No. 431.

A MUSCULAR HYPOCHONDRIAC. WELL-MEANING moralists, and young curates, and, in fact, all persons addicted to the abuse of metaphorical language, are a little hard on feminine beauty. They can never touch on the vanity, brevity, and superficiality of things in general without pointing their dull platitudes by the most unfair allusions and comparisons to the fair sex. No doubt the perfect bloom of all those endearing young charms' is soon impaired; but beauty is not the only thing which culminates to decline. Other charms than those of beauty have a scarcely less ephemeral duration. The charms of muscle, for instance, the glory of the calf

That play of lungs inspiring, and again
Respiring freely the fresh air, that makes
Swift pace or steep ascent no toil—

all these are things which endure in their glory and perfection but for a season-a base sea-side season. Why, then, can we not have a little variety in our teacher's parables? Why not leave the epidermis of the fair, and have an occasional tilt at the muscle of the strong? Granted that our dear enslavers may be none the worse for an occasional reminder that their empire is limited -in time, for it is fleeting; and in space, for it is but skin deep. But, O Hercules! do not our barbarised athletes' need a word in season too? Possibly, the ballroom belle sets too high a value on her charms, and is too deeply cast down by their decline; but not her emotions, when she feels she is a budding 'wall-flower '-not the depression of the gentleman in Wordsworth, 'who daily travels further from the east'-not the forlorn misery of the love-sick Guppy, can approach the pathetic desolation of the athlete who feels that he is increasing in the wrong place. To feel that the days are at hand in which he shall no more emulate the baboon on the trapeze, or the flea on the vaulting bar; that he must soon abjure the rectangular delights of standing at ninety degrees to a chair; that he can no more hang on to a bar by his toes or the back of his neck; that, in

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short, he must soon abandon the high pedestal from which he has hitherto contemned his less fortunate, because flabbier fellow-creatures, is to feel reduced to the level of a retired pugilist, whose example he may almost as well follow, open a public-house. Henceforth, nothing can effectually assuage the melancholy of the ex-gladiator; but such transient gleams of sunshine as gild his blighted life are when he is judge or starter at some athletic meeting; but even then he feels that he is only a sort of male chaperon, and the reflection is full of bitterness.

I do not thus borrow the language of the Preacher, because I have felt in my own case how bitter it is to retire into private life. Personally, I am not muscular, nor ever was. I have always been able to pass a fifty-six pound weight without the slightest desire to push it up from the shoulder; I have always been perfectly continent in the matter of dumb-bells and Indian clubs. To scull from the barges to Sandford, with an occasional fantasia in a scratch four, was the extent of my powers and the summit of my ambition. I was rather thinking of—or at— my old college chum, Joe Rullock, with whom I was spending a few days a short time since. In our old Oxford days, Joe was to me a sort of selfappointed committee or keeper, considering it his mission to interpose his brawny person between me and all sorts of imaginary dangers; and so, in course of time, I came to play an academic Phil Squod to his Captain George; I used to steer him to Iffley, to measure his throws with the hammer, or take his times when he ran at the Marston ground. In short, he loved me because he looked on me as so helpless and feeble-though I am not really feebler than Dr Beddoe's average man-and I loved him that he did pity me. I did indeed sometimes endeavour to protest against his mild and benevolent despotism, but he always calmly waived me off with: Pooh, my dear fellow; leave it to me; you know you are not strong.' What made my tame acquiescence in this bondage the more ridiculous was, that I was Joe's senior in years and standing. It was therefore but natural

