among her nearest relations; so far as deal quicker, since all the drain-pipes her means allowed, she remembered all who had been kind and obliging to her, including a laundress and a hairdresser; and she left fifty pounds each to the Theatrical Fund of Covent Garden Theatre and to the Catholic Society for the Relief of the Aged Poor. have been laid down in the fields. "John," said my father that Monday morning, "if ye want aught from the village, get it to-day against Christmas. There is a storm coming." So John went in with the great basket; and well it was he went then, for the wind had risen ere he came back; and weary work it was for him to carry the heavy basket along the five miles of Ridge; and the wind grew higher In literature, as in life, it is not always the most famous or distinguished persons who are the most interesting. Elizabeth Inchbald cannot claim high rank in the former class, but her char-after. acter, her letters, and her "Simple Story" leave her with few rivals in the latter. From Chambers' Journal. A CHRISTMAS AT THE RIDGE HOUSE. At ebb-tide, father and I went out to let the water off. Oh, it had risen more than I could have believed. It must have been snow-water from the hills. I never saw it so before or since. We opened the big gate; but when the water began to go through, all the ice came up in great blocks and fared to fill up the way; so we had to get a rake and pole to keep it clear. When we were hard at work, who should come by but Wilkins, the man that lives in the watch-house two miles on. was not much of a neighbor then. I had said him nay afore I married John, and he wasn't one to forget. But that day, as I saw him pass, I was thinking just of the babe left all alone in bed, and I called to him to lend father a helping hand while I ran round to the house. He WE were just four at the Ridge House Richard Hardy (that is my father); John Warne, my husband; the two-year-old babe called Little Dick; and myself. The Ridge is a desolate place; it is just a bank of sand and shingle, some eight or nine miles long; in front, there is the sea; and behind the house, the river and the marshes. In winter time the marshes are often flooded, and then there seems to be naught but water all round one. I have lived there nearly all my life, for my father has been "I've got but two hands," said he ; tideman many a long year. Just by "and they're for my own work ;" and our house are the flood-gates; and with that he passed on. when the water in the marsh dikes is "Never mind, Mary," said father. above a certain height, we have to "You go to the babe; that is what is open the gates at the ebb-tide and let right." the water down through a great iron pipe into the sea. But the gates must be shut ere the flood-tide runs back, for that is higher than the marshes; and if once the salt water ran through, all the good grass would be rotted; not to speak of what might happen in rough weather if once the strong waves began to run through to the land-side of the Ridge. It was two days before Christmas; we had had a frost; but the ice was melting now, and we knew well the water would soon run down from inland over the marshes. It comes a I suppose I was right; but in I went, right or wrong, and gave the boy his dinner and put the fire to rights; then John came in, and I sent him round to father, for the ice frightened me; I could hear it crashing and groaning from the house. Just after John went out, I heard him call. Father, poor dear, had got tired, and had sat down all hot as he was; and now he was set hard and stiff with the rheumatics. Oh, the job we had to get him home and to bed; and there we had to leave him, for the tide was running in, and John could the ice back. I thought it a dreadful time, not knowing that worse was coming. When the gates were shut, I went in and sat by father. He looked very bad, and in my heart came hard thoughts of Wilkins. Why couldn't he have stopped and saved the old man from doing more than his strength could bear? not shut the gates without me to keep | be half in the icy water; and the sea came roaring up the great iron tunnel, and we had only the lantern for light in the dreadful, howling darkness. When it was done at last, we crawled back to the house; we were all drenched, and almost frozen. John made me change my clothes, and then I threw myself down on the bed and slept. I seemed to have only been asleep a moment, when I awoke at the sound of voices. It was daylight. John and father were talking. Father said he had heard the water against the house in the night. John went down to open the gate and look for the tidemarks, while I got the breakfast and dressed the child. Father managed to get up, and I didn't stop him, for I couldn't bear to think of his lying in bed to be