CHAPTER II.

Waikato Times, Volume XXI, Issue 1771, 10 November 1883, Page 5

CHAPTER 11.

A HAPPY FAMHiY. Well thus it came to pass that Mrs. Birtles opened her house as a boarding house. It was a hard struggle at first, for although she lived rent free, and that was no doubt something, still until she got, lodgers, all her income was the ten shillings per week she received as rent for her cottage. How she would have got along without the help of the grateful Jewess Bachael Moss, it is impossible to say, perhaps not at all, for certain it is, that many of the pieces of furniture, carpets, linen, cfbokery, and other goods and chattels, necessary to the .proper fitting up of a boarding house never were entered in xVEilliken Moss's dirty ledger.- --__ , - I commenced by saying thai at Mother, Bristles' "We" "were 'a mixed lot. You oouldi hardly 'have/expected otherwise: Fitzroy Street is not by any means an ar^sto- . cratic;one, a.nd although not ini the ," slums", of tiie.city; i&is ...narrow arid; poky. Neither; was the house an arigtocrktic, one.- . - 1 :- \It was large and roomy,. in the, » sensd oi-, na,Ying;;piBncy<fcoi P rooms, > out '.;Iqob6'

streets of Fitzroy. Neither on the other hand was it of the common lodging house stamp, where they'take jta all sorts, and you must pay for your beds before you sleep in them, whare you may roam with a broken down swell one night, a bricklayer's labourer the iidi. 1 , and a drunken loafer the third. No, its habitueß were all in a way, and more or less, ladies and gentleman, that is to say they were nearly all what comes under the vague yet easily understood, although not so easily defined category of " Bohemians." The house had its advantages too. Imprimis 1 it was cheap, but by no means nasty. Item. It was within two or three doors of a public house, where they sold good beer and fairly good gin. Item. There was a little grocer's shop nearly opposite, where petitssoupers in the shape of red herrings, sardines, preseived salmon or lobster (these being delicacies not included in the regular dietary scale of the establishment) could be quickly arranged for, whenever, and that was not seldom, any of the guest 3 had the money, and felt inclined to be generous. Item. .Lower down there was a butcher's, famous all over the neighborhood for its sausages, tripe, black and white puddings, pork pies, saveloys, brawn, pig's feet, and sheep's trotters. And, Item. Bound the corner, in Brunswick Street, and no great distance away, there was a pawnbroker's. Then there were other advantages. You could smoke in any room in the house except the drawing-room, which was also the diningroom, and Mrs. Bh ties' own bed-room, which was also a kind of boudoir, where none of the sterner sex were even allowed to penetrate, but where — or so there were dark rumours — the feminine side of the house were occasionally regaled with such savory luxuries as tea and toasted crumpets, hnt pies, aye and even oysters and bottled stout ; and, in the season, strawberries and cream, and other such like delicacies in which the female heart doth take delight. Then Mis. Birtles could always evolve, out of her inner consciousness, as it seemed, to " shake down" for a belated friend. Again, you were always hail fellow well met with everybody in the house (that is to say so long aa you behaved yourself. If you didn't — if you transgressed the unwritten code, you'd soon have found yourself not only at Coventry, but tete-a-tete with Mrs. Birtles). • Then again, you could lie in bed in the morning if you liked, and have your breakfast kept hot in the oven for you, so long as you didn't try it on too often altogether. You were within half a minute of the 'busses and cabs if you wanted to ride, and ten minutes of the heart of Melbourne if you wanted to walk, the Carlton Gardens were within a minute, and the Fitzroy Gardens within five minutes of you. Again your food, if not served up as it might have been at Scott's or Menzies 1 , was wholesome, well cooked, olean, and plentiful. Lastly. Whenever any of the theatres issued " paper" the first handful of it used to come direct to Mrs. Birtles'. The managers knew what they were about. They knew we were good claquSrs and more, that to a certain extent, some of us had the ear of the town. When I joined the Birtles' establishment there Avere nine of us, nay, counting Mothe* Bristles and the baby (we always spoke of her as the baby), and Joanna the maid of all work, and the boy Sam, who used to come early and late, and work somewhere else in the day, there were thirteen of ua— twelve and a half at all events. Place aux dames. Misa Tulk, a lady of uncertain age, who taught music, French, and, they said, Italian, and whom we looked upon as a prodigy of learning. She was quiet, reserved ladylike, and used to spend much of her spare time talking to herself on the piano-forte— if I may be allowed the express sion. Poor lady, her's was a sad, sad story » more of which anon. Miss Cassandra Drummond, although, why oven her Godfathers and Godmothers should have called hef by the tragedy breathing name of Cassandra passes my compre* hension entirely. Why, she was the very antithesis of a Cassandra, and how she could have been so lighthearted and radiant under the crushing weight of a name like that, was and is a poser to me. (To be continued.)

