Part 4

And the Caliph took one egg, and hid it away in his cushion, which done, He bade them all do so. They did it; and sat down awaiting the fun.

With an air that was saucy and braggish, with a step that was jaunty and spruce, With a smile that was merry and waggish, with a mien that was reckless and loose,

With a "How is your high disposition to-morrow, if God should so will?" With a "Here in our ancient position, your Majesty seeth us still!"

With a face all be-chalked and be-painted, with a bound through the portal doth pass One with whom we're already acquainted, the world-renowned Abu Nuwas!

"Right welcome! Right welcome! my brother!" his Majesty smilingly spake, "We were just now in want of another, a nice game at forfeits to make.

"Whatever I do you must watch it, and each do precisely the same-- If I catch you chaps laughing you'll catch it! sit still and attend to the game.

"If you do just as I do, precisely, a _dinar_ apiece shall ye gain, If you don't, won't I give it you nicely--Mesrour you stand by with the cane!"

He spake: and the smile on his features was mischievous, cunning and grim, And the courtiers, poor awe-stricken creatures, smiled feebly and gazed upon him.

"Cluck, cluck, cluck aroo!" representing the note of a jubilant hen, The Caliph arises, presenting an egg, to the sight of all men.

"Cluck, cluck, cluck aroo!" and the rabble are all at once up on their legs, And with ornithological gabble display their mysterious eggs.

Then without in the least hesitating steps Abu Nuwas before all. "Cock-a-doodle doo doo!" imitating a rooster's hilarious call.

"Now I know why it is that you cackle," said he, "when you're trying to talk! And you find me a hard one to tackle, because I am COCK OF THE WALK!"

(_From_ "TEMPLE BAR," _by permission of the Editor_.)

A JOURNEY IN SEARCH OF NOTHING.

WILKIE COLLINS.

"Yes," said the doctor, pressing the tips of his fingers with a tremulous firmness on my pulse, and looking straight forward into the pupils of my eyes, "yes, I see: the symptoms all point unmistakeably towards one conclusion--Brain. My dear sir, you have been working too hard; you have been following the dangerous example of the rest of the world in this age of business and bustle. Your brain is over-taxed--that is your complaint. You must let it rest--there is your remedy."

"You mean," I said, "that I must keep quiet, and do Nothing?"

"Precisely so," replied the doctor. "You must not read or write; you must abstain from allowing yourself to be excited by society; you must have no annoyances; you must feel no anxieties; you must not think; you must be neither elated nor depressed; you must keep early hours and take an occasional tonic, with moderate exercise, and a nourishing but not too full a diet--above all, a perfect repose is essential to your restoration, you must go away into the country, taking any direction you please, and living just as you like, as long as you are quiet and as long as you do Nothing."

"I presume he is not to go away into the country without ME," said my wife, who was present at the interview.

"Certainly not," rejoined the doctor, with an acquiescent bow. "I look to your influence, my dear madam, to encourage our patient in following my directions. It is unnecessary to repeat them, they are so extremely simple and easy to carry out. I will answer for your husband's recovery if he will but remember that he has now only two objects in life--to keep quiet, and to do Nothing."

My wife is a woman of business habits. As soon as the doctor had taken his leave, she produced her pocket-book, and made a brief abstract of his directions for our future guidance. I looked over her shoulder and observed that the entry ran thus:--

"RULES FOR DEAR WILLIAM'S RESTORATION TO HEALTH.--No reading; no writing; no excitement; no annoyance; no anxiety; no thinking. Tonic. No elation of spirits. Nice dinners. No depression of spirits. Dear William to take little walks (with me). To go to bed early. To get up early. _N.B._--Keep him quiet. _Mem._ Mind he does Nothing."

