with rejoicing a gradual realisation of the truth of Mill's words, that there can be no healthful state of society in which the only relationship between capital and labour is that of the payment of wages;

and an effort to be true to the fact that a genuine union must be the result of personal qualities, which both sides need to display.

TIGHE HOPKINS.

CHAPTER XVIII.

IN TWELVE HOURS, PARIS. GUY CARRINGTON stood on the departure platform of the Dover Railway Station, in London. A guard unlocked the door of a carriage. As Guy was about to enter, a tall, slight man pushed before him-not rudely-not at all rudely -but still preceded him into the carriage.

66

"There is plenty of room," he remarked to Guy, when he was seated with his back to the engine, by way of a sort of semi-apology, but he kept the best seat. · Will you give me my coat ?" he said to the guard. "Thank you; and that small carpet bag. Be good enough to lock us in, and put engaged' on the door," and the gentleman drew down the blinds.

Quietly and deliberately he then proceded to make himself comfortable. From the small carpet bag, or rather cloth bag, for it was made of coarse corded fabric, of a dark purple colour, and it opened by a spring, he produced a leathern strap, which he passed round his waist. Then he took out a candle lamp, which he lighted with a lucifer match, and fixed, by a hook attached to it for that purpose, to the lining of the carriage. Then he arranged his cloak, a great

elastic strap. Then he produced a cigar. "I have your permission?" he said to Guy.

He only trifled with his cigar, however. "It is less agreeable

than opium. Don't you think so?" said he.

Guy had never smoked opium. "Then you have a great pleasure in store," said the stranger.

"The only really enviable things in this life are first sensations. Don't you think so?"

"Some are," said Guy.

"I am inclined to think that all are," said the stranger. "I never tried the bite of a mad dog. I like to keep that in store for some time when the inventive faculty shows signs of decrepitude. But I have tried that of a pet dog. That was novel. It gave me much pleasure. I rather think, though, that the principal part of the pleasure was derived from the simultaneous study of the physiognomy of the owner of the dog. She was an old lady-old that is to me-no doubt evergreen in her own eyes. The horror which she

expressed was scenic. She was what many people would consider a very handsome old lady, but her face assumed an appearance that was quite gorgonesque. It is so very improving to watch elderly females under the influence of alarm. Don't you think so?'

"I think you were more of a philosopher, than I should have been under the circumstances," said Guy, who by no means felt himself beginning to sympathise with his fellow traveller.

better, if the little trip is managed properly. We alight at Dover, and merely walk straight out to the steamer. Then you smoke. Arrived off Calais, one tumbler of cold gin-and-water-no sugar, of course. Then you walk along the pier, which is refreshing, and induces a disposition to sleep. The passport man knows you at once. Then you walk into the refreshment room. And when the officials come to drive you like wild beasts into a pen, you advance with serene composure, and naturally arrive first at the carriages, because everyone else has something to look after."

"Have you nothing then?" said Guy.

no

"Of course not," said the other, "otherwise experience were more experience. Of that description of the virtue which makes fools wise, I confess my absolute ignorance, but I cultivate the humbler species."

"But one must take luggage," said Guy.

"Je n'en vois pas la necessité," replied the philosopher. "I find it best to send my heavy baggage independently. Then, for those little comforts which one cannot relinquish without loss of selfrespect, my arrangements

are

simple, as you will see, if you will

do me the honour to watch me-to accompany me, I would say—if you were not under the bondage of the portmanteau. But I will keep a seat for you in the train from Calais."

The simple arrangement which the experience of the philosophic traveller had taught him to form was this. When the train slackened in approaching the terminus, he closed his carpet bag, passed through two leather rings, which seemed to have been attached for that purpose, the strap which he had round his waist, buckled it

firmly; put on his bearskin burnouse, and, the train stopping at that moment, walked quietly out of the carriage. The large garment had a hood hanging at the back, and descended so as almost to touch the ground. The sleeves covered his hands. He glided over the platform like a shadow, and no protuberance in the thick and hanging garment betrayed the presence of the carpet bag.

"You see how much unnecessary trouble careful study enables one to avoid," he remarked to Guy, when he had re-established their, tête-à-tête, in the French carriage.

It has been mentioned that the stranger was a tall, slight man. He might have been considered eminently handsome, but for a somewhat disproportionate fulness in the outer part of the orbit of the eye, and an expression which must be described as sinister. The effect was perhaps produced, at all events it was heightened, by his practice of casting downward and aside his eyes when anyone sought his glance. The movement was compensated by a steadfast fixity of gaze at other times, that is to say, when you were not looking at him.

