forth for promoting longevity appears to be that they are all deficient
in this important respect—that they only regard _one object, and
neglect the rest_. However beneficial any theory may prove, it must
be materially inadequate in fulfilling its purpose, should numerous
other matters of the greatest importance bearing upon the human economy
be ignored. Hufeland, in his luminous work _The Art of Prolonging
Life_, is of opinion that the real art of longevity consists in
cultivating those agents which protract existence, and by avoiding all
circumstances tending to shorten its duration. This is undoubtedly the
most reasonable method for obtaining the end in view. Moderation in
all things (avoiding as far as possible every morbific condition), and
open air exercise, are far more reliable means of prolonging life than
any of the elixirs and panaceas ever advocated. Finally, health and
longevity can only be attained by an intimate acquaintance with and
obedience to those natural laws which govern our physical economy.
A GENTLEMAN OF THE ROAD.
Many years ago, or, as children’s stories say, ‘once upon a time,’
when Bath was in all its glory, and Beau Nash reigned as its king, two
ladies were journeying towards that fashionable town in a postchaise.
Why two middle-aged ladies should in those unsafe times have undertaken
a journey without any male escort, I cannot say; the result proved that
they were very ill advised in doing so. It was broad daylight, and not
very far from Bath, when the postboy suddenly pulled up the horses,
and the chaise-door was thrown open from without with the usual stern
command: ‘Your money, or your life!’
I need hardly say anything as to the state of terror into which the
ladies immediately fell; no doubt they screamed, in spite of the
uselessness of such a proceeding; but it is not upon record that they
fainted. On the contrary, the one nearest to the door submissively
handed her watch, purse, trinkets, &c., to the masked highwayman; and
the other, a Mrs C., was hastily preparing to get rid of her valuables
in the same way, when the robber turned to remount his horse, as though
he had overlooked the second occupant of the carriage.
Such an unbusiness-like proceeding certainly did not bespeak him an
accomplished ‘gentleman of the road;’ for in those days the search for
valuables was usually conducted in a thorough and energetic manner,
often accompanied with more or less violence, especially if the
searcher had reason to suspect that the notes were ‘sham Abrams,’ or
the watches from the manufactory of Mr Pinchbeck.
By the way, do any of the present generation know the term of
‘Pinchbeck’ for sham-gold? and if any of them do, are they aware
how the term arose? To meet violence with craft, the travellers of
those days provided themselves very frequently with false bank-notes
and imitation gold watches, to be given up as booty, while the
genuine articles were carefully hidden; and a Mr Pinchbeck started a
manufactory of these watches. But the ‘gentlemen of the road’ soon
got up to this trick, and to prevent such mistakes, they insisted on
their victims taking solemn oaths as to the notes being those genuinely
signed by ‘Abraham Newland,’ the cashier of the Bank of England; and
also that the watches had not been supplied by Mr Pinchbeck.
What passed through Mrs C.’s mind as the highwayman turned away with
only half his spoil, it is impossible to say. Perhaps it occurred to
her that he might find out his mistake, come back, and take vengeance
on them for their involuntary deception. Or perhaps she never thought
at all, but acted on a terror-struck impulse. I do not suppose that she
herself ever knew _why_ she acted as she did, but she actually called
to the highwayman to come back!
‘Stop, stop!’ she cried; ‘you have not got my watch and purse!’
The ‘gentleman of the road’ came back again to the chaise-door, and
held out his hand for the watch and purse which Mrs C. seemed so
anxious to get rid of. But that watch and purse had unknowingly been
the bait of something very like a trap; at anyrate, the turning back
was a fatal move, for as the robber turned quickly to relieve Mrs C.
of her valuables, the quick movement of his head, or a passing puff of
wind, blew aside his crape-mask for a moment, and Mrs C. saw his face
distinctly.
When the ladies arrived at Bath, they were condoled with by their
friends on their fright and their loss; and no doubt Mrs C. had to
stand a good deal of joking about her kindly calling the highwayman
back to take her own watch and purse. But such occurrences were too
common for the condolences to be deep or long continued, or to cause
interference on the part of any one whose duty it might have been to
attend to the peace and safety of the public; and the ‘nine days’
wonder’—if it continued so long—certainly did not last any longer.