Mind I do nothing? No need to mind that. I have not had a holiday since I was a boy. Oh, blessed Idleness, after the years of merciless industry that have separated us, are you and I to be brought together again at last? Oh, my weary right hand, are you really to ache no longer with driving the ceaseless pen? May I, indeed, put you in my pocket and let you rest there, indolently, for hours together? Yes! for I am now, at last, to begin--doing Nothing. Delightful task that performs itself! Welcome responsibility that carries its weight away smoothly on its own shoulders!

These thoughts shine in pleasantly on my mind after the doctor has taken his departure, and diffuse an easy gaiety over my spirits when my wife and I set forth, the next day, for the journey. We are not going the round of the noisy watering-places, nor is it our intention to accept any invitations to join the circles assembled by festive country friends. My wife, guided solely by the abstract of the doctor's directions in her pocket-book, has decided that the only way to keep me absolutely quiet, and to make sure of my doing nothing, is to take me to some pretty, retired village, and to put me up at a little primitive, unsophisticated country inn. I offer no objection to this project--not because I have no will of my own, and am not master of all my movements--but only because I happen to agree with my wife. Considering what a very independent man I am naturally, it has sometimes struck me, as a rather remarkable circumstance, that I always do agree with her.

We find the pretty, retired village. A charming place, full of thatched cottages, with creepers at the doors, like the first easy lessons in drawing-masters' copy-books. We find the unsophisticated inn--just the sort of house that the novelists are so fond of writing about, with the snowy curtains, and the sheets perfumed by lavender, and the matronly landlady, and the amusing signpost.

This Elysium is called the Nag's Head.

Can the Nag's Head accommodate us? Yes, with a delightful bedroom, and a sweet parlour. My wife takes off her bonnet, and makes herself at home directly. She nods her head at me with a look of triumph. "Yes, dear, on this occasion also I quite agree with you. Here we have found perfect quiet; here we may make sure of obeying the doctor's orders; here we have at last discovered--Nothing."

Nothing! Did I say Nothing? We arrive at the Nag's Head late in the evening, have our tea, go to bed tired with our journey, sleep delightfully till about three o'clock in the morning, and, at that hour, begin to discover that there are actually noises, even in this remote country seclusion. They keep fowls at the Nag's Head; and at three o'clock, the cock begins to crow, and the hen to cluck, under our window. Pastoral, my dear, and suggestive of eggs for breakfast whose reputation is above suspicion; but I wish these cheerful fowls did not wake quite so early. Are there, likewise, dogs, love, at the Nag's Head, and are they trying to bark down the crowing and clucking of the cheerful fowls? I should wish to guard myself against the possibility of making a mistake, but I think I hear three dogs. A shrill dog, who barks rapidly; a melancholy dog, who howls monotonously; and a hoarse dog, who emits barks at intervals, like minute guns. Is this going on long? Apparently it is. My dear, if you will refer to your pocket-book, I think you will find that the doctor recommended early hours. We will not be fretful and complain of having our morning sleep disturbed; we will be contented, and will only say that it is time to get up.

Breakfast. Delicious meal, let us linger over it as long as we can,--let us linger, if possible, till the drowsy mid-day tranquillity begins to sink over this secluded village.

Strange! but now I think of it again, do I, or do I not, hear an incessant hammering over the way? No manufacture is being carried on in this peaceful place, no new houses are being built; and yet, there is such a hammering, that, if I shut my eyes, I can almost fancy myself in the neighbourhood of a dock-yard. Waggons, too. Why does a waggon which makes so little noise in London, make so much noise here? Is the dust on the road detonating powder, that goes off with a report at every turn of the heavy wheels? Does the waggoner crack his whip or fire a pistol to encourage his horses? Children, next. Only five of them, and they have not been able to settle for the last half-hour what game they shall play at. On two points alone do they appear to be unanimous--they are all agreed on making a noise, and on stopping to make it under our window. I think I am in some danger of forgetting one of the doctor's directions; I rather fancy I am actually allowing myself to be annoyed.

