IN MANY LANDS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 283, 22 April 1911, Page 10

IN MANY LANDS.

THE STOBIES OK A DIPULUATIST'S WIFE. Very readable are the two volumes by Mrs. Hugh Eraser, "A Diplomatist's Wife in Many Lands," just published. Mrs. Eraser has lived in many countries and been brought into contact with very many interesting people, and her reminescenccs teem witli good stories pleasantly told. Her brother was the late Marion Crawford, one of her aunts was the late Julia Ward Howe, who wrote the "Battle Hymn of the Republic"; her grandfather, •Samuel Ward, was the high-minded gentleman who, when the New York Legislature during a financial crisis voted to repudiate a State loan obtained from England, sent his entire private fortune to England to pay the debt. Old men still raise their hats to Mr. Ward's portrait as they pass the place it occupies in the New York Stock Exchange. Of one of the Popes of the middle of the nineteenth century, .Mrs. Eraser writes that "he was anxious to maintain a high level of public morals, and showed his zeal in that direction by ordaining that the (lancing girls of the opera should wear green Turkish trousers reaching to their ankles, whatever the rest of their costume might consist of.

"My mother used to say that the.effect of a company of young women pirouetting gravely on one toe, with short tulle skirts Hying straight out from their waists, while the rest of their limbs were swathed in iloppy green silk, was one of the funniest things she had ever beheld."

An aspect of Napoleon's character in his later days at St. Helena is touched upon in the following story of a saintly lady who was attended on her deathbed by a certain bishop, who asked her where she obtained her faith: "Ah, she replied, "when I was a little child I lived at St. Helena. The Emperor spoke to me one day. and asked me what. T knew of my catechism. He was not satisfied with my answers, and he said that he would instruct me himself. For years he Hindi' mc come to him every day, and he patiently taught me for hours at a time. 1 owe my knowledge of religion, all mv faith and joy in it, to him." There is a very interesting chapter in the first volume about Mrs. Eraser's brother, Marion Crawford:

"When he was about ten years old it dawned upon him that he had a violent and uncontrollable temper, and, with the simplicity which marked all his character, he decided to get it in hand. "One member of the family constantly irritated him to the verge of frenzy, and he invented a form of ?elf-discipline which very few children would have thought of imposing on themselves. My mother entered his room one day and found him walking round and round it, carrying on his back a heavy wooden shutter.

"'What are you doing?' she asked. " 'Getting over a rage,' he replied, doggedly continuing his exercise. ''When"! am so angry that I want to kill somebody T come in here and carry the shutter three, times round the room before I answer them. It is the only way.'" Marion Crawford was a very'strong man. He was once walking along a solitary lane and met a rustic using fearful language to a refactory pig that stubbornly refused to trot in the right direction.

"What good will all that cursing do?" Marion exclaimed scornfully. "Here, I'll show you how to drive the beast," and he lifted his blackthorn walkingstick and gave the creature a gentle tap on the head. The result was instantaneous—the pig rolled over stone-dead! In the end Marion had to pay him for the pig, and then pay him to cart it away.

Here is a pen picture of Mrs. Browning, the poetess, as Mrs. Fraser saw her before she became well acquainted with her:

"My mother took me to see Mrs. Browning, and that was an awesome experience. From the blaze of the Tuscan summer noon we passed into a dark room, so dark that it was some time before I made out a lady lying on a couch and holding out her hand to me. "I felt my way to a stool on the floor and looked at her for quite an hour without daring to open my lips, while she and my mother spoke in rapturous whispers of the glorious epocli opening up for Italy. "Everything was heat, the enthusiasm, the darkness, and I tried hard to get keyed up to the proper pitch and appreciate my good fortune. "But it was of no use. The poetess was everything I did not like. She had great cavernous eyes, glowering out under two big bushes of black ringlets, a fashion I had not beheld before.

"She never laughed, or even smiled, once during the whole conversation, and through all the gloom of the shuttered room I could see that her face was hollow and ghastly pale.