drowned, if it came to that. I kissed Dick quite gently; but I felt mad at heart; and when father tried to teach him the Christmas words, I went out to John, for I couldn't bear it. What peace was there for me, and my child going to be drowned? John went to bed for a bit, for we had a long night's work before us at the ebb-tide; and I lay down; but I couldn't sleep, the wind howled so. Little Dick was frightened too, but only held my hand, and didn't cry, for I said, "Father's asleep." There never was so good a babe! By and by he fell asleep; and when we had to go out, I just laid him on his grandfather's bed. Father looked a little better, and I gave him a hot drink before I took the lantern to start. It was a job to stand against the wind; but that wasn't what made John stumble; it was a great log that used to lie down by the pipe-mouth. "Heaven help us!" said I, "if it has, for to-morrow's the spring-tide, and where will it be then?" I tied the lantern up against the gate. The flood had risen higher than ever. It was terrible work keeping the ice back; but we felt as if we were working for our lives; for if the flood rose much higher, it would be almost over the bank; and with another high tide the waters would meet, and where would Ridge House be then? The water ran through better now, and John said directly the gates were shut, he would go round to the village for help against the next tide. But when we came to slide the gate, it wouldn't stay. One of the great iron holds was gone - cracked through by the frost, and knocked off by the ice, I suppose. John held the shutter while I went back for bolts and screws. one can know what it was like doing up that gate! We were both obliged to No I told John I must go to the village it was seven miles, but I thought I could get there. It was no use, however. When I had gone a few hundred yards, I got on to the loose sand, and having no foothold, I was blown down over and over again, and could only come back. When it was time to shut the gate, I tried to do it, while John stayed to stop the ice; but I couldn't stir it as we had done it up, so John had to do it for me, it moved so stiffly. Then we went in. The sea kept risFather prayed. I sat by the fire, and John walked about the room. There was no good in his going for help now, for this was the time of need. All at once he stopped in front of the window. "Where's the watchhouse?" said he; and well he might, for it was gone! It had been a little black house, built on a bit of bank between the Ridge and the great dike. Nothing was there now but foaming water, for the flood was rough like the sea. ing. "Wilkins must be drowned," said John. "Serve him right; and a good thing | Ridge; but every now and then I too," said I. I felt quite mad. caught sight of our house, a black speck in the distance. John got his glass. "I see him," he said; "he's on a spar. The house can't have gone long ;" and with that he went to the door. I went after him. As I expected, he was turning over our little punt. "What are you going to do, John Warne ?" I said, hard and cold. "Who is to move the flood-gate? for I can't ;" and I pointed to the icy water. You will never get back across the water; and if the gates stay shut, this house will be gone ere night." He turned round like one struck dumb and went into the kitchen. Father looked at us both and said nothing. Then John did a strange thing he cried. I'd never seen him cry before, and it frightened me. Then I spoke. "John," I said, quite gently, 'you can't go, for the sake of the lives here, and maybe those up country in the 'lookers' cottages. But though I said 'Serve him right,' I'll go, not for Wilkins' sake, but for yours, John." 66 I pulled; but I didn't seem to make way; the ice kept coming up against us. At last the boat got stuck fast in a great ice-sheet, and I couldn't move her any way. I drew the oars in, for there was nothing to be done; the ice was too thick to break round the boat. The wind blew us on, boat and ice together, round the bend of the Ridge. I couldn't see our home now, and I didn't know what might be happening there. Wilkins lay white, and like one dead, at the bottom of the boat. Perhaps he was dead, and I had done no good after all. And then John and Dick and father, they'd never been in trouble before without me with them; but what could I do now? Then I thought of father praying, and I prayed. I don't know what I said, and I don't think I said much. The cold seemed getting greater, but I seemed fading away from the cold and trouble. I fancied, somehow, through it all I was going into "Christmas peace." Then John got up; but father stopped him; and I just kissed them all, and ran out, and pushed the boat into the water all in a minute, for I feared John would go after all. And