Let us take a turn in the garden, at the back of the house. Dogs again. The yard is on one side of the garden. Every time our walk takes us near it, the shrill dog barks, and the hoarse dog growls. The doctor tells me to have no anxieties. I am suffering devouring anxieties. These dogs may break loose and fly at us, for anything I know to the contrary, at a moment's notice. What shall I do? Give myself a drop of tonic? or escape for a few hours from the perpetual noises of this retired spot, by taking a drive? My wife says, take a drive. I think I have already mentioned that I invariably agree with my wife.

The drive is successful in procuring us a little quiet. My directions to the coachman are to take us where he pleases, so long as he keeps away from secluded villages. We suffer much jolting in by-lanes, and encounter a great variety of bad smells. But a bad smell is a noiseless nuisance, and I am ready to put up with it patiently. Towards dinner time we return to our inn. Meat, vegetables, pudding, all excellent, clean and perfectly cooked. As good a dinner as ever I wish to eat;--shall I get a little nap after it? The fowls, the dogs, the hammer, the children, the waggons, are quiet at last. Is there anything else left to make a noise? Yes: there is the working population of the place.

It is getting on towards evening, and the sons of labour are assembling on the benches placed outside the inn, to drink. What a delightful scene they would make of this homely everyday event on the stage! How the simple creatures would clink their tin mugs, and drink each other's healths, and laugh joyously in chorus! How the peasant maidens would come tripping on the scene and lure the men tenderly to the dance! Where are the pipe and tabour that I have seen in so many pictures; where the simple songs that I have read about in so many poems? What do I hear as I listen, prone on the sofa, to the evening gathering of the rustic throng? Oaths,--nothing, on my word of honour, but oaths! I look out, and see gangs of cadaverous savages drinking gloomily from brown mugs, and swearing at each other every time they open their lips. Never in any large town, at home or abroad, have I been exposed to such an incessant fire of unprintable words, as now assail my ears in this primitive village. No man can drink to another without swearing at him first. No man can ask a question without adding a mark of interrogation at the end in the shape of an oath. Whether they quarrel (which they do for the most part), or whether they agree; whether they talk of their troubles in this place, or their good luck in that; whether they are telling a story, or proposing a toast, or giving an order, or finding fault with the beer, these men seem to be positively incapable of speaking without an allowance of at least five foul words for every one fair word that issues from their lips. English is reduced in their mouths to a brief vocabulary of all the vilest expressions in the language. This is an age of civilisation; this is a Christian country; opposite me I see a building with a spire, which is called, I believe, a church; past my window, not an hour since, there rattled a neat pony chaise with a gentleman inside clad in glossy black broad cloth, and popularly known by the style and title of clergyman. And yet, under all these good influences, here sit twenty or thirty men whose ordinary table-talk is so outrageously beastly and blasphemous, that not a single sentence of it, though it lasted the whole evening, could be printed as a specimen for public inspection, in these pages. When the intelligent foreigner comes to England, and when I tell him (as I am sure to do) that we are the most moral people in the universe, I will take good care that he does not set his foot in a secluded British village when the rural population is reposing over its mug of small beer after the labours of the day.

I am not a squeamish person, neither is my wife, but the social intercourse of the villagers drives us out of our room, and sends us to take refuge at the back of the house. Do we gain anything by the change? None whatever.

The back parlour to which we have now retreated, looks out on a bowling-green; and there are more benches, more mugs of beer, more foul-mouthed villagers on the bowling-green. Immediately under our window is a bench and table for two, and on it are seated a drunken old man and a drunken old woman. The aged sot in trousers is offering marriage to the aged sot in petticoats with frightful oaths of endearment. Never before did I imagine that swearing could be twisted to the purposes of courtship. Never before did I suppose that a man could make an offer of his hand by bellowing imprecations on his eyes, or that all the powers of the infernal regions could be appropriately summoned to bear witness to the beating of a lover's heart under the influence of the tender passion. I know it now, and I derive little satisfaction from gaining the knowledge of it. The ostler is lounging about the bowling-green, scratching his bare brawny arms and yawning grimly in the mellow evening sunlight. I beckon to him, and ask him at what time the tap closes? He tells me at eleven o'clock. It is hardly necessary to say that we put off going to bed until that time, when we retire for the night, drenched from head to foot, if I may so speak, in floods of bad language.

