Part 10

One to a naval man at South Africa has "Peace" typified by a blue-jacket hobbling along on a couple of crutches, minus his legs. Another from Cheltenham to Port Elizabeth has a highly coloured drawing of a big policeman chasing a small and bony dog, "Ye Cheltenham Bobby sees a cheeky dog in the park." The animal's impudence lies in the fact that he had dared to wear the prescribed muzzle on his tail instead of on his head.

A visitor to Broadstairs finds the name of this seaside resort represented by a pair of immense optics remarkably wide open (Fig. 6).

An Irishman has adopted a good means of making the donkey he is riding go (Fig. 7). He is holding a bunch of carrots in front of the animal, which the energetic creature is frantically endeavouring to reach. Hence the pace. There rests a traveller, far from home, on his hotel bed. Visions in the distance appear of a wife washing the children and putting them to bed. The traveller may be happy in his domestic dreams, but he does not know that the mice are seeking refuge for the night within his boots, which are thrown down at the foot of the bedstead (Fig. 8). A Mrs. Cook was the recipient of a wrapper on which a sportsman is seen "missing" a hare with his gun--the animal making a rapid retreat. Is this meant for "miss his cook?" (Fig. 9). Indeed, animals are well represented amongst the humours of the Post Office. An elephant is amusing itself on a euphonium, with its trunk to the mouthpiece, a crocodile is after a very diminutive boy wishing him "A Merry Christmas"; and a vocalist receives a view of house-tops and chimney-pots, round which cats are raising their voices, and a note in the corner to the effect that "the opera season has commenced." Perhaps the cleverest of these animal studies is that of the method employed by a number of mice to secure the meat of a pet puppy. Whilst the dog was innocently sleeping against a small perch a mouse has heroically climbed to the summit of it, and being the fortunate possessor of a tail both strong and long, has wound it round the poor puppy's neck whilst its relations are feeding in perfect safety and contentment (Fig. 10).

Matrimonial squabbles are not missing. One is an Irish scene. Pat, to escape the wrath of his loving wife, has shut himself up in his hut, and appears at the window with a radiant smile, alas! only of a temporary kind, we fear. For at the door is standing a lady armed with a mighty shillelagh, over whose head is written the refrain of a popular ballad, "Waiting here to meet her little darling!" Songs, it seems, are frequently quoted. Mephistopheles, in his traditional red, is eyeing a young lady, and declaring "I shall have her by and by." A banjoist is fingering his instrument whilst giving expression to his feelings with

"But whilst I listen to thy voice, Thy face I never see."

The artist has correctly suggested the reason by writing over the musician's countenance the words "No wonder!" "My love, she's but a lassie yet," says an ardent swain to his sweetheart, in full view of the postman, but one song seems to have been singled out for the purpose of adding to the artistic beauty of many an envelope. The picture is usually that of a not altogether fascinating damsel sitting at a piano, or occupied on some other musical instrument. The head is entirely destitute of what is generally to be seen growing in abundance there, and surrounded by a small and select party, she is obliging them with "My mother bids me bind my hair!"

The positions occupied by the postage stamps are many. Often a gentleman is sitting on it, other times carrying it on his back, but the favourite place seems to be as the sign of an inn--"The Queen's Head." One of such hostelries shows a person leaving the house in anything but a fit and proper state, over whose head may be seen the concluding portion of the familiar sign of many a country public-house--"licensed to be drunk on the premises." An exceedingly original drawing is that of a corkscrew with a merry expression about it, in the shape of a young man proceeding to draw the cork of a bottle in the form of a young lady, and drinking up the contents. This was addressed to a young lady, and suggests the affectionate disposition of the gentleman who sent it. Tokens of love, indeed, abound. One gouty being on crutches, and liberally bandaged, says, "I am going to be nursed by Miss ----," and here follows the address.

Amongst the miscellaneous items is a lady puffing from her mouth the name and address of the recipient (Fig. 11).

A lady's name is cleverly worked in amongst the wings of a butterfly (Fig. 12); whilst the owner of a certain envelope, presumably a bachelor, has all his articles of clothing, down to his stockings, scattered over the wrapper, with the postage-stamp on a red flannel shirt, and the address displayed on a white dress ditto (Fig. 13).

Not the least interesting sketches are those typical of the country wherever the person addressed is at that moment residing. The artist has in Fig. 14 cleverly utilised Pat's cart and the shafts thereof as a means of drawing the postman's polite attention to the whereabouts of a representative of wars alarms. The sign-post, too, suggestively points to the town, and the milestone has a space for the stamp. We are inclined to admire the designer's ideas of a pig on paper, but his birds on the sign-post are somewhat wanting in figure and plumage.