as I put off, John came out, looking all stunned with trouble and the cold. After that, I had enough to do keeping the boat from the ice. I had the wind with me; and in about half an hour I got to where Wilkins was still clinging to the spar. I thought of his words about his two hands being for his own work, and I felt quite savage again. But when I got up to him, I helped him in, and dangerous it was. thought the boat would have been over. Then I wrapped him up in a long piece of herring-net out of the locker, and turned to go home. While I was set-"Joy-bells" for Christmas! They tling Wilkins, the boat had drifted on; and when I turned her head round, I found it was a very much harder thing to go back against the wind than it was to come with it. I was tired out, too, you see; and I began to wonder whether the tide was in. The spray was flying in great sheets over the I must have slept a long time; when I woke, John was standing over me; people were rubbing my hands; some one poured brandy down my throat. I had been all but frozen to death! When I opened my eyes, John cried again; he was weak with the toil and trouble; but now we could rest, for the men had come from the village-six of them. John had walked across that rotten ice with a rope, and somehow they had got the punt ashore. They carried us back, for Wilkins was worse than I was, though not dead; and now the wind had dropped, for the frost had come back; and as we went along the Ridge, I heard the bells ringing inland. I were joy-bells for me, for those at home were safe. Nigh washed away, they had been; but the wind fell just in time to save them. "Thank God!" said father; and so said we all. The great folks since then, they have made a deal of my going for Wilkins; but I said to John: "You were the bravest, for you wanted to go when I didn't; and then you let me go, which was harder than going yourself." And he said: "I don't know, lass, that I should have let you go if I had been quick enough to stop you." From The National Review. THE GARDEN THAT I LOVE. "I COULD live in it," he said. It was a little plot of ground, some fifteen feet square, abutting on the highroad, one of a succession of cottage-gardens, all of them of pretty much the same size, but each having a representative character of its own, and better or worse cultivated, more or less affectionately tended, according to the disposition, taste, and energy, of the owner. This one was very formal — but, indeed, from the narrowness of their territory, they necessarily all had that characteristic but noticeably neat, and lovingly ordered. Its main ornament was a giant echeveria which drew my attention, certainly not by reason of its loveliness, but rather by the heartiness of its growth, somewhat surprising in a comparatively tender species exposed to all the chances of the year. Round it, at carefully calculated distances, were geraniums, calceolarias, ageratums, some ten-week stocks; everything, in fact, that you have a right to look for in a highly respectable enclosure. The man I had addressed was a mechanic, employed in some neighboring railway works, and he evidently treated his spruce little plot like a machine, which ought never to be out of gear. He had cast aside the dress of his daily occupation, smartened himself up, and put on his best attire, as he always did when about to work among his flowers; as though the tidiness he exacted from them reacted on himself, and compelled him in turn, to be spick-and-span when in their superior company. I had stopped to compliment him on the assiduity with which he cultivated his bit of ground, and for friendliness' sake observed that I suppose I smiled; for a whole life passed on a piece of earth fifteen feet square, part of which is dedicated to a gravel path, seems a somewhat narrow existence. But after all, what is narrow? The garden that I love is, I allow, a trifle larger than that; but to the owner of Wilton or Albury, I imagine it would appear pitiably small. Withal, not only could I spend all my days in it, but, as a fact, I do so; and the only complaint I ever have to make concerning it is when weeds grow apace or shrubberies become unconscionably untidy; and then I blame myself, and say to Veronica, who has often warned me against what she calls my mania for expansion, that I fear it is too large. Gentle as she always is with me, she cannot resist quoting my tardy testimony to the fulfilment of her own predictions. A wise man never says Meâ culpâ to a woman. But then I have no pretensions to be wise, save in love for my garden, and for Veronica. "I know you will be pleased Lamia and the Poet can both come; and it is so nice to think that, this time, we shall. have them all to ourselves." She had her hand on the green ivory knob of the old