GARDENER JIM.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2134, 7 March 1908, Page 3 (Supplement)

GARDENER JIM.

(By Alice Brown.)

“Jim!” called Mrs Marshall, as the old man, carrying a basket in one hand and a spade in the other, was trudging steadily by. His blue.overalls and jumper were threadbare under the soft brown they had achieved through his strenuous kneeling find the general intimacy of weeds and sod. Ho had a curious neutrality of expression—perhaps ian indifference to what his blue eyes fell upon, save when they looked out from under their rugged brows at the growing things he tended. Then the lines about them multiplied and deepened and his face took on new life. Mrs Marshall, the large lady at the gate, splendidly starched in her afternoon calico, regarded him without personal interest. He was merely an old resident likely to clear up a matter that had been blurred during her. years of absence in the West. Jim’s eyes travelled past her to the garden in the rear of the house, where yellow flower-de-luce was beginning to blow. “They’d ought to put somo muck on them pinies last fall,” said he, in a soft voice which his gnarled aspect had not foretold.

“Now you stop thin’ gardins for a minute an’ pay heed to me,” said Mrs Marshall. “How was I going to look out for the pinies, when I only t come into the property this spring? Uucle’d ha’ seen ’em mowed down for fodder before he’d ha’ let you or anybody else poke round over anything’t was his. But what I want to know is—what was’t the Miller twine had their quarrel about, all them years ago?” Jim answered without hesitation or interest: “’Twas about a man. They both on ’em set by one man, an’ h« led’m on. He made trouble betwixt ’em. ’Twas thirty year ago an’ more.” i “An’ they ain’t spoke sinced My! what fools anybody can make of themselves over a man! He’s, dead now, ain’t he?” I “I dun’no,” said Jim. Abstraction had settled upon him. “Say,; Mia? Marshall, what if I do drop in an’ ’tend to them pinies?” i “Fush on the pinies!” said Mr* Marshall, heartily. “You can, if/t’ll bejof any comfort to ye. ’Twasfthey that made me think o’ the Millers twins. Husband never got over talkin’;! about their pinies. I’d rather have a good head o’ lettuce thf.n all the pinies that ever Mowed.” Jim dropped his traps, opened the gate, walked past her without 'word, and began a professional examination, of the garden beds. When lie came to* a neglect-, d line of box, he made a sympathetic clucking of the tongue, and before a. rose bush, coming out in meagre leafage, he stayed a long time. “Too bad,” he said, as if tho bush appealed to him for comfort, “Too ba'di”

Mrs Marshall had gone contentedly back to her sewing by the window, apd a cautious voice challenged her frijm the bedroom, where her daughter, Lily, was changing her dress. said Lily, “I guess you’ve done it this time. Didn’t you know Jim’s wife the man ran run off with? "Well, it was.” i Mrs Marshall paused in her work. M'Well,” said she, “I don’t lienor? /whether to laugh or cry, I believe ’ hufcband-did use’d to say so. I ain’t thought of it for years. How’d yoiZ fiiad out so much?” )‘I guess I don’t have to .be in a long without hear in’ all there is tho hear,” said Lily, coming out in Mi’ crisp muslin. “Here, you hook mjp up. Why mother, he’s Wilfred’s own uncle 1 Wilfred told me. He sa|id his uncle never’d been the samo ninu since his wife run away.” jjim was wandering back to tha r dad, deflected now and then by tome starving plant.

