremblings and forebodings, to a happy and united life. The child would lay a hand on each, and would hold them together to all times But Val knew nothing of the county talk, and his moody troubled face bore no disguise that the dull wits of visitors and servants could be expected to look through. The weather for many days past had been close and sultry, and had brought with it a feeling of depression, which affected both husband and wife. And now the time fraught with so much of desire and dread came on, and Val waited for news in the room in which Hiram Search first met him. For a time the messengers who found him waiting there, brought reassuring news enough; but in a while he was left altogether alone, staring out at the sultry noonday sky and the shadowless noonday fields. He waited a long time, and then rang the bell and asked for news. The messenger returned with an ominous face and an equivocal message; and after another anxious terrible pause of an hour, which seemed a year in its prolonged suspense, he was confronted by the doctor. Well?' he said. That was all. It was recorded against him afterwards, though the stern, almost savage brevity of the question meant Love on the rack. "I may congratulate you on one side, Mr Strange,' returned the doctor; though on the other I am afraid there is scarcely room for hope." Val looked at him stonily and said nothing. It was all set down against him with the rest, though his very heartstrings ached. 'Mrs Strange has implored me to allow her to see you. I am sure I need not ask you to be self-possessed, though I fear it can make little difference.' There was a dryness in his throat and a fire in his eyes, as Val followed the doctor through the long corridor and up the stairs. A moment later, Constance reached feeble arms towards him. 'You have always loved me,' she whispered, 'in spite of the shadow that fell between us.' Always,' he answered huskily. I shall love you till I die.' He buried his piteous face in the pillow beside her, and those were the last words she heard in this world. The lax arm that lay across his neck told him the truth; but he did not move until some one entered and touched him on the shoulder. Then he arose and looked at the face before him for a minute, and walked away without a tear or a kiss or a murmur. It told against him in the common foolish tale; but in his soul lay the unutterable burden of coming hopeless years, and whatever broken gleam of light the world had held for him seemed at that moment to go out-for ever. T The doctor left the house of mourning, and was called to another case. He carried the news |