"Mamma mia! but I was glad when I got out into the sunshine again! All that day, and long afterwards, I pondered in my own silent, busy way over the strange problem—why should that nice, happy Mr. Browning have such a dismally mournful lady for his wife." concerning; her schooldays in the Isle of Wigiit with tlie Misses Sewcll (whom the pupils called "'aunts") she tells this amusing story: "One of the maids was particularly popular with us, and one day Aunt Ellen heard me call her a "jolly brick.' With her kindest smile she remarked, 'My dear, I approve of your sentiments for Harriet; but 1 should be glad to hear you translate them into better English.' "I thought for a moment, and then asker if 'hilarious fragment of masonry' would meet the case. 'Very correctly put.' replied Aunt Ellen; "but since it makes too long a name for daily use, I advise you to call her Hilary.' And Hilary the good soul was ever after." Of the several grim stories, here is one relating to a house in England she once visited, with a great laurel shrubbery which had to be cut away: "Measurements were taken, nnd proved that a room existed to which there was no entrance from within. This was finally effected by breaking down a brickedup window, and then the long-excluded daylight showed a bedroom of the eighteenth century—in wild confusion, garments thrown on the floor, and chairs overturned as if in a struggle. "On the mouldering bed lav the skeleton of a woman, still decked out in satin and lace, with a dagger sticking between the ribs. Under the bed was another skeleton, that of a man, who seemed fromt he twisted limbs and unnatural position to have died hard. "No clue had been obtained to the story. It was just one of those domestic stories, which, as my brother used to .-ay. might occur any day in any of those remote country houses where the master's won! is law and no outsider can ever penetrate." During Mr. Eraser's life in Borne, she was brought much into contact with the Papal authorities at the Vatican. Clarke .Icrrnise, an unofficial British representative charged with all the business connected with the Vatican, told her of his experiences with an over-enthusiastic compatriot who wished to see Pius X. "During the drive to the Vatican Clarke Jervoise took much trouble to explain to his companion thn': he must be careful to address the Pontiff as 'Sainte Pere.' , .

"By the time they had passed all the guards and secretaries and chamberlains and monsignori the stranger was trembling with excitement. At last they were ushered into the Pope's presence, and there he threw himself on his knees in a fervor of veneration, exclaiming, "Sacre Pere!'

"Surely never before had a Pope been sworn in at the heart of the Vatican. Pio Nono kept his countenance and the naughty 'cuss' word passed without remark—then; but how he must have laughed afterwards! "A genial American capped this feat years afterwards on being presented to Leo XIII. 'Sir,' he exclaimed, seizing the Pope's hand and shaking it heartily, M am glad to meet von. 1 knew your father, the late Pope!'" Prescott, the Historian, was :i. friend of Mrs. Eraser's mother, and she fold the writer that he was distinctly original, passing in his own family for a hopeless idler who would never come to any "Ilis relations were constantly imploring him to do something useful, to take up some respectable career, instead of sitting all day locked up in his library eating soap! "lie ii-ed to keep a cake of litis on his writing table, and nibble at it constantly, saying when lie was remonstrated with that people should be clean inside as well as out." In an intimate picture of the Far East the, following throws vivid sidelights on the lives of the women. "A Japanese lady thinks nothing of spending four or live hours on dressing to pay a visit, and I fancy the .Yfanchu dames—the only ones I ever saw—took even longer. But the visit was as lengthy as the preparation. "It was something of an ordeal to have the wife of a great dignitary arrive at eleven or twelve o'clock and stay till sunset. All her female relations J accompanied her and brought two maids apiece, so that the compound, seemed filled with palanquins and mulecarts "Once inside a toreign bouse, however, curiosity overcomes fashion, and they Hit about from room to room fingering everything, trying on one's clothes, turning out articles, and strange, to say, carrying off all the toilet soap in sight. "Why this should particularly attract them we never could imagine. Our servants told us that they regarded it as a palatable sweetmeat and cut it up in little squares to distribute to their friends! Generous restitution for the trilling theft was always made the next day in presents of cakes and fruits." Ifere is a traveller's story of his night in a Chinese temple: One of the former Legation staff, having ridden all day, arrived after dark at a lonely temple and asked for hospitality. The Bonze conducted him to a room which contained several large chests.

"The priest had furnished him with a lantern, which he left burning. Waking in the dead of night he found himself staring at the dark wooden cases against the opposite wall—and with a sudden shiver realised that they were coffins! As he looked at them another horrible certainty came to him —the lid of one was being slowly and stealthily raised from within.

"Inch by inch it went up. and then four ebony fingers appeared over the edge of the box. With a leap he was off the 'kang' and flying out of the door, but there was a crash behind him and heavy footsteps ponded in pursuit. "Glancing back as he ran, he got one glimpse of a hideous face and figure. The next moment he was out of the courtyard, had reached the shed where he had left his horse, and dashed away into the night."