you want to do,” cali I‘pd Mrs Marshall, with oomneneaitory impulse, “You’re welcome to. > Ijtaay put in a few seeds.” , ’Him stood there, shaking his "’E'ead : hif great dissatisfaction. ;,(“It would’nt ha’ done a .mite o’ g°?od for me to come here when he was M|vo,” he said, as if he accounted to hfiuself for that grievous lapse.■;He’d lia’ turned me out, neck a cr !op, if I’d laid a finger on it” ’{“Well, come when t / ' Marshall. S' w \\lling to fa 1 ’ pe‘~..r c; af y<f te’ ki so su Teason ?' says I. ‘V\(hy,. hardener Jinn goes round an’ takes care of ’em without money and without price.’ Wake up, Jim. That’s what I said.” The look of response had vanished from his face. He had taken a knife from his pocket and was clipping a. dead branch from the paririe queen at tii© window. When the deed was-, done with great nicety, he closed the: knife, returned it to his pocket, andi took Ills way silently out of the yardi, Mrs Marshall, glancing up from her sewing, saw him again trudging towords his lonely home. _ -M’ When Jim went along like that, his head bent and his eyes fixed upon tho ground, people often wondered whetTj or he was thinking of anything at or whether such iutentness did M token a grave preoccupation. Sdi times they tested him. “What tliinkin’ about, Jim?” one ask him, when they met ■ road; but Jim never reph

.... all, it was only to query, “How’s j . ou’r gardin?” and then, as soon ns --- ,^tho response was given, to nod and : 1 " dhurry on again. If the garden was as not doing very well, Jnn was there next morning, like the family doctor. To-day, when he reached the cross-road leading to his little black house, ho paused a moment, as if ho wore working out something anil must wait for the answer. Then lie ■—;*s continued on the way he had been going, and ft quarter of n mile further on stopped before a great house of a dull time worn yellow, where, in the corresponding front window of the upper chambers, two women sat, each in her own solitary state, binding shoes. These were the Miller twins. Sophy saw him as ho opoued the side gate and went along her path to the back of ' the house. She rose, tossed her work on the table, and ran into an overlooking chamber to watch him. Sophy had been the pretty one of the family Now her fair face had broadened, her blond hair showed a wide track at the parting, and her mouth dropped at tho corners ; but her faded blue ej'es still looked wistfully through their glasses. They had a grave simplicity, like that of a child. As she watched Gardener Jim, a frown cam© upon lior forehead. "What under heavens?” she muttered ; and then 6he saw. Jim was examining her neglected garden, and . the wonder was not that. It was that after all these years, when he had - worked for other people, suddoulv lie had come to her. A moment after, ho looked up, to find her at his elbow. “I should think anybody ’d be ashamed,” said he, "to let things go to wrack an’ ruin this way.” Tho paths were thick with weeds. Faithful sweetwilliam and phlox had evidently struggled for years and barely held their own against misfortune, and bouncing-bet was thrifty. But. other of tho loved in old-time gardens had starved and died. “You used to have tho handsomest canterbury-bells anywhere round,” said Jim. Ho spoke seriously, as if ’ • it pained him to find things at such a pass. “Don’t look os if you’d sowed a seed since nobody knows when. Where’s your pinies?” Sophy turned towards the high board fence that ran from the exact middle of tho house down through the . garden.

“Over there.” she said. “Over where?” “In her part.” “Her part o’ the place? what you been an’ cut it up this way for?” If Gardener Jim had over heard of tho feud that seperated tho two sisters he had apparently forgotten it, ■ and Sophy, knowing his reputed state, felt no surprise. “She lives in t’other part o’ the house,” she vouchsafed, cautiously. “Well,” he grumbled, “that’s no roason, as I see, why you should ' ha’ gone an’ sliced up the gardin’.” He gave one more look at tho forlorn waste. “Well I’ll be over in tho mornin’. ■“You needn’t,” Sophy called sfter him. “I don’t want any gardenin’ done,” she cried the louder; but Jim paid ho attention. He was at the other gate now, leading into Eliza’s grounds, and there he found Eliza waiting for him. She looked older than her sister. She was thinner, her eyes were sharp, and her chin was square and firm. “Well,” she said, “what is it?” Jim hardly seemed to see her. “Where’s your pinies?” he asked.

