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CHAPTER II.

GETTING OUT OF THE SMOKE.

A LETTER TO BULLION BALES, ESQ. OF MANCHESTER,

FROM HIS FRIEND MR SCAMPER.

July 1870.

MY DEAR BALES, My three telegrams-one only two days old-must have advised you that I am alive and moving. How I have lived and moved I now propose to tell you. Imprimis, with reference to those favourite similes of yours about a child bounding from the schoolroom, or a bird liberated from a cage, believe me, they do not apply to folk like you and me fleeing from our desks and ledgers. Manchester goes with us, hanging on like Sinbad's old man. One who has been long in populous city pent does not, if he has been pursuing a business therein, disengage himself from the populous city so easily as a poet may think. Prythee, then, Bales, give over your similes, for they prove to those who have travelled that you have not.

I was not unprepared for the feverish bustle of my last few days before starting. Where fresh work

comes pouring in up to the last minute, it is in vain that you seek those few quiet hours which are to be devoted to the plans and provisions of the journey; "rusticus expectat dum defluit amnis," the leisure never comes, and you go away distracted. You have forgotten a good many necessary things, and you are persuaded that you have forgotten a great many more, which afterwards turn out all right; you would many times on your way to the station stop the carriage and turn back if you had not run the time so fine; it is anything but a luxury that first half-hour's communing with your own spirit. And when, at last, comes the reflection that it is too late to remedy an omission in regard to personal wants, you don't subside into calm. There are a hundred business matters first intended to be done by yourself, then to be carefully committed to the doing of another, which, you think, have been neither done nor committed; and you study how the shortest possible form of words shall convey the necessary instructions in the telegrams which you will rush to despatch as soon as you are out of the train.

As you rummage your vocabulary to make these concise, a proverb keeps buzzing about your brain that brevity is the soul of something or other, but telegraphy is too long a word to fit in. What is the word? Hang the word! how the deuce shall I abridge this message to Bales without vitiating its import? How often do you say in your haste that a holiday is not worth having on these terms; that

but for shame you would turn back now, and bring your perplexity and your trip to a sudden end together! You can't do this, and by-and-by you find out that there is no remedy for your forgetfulness, except the telegrams which you have invented; and so that trouble is dismissed, but only to make way for another. You have arranged to do so many things in London and its suburbs! and the time allowed, which cannot be exceeded, will never suffice for all these, and you begin to enumerate them for your comfort. It all seemed simple enough when you were planning, but now it is clear that it never can be done. Thus does your mind, once set a-fretting, find the means of continuing its own disquiet.

Well, you get to London, and don't send off the pithy telegrams which took such a world of labour to frame; you find that seven-eighths of the things supposed to have been forgotten or unprovided for have been carefully looked to; and that, although you have no spare time in London, you do get through all your programme and are prepared to start at the appointed time. On making this departure from London for the coast, and not before that, you really begin to feel that you are leaving some of your cares behind.

What I have described above has always been my experience in getting away from business. But two or three days once past without the sight of new work make a different man of you, as I felt on turning out in a fresh morning to take the train for Dover. I

felt still better when I arrived on the pier and got a sight of the sea. Embarkation was no difficult matter, but it would have been much easier than it was if a broader stair had been provided at the pier ; for where there is a down current and an up current of mankind and two people can scarcely stand abreast, ascent and descent cannot be pleasant. It was a fine unsuspicious morning enough, nevertheless I found people making themselves up for a blow, or at any rate for a shipment of seas; so, to be in the fashion, I adopted the prevailing uniform, which was a long tarpaulin dress fashioned with pieces of spun yarn for frogs and headed by a capacious hood, so that the passengers, whom I felt inclined to speak of as the brethren, resembled a convent afloat. After pacing the length of the deck once or twice I thought it prudent to sit down; and accordingly I secured a place on a bench which held three, near the waist of the vessel, the two other occupants being an old gentleman and a lady. You know how, when you come among a crowd of strangers, there is always some group or some individual that more than all the rest attracts your notice, don't you? Well, on board the steamer I was not long in singling out a gentleman as an object of interest. He did not robe himself as a monk, but it was not this singularity that caused me to observe him. He wore two wideawake hats at once, a black one over a brown one, yet neither was this the reason of my regarding him. I was fascinated by his peculiarly handsome face, and by the

He had something to say

gracious expression of it. to almost everybody on board, certainly to all those who walked to and fro; and at last he collected a crowd of passengers of all classes on the forward part of the deck and addressed them earnestly. I was too doubtful of my own behaviour on the high seas to rise and join his audience as I wished to do, but I found out afterwards that he had discovered a new interpretation of Scripture, and was anxious to caution all men that the common teaching is utterly erroneous, and that they can know nothing of real religion until they study his version. He was carrying with him to the Continent translations into many languages of one of the gospels; but whether he travelled solely on a missionary errand, or improved the occasions created by other business by dropping divine knowledge on his path, I did not discover. I spoke to him before we left the ship, and learned that he was going to make a wonderfully long journey without a halt. His age may have been five-and-thirty years. But my first proceeding after settling myself in my seat was to establish relations with my immediate neighbour, whom I found to be an elderly and infirm gentleman going to the South for his health. The lady on his other side was taking care of him, he being a widower but lately bereaved. Had he not told me this I should never have discovered that he was a mourner: neither his garb nor manner betokened it. For many years he had resided abroad on his wife's account, she having been a great sufferer from