I am inclined to think, however, that Mrs C. kept her own counsel as to
one result of that calling back, and told no one of her having seen the
robber’s face unmasked.
Some weeks had passed away, when one evening Mrs C. was at the Assembly
Rooms, together with all ‘the rank and fashion’ of Bath. She was
talking to a friend, a gentleman named Mr M., and at the same time
surveying the ladies and gentlemen who frequented the Assembly, when
she suddenly exclaimed: ‘There’s the man who robbed me!’
‘Where?’ asked Mr M., in great astonishment.
Mrs C. pointed to a fashionably dressed young man who was talking to
some of the company.
‘My dear Mrs C.,’ said Mr M., ‘pray, be more careful. You really must
not bring such an accusation as this against that gentleman. Why, he is
young H., son of Mr H. of ——, a very wealthy and well-known man; and
young H. is in all the best company. I know him well as a friend.’ This
was said in a joking manner, as Mr M. thought that Mrs C. was making
an absurd mistake, deceived perhaps by some slight, or even fancied,
resemblance.
But Mrs C. said seriously: ‘I do not care who he is, or what his father
is, or even as to his being a friend of yours. That is the man who
robbed me! I am quite certain about him, for when he turned back to
take my purse and watch, his crape-mask blew aside, and I distinctly
saw his face. I remember it perfectly.’
Mr M. again tried to persuade her that she was mistaken; but to no
purpose. Still trying to make a joke of her supposed extraordinary
delusion, he said to Mrs C.: ‘I will bring him here, and introduce him
to you, and then see if you will still assert he is a highwayman!’
Before she could decline the introduction, Mr M. crossed the room
to where the young man was standing, and said with a smile: ‘Here’s
a joke, H. That lady over there declares you are a highwayman, and
that you are the man who robbed her a few weeks since! Come and be
introduced to her.’
But young H. did not take the joke as his friend meant it; on the
contrary, he answered in rather an ill-tempered manner: ‘I do not want
to be introduced to the old fool!’
‘Well,’ said Mr M., ‘you need not have taken it in that way, and lost
your temper about such a trifle. Of course I was only in fun. I thought
you would have enjoyed the joke, and tried to persuade her that you
were an honest man, and not a gentleman of the road. Pray, do not be
offended.’ So saying, Mr M. returned to Mrs C., and reported that the
young gentleman had taken the joke in ill part, and refused to be
introduced to her.
Once more Mrs C. declared it was neither a joke nor a mistake, but that
in serious fact young H. was the highwayman whom she had called back
to take her watch and purse. The subject was then allowed to drop; and
after a little conversation on other matters, Mr M. took his leave of
Mrs C., with the intention of smoothing the matter over with his friend
H., as he did not want their friendship to be interrupted, and he had
clearly seen that Mr H. was much annoyed. With this friendly intention
he looked about in the Assembly Rooms for young Mr H., but without
success. He then inquired of some mutual friends, and was told that
young Mr H. had left the Rooms almost directly after he, Mr M., had
last spoken to him, and had seemed much annoyed and disturbed.
This account made Mr M. all the more anxious to find his friend and put
the matter right with him. Leaving the Rooms, Mr M. looked in at their
club, and at two or three other places where he thought it likely he
might find Mr H. But his search was unsuccessful; and he had to go home
without seeing his friend, comforting himself with the thought that he
would next day call on Mr H. at his father’s house, where he lived.
But next day young H. was not at his father’s; nor indeed did he
ever again appear in Bath. When he left the Assembly Rooms, he
returned home, changed his dress, and at once left Bath, and—it was
supposed—left England also at the earliest opportunity.
Of the grief and agony of his father and of his family, I will not
speak; it can easily be imagined what distress and shame they suffered.
Mr H., the father, was a wealthy man, of good position and family;
but the young man, an only son, brought up to no profession, but
only to inherit his father’s riches, had fallen, probably from sheer
want of employment, into bad company, had played for very high
stakes—lost—played again—exhausted his father’s patience in paying his
debts, and at last had ‘taken to the road’ to replenish his purse—a not
very uncommon proceeding in those days—while at the same time keeping
his place in society.
From his unbusiness-like haste and want of looking after the whole of
the booty, in the case of Mrs C. and her friend, it is to be presumed
that he had only lately adopted the practice of—as it was politely
called—‘collecting his rents on the road,’ even if it was not his first
attempt. How long, however, he might have continued the ‘collection,’
but for the accident of the mask having been blown aside, is another
question.