Sheffield silver-plated urn, ready to turn it back as soon as the teapot was duly filled. The urn was one of her "things my sister valued most in the world, partly because, as I cannot deny, its form was admirably classical, which is only another word for shapely and harmoniously proportioned; but still more because she had got it a bargain in a country town not yet awake to the money value of what our grandmothers laid aside as done with, or parted with as out of date. I remember when she first brought it home, showing it to me with an air of triumph, and evidently expecting from me that instant and copious sympathy which every good woman demands from male ignorance for her purchases, I thought it one of the most worthless pieces of old rubbish I had ever looked on. I did not "I say, old fellow, don't forget the urn." say so, you may be quite sure; on the contrary, I was splendide mendax, quite magnificently mendacious, employing One friend of mine - I need scarcely for the purpose the most colossal say he was an Irishman -acted so exadjectives of conventional admiration I travagantly on the hint, and expatiated could summon to my lips. It is only with so much unction on the urn, and, fair to say that when I bring home more particularly on what he called the some new campanula, looking exceed-"Hellenic fascination of its form," ingly scrubby and more like a small though in truth he does not know au wisp of withered grass than a live plant, oval from a rhomboid, that I have often Veronica behaves with the same sym- suspected Veronica, apparently coupathetic insincerity, and lavishes on firmed celibate though she seems, keeps my trumpery trouvaille epithets that a soft corner in her heart for that arrant would better become a new orchid from impostor. the upper reaches of the Amazon or the jungles of Madagascar. "Guess what I gave for it," she said. To be honest, I would not, in my then state of mind, have given half-acrown for it. At a shot, I said, The concentration of Veronica's attention on the breakfast-table did not prevent her from extending to me her sisterly cheek. I always salute her thus when we meet in the morning. She always salutes me before we part for "Perhaps eighteen shillings." the night. I imagine the former is a "Fifteen!" she answered, with a tribute from me to her evident superiglow of financial triumph. She had it ority in being abroad the first, and the plated again, and, I fancy, it now latter a tribute from her to me in token stands her in about six guineas; and of my manly capacity for sitting up to any guest who fails, before going away, any hour over Gerard's "Herball" or to notice this urn, and comment on its the latest number of one of Mr. Robinmatchless beauty, is mentally set down son's periodicals. Be that as it may, I by its owner as a person not only desti- am quite of Veronica's opinion that this tute of taste, but as deficient in good little domestic ceremony should never breeding, and even lacking in the car- be pretermitted, being a sort of morudinal virtues. Such an offender is ing and evening prayer that sweetens never invited again, except at my spe- and sanctifies a household. I am aware cial instance; and, though the slight to the habit is somewhat out of fashion, the urn is never alluded to - Veronica | like good manners generally, in these is much too feminine a diplomatist for indifferent, what-does-it-matter days. that my proposal is invariably received with coldness, and is not conceded until the moral qualities of the person in question have been tacitly depreciated between us. Women rarely, if ever, commit this particular form of Whenever we are expecting a male offence; but most men, it must be guest in whom Veronica is particularly owned, are so stupid, that they are interested, it is invariably assumed quite capable of seeing tea made out of that he is invited for my gratification; an urn big enough and beautiful enough and when, on the other hand, we are to contain all the ashes of all the Great to be paid an angel's visit by some without making an observation. To creature too divinely good for human the more crass of our male guests I nature's daily food, then of course it is generally contrive to give a seasonable as Veronica's friend that she is asked. hint on the subject; and if it be a man Thus we pay due deference to the proI like very much and wish to see abid-prieties without foregoing our little ing in Veronica's good graces, I take preferences. Of my admiration of Lacare, on Monday morning, to whisper mia I make no secret. No man could to him just before breakfast, be hypocrite enough for that, seeing But I am sure, were I to neglect it for a single morning Veronica would be as much astonished as if the room had not been dusted, or if the water refused to boil. |