should say in scorn he married her though there was nothing against her, I should still be happy, knowing I had your love. But my father, that dear old man in his quiet, country vicarage. Think of it? It is too horrible!

Angelina (with bowed head.) You are right, I had forgotten your father.

Edwin. How could I ever look into that sweet, wrinkled face, and meet those reverend eyes, knowing that I was asking him to receive as a daughter one who had never even once strayed from the paths of virtue?

Angelina. I see it all now, good-bye.

Edwin. Good-bye.

Angelina (as he is going). Edwin, come back.

Edwin. Ah! don't torture me, I can bear no more!

Angelina. But what if I were to tell you that this confession, so humiliating to us both, was but a ruse to test the strength of your devotion.

Edwin. Ah, don't raise a false hope within me, only to plunge me again in the abyss of despair.

Angelina. But this is no false hope.

Edwin (eagerly). What do you mean?

Angelina (burying her head on his shoulder). I mean that I been no better than I should be.

Edwin (embracing her). My own true love, nothing can part us now.

Curtain.

Crackers.

The youthful but indiscriminating would-be smoker will find unending bliss in the joys of Our Smoking-Room Concert, his pleasure though commencing with a bang won't end in smoke. Feminine hearts who long for the sunny south will revel in the Riviera Cosaque. Both these are warranted to "go off," through the inventive genius of our "crack" G. Sparagnapane.

THE TRUISMS OF LIFE.

(By the Right Hon. the Author of "The Platitudes of Life," M.P., F.R.S., D.C.L., LL.D.)

Chapter II.—De Quibusdam Aliis.

"Cleanliness is next to Godliness"; so runs the witty aphorism; and modern bacteriologists "explain clearly the reason, and show why it is so,"[1] the italics not being in the original. The use of water is an effectual element in cleanliness. Men have been known to brush their teeth with it. Of soaps there are many; but water is practically one. "Πάντα ῥεῖ," said Thales. And, again, "There is a tide in the affairs of men,"[2] as Lord Byron put it, in confirmation of Shakspeare's previous statement.

Fresh air contributes largely to the health. "In aëre salus," said the Romans; though some, for want of knowledge, have rendered this, "There is safety in flight"; and others, for want of the diæresis, have supposed it to mean, "Tip a policeman, and he will carry you over the crossing."

Yes, indeed, how wonderful is the air! Not only confined, as in aërated bread or waters, but in the open. By it we breathe and smell and sail on ships. Also the fields are full of buttercups. And then the weather! How much of true happiness depends on conversation, and how much of this on the weather! Yet "there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather."[3] This true thought has often helped me in a London fog.

Again, the open air suggests games and railways. "Games are admirable."[4] Did not Lord Nelson rightly say that the battle of Trafalgar was "won in the playing-fields of Eton?" He referred of course to the floods. Railways take us about through the air. Ruskin speaks of the advantage of increasing the "range of what we see," forgetting for the moment his views about locomotives.

Among other forms of recreation men reckon Art and meals and their wives' relations. I say nothing of the Drama, though the other day I came across the statement that "All the world's a stage."[5]

Another recreation is letter-writing. Lord Chesterfield wrote letters. But be careful. If you have written a cruel letter, put a stamp on it, lest it come back upon your own head.

I have spoken of a man's wife's relations. This implies marriage. "The wise choice of female friends is ... important."[6] "Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel,"[7] as a writer lately put it, thinking, perhaps, of the Elizabethan skirt. There are risks in marriage. It is "for better for worse."[8] This distinction is well brought out in the two following passages—"And oh! if there be an Elysium on earth, it is this, it is this!"[9] and "Wedlock's a saucy, sad, familiar state."[10]

One might throw out some thoughts on the question of selection, but, as a friend aptly and originally expressed himself to me—"Silence is golden"; and I remember to have read that "talking should be an exercise of the brain and not of the tongue."[11] Substitute "writing" for "talking," and "pen" for "tongue," and I really wonder why I have written all this. Can it be that I regard the reading public as "mostly fools"?[12]

[1] Lubbock.

[2] Don Juan.

[3] Ruskin.

[4] Sir James Paget.

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