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tremulous and prolonged wail of mournful fear and utter despair as may be imagined to follow the flight of the last hope from the earth. There was a great commotion in the bush; the shower of arrows stopped, a few dropping shots rang out sharply-then silence, in which the languid beat of the stern-wheel came plainly to my ears. I put the helm hard a-starboard at the moment when the pilgrim in pink pajamas, very hot and agitated, appeared in the doorway. "The manager sends me he began in an official tone, and stopped short. 'Good God!' he said, glaring at the wounded man.

"We two whites stood over him, and his lustrous and inquiring glance enveloped us both. I declare it looked as though he would presently put to us some question in an understandable language; but he died without uttering a sound, without moving a limb, without twitching a muscle, Only in the very last moment, as though in response to some sign we could not see, to some whisper we could not hear, he frowned heavily, and that frown gave to his black deathmask an inconceivably sombre, brooding and menacing expression. The lustre of inquiring glance faded swiftly into vacant glassiness. 'Can you steer?' I asked the agent eagerly. He looked very dubious; but I made a grab at his arm, and he understood at once I meant him to steer whether or no. To tell you the truth, I was morbidly anxious to change my shoes and socks. 'He is dead,' murmured the fellow, immensely impressed. 'No doubt about it,' said I, tugging like mad at the shoelaces. 'And, by the way, I suppose Mr. Kurtz is dead as well by this time.'

"For the moment that was the dominant thought. There was a sense of extreme disappointment, as though I had found out I had been striving after something altogether without a substance. I couldn't have been more dis

gusted if I had travelled all this way for the sole purpose of talking with Mr. Kurtz. Talking with . . . I flung one shoe overboard, and became aware that that was exactly what I had been looking forward to a talk with Kurtz. I made the strange discovery that I had never imagined him as doing, you know, but as discoursing. I didn't say to myself, 'Now, I will never see him,' or "Now, I will never shake him by the hand,' but 'Now, I will never hear him.' The man presented himself as a voice. Not, of course, that I did not connect him with some sort of action. Hadn't I been told in all the tones of jealousy and admiration that he had collected, bartered, swindled or stolen more ivory than all the other agents together? That was not the point. The point was in his being a gifted creature, and that of all his gifts the one that stood out pre-eminently, that carried with it a sense of real presence, was his ability to talk, his words-the gift of expression, the bewildering, the illuminating, the most exalted and the most contemptible, the pulsating stream of light, or the deceitful flow from the heart of an impenetrable darkness.

"The other shoe went flying unto the devil-god of that river. I thought, 'By Jove! it's all over. We are too late, he has vanished-the gift has vanished, by means of some spear, arrow or club. I will never hear that chap speak after all,' and my sorrow had a startling extravagance of emotion, even such as I had noticed in the howling sorrow of these savages in the bush. I couldn't have felt more of lonely desolation, somehow, had I been robbed of a belief or had missed my destiny in life. . . . Why do you sigh in this beastly way, somebody? Absurd? Well, absurd. Good Lord, mustn't a man everHere, give me some tobacco."

...

There was a pause of profound stillness, then a match flared, and Marlow's lean face appeared, worn, hollow, with

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Making Haste.

downward folds and dropped eyelids, with an aspect of concentrated attention, and as he took vigorous draws at his pipe, it seemed to retreat and advance out of the night in the regular flicker of the tiny flame. The match went out.

"Absurd," he cried. "This is the worst of trying to tell. . . . Here you all are, each moored with two good addresses, like a hulk with two anchors, a butcher round one corner, a policeman round another, excellent appetites and temperature normal-you hear normal from year's end to year's end. And you say absurd! Absurd beexploded! Absurd! My dear boys, what can you expect from a man who, out of sheer nervousness, has just flung overboard a pair of new shoes. Now I Blackwood's Magazine.

97

think of it, it is amazing I did not shed tears. I am, upon the whole, proud of my fortitude. I was cut up to the quick at the idea of having lost the inestimable privilege of listening to the gifted Kurtz. Of course I was wrong. The privilege was waiting for me. O, yes, I heard more than enough. And I was right, too. A voice. He was little more than a voice. And I heard himit-this voice-other voices-all of them were so little more than voices-and the memory of that time itself lingers around me, impalpable, like a dying vibration of one immense jabber, silly, atrocious, sordid, savage, or simply mean, without any kind of sense. Voices, voices-even the girl herselfnow-"

He was silent for a long time.

(To be continued.)

MAKING HASTE.

"Soon!" says the Snowdrop, and smiles at the motherly earth, "Soon!-for the Spring with her languors comes stealthily on. Snow was my cradle, and chilly winds sang at my birth; Winter is over, and I must make haste to be gone!"

