laughter as I managed to murmur: Is that all? How lucky!" My husband has a delightful old cousin who lives in the heart of one of the largest and dirtiest towns in the North. When he inherited the house fifty years ago it was more or less in the country, but the town has grown up round him. He will not move. He will not allow a tree to be cut down, so, at least, he cannot see what has happened at his very gates. He has his few fields, his cows, his dairy, his greenhouses, his laundry: a little estate in the heart of the busy town. They have even mined under his house, but he will not go. He gives, or gave, huge parties for the Grand National. We motored to the course, where a coach waited for us. But he loathed motors, and never went himself, just as he never used the beautiful bathroom he had had built, but took a tub in his room. That was good enough for his father, and so was good enough for him. He disliked change or progress in any form. The North is a curious mixture. Surely the most goahead, quick business men in the world. Yet here and there you meet an old gentleman like this, one of the real old school such as I have never met in any other country. My husband had other relations also, two old ladies, who had a beautiful place still further North. They died only in the early years of the present century. Yet they had never been in a railway train. The travelling coach they used for their journeys, as good as the day they bought it, still stands in the stables. Nothing would induce them to travel by any other means. In many ways the North, in spite of the Socialism and independence of the majority of its people, is more conservative, more feudal even, than any other part of England. I am certain that no South-country peer has the great influence that Lord Derby or Lord Crawford has in the North. I remember a crowded political meeting, at which all the large number of miners present greeted Lord Crawford, then Lord Balcarres, with shouts of "Cheer up, Charley." But he did what he liked with them, whether they realised it or not. Just as the two old ladies I spoke of ruled the countryside with a rod of iron in the last century. There was only one big strike while we were in the North, which was lucky. Of all duties of the soldier in England, strike duty must be the most unpleasant. The railways were the cause of the trouble this time. One night about 2 A.M. the telephone went. My husband answered it. He was to proceed at once with fifty men to a police station twelve miles away. There he would get further instructions. In a fearful thunderstorm, and in pitch darkness except for the lightning flashes, he drearily started for the barracks some miles away to collect his men. I put my head under the bed-clothes. I hate thunderstorms. And I wondered for the fiftieth time why any one marries a soldier. I saw and heard no more of my husband for three days. Then he returned, indescribably dirty, after an unnerving time spent at some railway workshops, endeavouring-fortunately with success-to restrain fifty bored British soldiers from firing on all and sundry who approached the building, the same soldiers being quite oblivious of the fact that, as they were nearly all recruited locally, it was more than likely that some of their own relations would be among the casualties, should any occur. The sergeant, whose home was within a stone'sthrow of the building, was especially keen to get to work. He spent his time selecting various spots whence a machinegun would do the most execution. Fortunately for my husband, the strike was quickly over. Had any shots been fired he would have had to bear all the blame. even on the horizon. However, there were other "attractions.' I went down the water-chute fifteen times. I sat on a sort of ostrich on the merry-go-round till I was giddy, deaf, and blind. In company with two or three perspiring sticky children I even tried the swingboats. he But at tea I disgraced myself for ever. Seeing dozens of waiting cups, I seized a large jug of what looked like milk, and filled them all. It was the cream that was being kept for the strawberries. We had been in the train some twenty minutes on our homeward journey, when one warrior, the owner of the largest family, discovered that his wife and seven children had been left behind. He must have somehow forgotten them. With great presence of mind pulled the communication-cord. The train stopped. The noise and argument that followed I have only once heard equalled. That was in Ireland, when the engine driver whether he should, or should not, take on the train, which had just been boarded by an armed party of Irish Constabulary. stabulary. Just as the Irish driver then refused to go on, this one refused to go back. There was no later train. Did I not say it was an all-day excursion? We left the seven to their fate. to their fate. Perhaps they Two of the most lurid days of my life were those in which we took the married families to the seaside. Once a year this awful performance takes place, and some hundred men, women, and children are given a day out. I said seaside. But on are there still. the first occasion we selected Southport. There was no sign of any sea at Southport, not was arguing The following year we went to Blackpool, a truly marvellous place. And there was the sea, also a zoo, a hundred side-shows, and dancing in a ballroom which is said to have the finest floor in England. All this for sixpence. This day passed off without incident. I was not allowed to help at tea, and no one was lost. Shortly after this our time in the North was finished, and with a complexion and hair several shades darker, and feeling considerably chastened, we