Guy's enjoyment of a novel route was almost entirely destroyed by the fact of its being pursued by night. Even the brief and hurried glimpses of scenery which the speed of a railway train seems to tear out of the eyes before they have fairly impressed their image on the retina are impossible by night. A jar, a rumble, and an annoying series of apparently useless stoppages, form the journey to Dover. Then you are chilled by draught through the station, sharply pained just behind the shoulder during your stumble through the lamplit or moonlit streets, nearly precipitated into the sea from the slippery woodwork

of the landing stage, and more or less baptised with sludge and sea water before you find your way on board. Then when you have secured your seat somewhere on deck, scorning to turn in for a two hours' passage, you are struck by the sudden terror that you are on board the wrong steamer. Reassured on this point, you are deafened and aggravated by the sudden and unnecessary vehemence of the bell. Then you discover that a limpid sheet of glass, such as you have persuaded yourself that the Channel was on that occasion, can give a very perceptible motion to the vessel- an increasing motion a motion that must be eminently unsafe. Then you wish that you had slept at Dover, to cross at daylight. Then you wish you were across. Then you cease to wish anythingto think anything-you only feeland the feeling is unpleasant. If this comes to a crisis it is the best thing for you; yet the crisis is what you most dread. It is the dread, however, that brings it on. The point is settled by the intervention, at the very unfittest part of the whole voyage, of the heartless steward, who demands your ticket. Then there is the sense of heavenly relief, the gentle moisture, the gradual restoration of the steamer to obedience to the laws of gravity; the lighthouse neared-passed-the shouts in a strange tongue, the climb up the long steps, and the blessed, blessed terra firma under foot again; which almost reconciles you to a long walk over a wind-swept and spraybesprinkled pier to the distant station.

How vast its illumined glass gables appear. How strange the smell of the Continent is in your English nostrils. You look round at your late fellow sufferers, marked by different degrees of pallor, and

shrouded in all kinds of impossible wraps, who crowd round the waiting-room. You look with a kind of awe at the stout, keen-visaged inspector, in his little red cloth cap, flanked by two military and sworded assessors, who examines the passports at the bar before which you have to pass.

Cologne," with a toss of the paper, "Bruxelles," "Cologne," Then a pause and a scrutiny. "Paris. Where for, monsieur?"

'Marsey," says an Anglo-Saxon tongue.

"Parbleu! speak Engleesh. I understand you as better," replies the inspector.

You feel relieved by the snub administered to your predecessor in passing through the little sheep pen guarded by those fierce men in kepis.

Your doubts as to the purity of your own pronunciation are freely tossed to the winds, and you boldly say "Paris" in plain English.

"Passez, monsieur," says the official in a tone that implies "Get along!"

Then you become sensible that you are in the land of liberty and equality; liberty for the railway officials to treat the passengers like swine-equality in the helpless subjects of their wrath before the majesty of the bureau.

Then

comes the struggle for the luggage; the sharp rebuke because your keys are not ready; and the halfexpressed intimation that you are a smuggler, because of the bit of dust that has ensconced itself in the tube of your Bramah. Next comes the putting of the dirty hands of one of the men in blue blouses in the plaits of your dress shirts. The neatly-packed contents of your trunks are stirred up as bricklayers whomel the mortar with a spade; the lid is jammed down, with the tail of a coat flying out as a signal of distress; the

portmanteau is inverted with something that sounds like a curse, pushed away as you are attempting to relock it; and you are hustled from the comfortless den into another, thence to be driven as if with a scourge, when the engine is screaming to say, "Now, I am really off, and shall wait for no

one.

"Vite! Vite!" shout the attendants-attendants do we say?the condescending but extremely malevolent genii loci.

Then comes a repetition of the first part of the journey, varied by the fierce shouts which conceal the names of the stations at which you stop, the violent flinging open of the door of the carriage when you feebly attempt to close it, the infliction of the maximum of noise, of disturbance, and of contempt, upon the helpless passengers, combined with such a method of stoppage short of the platform, or on the wrong side of the line, which you are forbidden to cross on pain of imprisonment, or worse, that you cannot get out for a minute to make yourself comfortable. And so you arrive at Paris.

Here again is the torment of the luggage the search less profound, but rendered all the more aggravating by the half hour's preliminary delay during which you are kept all together in a room, without even a bench to sit down upon. Then you emerge on an open corridor, where a line of omnibuses is being loaded amid a storm of screams, of shouts, and oaths, the like of which never burst on your senses before. Then you get into a remise, your luggage is handed

up,

and you feel the first moment of comparative relief and comfort since you left your home for the station in London.

"Where can one go to be comfortable in Paris?" asked Guy of his travelling companion.