"Soon!" says the Swallow, and dips to the wind-ruffled stream, "Grain is all garnered-the summer is over and done;

Bleak to the Eastward the icy battalions gleam,
Summer is over-and I must make haste to be gone!"

"Soon-ah, too soon!" says the Soul, with a desperate gaze, "Soon!-for I rose like a star, and for aye would have shone, See the pale shuddering dawn, that must wither my rays, Leaps from the mountain-and I must make haste to be gone!"

The Spectator.

Arthur C. Benson.

THE CURRENT COIN OF POLITICIANS.

It is interesting and instructive to trace the origin of our party nomenclature and of those effective and picturesque phrases and familiar colloquial expressions which are the common property, or the current coin, of all politicians. Most of these striking sayings are asociated with the names of eminent statesmen. Indeed, it is one of the ironies of parliamentary history that the memory of many a politician, distinguished and powerful in his day, lives mainly in his phrases. In some instances the sayings, or catch-words, were really coined by the speakers who first contributed them to our political currency; but in other cases they were not so much original expressions, as apt quotations, from obscure sources, so strikingly applied as to fire the popular imagination. Take, for example, the phrase "a leap in the dark," so finely used by Lord Derby in reference to the bill which, in 1867, established household suffrage in boroughs. When Lord Derby was Premier of a Conservative Government for the third and last time, this measure was introduced by his own Administration, but he gave it only a half-hearted support. "No doubt," said he, on the third reading of the bill in the House of Lords, "no doubt we are making a great experiment and taking a leap in the dark, but I have the greatest confidence in the sound sense of my countrymen." The phrase was used eight years before by Lord Palmerston, in a private letter to Lord John Russell under, curiously enough, somewhat similar circumstances. Lord John had in contemplation certain proposals for electoral reform which included a £10 county franchise. "As to our county franchise," wrote Lord Palmerston, "we seem to

be taking a leap in the dark." But we hear of the phrase having been used two hundred years earlier. Thomas Hobbes, the political writer of the seventeenth century, is reported to have said on his death-bed, “I am taking a frightful leap in the dark.” "Meddle and Muddle," one of the most expressive terms in our political currency, which is also associated with the name of Lord Derby, was really coined by that statesman. In 1865 Lord John Russell (or rather Earl Russell, for he was then a peer) was Premier and Foreign Secretary. He claimed that the policy of the Liberal Government in foreign affairs was a policy of nonintervention. "The foreign policy of the noble Earl, so far as the principle of non-intervention is concerned, may be summed up," said Lord Derby, "in two short, homely, but expressive words, meddle and muddle."

man.

"Cave," the designation of a discontented section of a party which breaks away from its allegiance, arose out of a humorous sally made by Mr. John Bright during the debates on Mr. Gladstone's abortive Reform Bill of 1866. The measure was opposed by a strong party of Liberals, including Mr. Hors"The Right Honorable gentleman," said Mr. Bright, in the course of a speech in the House of Commons, "is the first of a new party who has expressed his great grief, who has retired into what may be called his political Cave of Adullam, and he has called about him every one who is in distress, and every one who is discontented." The phrase caught the popular fancy and was accepted by the malcontents. "No improper motive," said Lord Elcho (now Lord Wemyss), "has driven us into this cave, where

we are a most happy family, daily-I of two offices he held under the Crown, the Lord Lieutenancy of the West Riding of Yorkshire and the command of a Militia regiment, and was also struck off the list of the Privy Council. Carlyle, on the other hand, thought the people were "mostly fools." It has been stated that this declaration occurs in Carlyle's appeal (printed in The Spectator) to Lord John Russell, then Premier, to do something for the industrial improvement of Ireland. In that appeal, Carlyle merely speaks of his countrymen as "twenty-seven millions, many of whom are fools;" but in the "Latter-Day Pamphlets," in the chapter on Parliament, he says:

may say hourly-increasing in number and strength, where we shall remain until we go forth to deliver Israel from oppression." The bill was defeated and the Government resigned, only to be replaced by Lord Derby's Administration, which pased the Household Suffrage Act. "The Ministry," said Lord Granville in the House of Lords, referring to that Administration, “have dished the Whigs," thereby making an important contribution to our political phraseology; and Mr. Robert Lowe (subsequently Lord Sherbrooke), who had joined Mr. Horsman in the Cave of Adullam, invented the happy phrase, "We must now, at least, educate our Masters" (àpropos of the new electorate) in a speech expressive of his amazement at this surrender of the Conservative Government on the question of Reform.