went on leave, there to wait our fate, which proved to be India. I have not lived in the North country since that time, but this year I hope to go up for the unveiling of the War Memorial erected by the regiment to its thousands of dead. Truly, the North gave freely and of her best. I, who used sometimes to laugh at them, laugh no more. I can only stand in reverent and awed silence. The spirit of the North contains the very essence of the spirit of England. (To be concluded.) "BOW AND ADORE." BY EDMUND CANDLER. And when they are all seated, each in his proper place, then a great prelate rises and says with with a loud voice, 'Bow and adore.' And as soon as he has said this, the company bow down until their foreheads touch the earth in adoration towards the Emperor as if he were a god. And this adoration they repeat four times, and then go to a highlydecorated altar, on which is a vermilion tablet with the name of the Grand Kaan inscribed thereon, and a beautiful censer of gold. So they incense the tablet and the altar with great reverence, and then return each man to his seat." THE spirit of independence a field of corn. Uncles, brothers, has never been allowed to nephews who have stood in thrive indigenously in the East; the path of the royal succeswhere it occurs, it is a Western sion have gone that way. The product. In the beginning pro- monarch is safe when the courbably pomp and magnificence tier feels as small as a poet in in the despot were necessary front of a great mountainagents of self-preservation. range at dawn. Then, as now, the Oriental could be commanded only by a display of power. The jolly monarch of the old King Cole type, who hobnobbed with his subjects, would not have survived a week. The will and power to raise up or strike down must be manifest, even if exercised by caprice. The material insignia of wealth and resources-apes, ivory, and peacocks, men-at-arms, hunters, eunuchs, multitudes of slaves, elephants, horses, camels, lions, as well as the ghostly supports of religion and superstition must be visible to impress and overawe. An atmosphere of magnificence must be created, in which adoration becomes instinctive. Symbols of dependence must be multiplied until the assertion of self becomes a blasphemy, and the subject feels as a grain of chaff that may be blown aside at the sovereign will. He owes He owes his preservation to his minuteness alone if he is ennobled he stands more in awe, for the taller the head the more likely it is to be lopped off, like an outstanding thistle in Thus Marco Polo describes the reverence paid to the Great Khan. In another passage, as though human veneration were not enough, he tells of a lion among Kublai's courtiers. The beast was led into the Emperor's presence, and as soon as it saw him it lay down before him with every veneration, as if it acknowledged him for his lord, and it remained there lying before him and entirely unchained. No doubt the Polo family, uncle and father and son, paid their respects to the Great Khan, prostrating themselves with all reverence to the ground. The three Venetians, though of noble birth, would not have felt any abasement in the homage, as they loved the Khan and were proud to be his liege men, declaring that he was the wisest and most accomplished man, the greatest captain, the best to govern men and rule an empire, the most potent as regards forces and lands and treasure that existeth in the world or ever hath existed from the time of our first father Adam until this day. The great Khan, to maintain his state, had a guard of twelve thousand horsemen. Marco Polo has given him exactly the same escort as Solomon (1 Kings iv. 26); and he was careful to explain that he kept these not for fear of any man whatever, but merely because of his own exalted rank.’ As the spirit of independence grew in the West, the habit of prostration before Oriental potentates became more difficult to acquire. In the thirteenth century the European, when approaching the earthly manifestation of the divinity, could strike his forehead to the ground without abasement. His reverence, indeed, as in the case of Marco Polo, was often quite genuine. But with the passing of the Middle Ages the exaction of these obeisances came to be regarded as a monopoly of the Almighty, and it was not so easy for the vessel of clay to assume the God." Nevertheless, nearly five hundred years after the Polo foreheads struck the flags of the audiencechamber at Cambabuc a similar act of homage was demanded of the Russian Ambassador of Peter the Great at the court of Pekin. The incident provided De Quincey with an ironic theme. In dramatising the situation he indulged his hatred of the Chinese and the sense of personal dignity that amounted in him to a religion. "Between you and me, such old friends," said the Chinese minister to the Russian-Ismaeloff was his name- a bauble not worth speaking of! Would you oblige me, when presented to the Emperor, by knocking that handsome head of yours nine times-that is, you know, three times threeagainst the floor? I would take it very kindly of you; and the floor is padded to prevent contusions." Ismaeloff, after a little pondering, complied. He did "absolutely consent to elongate himself on the floor, as if preparing to take a swim, and then knock his forehead repeatedly, as if weary of life, somebody counting all the while with a stop-watch, No. 1, No. 2, No. 3, and so on." But he hedged with his dignity by stipulating that any Chinaman seeking a presentation to the Czar should, in coming to St Petersburg, go through exactly the same ceremony. The courtiers of Pekin accepted this condition in good faith, no doubt chuck |