that, when I put on my gown, I should leave my protector behind me. But this natural course of events annoyed him greatly, and caused him as keen a pang as a hen who rears a duck feels when her protégée takes to the water. But I went my way, and left Joe in a halo of cricket, and long throws, and tremendous puts, living a life of incredible hardship on raw meat, but perfectly recompensed by his inches round the chest, and his generally lumpy and tuberous condition, and the unanimous commendations of the sporting press. Ten years elapse between the prologue and the next act. I had been serving my country in India, and Joe had retired to his comfortable patrimony, where he settled down into a model squire. From time to time reports reached me, through Bell's Life, of his prowess in cricket, and occasionally he favoured me with a letter. But after a while, without any diminution of kindly feeling, our correspondence fell through, and the notices of my friend in the oracle became rarer and rarer. At the end of ten years, I came home on leave for twelve months, and I lost no time in getting to Ashlins, where Joe gave me the warmest of welcomes. He had developed into a magnificent specimen of an Anglo-Saxon, deep in the chest, broad in the shoulders, firmly set on long, massive thighs, with a full yellow beard rippling over his honest, serious, sun-browned face. His figure, perhaps, was verging on the portly; but, as yet, he was safe from any curter epithet than portly. He wrung my hand with his old remorseless gripe, and patted me on the back with the old Oxford air of protection, so that I felt at home immediately on the old footing of the feeble dependant. I observed, too, at luncheon, that my friend's old prowess with the knife and fork still clung by him. Huge slices of beef crumbled beneath his molars like corn in a mill; and quart pewters, the trophies of his legs and arms, streamed with bright ale. Afterwards, he smoked his venerable meerschaum, with that deliberate and grave enjoyment of which none but physically powerful men are capable. Luncheon over, a walk to the covers was proposed, and we were soon immersed in that discursive chat, dear to long-parted chums. Unfortunately for our quiet enjoyment, a five-barred gate threw its malignant shadow across our path. I need scarcely say that I had no more imagination apropos of a five-barred gate than Peter Bell of a yellow primrose. And I have my private opinion that Joe also had, by this time, got into a way, when alone, of walking through gates, when possible, rather than vaulting over them. On the present occasion, however, the association of ideas, I suppose, was too strong for him, for he put his hand carelessly on the gate and-struck his knee heavily against the top bar.

'Foot slipped,' explained Joe; and again he went at the gate, with the same result as before. A shade of annoyance crossed his face, as if it were a humiliation to have to take a run at such a mere bagatelle as five feet six. He felt, however, that he had gone too far to recede with honour; so he took a run, and again succeeded in heavily banging his knee. The saddening conviction now began to dawn on poor Joe's mind that he could not get over the gate at all. The truth was horrible, but irresistible, and the moan of the fallen athlete was as touching as Wolsey's lament to Cromwell. Oh, hang it, Tom,' he said with a mournful shake of

the head, 'this is too sickening! This is the approach of the sere and yellow with a vengeance. I give you my word, I once got over six foot seven at Mac's. And now I have to sneak over five foot six like a girl in petticoats! No offence meant to you, you know, because you never were strong. But to slip through one's six ages into the slippered pantaloon by thirty-five! But it's all those confounded gymnastics.'

'Confounded gymnastics;' and from those lips! I could not believe my ears. No. The pope might deny his own infallibility, and Bass might advocate a Maine Liquor Law, but Joe Rullock, the mighty gymnasiarch, the hero of a hundred 'grinds,' the unwearied haunter of the palæstra, could never give the lie to his whole past life, and deny his own gymnastics.

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'Come, Joe,' I said soothingly, 'you're riled, old fellow. You must be chaffing about the gymnastics.'

'I tell you,' he repeated with solemn emphasis, 'it's those cursed gymnastics. They bring you into an unnatural state of training and muscular development; and the consequence is that you break down twice as early as other men. Look at me: at five-and-twenty I was a sort of Milo; at five-and-thirty I am a wreck.'

It was no use trying to argue Joe out of his position; besides, I had no wind to spare for talk, as it was all I could do to keep up with this poor wreck, striding along at five miles an hour. But, not being a wreck myself, I soon began to exhibit symptoms of distress at this rapid pace, whereon Joe graciously proposed that we should sit on a gate and chat. Being anxious to divert him, if possible, from the unhappy train of reflections in which he was evidently indulging, I started a hobby that I hoped he would deign to ride. Made any long scores lately, Joe?' I inquired.

What at?' snapped Joe. 'Why, cricket, of course.'

'Cricket! Do you think a man can make a score with a pot like mine? No, sir; I'm too fleshy for that sort of fun; too fat, sir. Do you know that I weigh fourteen stone seven? And what have I to thank for it?-Those infernal gymnastics. They put on great lumps of muscle at high pressure, which, directly you return to a natural, normal life, turn to fat.'

I tried to assure the poor fellow that his case, as yet, was by no means desperate that he was far from a Banting; but he would not be comforted.