I cautiously put my head out of window, and see that the lights of the tap-room are really extinguished at the appointed time. I hear the drinkers oozing out grossly into the pure freshness of the summer night. They all growl together; they all go together. All?

Sinner and sufferer that I am, I have been premature in arriving at that happy conclusion! Six choice spirits, with a social horror in their souls of going home to bed, prop themselves against the wall of the inn, and continue the evening's conversazione in the darkness. I hear them cursing at each other by name. We have Tom, Dick, and Sam, Jem, Bill, and Bob, to enliven us under our window after we are in bed. They begin improving each other's minds, as a matter of course, by quarrelling. Music follows, and soothes the strife, in the shape of a local duet, sung by voices of vast compass, which soar in one note from howling bass to cracked treble. Yawning follows the duet; long, loud, weary yawning of all the company in chorus. This amusement over, Tom asks Dick for "backer," and Dick denies that he has got any, and Tom tells him he lies, and Sam strikes in and says, "No, he doan't," and Jem tells Sam he lies, and Bill tells him that if he was Sam he would punch Jem's head, and Bob, apparently snuffing the battle afar off, and not liking the scent of it, shouts suddenly a pacific "good night" in the distance. The farewell salutation seems to quiet the gathering storm. They all roar responsive to the good night of Bob. Next, a song in chorus from Bob's five friends. Outraged by this time beyond all endurance, I spring out of bed and seize the water-jug. I pause before I empty the water on the heads of the assembly beneath; I pause, and hear--O! most melodious, most welcome of sounds!--the sudden fall of rain. The merciful sky has anticipated me; the "clerk of the weather" has been struck by my idea of dispersing the Nag's Head Night Club by water. By the time I have put down the jug and got back to bed, silence--primeval silence, the first, the foremost of all earthly influences--falls sweetly over our tavern at last.

That night, before sinking wearily to rest, I have once more the satisfaction of agreeing with my wife. Dear and admirable woman! she proposes to leave this secluded village the first thing to-morrow morning. Never did I share her opinion more cordially than I share it now. Instead of keeping myself composed, I have been living in a region of perpetual disturbance; and, as for doing nothing, my mind has been so agitated and perturbed that I have not even had time to think about it. We will go, love--as you so sensibly suggest--we will go the first thing in the morning to any place you like, so long as it is large enough to swallow up small sounds. Where, over all the surface of this noisy earth, the blessing of tranquility may be found, I know not; but this I do know: a secluded English village is the very last place towards which any man should think of turning his steps, if the main object of his walk through life is to discover quiet.

(_By permission of the Author._)

GEMINI AND VIRGO.

C. S. CALVERLEY.

Some vast amount of years ago, Ere all my youth had vanish'd from me, A boy it was my lot to know, Whom his familiar friends called Tommy.

I love to gaze upon a child; A young bud bursting into blossom; Artless, as Eve yet unbeguiled, And agile as a young opossum:

And such was he. A calm-brow'd lad, Yet mad, at moments, as a hatter: Why hatters as a race are mad I never knew, nor does it matter.

He was what nurses call a "limb;" One of those small misguided creatures Who, tho' their intellects are dim, Are one too many for their teachers:

And, if you asked of him to say What twice 10 was, or 3 times 7, He'd glance (in quite a placid way) From heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;

And smile, and look politely round, To catch a casual suggestion; But make no effort to propound Any solution of the question.

And not so much esteemed was he Of the authorities: and therefore He fraternized by chance with me, Needing a somebody to care for:

And three fair summers did we twain Live (as they say) and love together; And bore by turns the wholesome cane Till our young skins became as leather:

And carved our names on every desk, And tore our clothes, and inked our collars; And looked unique and picturesque, But not, it may be, model scholars.

