No. 960.-VOL. XIX.

GOING FORTH TO LABOUR. A FEELING of pity, mixed with contempt, is provoked on seeing a family moving in a respectable position in which, through some species of pride or indifference, sons are brought up to do nothing. The father, a good enough man in his way, has not the vigour of character to see the folly of which he is guilty. He has perhaps an idea of the youngsters getting some sort of position in the Civil Service; but for want of ability, and assiduity in learning, that proves hopeless, and comes to nothing. Then he has a notion of the Army, which used to be the general refuge for the genteel destitute; but matters in that respect are also now so hemmed in with regulations and restrictions, that it, too, proves abortive. It is altogether an awkward case. There are the young fellows growing up. They are beginning to show symptoms of a moustache. Costly fancies are demonstrated in the way of dress. Tailors', bootmakers', and jewellers' bills are becoming unpleasantly numerous and oppressive. Papa is perplexed, and at his wits' end. It is a bad look-out.

The man has obviously behaved foolishly. If he has got into a mess, it is his own blame, and he must take the consequences. Why did he not bring up his family with the belief that in the ordinary course of things, according to the destiny of nature, they must Go Forth to Labour-not sham labour, like that pictured by fashionable frivolity, but downright work-something which will help on the general business of the world, and produce a reasonably fair livelibood? This is a question which the man cannot er will not answer. It was a hateful false pride that was at the bottom of his stupidity. He belonged to a condition of society in which an industrial career in commerce or the useful arts is looked down upon; and to avoid that, all risks are to be run, even to the extent of pinching poverty, and a resort to shabby contrivances for a livelihood.

Suppose the man had succeeded in his primary

PRICE 11d

idea of getting his sons appointed to some department of the Civil Service, it would have been a paltry affair after all. The Civil Service means continuous daily toil through life, with a moderate subsistence, and a round of duties which almost amounts to a crushing out of all mental saliency. Hope is left behind. With good health, and good behaviour, there is no doubt a prospect of employment until old age, with a small retiring pension, but all chance of improvement of circumstances on a scale worth speaking of has to be laid aside. The father who gets his son established in the Civil Service, has condemned him to life-long drudgery and obscurity, and that is hardly to be deemed a matter of kindly gratulation. A youth should, if possible, be floated off on a career in which his capacities will have scope for development in enterprise. Without progressive incitements corresponding to faculties and opportunities, life is apt to be but a cheerless monotony. Perhaps, from the eagerness with which the Civil Service is sought after, this dull routine of existence commends itself to vast masses of young men who are disinclined to self-reliant exertion. If so, we leave them to enjoy what they appreciate, and turn our attention to those phases of society more likely to be roused to an independent exercise of brains and sinews.

It is an instructive fact, that those who affect to consider themselves as belonging to the higher classes of society, are by bad up-bringing excluded from the pursuits which have made England the most wealthy and powerful nation in the world. Riches are not obtainable by putting on a fine appearance, or by talk, or by the pretensions of dreamers, but by Going Forth to Labour, and pursuing that Labour with all reasonable diligence. The costly education given to youth, often in itself is a bar to advancement in life. As a consequence, the wealthier classes are in the main recruited from the ranks. For the most part, they began as poor boys who, fearing no imaginary humiliation, and embracing every opportunity of advancement 'justified by honour,' at length

attained to the distinction and ease of circumstances which they are now seen to enjoy. We may be quite certain that the wealthy men we see and hear of have not made their way by street-lounging, by attending steeplechases, or by squandering their time in Club rooms under the inspiration of nips of brandy and cigars.

Of late, we are happy to say, the so-called higher classes have shown symptoms of turning over a new leaf. Feeling as if they were about to be left in the lurch, a number of them have resolved to send their sons Forth to Labour in fields which lie invitingly open for their mental and bodily capacities. As better than any moralising, we propose, in illustration, to tell a story of real life, which we condense from a narrative recently published.* An English gentleman, whom, for brevity's sake, we may call the Captain, living in good circumstances, with a wife, three sons, and a daughter, was suddenly brought into difficulties by certain pecuniary losses. He resolved to make a personal sacrifice for the sake of his boys; and in this, his wife and daughter cheerfully concurred. The Colonies offered an opening for enterprise, and the part he selected was the neighbourhood of Winnipeg, in Manitoba. This newly opened-up district has been much spoken about recently. It is situated near the south end of Lake Winnipeg, and west of Lake Superior, in Canada, and noted for its general fertility. Had we been to make a choice, we would, for the sake of a generally agreeable climate, have selected New Zealand, or some part of Australia; but to many persons, such would be objectionable, owing to the long voyage and distance from England. Canada is comparatively near home, and can be so easily reached by steamboat, as to be deemed preferable by a large number of emigrants. It was so, on the present occasion.