Cardinal Richelieu's Remains. An article in the Gazette dcs Beaux Arts reminds the world of the fate of Cardinal Richelieu's remains. " The King of the King," as the people had nicknamed him, when he had crushed the noblesse, disarmed the Protestants, humbled the house of Austria, founded the French Academy, built the Palace of the Cardinal and the Chateau Richelieu, the two first museums of the Seventeenth century; when he had put French finances on a sound basis,- created the navy, given to France, Canada, St. Domingo, Guiana, and Senegal, was entombed in the fulness of his glory, in the vaults of the Sorbonne Church. One day, some sixteen years ago, the Mayor of a little village in Brittany presented himself before the Emperor Napoleon 111. He opened a small box which ha brought under his arm, unwrapped the parcel which it contained, and drew from it a human mask. The skin was dried up and wrinkled, the eyes deeply buried in their sockets, the mouth contracted, the teeth perfect. The beard, mustaches and eyebrows were still in their places, and the whole was covered with a yellow varnish like an anatomical specimen. " Sire " said the Mayor, "you behold all that remains of Cardinal Richelieu." The article, which ia accompanied by an excellent reproduction of a sketch of the mask taken at the time to which we refer, goes on to state that in the month, of December, 1793, when a revolutionary party pillaged the tomb 9 of the Sorbonne, one of the soldiers entered the vault which contained the body of the Cardinal, and finding that the mask of the face, doubtless in order to facilitate some process of embalming, had been sawn of! from the rest of the head, possessed himself of it, and displayed it in triumph to the spectators, who thought that he had .himself out off the great man's head. Subsequently a hatter named Cheval poasessed himself of the trophy, and hid it in a cupboard at the back of his shop. The ninth Thermidor came. The hatter, in alarm, gave the mask in charge to one of his customers, the Abbe Armez, who carried it with him to Brittany and gave it to his brother. The brother finding that insects were attacking the relic, consulted the village apothecary, by whose advice it was varnished. It was this gentleman's son who brought it to Paris in 1866, and in December of that year it was restored with great ceremony to its place under the monument of the Cardinal, in the presence of the Archbishop of Paris, Monsignor Darboy, the Duke of Richelieu, arid a great gathering of notabilities. Since that day the Emperor has died in exile, the Archbishop, of Paris has been shot, and the last of the name' of Richelieu has died without issue.

Where Women are not Wanted. Wome& are rigidly excluded from St. Malo, a place fifty^miles irom New Orleans, inhabited by about half a hundred Malays, They .have lived there forty- years, / having originally deserted from Erenohjships, while littler more than boys. They are described as* -low, ignorant, and ferocious, with mixed Chinese ,and Japanese -features. ' They live by^ fishing, and gambling is;,abou.t their-^only diversion. • Their^firgt leader Ja^d. tiiniel and: tl^ story .^Q^thatijui.qonsequence of the" jealousies r Mafbus^d f she*wa/; J deUber-V' Ineyeifeto^pQrnttt^anotheiAbf^her^^f^inXthe -j. 1 -