If this were fiction, I might enlarge on young H.’s future career in
another land. I might, on the one hand, make him go from bad to worse,
and end his career by murder and a murderer’s death. Or, on the other
hand, I might depict him as leading a new life in a new country, and
eventually returning to England, to the joy and comfort of his family,
and worthily inheriting his father’s wealth and position. I might even
describe his penitent introduction to Mrs C., and his deep gratitude to
her for checking him in his downward career; and still further might
end the romance by his falling in love with, and marrying Mrs C.’s
daughter. But romance is denied to me, for the story is not fiction,
but fact in all its details. Mrs C. was an ancestress of the writer’s,
and the story has been handed down in the family.
Being, therefore, obliged to keep to facts, I am compelled to admit
that I know nothing as to young H.’s after-life; so I must close my
true history by supposing that he was never again heard of in his
native country for good or evil, after his detection by Mrs C. as ‘a
gentleman of the road.’
AN ANCIENT PEOPLE.
There is no lack of literature about Cornwall. Hardly any other county
in England finds so many to write about it. It is a favourite with
novelists as a place in which to give their imaginary characters
‘a local habitation and a name;’ and Tre, Pol, and Pen abound in
their pages. Every year there is a crop of articles about it in the
newspapers and magazines for the benefit of those who choose it for the
scene of their autumn rambles, or who wish to renew their recollection
of its rocky headlands, washed by the deep-blue Atlantic waves, its
sheltered coves, its glorious sunsets, and its wealth of ferns and
rare birds and flowers. In nine cases out of ten, it is of the Land’s
End and its neighbourhood that people thus write; indeed, in the minds
of many at a distance, the Land’s End _is_ Cornwall, much as the Fens
are popularly supposed to be Lincolnshire. But there is much that is
interesting about the county and its people which only those who live
in Cornwall are likely to observe. It is not as other counties, and
the Cornish are not as other folk who live ‘up the country’—the local
name for all beyond the Tamar. They have peculiarities of custom and
of speech, not to be accounted for merely by the fact that they are
far away from the great centres of national life, and are, as it were,
living in the day before yesterday. They are of a distinct race, the
kindred of the Welsh, the Irish, and the Bretons, but a race whose
language has perished, save in the names of places and people; and the
tongue they speak is not the English of to-day, but, with a mixture
of Celtic idiom, the English of two centuries ago, the English of our
translation of the Bible. Cornwall is emphatically an ancient county,
and there is an unmistakably old-world flavour about everything that
belongs to it.
One thing which particularly strikes any one who converses much with
the labouring classes is, that they speak much more grammatically
than their compeers usually do. There are the peculiar idioms which
we have just mentioned; but apart from these, the language is rather
that of educated people than what one usually hears in other counties.
This arises from the fact that English was scarcely introduced into
Cornwall until the Elizabethan age, and that when it was introduced
it was by the upper classes. The rest, who used Cornish for their
intercourse with each other, learned English as a foreign tongue, and
learned the refined form of it. That form it still retains; and hence,
quaint and odd as it is when used in the Cornish way, from the lips
of these western folk it is never vulgar. We are not well enough read
in the mysteries of the ancient tongue to know the reason for the
singular use of the personal pronouns, but certain it is that they seem
to have a rooted antipathy to the objective case. ‘Tell it to she,’
‘Bring he to I,’ and ‘This is for we,’ are the universal forms. Then
the preposition ‘to’ is always used instead of ‘at,’ as, ‘I live to
Bodmin.’ In Cornwall, too, people are never surprised, but ‘frightened’
or ‘hurried;’ never in a bad temper, but in a ‘poor’ one; and the very
eggs and milk, if kept too long, go ‘poor.’ When they live beyond
their means, they ‘go scat;’ and if they are not too particular as to
honourable dealing, they ‘furneague.’
But in spite of these peculiarities, one hears the ring of good old
English speech, such as nowadays we may look for vainly elsewhere, save
in the pages of the Bible. Girls are spoken of as the maids or the
maidens, and when they leave the house, they ‘go forth.’ ‘Come forth,
my son,’ is an invitation one often hears, occasionally even when ‘my
son’ turns out to be a horse or a dog. And if we wish to know the name
of any little boy whom we may meet, the best chance of getting an
intelligible answer is to put the question in the form of, ‘How are you
called, my son?’