Some time before setting out, the Captain submitted his sons to an agricultural training, so that, on arrival in the colony, they took kindly to a routine of rough work in the fields. Going by way of the St Lawrence and Toronto, the family reached Winnipeg in twenty-two days, including stoppages. They found Winnipeg a busy and thriving town, rapidly rising into importance, with establishments for the sale of every kind of farming implement; also for the sale of horses, draught oxen, milk cows, and other animals. Likewise shops of different kinds, for articles native and imported. Hotels large and nume

rous.

The Captain had bargained for a lease of a settlement including a dwelling-house, a garden, and some land in crop. The whole was a downright imposition. The dwelling-house was little better than a dilapidated shed, with the rain pouring through the roof. There was no garden;

and ten acres alleged to be in tillage, were upwards of a mile off, through swamps waist deep. Certain so-called stables and cattle-sheds, were simply roofless piles of manure and rubbish. So much for entering into a contract for houses and lands without seeing them. It was too late to repine, or to think of going back. The Captain, with his sons, set a stout heart to the business, and did their best to get things into order.

It was rather late in the season--the beginning of June, 1880; but this family of Crusoes managed, by dint of hard work, to cultivate some land near their dwelling, sufficient to insure the prospect of a tolerable harvest. A good deal of carpentry in a rough way was also effected; wooden fences were set up, and the dwelling-house underwent a thorough repair. There was now an air of comfort, where there had been formerly nothing but misery. The writer of the narrative says: 'For forty dollars (eight pounds) I purchased a cow and calf of a neighbour; and within seven weeks of leaving England, we had as good cream and butter on our table as in Devonshire itself. Poultry, pigs, &c. soon followed.' Not caring for delicacies, which could be procured only from Winnipeg, ten miles off, the family had for diet, bacon, salted pork, eggs, salads, vegetables, pastry, and home-made bread, all which were sufficiently nutritive. Domestic work, we presume, was done by the ladies, for we hear nothing of hired assistants.

The struggle was hard, but contained the elements of success. Horses, a serviceable wagon, a mowing-machine, and other implements of husbandry, were purchased, and put to a good use. The worst thing to contend against were the roads, which in wet weather were in a frightful condition. Every hardship, bad roads and all, was philosophically surmounted. Fortunately, there was near at hand a vast stretch of prairie, yielding wonderfully high and thick grass of excellent quality; of this, a large quantity was cut and winnowed, forming a useful stock for sale, and also for winter use. The boys took to the work of hay-making, as well as everything else, with much alacrity. The Captain tells us, for the encouragement of others, 'that wholly unaïded, his three boys-the eldest under twenty-managed to plough and crop sixty acres in the short period of six weeks-the work, too, being well done!'

There seem to be two heavy drawbacks against Manitoba, which are touched upon lightly. The first is the comparatively short summer, with its great heat, and swarms of black flies and mosquitoes, which there seems no way of extirpating. The second drawback is the long winter, with its intense frost, sometimes sinking to fifty degrees below zero, and which would be wholly unendurable but for the dryness of the atmosphere. When the wind blows during this frosty season, no one dares to encounter it unless

from Winnipeg the day before Christmas, it

seemed almost too cold for any one to survive it. 'My nose and cheeks,' says the Captain, 'were frozen on two different occasions during the day, leaving very sore evidences thereof for some while afterwards; and it was imperative every now and then to get down and run alongside for a considerable distance, to maintain circulation at all.... Of course, it becomes, under any circumstances, a question of more or less clothing; coats of skins-the dress of primitive man-best meeting the necessities of the case. For these, bears, beavers, wolves, racoons, skunks, and every variety of furred animal, are freely drawn upon; but especially and chiefly the buffalo supplies his hide for the comfort of those who have now nearly exterminated him from those prairie-wilds where but lately he was wont to reign supreme in herds of countless thousands.'

With all its drawbacks, the Captain was favourably impressed with Manitoba for the special object he had in view, namely, that of settling his sons.