We did much as we chose to do; We'd never heard of Mrs. Grundy; All the theology we knew Was that we mighn't play on Sunday;

And all the general truths, that cakes Were to be bought at half a penny, And that excruciating aches Resulted if we ate too many:

And seeing ignorance is bliss, And wisdom consequently folly, The obvious result is this-- That our two lives were very jolly.

At last the separation came, Real love, at that time, was the fashion; And by a horrid chance, the same Young thing was, to us both, a passion.

Old Poser snorted like a horse: His feet were large, his hands were pimply, His manner, when excited, coarse:-- But Miss P. was an angel simply.

She was a blushing, gushing thing; All--more than all--my fancy painted; Once--when she helped me to a wing Of goose--I thought I should have fainted.

The people said that she was blue: But I was green, and loved her dearly. She was approaching thirty-two; And I was then eleven, nearly.

I did not love as others do; (None ever did that I've heard tell of); My passion was a byword through The town she was, of course, the belle of:

Oh sweet--as to the toilworn man The far-off sound of rippling river; As to cadets in Hindostan The fleeting remnant of their liver--

To me was ANNA; dear as gold That fills the miser's sunless coffers; As to the spinster, growing old, The thought--the dream--that she had offers.

I'd sent her little gifts of fruit; I'd written lines to her as Venus; I'd sworn unflinchingly to shoot The man who dared to come between us:

And it was you, my Thomas you, The friend in whom my soul confided, Who dared to gaze on--to do, I may say, much the same as I did.

One night I saw him squeeze her hand; There was no doubt about the matter; I said he must resign, or stand My vengeance--and he chose the latter.

We met, we "planted" blows on blows: We fought as long as we were able: My rival had a bottle-nose, And both my speaking eyes were sable.

When the school-bell cut short our strife, Miss P. gave both of us a plaister; And in a week became the wife Of Horace Nibbs, the writing-master.

* * * * *

I loved her then--I'd love her still, Only one must not love Another's: But thou and I, my Tommy, will, When we again meet, meet as brothers.

It may be that in age one seeks Peace only: that the blood is brisker In boys' veins, than in theirs whose cheeks Are partially obscured by whisker;

Or that the growing ages steal The memories of past wrongs from us. But this is certain--that I feel Most friendly unto thee, oh Thomas!

And whereso'er we meet again, On this or that side the equator, If I've not turned teetotaller then, And have wherewith to pay the waiter,

To thee I'll drain the modest cup, Ignite with thee the mild Havannah; And we will waft, while liquoring up, Forgiveness to the heartless ANNA.

(_By permission of_ MRS. CALVERLEY.)

KING BIBBS.

JAMES ALBERY.

"It's all through that Liberal Government."

These were the words uttered by King Bibbs as he stood in the rain without an umbrella; and it was not the first time he had uttered them.

Think of it! There stood King Bibbs in the rain without an umbrella.

Once upon a time King Bibbs had a beautiful palace; but there came a Liberal Government, and they promised the nation economy.

Their policy was to save and censure, to cut down everything they did pay for, and to cut up everything they did not.

They contracted that every soldier in the army should have one nail less in his boots, and they blamed the last Government for not having soldiers who required no boots at all. They arranged that the royal charwomen should clean the floors of the Government offices with soap without sand or with sand without soap; and they censured the late Government for having floors that wanted any cleaning. They cut down the amount and the quality of the cheese required for the royal mousetraps, and they pointed out to a plundered people that the last Government were entirely to blame for there being any mice. They voted that the royal weather-cock on the national stable should be re-gilt only once in six years, instead of once in five, and they made it clear, at least to their own party, that it was entirely owing to the tactics of the late Government that weather-cocks were required at all; and it must be admitted that upon this point the late Government were a little bit with them.

It was a _fine time_, and the nation that King Bibbs reigned over might well feel proud.

They did.

But you know that if you keep the stove going by what you can spare from your household furniture, the time will come when you will be a little at a loss for firewood.