'I tell you, I ought to know best, Tom. It has been coming upon me some time now. I had long had some uneasy suspicions on the subject, but I was brought up sharp about two years ago. I was taking a team to play the opening match of the season with the Stalkshire Hedgehogs. Well, sir, when I came to put on my bags, I found I had precious hard work to draw them on; my thighs seemed to be in tights, and the buttons altogether refused to meet. At first, I thought they had shrunk in the wash, or possibly I had got a pair of my brother's by mistake. But, when I tried another pair, I found it was still the same; and then I realised the stern fact, that I was growing a pot. Since then, I have seldom played except with our own fellows; and I shall give it up altogether next season.'

* 'Grinds,' college slang for athletic sports.

This failure of my best meant efforts dismayed me excessively, for I saw that I had to deal with a perfect hypochondriac on the subject of muscular atrophy. He persisted in regarding himself as a shattered athlete, and was perpetually 'facing the infernal facts,' as he phrased it. The slightest thing set him off; he would go off on the very faintest scent. For instance, when his eldest boy, as fine a lad of eight years' old as ever a man called son, was brought in after dinner, I stumbled on the unlucky remark, that he was a perfect little athlete.' Joe was down on me like a knife. 'Don't talk like a fool, Tom. Do you want to vitiate the poor little fellow's mind already? I once caught that boy playing with a dumb-bell, and I gave him a good licking for it. And if ever, he continued, sternly fixing the boy with his eye, 'I catch Joe on the bars, or playing the tomfool in any such way, I'll skin him! Remember that, Joe; for I mean it. Gymnastics have caused your poor father misery enough, without wrecking the happiness of his son. I am no heathen, to sacrifice to Moloch.'

'Come, Joe,' I said, 'you seem uncommonly bitter against your old love. But be a trifle more explicit; let us hear the whole of your impeachment of gymnastics. You seem to me to be as violent now in your denunciations of them, as you were formerly unreasonable in your devotion to them. Come, now, what harm have they done you?'

'Well, in the first place,' grunted Joe, 'they have broken my wind.'-I thought of the five miles an hour, but was silent.-At the slightest exertion or quickening of the pace, I begin to blow like a grampus. I tried to get up Mont Blanc last year; had to give it up at the Grands Mulets. If I go in for swimming, I knock up after half a mile.'

'Well, but even if this is so, how is it due to gymnastics?'

'I'll tell you. In the first place, as I said before, they put on muscle that with the least inaction becomes fat. But besides this, only consider what fooleries we go in for when we are at it! We get into a perfect lather of perspiration; we immediately shove our heads into a basin of cold water, or get some fool like ourselves to pour a can of cold water down our backs. Of course, the perspiration is violently arrested, and the system chilled. The result is that we thicken the bronchial tubes, we derange the action of the heart, we become asthmatic, and extremely sus ceptible of cold.'

Well, I admit the first count, old man. You are, comparatively-very comparatively-speaking, broken-winded. What next?'

'Well, in the next place, you never yet knew a fellow go in heavily for athletics who did not damage himself by overstraining some part or other. You knew Dupoids of Balliol-magnificent fellow! seen him throw the hammer one hundred and twelve feet-well, he strained his left breast, and feels it ever since. Long, the mile-runner, brought on varex, and wears an elastic stocking; Doolan, the spurt-runner, went into a consumption; my cousin Jack, who won the sculls, has to wear a truss. I sprained the right pectoral muscle when I was playing some stupid antics on the trapeze, and directly the cold weather sets in, I am never free from pain in the damaged part.'

'Proven,' I exclaimed, anxious to check his reminiscences of disabled heroes, which threatened to become lengthy. You have made good your second count. You are damaged, in point of fact a screw-a broken-winded screw. What next?' 'Besides all this,' continued he, 'I am quite convinced that strong training makes a man heavy, somnolent, and stupid. Plato, who, to my mind, is about the only fellow who ever understood the subject of education as a system founded on reason, is quite right in saying that physical and mental training cannot go on simultaneously. Mark Pattison, too, is tolerably well on the spot in what he says about the mania for athletics. Only, you know, he is a weakling like you, and a man does not like to be put right by a fellow that he could smash.'

'Well, but the Greeks,' I objected, 'certainly made gymnastics an integral part of their education.'