He does not think it is a country suited for tenant-farmers of the ordinary class, or for persons coming out to take things easily. 'One sees numbers of young, smartly dressed fellows, ornate with gold chains, rings, and solitaires, with finely starched linen-fresh arrivals from England -lounging about the streets of Winnipeg; and we wonder whether they have at all realised what farming in Manitoba means! It certainly means the greatest exertion to maintain even personal cleanliness and common decency of attire; for the destruction of clothes is truly alarming, and nothing but the adoption of the "overall" duck suits of the country and high boots, can preserve a man who has to work from soon becoming, as to his clothing, a veritable scarecrow.' Considering how successfully his sons had taken to the rough mode of life pursued in the colony, the Captain thinks that Manitoba is well adapted for a class of young men with good education and fond of a country life and pursuits, provided they are industrious and not likely to be daunted by trifles. This is exactly the class who are so numerous as to be a positive embarrassment to the country at home, and whom many parents would be thankful to see comfortably and decently settled.

The writer candidly tells us that Manitoba is not the place for persons of settled habits in middle life. For himself and his wife, he says: 'We should indeed be very sorry were we compelled to live here always.' This is an important admission. Intending emigrants would need to consider the nature of the country they select. As a rule, capitalist emigrants in middle life, and who design to rely upon agriculture, cannot he advised to go to Manitoba, or indeed any raw

We

district in the north-west of America. should also doubt whether it is suited for the reception of the large number of artisans who have been flocking thither; though it appears there is a good opening for blacksmiths and such

handicrafts. It should be added, however, that the improvement by means of railways will speedily change the aspect of affairs, and afford openings for settlement hitherto unheard of. We need not pursue the subject. Our object was to point out how a gentleman with his wife quitted home and country, making for the time many sacrifices, for the purpose of establishing their sons in a career adapted to their faculties, and which proved eminently successful. It was a noble effort, and can only be spoken of with the heartiest approval. Instead of seeing their boys merged in the crowd of genteel idlers who have become a pest to society, they had the satisfaction of observing them Going Forth to Labour in a field every way worthy of their exertions.

W. C.

VALENTINE STRANGE.

FRIENDSHIP

A STORY OF THE PRIMROSE WAY. CHAPTER HIS XIX.-REGINALD, IN FOR VAL STRANGE, BEGAN TO GROW DESPERATELY FEARFUL FOR HIM.

MR REGINALD JOLLY and his father walked sometime laureate of the West End, would have together in Piccadilly. Even Captain Morris, the found but little in his favourite haunt to praise on such a morning. Mud and mist were its prevailing characteristics; the mud oceanic, the mist Scottish, and the general outlook profoundly melancholy. London is the home of wonders, and amongst its store of marvels it is open to question whether there be one greater than the placid endurance of its people. In Stamboul—which is the incapable official's earthly paradise-men bear anything. But in London, capital city of the land of the free, it is singular that we make no rebellion against misrule. There was an Irishman once, who, being informed that for a score of years the bailiff or land-steward in a certain district had not been shot at, excused his countrymen on the ground that what was everybody's business was nobody's business. Perhaps the same Proverb applies in other cases; and anyhow, Piccadilly lay in its usual spring-tide condition.

Mr

In all minds, good temper is not merely synchronous with boot-polish; but there are circumstances and conditions in which the one may disappear with the loss of the other. Jolly, in spite of the weather, had turned out of his chambers in the Albany in a beaming condition. A passing hansom rolled up a sudden varnished shoes and spotless gaiters; the cabman wave of mud; the wave overflowed Mr Jolly's turned and grinned derisively; a small boy, with that inhuman delight in misery which only small boys feel, danced with joy on the muddy pavement at the sight; and the injured gentleman forgetting dignity in anger, made at the juvenile But the small boy, sursatirist with his cane.

rounding himself with a very halo of mudsplashes, danced behind a lamp-post, and from ponderous-so it seemed-for infant tongue to that place of vantage hurled forth satires too wield; and Mr Jolly could but shake his stick at him in impotent exasperation. Turning, in anger curiously disproportionate to the event,

such as elderly gentlemen are subject to on like occasions, the injured man faced his only son, and read on his undutiful countenance a smile of mirth. At that, with such reproach in his glance as may have stricken Brutus when dying Cæsar breathed 'et tu,' he walked in silence to a near cab-stand, and entering the first vehicle he came to, gave the word for home. When Reginald would have entered with him, the aggrieved father voicelessly waved him back and drove away alone. The aged-seeming youth stood upon the kerbstone and watched the retreating cab. His smile was half-glad, half-pensive, and he gave the small boy a penny. Then obscuring the remnant of his emotion with an eyeglass, behind which all passions faded to a stony glare, he turned away, and felt a hand upon his shoulder.

'Hillo! How de do?' from Reginald. 'How de do?' from Mr Gilbert, late yachting comrade of Val Strange's. 'Nice day. Your governor, wasn't it, who drove away just now? -Thought so.- -Which way are you going?'