In things that meet the eye, too, we seem to have come into an older
world in Cornwall. There are the old-fashioned earthen or ‘clomb’
pitchers, of exactly the pattern we see in the pictures of old Bibles
in the hands of Rebekah or Zipporah; though we cannot say we ever saw
one balanced upon the top of a woman’s head. Till very lately, oxen
were still used to draw the plough; and to this day, in the country
districts, kitchen stoves, and indeed coal-fires of any sort, are
hardly known. The fuel is commonly dried furze, which is burned either
in an earthen oven or on a wide open hearth. It is thrown on piece by
piece with a pitchfork, till the iron plate on which the baking is to
be done is considered hot enough; then the plate is swept clean, and
the cakes—biscuits, as they are termed—or pasties having been ranged
in order upon it, an iron vessel shaped somewhat like a flower-pot is
turned over them, the furze is again piled on, and a large heap of
glowing embers raked over all. No further attention is paid to the
cooking; but when the embers are cold, the things are done. And those
pasties, what wonderful productions they are to the uninitiated; there
appears to be scarcely any article of food that does not find its way
into them. Parsley pasties, turnip pasties (very good these are, too),
‘licky,’ that is, _leek_ pasties, pasties of conger-eel, of potatoes
and bacon, of all kinds of meat and of all kinds of fruit, the variety
is endless.
In the old days, the Cornish were great smugglers. Indeed, the natural
features of the coast are such, that they would have been almost more
than human if they were not. Even when it did not pay very well, the
love of adventure enlisted the whole population in its favour. The
farmers who did not themselves help to run a cargo on a moonless night,
would, when the riders—the coastguard—were out of the way, lend their
horses to those who did, so that long before daylight the kegs were
all carried off far inland, or stowed away in the hiding-holes which
nearly every house possessed. A darker page of Cornish history is that
of the days of wrecking. Terrible sights have some of those pitiless
beaches witnessed, when the doomed vessel was lured on by false lights
to be the prey of men more pitiless still. At St Eval, between Padstow
and Newquay, a lame horse used to be led on stormy nights along the
cliffs with a lantern fixed on its head; and many a craft, supposing
it to be the light of a ship riding at anchor, was then steered by her
luckless crew straight into the very jaws of death. Wrecks were looked
upon as a legitimate harvest of the sea, even as things to be prayed
for, like a shoal of pilchards or a lode of tin. The remains of that
feeling are not extinct even yet. A few years ago, a vessel laden with
Manchester goods was wrecked on the north coast. Her name was the _Good
Samaritan_. Of course such of her cargo as was saved was supposed to
be handed over to the coastguard, according to law; but a good deal
of flotsam and jetsam was quietly appropriated notwithstanding, the
fortunate finders never dreaming that there could be anything morally
wrong in such acquisitions, though they might not be strictly legal.
Some months afterwards, a lady of the neighbourhood was visiting the
cottagers and asking them how they had got through the hard winter that
was just over; and she was told by one of the simple folk that times
had been bad indeed, that work had been slack and wages low, and that
it had been a severe struggle to keep a home together. ‘And indeed I
don’t know what we should have done, if the Lord hadn’t sent us the
_Good Samaritan_!’
It is reported of a worthy old parson on the west coast at the end of
the last century, when wrecks were considered as godsends, and it was
an article of faith that the owners of a ship lost all title to their
property the moment her keel touched ground, that in the long extempore
prayer which, in defiance of the rubrics, was then generally indulged
in before the sermon, he was accustomed, as the winter drew on, to
introduce a reference to this grim ocean harvest, in some such style
as this: ‘Lord, we do not pray for wrecks; but since there _must_ be
some, grant, we beseech Thee, that they may be on our beach.’ Perhaps
this was the divine who was in the middle of his sermon when the news
reached the church that a vessel had just struck and was going to
pieces in the bay, and who instantly concluded with the benediction,
and left his surplice in the pulpit, so that he and his congregation
might start fair upon the shore. Yet eager as was the rivalry for what
could be snatched from the sea, there was no pilfering from any man’s
heap. To this day, you have but to put a stone upon anything you find
upon the beach, in token that it has been ‘saved,’ and you may leave
it in perfect safety, for no Cornishman will take it then. If, on your
return, you find it gone, you may be sure that some less scrupulous
‘up-country people’ have been by that way.