"The greatest happiness of the greatest number" first appeared (according to Jeremy Bentham, in his "Liberty of the People") in one of the innumerable pamphlets written by Dr. Joseph Priestley, in reply to Edmund Burke's "Reflections on the French Revolution." "He rose like a rocket and fell like the stick," was first used by Tom Paine, the notorious Republican writer, in reference to Burke. "One half the world knows not how the other lives" will be found in "Holy Observations," by Dr. Joseph Hall, Bishop of Exeter and of Norwich, in the seventeenth century. "The Majesty of the people” was coined by Charles Fox. In 1798 a political dinner was given at the Crown and Anchor tavern, in celebration of Fox's birthday, with the Duke of Norfolk in the chair. Concluding his speech in reply to the toast of his health, the great Whig leader said: "Give me leave, before I sit down, to call on you to drink our Sovereign's health, the Majesty of the people." For this sentiment Fox was deprived

Consider in fact, a body of six hundred and fifty-eight miscellaneous persons set to consult about business, with twenty-seven millions, mostly fools, assiduously listening to them, and checking and criticising them,-was there ever since the world began, will there ever be till the world ends, any business accomplished in these circumstances?

It is plain that it was from the latter, and not from the former, passage that the celebrated phrase came into popular use.

Among the political sayings, for which we are indebted to Disraeli are"Reaction is the consequence of a nation waking from its illusions" (1848),— "A tu quoque should always be goodhumored, for it has nothing else to recommend it" (1855),-"Finality is not the language of politics" (1859),-"To assist progress to resist revolution is the policy of the Conservative party” (1859),— "Party is organized opinion" (1864). "England does not love coalitions" is another saying of that great political phrase-maker. On that night, in 1852, when Lord Derby's first Ministry, in which Disraeli filled the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer, was defeated on an amendment by Gladstone to the Budget,-an amendment which united

Whigs, Radicals and Peelites-Disraeli, in a defiant speech before the fatal division, said: "I know that I have to face a coalition. The combination may be successful,-combination has before this been successful-but coalitions, though they may be successful, have always found that their triumphs have been brief. This I know, that England does not love coalitions." That particular coalition under Lord Aberdeen and Lord John Russell was certainly not successful. "There is one indisputable element of a Coalition Government," said Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, "and that it is that its members should coalesce." apart.

In this case they drifted widely

But Disraeli's most popular phrase was "Peace with Honor." The occasion on which the words were used is well known. On the return of the two British plenipotentiaries at the Berlin Congress in 1878, Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Salisbury, an enthusiastic reception was given them in London; and speaking, on July 16, the former said; "Lord Salisbury and myself have brought you back peace, but peace, I hope, with honor, which may satisfy our Sovereign and tend to the welfare of the country." The phrase, however, like so many of his epigrammatic utterances, was not Lord Beaconsfield's own invention. It had been used before by two eminent statesmen, but it was Lord Beaconsfield's fine and apt application of it on a dramatic occasion that fixed it forever on the public memory and made it a current coin of everyday political speech and writing. Lord John Russell, in the course of a speech at Dundee in 1865, said, "As Secretary for Foreign Affairs it has been my object to preserve peace with honor." The phrase is also to be found in one of the best known of Burke's speeches,-that imperishable oration on Conciliation with America, delivered in the House of Commons, March 22nd, 1775. "Great

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and acknowledged force," he said, "is not impaired either in effect or in opinion by an unwillingness to exert itself. The superior force may offer peace with honor and with safety." Yet it is to poetry and not to politics that we are really indebted for the phrase. Shakespeare uses it in "Coriolanus," iii, 2:

If it be honor in your wars to seem The same you are not, which, for your best ends,

You adopt your policy, how is it less, or worse,

That it shall hold companionship in

peace

With honor, as in war, since that to both

It stands in like request?

An amusing story is told in connection with the phrase. In the course of a political lecture, illustrated with a magic-lantern, in a country village, portraits of Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Salisbury, with the words Peace with Honor were thrown upon the screen. An old lady among the audience, whose head was full of recollections of a notorious criminal, innocently inquired, amid great laughter, "Which is peace?"

"Every man has his price;" this cynical saying is generally ascribed to Sir Robert Walpole; "yet," writes Mr. John Morley, "he never delivered himself of that famous slander on mankind." One night in the House of Commons he insisted that self-interest, or familyinterest, was at the bottom of the fine and virtuous declamation of the Opposition: "All these men," he said, "have their price." It was, therefore, not a general, but a political proposition. "Mend it or end it," was used by Mr. John Morley in reference to the House of Lords, in a speech made at St. James's Hall, on July 30th, 1884. Mr. Morley was much praised by the Radical newspapers for his happy jingle. They did not know, though we may be sure so staunch a lover of good

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