'I am a waif upon the human sea,' responded Reginald, winking behind his eyeglass with much dexterity. 'I was going somewhere; but my guide has left me, and I am alone in London, and I don't know where to go.'

'Come and lunch with a fellow at the Clubjust across the road.'

'What fellow am I to lunch with?' inquired Reginald.

"Come on,' returned Gilbert; and led the way to a ford, or crossing, by means of which they passed over the river of mud and came to the Club portals.

'Thus,' said Reginald later on, waving his hands vaguely at the well-furnished table, the cheerful apartment, and the fire-Thus we pluck sweetness from misfortune, and the grief of the father becomes gladness to the son.'-Gilbert, who had seen the disaster to the elder Jolly, smiled, and pushed the claret across the table.Strange is in town, I believe,' said Reginald, a moment later. 'Have you seen him?'

No,' said Gilbert, a slow smile again wreathing itself about his broad features. Strange and I are at loggerheads.' When Gilbert smiled, there was this peculiarity about it, that the smile worked underground, so to speak, travelling unseen about his countenance, breaking out at salient points, to disappear again and break out again, now in a wreathing of the lips, now in a twinkle of the eye, until, having permeated the whole mass of his mid-England features, it burst forth all over in a kind of triumph.

'At loggerheads?' said Reginald, fixing his eyeglass in order to reproach him. Why, I thought you two were the Damon and Pythias of the modern world. And who ever heard of anybody quarrelling with Val Strange?'

I never quarrelled with him,' said Gilbert, with his smile in ambush in his eyes. I never row with anybody. Not on principle, because I think a fellow ought to assert himself at times; but because I haven't energy. The fact is, he quarrelled with me.'

'What about?' inquired the other.

'I think I have the letter about me somewhere,' said Gilbert, pulling out some loose papers. 'Yes; here it is.'

Reginald took the letter from his outstretched hand. 'Am I to read this?'

Gilbert nodded; and his companion taking down his eyeglass, opened the letter, and read a line or two: 'I am in the dullest hole I ever got into in my life;' and so forth. At this he turned his eyes to the address from which the writer dated, and saw that this epistle had been forwarded from his father's house. He gave a little gasp at that discovery, and partly to cover a momentary confusion, read on. When he had read it through, he handed it back to Gilbert. 'Did you send the telegram?' he inquired innocently.

Gilbert's slow smile declared itself on his lips, disappeared, shone out in his eyes, disappeared, and beamed suddenly on every feature. He nodded twice or thrice, and responded, in the phrase of the once-famous Muster Gerridge: I believe you, my boy. I sent it. I did more. I went out of my way to oblige him. You see, ¦ he asked me not to fail in making the telegram urgent enough to fetch him out of the place he'd got into; and so, thinking the first mightn't seem sufficiently particular, I sent a second; and then so that there shouldn't be any mistake about it-I sent another. Then he comes up to town, slangs me horribly for overdoing it, and tells me he's done with me for ever. It's Talleyrand over again. Trop de zèle. You catch me ever helping anybody again, and tell me of it.'

"You don't happen to know whom Strange was staying with, do you?' asked Reginald.

'No,' said Gilbert. He omitted to name his host, and I don't know anybody but Val himself in that part of the country.' And Mr Gilbert, had he known the truth, would rather have been shot than have betrayed Strange in this manner.-'Why do you ask? Do you know 'em?'

'Ye-es!' said Reginald, again assuming his eyeglass, and speaking in a tone of anything but certainty. I think I do.'

"They must be a wooden lot,' said Gilbert, 'to frighten Strange in that way. In the matter of patient endurance of boredom, I'm a perfect camel, and Val is the next man to me. I never knew anybody who could endure being bored better than Val, except myself of course. But then, you know,' said Gilbert, as if deprecating his own virtues, 'I'm so used to it. I can't remember not being bored; everything's a bore to me, and always was, and so, you see, I've had lots of practice.'

He

'Ye-es,' said Reginald again. Must have had.' He was both humiliated and indignant; but by dint of much self-control, he disguised his feelings, and turning the conversation to other matters, sat on for an hour, and then took leave. was eager to be alone, that he might puzzle out this curious affair of Strange's. If it were true that Val had found things dull at the Grange, it was certain that he had borne the infliction in a marvellously cheerful manner on the whole. Dull? He had been the life of the house-the very centre of all people's enjoyment. Once or twice there might have been a preoccupied and even a dreary look upon his face-Reginald remembered that-but he had always emerged from his momentary quiet into a very fever of good spirits. There was some small mystery at