Eliza resolutely refrained from looking at the grassy plot where they sat in their neg;lected state. “I dnn’no they’re coming this year,’’ ahe returned speciously. “Yes, they he, too,” said Jim, with vigor. He had gone straight over to the spot, where the juicy red-brown stalks were pushing up among tho grass. “Well if I don’t git round this fall and feed up them pinies I gha’n’t have a wink o’ sleep all winter-”:

•. Wv™. had followed him, and now she stood regarding flie peonies absently and with a wistful curiosity, j,- as if they had recalled something she had long forgotten to enjoy. ' •’ *‘l ain’t done much in the ghvdin’ for a good many year,” she said. “I p, got dvinder stiff, an’ then I gave it -• up. It’s too late to do anything to .'•'•'em now, I s’pose?” “No it ain’t, cither,” said .Tim. g “I’ll bo round to-morrer an’ git the ! I -grass out. an’ put somethin’ on to I vvjnako’em grow. Trouble is/t’a-in’t so ' easy to do it in the spring as ’tis in : ' Ipo fall,' them stalks are so brittle, .Don’t you touch ’om, now. I’ll see to •'’em myself-” Eliza followed him to the gate. She was curious, and yet she hardly knew how to put her question with the indifference; she. sought. As lie was tak- . ing up his spade, she found the words; “What’s started you, to come hero arfcOr so many ye are?” . His'oyes dropped. The shaggy • browmot ovor thew in a defence, j “1 kinder' thought I would,” said ‘ he. Then he went soberly back to his Xm-S own' house. . 5 .T." Jim bad mo garden. lm& a &>> when his wife left him, to run away with another man, ho tried to wipe out every sign of his life with hex. It was in the early spring of the year when it happened, and the first thing did, after he caino back from the field iand found her letter, was to drive the oxen into the home plot and plough up the garden she had loved. The next day lis had harrowed it and sown it with grass, and then had taken to his bed, where the neighbours found him, and, one and another, nursed him through his' fever. When ' he got up again, he was not entirely the same, but ho went about his work, making shoes in the winter, fi.ud in the summer going from house to house to tend the gardens. At first the neighbors had deprecated his spending so much unrewarded time, or even forcing tliem to resuscitate old gardens against their will; but they •were obliged to yield.' He continued Ms task with a gentle persistency, and -the little town became .resplarirjont in gardens—great tangles of cherished growth, or little thrifty squares like patchwork quilts. Jim was not particular as to color and effect. Jd° was only determined that every plant should prosper. Only the sisters he had neglected until to-day, and nobody know whether lie remem- \ bored that it was at their house the un-ah stayed, charming hearts, before he Vent away again upon his travels, staking tlid prettiest woman of all with > 'him, or whether it was merely con- - nected with a vague discomfort m his iznind.

tuft ,atp p,wo thur VneredOiet et 6 To-night Jim went into his kitchen id cooked his supper with all a yom- « deftness. ' His kitchen was always

another, not imperatively needed. One day lie had made a collection of art:V!"s only used in a less primitive hce-okeoping, from nutmeg-grater to fluting iron, and tossed them out, of tho window into a corner of tho yard. There they stayed while ho added to them a footstool, a crib, and a mixed list of superfluities; then some of tho poorer inhabitants of the town, known as “Frcnchies,” discovered that such treasure was there, and grow into tho habit of stealing into the yard twice a week or so and, unmolested, taking away tho plunder.

To-night Jim determined to go to bed early. Ho had more to do next day than could possibly be done. As ho sat on tho front steps, having his aftersupper smoke, lie board tho bent of hoofs, and looked up to see Wilfred whirling by. Lily Marshall sat beside him, all color and ,radiance, in her youthful bloom. As Wilfrod lookoil over at him, with a nod, Jim threw out his arm with wild beckoning. “Here!” ho called. “Here, you stop a minute!” Wilfred drew up at tho gato, and Jim hurried down to them. “Which wav you goin’?” ho called, while Lily looked at him curiously and Wilfred reddened with shamo. Ho was sorry that this now girl como into town must see for himself how queer his undo was. “Oh, ’most anywheres!” ho answered, bluffy. “Wo’re just takin’ a ride.” “Well you go down over Alowife Bridge, then, an’ cast a look into Annie Darling’s gardin. She’s gone away an’ left it as neat as wax, an’ the gate o’ hern swings open sometimes an’ them ’tarnal ducks’ll get in. You wait a minute. 11l give ye a mite o’ wire I kep’ to twist round the gate.” He sought absorbedly in his pocket and pulled out a little coil. “There!” he said, “that’s the talk.”