As to the ferns, every botanist knows the green treasures of this
western land. Indeed, we wish he did not know quite so well; for though
men of science may be trusted to pursue their researches without wanton
destruction of the beauties of nature, it is too often far otherwise
with the tourist. It is not only ’Arry who is to blame in this matter;
those from whom one might expect more consideration for the feelings
and the rights of others are not seldom the greatest sinners of all.
Only last summer, a young man actually stripped two large hamperfuls of
the beautiful sea-fern (_Asplenium marinum_) from the roof of a cave,
utterly ruining its beauty for several years to come. There were plenty
of specimens to be had elsewhere upon the cliffs for the climbing;
but he must needs get a ladder and take fifty times as many as he
could possibly want, just where it most grieved the inhabitants of the
neighbourhood to lose them. But we fear our righteous indignation at
the iniquities of the tourist will run away with us—how he ruthlessly
exterminates rare ferns; how he comes into churches where service is
going on, and walks about and stares around him; how he strews scenes
of natural loveliness with his sandwich papers and his broken bottles;
how he thinks to add interest to the rocks and cliffs by inscribing his
name and the date of his visit upon their face. It is his mission, we
suppose, to ‘vulgarise creation.’ But Cornwall will take a great deal
of spoiling yet, and so will its people and its language, menaced as
this last is by the penny paper and the Board School. And those who
like a peep into a world which, in spite of railways and telegraphs
and newspapers and nineteenth-century ideas, is still an old world,
and full of old and quaint and beautiful things, will find enough in
Cornwall to occupy them, as a Cornishman would say, for a ‘brave little
bit of time.’
THE NET OF MARRIAGE.
The Rev. Harry Jones, writing in the _Sunday at Home_, says: ‘Some
people, especially if they marry young and on the impulse of some
taking fancy, without a due consideration of the very grave nature
of the state they are entering, discover afterwards that his or her
mate does not come up to the expectations which had been formed. The
light and laughing love of the marriage and the early periods of
married life are succeeded by a sense of disappointment. Then comes
domestic indifference, perhaps recrimination. Both man and wife are
deceived, and undeceived. Unintentionally perhaps, but really. Both
feel, as it were, entangled. They have married in haste, and repent too
often, not at leisure, but with mutual bitterness and ill-concealed
unconcern for one another. Each generally thinks the other most to
blame. And I do not believe that I am overstepping the limits of
appropriate language when I say that the idea of being caught in a net
represents their secret convictions. Here is a disastrous state of
affairs. In this country, such a net cannot be easily broken. The pair
have married for worse, in a more serious sense than these words are
intended to bear in the marriage vows. What is to be done? I should
very imperfectly express my advice if I simply said, “Make the best
of it.” For though this is a rude rendering of the advice needed,
much might be said to show how this can be done after a Christian
way.... It is a great Christian rule that, to be loved, we must show
kindness and consideration, and not expect to receive what we do not
grant ourselves. “Give,” says Christ, “and it shall be given unto you.
Judge not, and you shall not be judged. Condemn not, and you shall
not be condemned.” And if this applies anywhere, it applies most in
the case of those who are in the close relationship of husband and
wife. Clouds sometimes come over the married life because too much
consideration is expected. Show it, I would say, rather than demand
it, if it has seemed to come short. Do not think to mend matters by a
half-grudging endurance, but ask God to give His sacred help to the
keeping of the rule “bear and forbear.” So may a hasty marriage, the
beauty of which has been spoilt by some misunderstandings, ripen into
the true affection which should mark this holy estate, and the cloud of
disappointment give place to a love which rests upon no passing fancy,
but upon an honest Christian observance between man and wife of the vow
betwixt them made. So may the miserable afterthought of having been
entangled in a relationship be blotted out, and succeeded, as years go
on, by a love cemented with the desire to do right before God, in whose
presence, and with prayer for whose blessing, the relationship was
begun.’
TRIFLES.
An August day
Now passed away
For ever;
A sunny smile,
A little while
Together.