Niggers are numerous. A diminutive, but courageous inhabitant of darkest Africa has converted an ostrich into a species of feathered postman (Fig. 15). The youthful darkey appears to be bidding his steed to "go on"--or words to that effect. The obedient ostrich, with straining neck, is hurrying along to "Hy. Jones, Esquire."

(_To be continued._)

_Jenny._

FROM THE FRENCH OF VICTOR HUGO.

I.

It was night. The cabin, poor, but warm and cosy, was full of a half twilight, through which the objects of the interior were but dimly visible by the glimmer of the embers which flickered on the hearth and reddened the dark rafters overhead. The fisherman's nets were hanging on the wall. Some homely pots and pans twinkled on a rough shelf in the corner. Beside a great bed with long, falling curtains, a mattress was extended on a couple of old benches, on which five little children were asleep like cherubs in a nest. By the bedside, with her forehead pressed against the counterpane, knelt the children's mother. She was alone. Outside the cabin the black ocean, dashed with stormy foam-flakes, moaned and murmured, and her husband was at sea.

From his boyhood he had been a fisherman. His life, as one may say, had been a daily fight with the great waters; for every day the children must be fed, and every day, rain, wind, or tempest, out went his boat to fish. And while, in his four-sailed boat, he plied his solitary task at sea, his wife at home patched the old sails, mended the nets, looked to the hooks, or watched the little fire where the fish-soup was boiling. As soon as the five children were asleep, she fell upon her knees and prayed to Heaven for her husband in his struggle with the waves and darkness. And truly such a life as his was hard. The likeliest place for fish was a mere speck among the breakers, not more than twice as large as his own cabin--a spot obscure, capricious, changing on the moving desert, and yet which had to be discovered in the fog and tempest of a winter night, by sheer skill and knowledge of the tides and winds. And there--while the gliding waves ran past like emerald serpents, and the gulf of darkness rolled and tossed, and the straining rigging groaned as if in terror--there, amidst the icy seas, he thought of his own Jenny; and Jenny, in her cottage, thought of him with tears.

She was thinking of him then and praying. The sea-gull's harsh and mocking cry distressed her, and the roaring of the billows on the reef alarmed her soul. But she was wrapped in thoughts--thoughts of their poverty. Their little children went barefooted winter and summer. Wheat-bread they never ate; only bread of barley. Heavens! the wind roared like the bellows of a forge, and the sea-coast echoed like an anvil. She wept and trembled. Poor wives whose husbands are at sea! How terrible to say, "My dear ones--father, lover, brothers, sons--are in the tempest." But Jenny was still more unhappy. Her husband was alone--alone without assistance on this bitter night. Her children were too little to assist him. Poor mother! Now she says, "I wish they were grown up to help their father." Foolish dream! In years to come, when they are with their father in the tempest, she will say with tears, "I wish they were but children still."

II.

Jenny took her lantern and her cloak. "It is time," she said to herself, "to see whether he is coming back, whether the sea is calmer, and whether the light is burning on the signal-mast." She went out. There was nothing to be seen--barely a streak of white on the horizon. It was raining, the dark, cold rain of early morning. No cabin window showed a gleam of light.

All at once, while peering round her, her eyes perceived a tumble-down old cabin which showed no sign of light or fire. The door was swinging in the wind; the wormeaten walls seemed scarcely able to support the crazy roof, on which the wind shook the yellow, filthy tufts of rotten thatch.

"Stay," she cried, "I am forgetting the poor widow whom my husband found the other day alone and ill. I must see how she is getting on."

She knocked at the door and listened. No one answered. Jenny shivered in the cold sea-wind.

"She is ill. And her poor children! She has only two of them; but she is very poor, and has no husband."

She knocked again, and called out, "Hey, neighbour!" But the cabin was still silent.

"Heaven!" she said, "how sound she sleeps, that it requires so much to wake her."

At that instant the door opened of itself. She entered. Her lantern illumined the interior of the dark and silent cabin, and showed her the water falling from the ceiling as through the openings of a sieve. At the end of the room an awful form was lying: a woman stretched out motionless, with bare feet and sightless eyes. Her cold white arm hung down among the straw of the pallet. She was dead. Once a strong and happy mother, she was now only the spectre which remains of poor humanity, after a long struggle with the world.

Near the bed on which the mother lay, two little children--a boy and a girl--slept together in their cradle, and were smiling in their dreams. Their mother, when she felt that she was dying, had laid her cloak across their feet and wrapt them in her dress, to keep them warm when she herself was cold.

How sound they slept in their old, tottering cradle, with their calm breath and quiet little faces! It seemed as if nothing could awake these sleeping orphans. Outside, the rain beat down in floods, and the sea gave forth a sound like an alarm bell. From the old creviced roof, through which blew the gale, a drop of water fell on the dead face, and ran down it like a tear.

III.