Wilfred accepted the wire in silence, and drove along. “Who’s Annie Darling ” ask’d Lily with innocence. She had not been long in the town without hearing that 'Wilfred had been “going” with Annie Darling before Ills sudden invitation to her, the night after ti.e prayer meeting, “May I have the pleasure of seeing you home?” Wilfred himself could not have told v liy ho asked that question when A time, he knew, was only a pace behind. The one thing he could remember was that when he saw Lily coming, he realized that ho had never its his life known there were cheeks so red and eyes so dark. “’Who is she?” asked Lily, egan, tightening her veil. It had been blowing against her cheek. “Annie Darling,” said Wilfred, with difficulty. “Why she’s a girl lives round here. Her mother died last winter, and she’s been tryin’ to go out nursin’. That’s whero she’s gone now, I guess.” Lily Marshall laughed. “It’s a funny name,” she saifi. “ T should think folks ’d turn it round and make it Darling Annie.”

Wilfred felt a hot wave sweeping over him, the tide-of recollection. “Well,’ he said, “I guess Huy have—some of ’em.”

Lily gave him a swift glance, ard wondered how much she really iil ed him. He seemed “pretty country’’ sometimes beside the young hard v ire man who was writing to her from t> o West. But she was “one to make things go,” and she talked glibly on until they had crossed Alowife Bridge and Wilfred drew up before a grey house with a garden in front, marked out in prim little beds defined with pebbles, and all without a weed. The iris, purple and yellow, seemed to be holding banners, it was so gay, and the Iliac were in bloom. He h t tho reins in Lily’s'hands, and stoi.l a moment at the gate, glancing at the beds. Then he went inside, tried the front door, and shut a blind that had failed to catch, and-after a second frowning look at the. beds, came out and wired the gate.; i : , ; ' 1 >

“Well,” said Lily, as they drove away, “Ain’t you good taking all that trouble!” Wilfred frowned again. “I don’t like to see thmgs go to wrack and ruin,”' lie remarked.

“How’s she look?” “How’s who look?” “Annie Darling.” “I can’t tell how folks look,” said Wilfred. He. spoke roughly,- and sho glanced at.him in a calculated show of surprise. “Why, you’ve seen her. She was at the mectin’ thc'iiiglit I walked home with you.” “Was sho?” s.aid Lily. “Well 'I never noticed folks here very much till I began to get acquainted,” But she had brought back to him a picture he had been forgetting: Annia, standing in her garden, sweet, serious, and so kind. He had hardly thought before of Annie’s looks. People never spoke of them when they were recalling,her. She was simply a person they liked to live beside. The next morning Jim was at Mrs Marshall’s before breakfast—almost before light, she' thought, because through her 1 last nap she had heard his boo clinking, and when sho went out, there was the track of his wheelbarrow through the dew, and the liberated peonies, free- of grass, stood each in its rich dark circle of manure. A little later tho Miller twins saw him coming, and Sophy was o't the door awaiting him.

‘Don’t you want a- cup o’ tea?” sho asked.

Sophy was quite eager. It seemed to her that, with the garden resurrected, something was going to happen. Jim shook his head. dig round them rose-bushes,” said he. “Then I’ll go and get some dressin’.”

“I’ll pay for it,” said Sophy. “You sha’/j’t have that to do.”

“It’s no consequence,” returned Jim, indifferently. “J’ll get all I want out o’ Squire’s old yard, I pay him for it in the fall, cobblin’. Its no great matter, anyways.” Sophy dissappeared into the house, and came out again hurriedly, with a trowel in her hand.

“I ckpj’t know but I’ll work a mite myself,” she safil, “if you was to tell me where ’twas worth lyhile Oegin.” •

“Poy’fr ye touch the spring things,” said Jiip briefly. He was loosening tho ground about the roses, with delicacy and despatch. “Let it be as it may with ’em this year. Come November, we’ll overhaul ’em. You might see if you can git some o’ the grass out o’ that monkshood over there.”