"True,' replied Joe; but, in the first place, the Greeks began their physical education at a time when the mind is best fallow, and brought it to an end in good time. Whereas our fellows grind on the river, or in the gymnasium, at the very crisis of the mind: they burn the candle at both ends. Besides, the gymnastics of the Greeks went on an entirely different principle from ours. Theirs were systematic, and, so to speak, generic; ours are haphazard and special. They cultivated the harmony of the whole body, we only develop particular parts; our fellows only aim at putting on lumps here and there. One fellow goes in for rowing, and puts a lump on his forearm, and another behind his shoulder-blades. Another fellow goes in for dumb-bells and parallel bars, and puts a lump on his biceps. Another goes in for running or jumping, and puts a lump on his calf. But there is nothing systematic; it is all chaotic and idiotic.'

"Well, I suppose you must have it your own way,' I said: 'I will "write you down an ass," if you like. Let me see that makes a brokenwinded asinine screw. Anything else?'

'Yes; there are the moral annoyances and vexations of finding out that you are perpetually losing the faculty of doing some absurd thing or other, that no one in his senses feels the least desire to do. You saw to-day how I lost my temper because I could not vault over a five-barred gate. It was the same thing the other day at an athletic festival at Westwich." I was fool enough to let them humbug me into going in for the hammer-“just to shew the rustics how to throw it." Well, sir, one of my own tenants' sons threw six feet further than I did.-But come; we've had enough of this; pass the port. A few pounds of flesh more or less can't make much difference now.-No more? Then let us go, and have coffee with Annie.'

'Just another minute,' I pleaded. At this rate, we ought not to take any exercise at all.'

'I never said that. Take exercise in plentycricket, row, ride, shoot, skate, fence, box, so long as you can do so without leading an unnatural life. But if any one wants you to go into training for any of these things, to knock off your pipe, to limit yourself to some absurd pittance of fluid per diem, with your throat as dry as the Sahara, to variegate your skin with a crop of boils, or to live at the mercy of some brutal trainer or some pigmy cox., take my advice, and do nothing of the sort. It is

better to remain an abortion like you, Tom, than to break down like me. But come up-stairs, and then we'll have a pipe.'

A GOLDEN SORROW. CHAPTER XXV.-'WHERE IS WALTER ?' WITH the certainty that under any circumstances his life could not be much prolonged, it might have been supposed that some soft, regretful feeling would have come to Reginald Clint. He might have been less morose and cynical, less obstinate in his conviction, that in the long-standing quarrel between himself and his fellows, he only was in the right, they absolutely and wilfully in the wrong. But, if any observer had indulged such an expectation, it would have arisen from an imperfect conception of the man's character. We are too apt to regard sickness and sorrow as direct agents for good in themselves, whereas they never absolutely turn aside the ordinary current of one's moral life; they are what the person who experiences them makes them. Reginald Clint believed what Mr Martin had told him; indeed, there was a warning voice within him heard, but, in the sense of warning, unheeded, which affirmed the truth of the doctor's words. Nobody but himself could tell how difficult he-who, until a comparatively late period, had been a strong man-sometimes found it to live; how easy it would have seemed to him to relinquish the effort, and allow that deadly nausea, that terrible tremulousness, that overwhelming weakness to have their full way. And they wanted him to give up drink; to give up the only thing that checked all these, and pulled him back from the abyss he so constantly neared! He was not such a fool as not to know that it was also the origin of the deadly evil which he felt within his frame, but it was too late now; he did not deceive himself; he knew it would always have been too late, at least ever since the time when, if an intrusive vision of his wife's pale face, as he remembered it in her welcome coffin, and his wife's rosy face, as he could not forget it, on her wedding-day, arose before him, he got rid of them both by the agency of drink. He would keep off the big bouts which shook his nerves, and inflicted those dreadful attacks of fear upon him, but he would do no more; and he was not afraid of death. There might be another life, perhaps; he did not know or care much about that; Reginald Clint had not in him even the beginning of wisdom;' at all events, he was getting tired of this present world. People died very easily sometimes, with the aid of drink, and he did not like pain. He had had a good deal of it already, more than any one knew about; he wanted to have as little more as possible, and as to avoiding it by giving up drink, he knew better! At all events-and he came steadily back to this in his thoughts-he would not, and he could not.