What had Jenny been about in the dead woman's house? What was she carrying off beneath her cloak? Why was her heart beating? Why did she hasten with such trembling steps to her own cabin, without daring to look back? What did she hide in her own bed, behind the curtain? What had she been stealing?

When she entered the cabin, the cliffs were growing white. She sank upon the chair beside the bed. She was very pale; it seemed as if she felt repentance. Her forehead fell upon the pillow, and at intervals, with broken words, she murmured to herself, while outside the cabin moaned the savage sea.

"My poor man! O Heavens, what will he say? He has already so much trouble. What have I done now? Five children on our hands already! Their father toils and toils, and yet, as if he had not care enough already, I must give him this care more. Is that he? No, nothing. I have done wrong--he would do quite right to beat me. Is that he? No! So much the better. The door moves as if someone were coming in; but no. To think that I should feel afraid to see him enter!"

Then she remained absorbed in thought, and shivering with the cold, unconscious of all outward sounds, of the black cormorants, which passed shrieking, and of the rage of wind and sea.

All at once the door flew open, a streak of the white light of morning entered, and the fisherman, dragging his dripping net, appeared upon the threshold, and cried, with a gay laugh, "Here comes the Navy."

"You!" cried Jenny; and she clasped her husband like a lover, and pressed her mouth against his rough jacket.

"Here I am, wife," he said, showing in the firelight the good-natured and contented face which Jenny loved so well.

"I have been unlucky," he continued.

"What kind of weather have you had?"

"Dreadful."

"And the fishing?"

"Bad. But never mind. I have you in my arms again, and I am satisfied. I have caught nothing at all, I have only torn my net. The deuce was in the wind to-night. At one moment of the tempest I thought the boat was foundering, and the cable broke. But what have you been doing all this time?"

Jenny felt a shiver in the darkness.

"I?" she said, in trouble, "Oh, nothing; just as usual. I have been sewing. I have been listening to the thunder of the sea, and I was frightened."

"Yes; the winter is a hard time. But never mind it now."

Then, trembling as if she were going to commit a crime:

"Husband!" she said, "our neighbour is dead. She must have died last night, soon after you went out. She has left two little children, one called William and the other Madeline. The boy can hardly toddle, and the girl can only lisp. The poor, good woman was in dreadful want."

The man looked grave. Throwing into a corner his fur cap, sodden by the tempest: "The deuce," he said, scratching his head. "We already have five children; this makes seven. And already in bad weather we have to go without our supper. What shall we do now? Bah, it is not my fault, it's God's doing. These are things too deep for me. Why has He taken away their mother from these mites? These matters are too difficult to understand. One has to be a scholar to see through them. Such tiny scraps of children! Wife, go and fetch them. If they are awake, they must be frightened to be alone with their dead mother. We will bring them up with ours. They will be brother and sister to our five. When God sees that we have to feed this little girl and boy besides our own, He will let us take more fish. As for me, I will drink water. I will work twice as hard. Enough. Be off and bring them! But what is the matter? Does it vex you? You are generally quicker than this."

His wife drew back the curtain.

"Look!" she said.

_The State of the Law Courts._

II.--THE COUNTY COURT.

The County Court in every respect presents a marked contrast to the High Court, which formed the subject of our article last month. So widely, in fact, do these tribunals differ, that it is difficult to imagine that they both form a part of the same judicial system--if, indeed, such a word, which certainly implies cohesion and method, can properly be applied to our judicature at all. While the work of the High Court is continuously and (unless some reforms be introduced) permanently congested, that of the County Court is for the most part performed with celerity: while the High Court is mainly supported by the State, the expenses of the County Court are mostly covered by the fees extorted from suitors: while there is common complaint (which we by no means endorse) that there are not enough High Court judges, it is impossible to deny that, having regard to the amount of work they perform, there are too many for the County Court. Whatever the defects of the County Court may be, it is essentially a popular tribunal. It is interesting from many points of view, and not more so to the legal student than to the student of human nature. Probably nowhere are more curious and varied types of humanity to be observed than those gathered together at a busy County Court. The humorous and the pathetic are strangely mingled; there are rapacious creditors and broken-down debtors; there are victims of confidence in their fellow men, and wolves that prey upon the unwary. Witnesses and suitors of every class wait about the corridors for their cases to be called: some of them talking together and discussing their prospects with their solicitors in high spirits at the certainty of success; while others in blank despair await hopelessly a foregone conclusion, which probably means the seizure of their goods and perhaps their imprisonment.