Sophy, in her sunbonnet, bent over her task, and for an hour they worked absorbedly. Suddenly she looked up, to find herself alone. But there were voices in the other yard. He

hack and forth—Sophy could soo her passing the cracks in tho high board fence and once slio called to Jim in ft nervous voice. “I wish you would go away.” Jim apparently did not hoar. Ho went ou freeing the peonies. “No wonder things git pindli.i under this old locust tree,” Sophy heard him grumble. “Throwing clown loaves an’ branches every day in tho year! Half on’t’s rotten. It ought to como down.” “Well,’ said Eliza, “If it ought to como down, let it como. You know where to find tho axo.” Sophy, on tho other side of tho fonce, could hardly boar the horror and surprise of it. She forgot she was not “speaking” to her sister. “Oh ’ Liza i” she cried, piercingly. “That was mother’s tree. She sot it out with her own hands. I dun no what she’d say.” There was a moment’s quiet, and then Eliza’s voico - came gruffly: “You let that tree alone.” But Jim had no thought of touching it. He was working silently at his task. Sophy wont into tho house, trembling. She had spoken first. But it was to save the true. The warm spring days went on, and Annie Darling had not come. Woods began to devastate her garden, and Wilfred used to look over the fenco and wish Undo Jim would do something. Once he spoke to Uncle Jim about it, in the way everybody hail of making him responsible for tho floral well-being of the neighborhood; but Uncle Jim would hardly listen. “You 'tend to it! you ’tend to it!” Ae cried, testily. “I’ve got all I can do to git them Miller gals’ pieces into shape so’t they can sow a fow seeds.” But one morning ho sought out Wilfred, mending a gap in his own orchard wall by tho road. “Wilfred,” said Gardener Jim, “have you ’tended to Aimie’s gardin?” He laid down his hoe and put a foot on a etono in good position for talk. Wilfred dropped las crowbar and came forward.

“Wliv, no,” said lie, irritated, ho hardly knew why, as if by a call to a forgotten task. “Nobody’s asked me to ’tend to it.”

Jim stood for a minute looking through tho tree spaces, and then his gaze came back to his nephew, and Wilfred, with a start, realized that ho hail never before had the chance to look into his Uncles Jim’s eyes. Now ho found them direct and rather stern.

“Wilfred,” said Gardener Jim, “don’t be a ’tarnal fool.”

Wilfred said nothing, but immediately, ho could not tell why, he seemed to be looking upon a picture of Annie standing among the flowers in her little plain dress. His heart was heating faster, and he said to himself, that after all, it would bo sort of nice if Annie would come home. Gardener Jim was speaking laboriously, as if lie dragged out conclusions lie liad perhaps reached long ago and liad not yet compared with any one.

“Tliere’6 a time for everything. Tliere’s a time to graft a tree an’ a time to cut it down. Well, its your time o’ life to make a 'tarnal fool o' yourself. Don’t ye-do it. If you do, lilt's not when you’re my age you’ll be all soul alone, like me, an’ goin’ round fendin’ to other folk’s gardins.”

Wilfred stared at him in wonder. “I don’t know,” he found himself saying. “I might fix it, hut I guess 'twould he kind o’ queer.” Gardener Jim screwed up his face until his eyes were quite eclipsc-d. “Queer!” said he. “Nothin’s queer if you go ahead an’ do it an’ say nothin’ to nobody. What if they do call ye crazed? That’s another way to make ’em staif from under an’ let ye go it. There! I’ve said my say. Ain’t that your axe over there by the well? You take an’ come along o’ me. I’d lia’ brought mine, only I thought mebbe I shouldn’t need it till to-morrer. But I guess I shall. I guess I shall.” Wilfred followed him along the road to the Miller house, and there they saw the twins. Sophy, obscured by her sunbonnet, was on her knees, sowing seeds in a bed Jim had made for her the day before; but Eliza, stood quite still among the peonies, looking off down the road. Gardener Jim took liis way into Eliza’s part of the yard. She turned and looked at him uneasily, as if she wondered what exactions he might make to-day. Wilfred thought her face had changed of late. There were marks of agitation upon it, as if she had been stirred by unaccustomed thoughts and then had tried to hide them. Her eyes were troubled. Gardener Jim walked over to the tall fence.

“Here, Wilfred,” said he, “you take your axo ail’ knock off them boards. The posts ’ll go too, give ’em a chance. They’re pretty nigh rotted off.” Eliza came awake. “Don’t you touch my fence!” she called. “Don’t you so much as lay a finger on it.” Wilfred gave her a compliant look. “■You can’t do that, you know,” ho said, in an undertone, to Garderer Jim. “It’s their fence. They don’t want it dmvn.” Gardener Jim made no answer. Ho took the axe from Wilfred’s hand and dealt tho fence a stroke, and then another, and at every one it seemed as if something fell. Eliza strode over to him, and, without reason, stood there. Sophy left her seed-sow-ing on tho other side and came also, and she, too, watched the boards falling. The Avomon Avcre pale and their oyes shoAved terror; whether at tho unchained power of the man or at the Avonder of life, no one could have told. Wilfred sauntered aAvay to tho old apple, tree, and began picking off tAvigs here and there, to drop them on the grass.

Gardener Jim thmvdoAvn the axe at last and wiped his forehead. “Whero you Avant them hoards piled?” he asked Eliza, briefly. “Doavh tlioro by tho Avood shed.” Her voice trembled. They’ll make good kindlin’. Over tho space Avhere tAvo or three sound posts AA'ore standing, she spoke to her sister.. There Avas something strident in her voice, as if she pleaded for strength to break the Aveb of years.

“You better have some o’ them boards,” “Mebby I had,” said Sophy. ‘•Here, Wilfred,” called Gardener Jim. “You pile them hoards an’ I’ll see if I can’t loosen up the dirt a mite round this old phlox. Anyone must be a ’tarnal fool to build up a high board fence an’ cut off the sun from things AA-lien they’re trying to groAV.”

Sophy looked timidly at her sister. ...

“I s’pose ’tis foolish to try to have

slio snid. Eliza cleared lior throat and answered with the .sumo irrelevance: “He’s fixed tho pinies up real nieo. See ’f you remember which tho white one was.” Sophy stepped over the dividing lino, and the two sisters walked away to the peony settlement. Gardener Jim touched 'Wilfred on tho arm. “You go along,” said he. “I’ll finish here. You ’tend to Annie’s gardin. I hovo a trowel over tho fenco thero this mornin’. You go an’ git up some o’ them weeds.” Wilfrod nodded in unquestioning compliance. As lie hesitated then for a moment, watching tho sisters, and wondering what tlioy were talking about, Eliza raised her hand and brushed a leaf from Sophy’s shoulder. Then tlioy went on talking, but apparently of the garden, for they pointed hero and thero in a fervor of discovery. Wilfrod turned with a rush and went off to Annio Darling’s. Ho found tho trowel under tho feme, as Gardener Jim had prophesied. and ho worked all day, with abrief nooning at home. The garden was full of voices. Here was a plant lie liad driven ton miles to get for her; hero wero the mint and balm slio loved. It seemed to him, as tho hours -went by, that ho was talking with her and telling her many things—confessions, some of thorn, anil pleas for her continued kindliness. When ho had finished, all hut carrying away his pile of weeds, ho heard a voice at.tho gato. It was Lily, under a bright parasol, her face repeating its bloom. “Well, I never 1” sho called. “You goin’ to turn gardener, same as your Uncle did?” Wilfred took off his hat, to feel tho cool, air, and went forward towards her.. He was not embarrassed. Slio seemed to him quite a different person from what slio luid before. “I’ve just got it dono,” ho said with perfect simplicity. “Don’t it look nice?” Lily had flushed, and, lie thought with surprise, she looked almost angry. But sho laughed with tho samo gay note. “Been doin’ it for Annie Darling?” she asked. “For darling Annio?” “Yes.” said Wilfred, “I’ve been doin’ it for Annie.” “Mercy! how hot it is!” said Lily. “Seems if there wasn’t a breath of air anywhere. I must get homo and see if I can find mo a fan.” She was rustling away, but Wilfred did not look alter her. Ho was too busy.