Sometimes the proceedings are relieved by an amusing scene, such as that shown in our illustration, where a voluble young lady is sued for the price of a pair of boots, which she declares to be a misfit. "They are too large," she persists. "She said she would not have them if they were tight," the plaintiff protests. Such an opportunity to bring off smart witticisms is not neglected by the counsel on either side. Eventually the learned judge decides to see the boots tried on, and, sinking the lawyer, figures for the nonce as a judge of feminine fashionable attire. Cases of this sort are by no means rare. Only the other day a County Court Judge had to give a decision as to the fit of three elegant gowns supplied to an actress and her two sisters. It is a curious fact that the most amusing cases in the County Court are usually those in which members of the fair sex are engaged. Ladies, as a rule, seem unable to appreciate the laws of evidence, and when in the witness-box often take the opportunity to indulge in family reminiscences, and to pile satirical obloquy on their opponents. The judges (who, when the parties to a suit are without professional assistance, examine the witnesses themselves) have great difficulty in keeping them to the point, and nothing but the fear of being committed for contempt will induce some excited females to give their evidence in a lucid manner. Incidents of this sort frequently relieve the tedium of the proceedings, but they are a source of considerable delay, and this is a serious matter to those suitors and witnesses who have had to give up a day's work in order to attend the Court. It is indeed a hardship for suitors who, perhaps, have brought their witnesses from long distances at serious expense, to have their cases postponed from one sitting to another in consequence of unexpected delays. But this only happens occasionally in the busy Courts, the working of the County Court being, as a rule, expeditious enough.

A glance at the history of the County Court is enough to show that from very early times it has always been the most popular of all legal tribunals. It is, in fact, the oldest of our Courts, having been instituted, according to Blackstone, by Alfred the Great. Mr. Pitt Lewis, in his most valuable work on County Court practice, remarks that the origin of the County Court is to be traced in the Folkmote, the gathering of the people, of Anglo-Saxon times. Hallam, in his "Middle Ages," describes it as the "great constitutional judicature in all questions of civil rights," and states that to it an English freeman chiefly looked for the maintenance of those rights.

The Court was, at the time referred to, an assembly of the freemen of a county, presided over by the Bishop and the ealderman of a shire; "the one to teach the laws of God, and the other the law of the land." The actual judges, however, were the freemen themselves. The ancient functions of the County Court comprised the election of knights of the shire, the election of coroners, proclamations of outlawry, and "consultation and direction concerning the ordering of the county for the safety and peace thereof." It exercised jurisdiction in ecclesiastical suits, and appellate jurisdiction in certain criminal cases; it was empowered to try all civil cases where the amount in dispute did not exceed forty shillings (a large sum in those days), and by special authority, all personal actions to any amount. It will thus be seen that in old times the County Court possessed all the elements of a popular institution. It flourished for many centuries in full vigour, and to such a degree had it gained the confidence of the public that it practically exercised civil jurisdiction to the exclusion of all other courts.

Of course it was hardly to be expected that our ancestral law-makers would allow such a satisfactory state of things to continue, and in the reign of Henry I. it was virtually "improved" away by the establishment of itinerant justices, the predecessors of our present judges of assize. It appears, however, that the new arrangement did not work very well. There were numerous complaints of delay and expense that prevented suitors from obtaining justice. So, to meet this difficulty, James I. established the "Courts of Requests" throughout the country, with a limited jurisdiction, and it was not until the year 1846 that these Courts were abolished, and that the County Court was established in its present form.

The modern County Court is, as may be imagined, a very different affair from its predecessors. While retaining part of its ancient jurisdiction in common law, its powers have been altered and extended to such a degree, that they now cover a vast field of contentious matter.

It has jurisdiction in all actions of contract for less than £50, and in all actions for wrongs where the amount claimed does not exceed £50. To this general rule, however, there are many exceptions, with which it is unnecessary to trouble the reader.

The County Court also has a limited equity jurisdiction, and powers have been conferred upon it in many other matters. These include actions of contract remitted from the High Court up to £100, and actions for damages to any amount in respect of wrongs may likewise be remitted, when the defendant, if unsuccessful, is unlikely to be able to pay the plaintiff's costs. Cases to the amount of £1,000 are remitted to it from the Court of Admiralty, besides which it exercises jurisdiction in numerous special cases under various Acts, including the Married Women's Property Act, the Coal Mines Regulation Act, the Building Societies Act, the Friendly Societies Act, the Employers and Workmen Act, the Industrial and Provident Societies Act, and, most important of all, the Employers' Liability Act. But the Court is principally useful to the public as a tribunal for the recovery of small debts, and this is proved by the fact that in 1889, out of 1,034,689 plaints entered, no less than 1,022,295 were for sums not exceeding £20.

Upwards of 500 Courts are held in the various districts of England and Wales, and these districts are divided into circuits, which are distributed among the County Court judges, and are fifty-nine in number. The majority of circuits have one judge, but some have two.

Undoubtedly many of the judges in London, and in large provincial towns, have a great deal, though not by any means an excessive amount of work devolving upon them.