When tho weeds had all been carried away, ho stood looking at the orderly garden with something like lovo for it in his heart. And then the gato clinked and Annie came in and up tho path. There was a strange wistful radiance in her face, is f she had chanced upon an undreamed of joy. It was liko the home-coming of a bride. Wilfred strode over the beds and put his arms about her. “0 Annie!” lie said. “I’m so glad you’ve como.”

At six o’clock they wero still in the garden, talking, though she had opened the house, and the smoke was coming out of the chimney from the fire boiling water for their tea. Gardener Jim, going home from work, came up to the fence and leaned on it, eying tlio garden critically. ‘‘Well, Wilfred,” said he, “you’ve done a good day’s work.” The youth and maid came forward. His arm about her waist and her cheeks were pink. “How’cl you leave the twins?” Asked Yv'ilfved.

Gardener Jim looked off into the road vista, and shook all over, mirthlessly.

. ‘‘l heel'd ’em say they were goin’ to have flip jacks for supper,” said lie, gravely, “an’ fry ’em in Sophy’s part.” His eyes came back to Annie and lie studied her for a moment. Then he spoke abruptly. “I’m goin’ to give you suthin’, Annie—that set o’ flowered chiny, Its all there is left in the house that’s wutli nnvthing. ’Twas my mother’s, an’ her mother s afore her. an’ there ain’t a piece mispin’. When you git ready for it, Wilfred liere-he’ll como round an’ pack it up.”

In Denmak as a whole tho poor aro extremely well-cared for, and tho cost of poor relief, together with oldage relief per head of the population, is os 8d per year. In England, whore the great mass of the out-door poor must either beg or starve, tho cost ol poor relief alono, por head 8s 2 > d” population ’ was last year

rr recent financial crisis in tho States is attributed by soino authorities to the growing tendency on the part of the prudent to keep their money in their OAvn possession ratfler than entrust it to the banks. It is estimated that no less -a sum than £200,000,000 has thus boon lvithdraAVii from circulation in tho United States, owing t-o lack of confidonco in public institutions. Egypt is also responsible for a part of the dearth, according the Lord Cromer. During tho past four years the excess of gold imports over exports amounts to £10,000,000. Much of this gold is converted into personal adornments.”

The best eyesighit is possessed by those peoples aa’Eoso lands are vast and barren, and where obstacles tending to shorten the sight are foiv. Eskimos Avill detect -a AA'hite fox in the snow 'at a great distance away, while the Arabs of the deserts of Africa have such extreme poAvers of vision that on tho vast plains of the desert they will pick out objects invisible to the ordinary eye at ranges from one to ten miles distant. Among civilised people the Nonvegians have better eyesight than most, if not all, others, as they more generally fulfil -tho necessary' conditions, The reason why defective eyes are so much on the increase in this country and in Europe lies in too much study of books in early life and in badly-lighted rooms.

“The British naval officer Avho discovered the fate of Sir John Franklin, Avliose venture for tho north polo remains still the most sensational of all tho list, as that of 'a pioneer in soarch of the Northwest passage, has just died in London at the age of eighty-eight. This is Admiral Sir Francis Leopold McClintock. He Avas second lieutenant under Sir James Clark Ross, on the Enterprise, the first vessel sent out to search for Franklin’s expedition in 1818. T.wo years -Lator ho joined the second ex-pedition,-and found thereon the first evidences of Franklin’s course, making a heroic journey of 750 miles by sledges. In its course he rescued Captain McClure and liis companions, who had been imprisoned for three years in the ice near Melville Island. This Avas a marvellous journey by sledges, and his experience Avas the basis of future work'. Again lie went on the expedition equipped and sent out by Lady Franklin, and then lie found fho record of Frank!indciifh and the discoveries that the f ranklin expedition had made. He published a report of the whole, entitled, The fate of Sir John Franklin; the \ oya»e of the Fox, 1859.’ He was received with great honor, made a knight, and given the freedom of the city of London. Since then he had been useful in important posts. Luo universities of Cambridge,