He did not. Within three weeks after the making of his will, Reginald Clint had brought himself to a state which, if he had deferred that proceeding, would, in all probability, have invalidated it. His temper, so far from being softened, was more than ever intolerable, and his tyranny such that there was great difficulty in keeping the domestic staff together. Florence bore the brunt of much of this, putting herself as far as possible between him and those whom he had habitually maltreated with his

tongue, though never so grossly as now. Her task was a hard one, full of most repulsive duties, for disease spared nothing to the dying drunkard, and there was no one to share them with her. In after-days she wondered how she was sustained in courage and in bodily strength throughout that time, with its ever-present horror and its agonising suspense.

Miriam was informed of her father's state, but Florence found herself obliged to add that Mr Clint would not receive her unless she came to the Firs alone. He positively refused to admit Mr St Quentin into the house. This was a novel development of his extraordinary temper, and Mr Martin and Florence were equally at a loss to account for it. But they presently discovered that he had, by dint of long brooding over the matter, conceived a violent animosity against Mr St Quentin, in consequence of his victory over him respecting the conditions of his marriage with Miriam. He had been beaten on the point of the settlement; and his morose, ill-conditioned mind, beginning now to be touched with positive disease, ever seeking nutrition for its spleen and ill-will, had fastened on this fact with peculiar avidity. Miriam might come if she chose, but not the plausible old cheat she had married, and would find out some day. She had been in such a hurry to get away from her father, that she had allowed herself to be fooled; let her take care she was not left in the lurch altogether. They could not extract from him any expression of a desire to see his daughter; beyond 'she may come if she chooses,' he would not go.

Miriam would have gone to the Firs gladly, even on such slender encouragement as this; but she was destined to feel, in this instance, the full weight of the yoke under which she had heedlessly and credulously placed herself. If her father was obdurate, so was her husband, and he had a threat to use which was potent. You go nowhere without me. If you leave my house, without my permission, on any pretext whatsoever, you need never return to it. Let there be no further discussion of the subject.' Miriam had ascertained that this was no vain threat, no imposition in the true spirit of a petty tyrant, on her credulity, but that he had the power to carry it out. So she submitted, and hardened her heart against the man who thus treated her-well-nigh driving him mad by her carefully displayed contempt. She wrote to Florence full particulars of the battle, and, acknowledging Mr St Quentin's victory, declared her intention of rendering it more costly to him than any number of defeats. Florence in reply entreated her to write no more in that strain; she felt she could not bear it, in the deep gloom of the terrible episode through which she was passing. Miriam hardly understood Florence's feelings, but she respected them, and for some weeks their correspondence was almost limited to the despatch of bulletins on the one side, and the acknowledgment of them on the other.

Reginald Clint asked no questions about his daughter. Whether he thought of her with affection and regret, or with bitterness and resentment, no one could tell. He was generally taciturn, even with Florence, but, at the worst stages of his illness, he was pleased when she was with him, and uneasy in her absence.

The night had come, cool, calm, and silent, after a day of much suffering to the dying man, and of

incessant fatigue to Florence. Mr Martin had left the house shortly before, and Florence's watch was soon to be relieved for a few hours by a hired nurse, who had now been in attendance for some days. Mr Clint had been asleep for a little while, and Florence, who was sitting by his bed, had allowed her weary lids to close for a few moments. When she opened her eyes she found that the sick man had turned, and was gazing at her intently. A change in his face caught her attention immediately. 'Do you want anything, sir?' She approached him as she spoke, expecting the usual craving demand for stimulant, which it had long been useless and impossible to resist. But no such demand was made, nor did the dim, sunken eyes turn eagerly, as they had always hitherto turned on waking, towards the spot where the bottles were kept. He still looked at her, but did not reply. She held back the curtain, and inspected him more narrowly. The change struck her still more forcibly, but it was not a painful alteration; it consisted rather in general unlikeness to the face she was accustomed to see, than in any threatening symptom.

Where is Walter?'

He spoke the words slowly and distinctly, his eyes still fixed on her face. No answer. Florence never knew whether her body started, or in any way betrayed emotion, but she felt as if she had been shot.

'Where is Walter?'

She gently kneeled down beside the bed, and answered him in a soothing tone, with all her terror: Don't you remember, sir? Mr Walter is in California.'

'I forgot.'

He closed his eyes, and dozed for awhile-how blue and sunken his face was, how irregular his breathing!-and she knelt perfectly motionless beside him. It was the first time she had heard his father pronounce her husband's name. Presently he roused himself, and sighed heavily. 'Are you in pain, sir? Can I give you anything?' 'No; I am in no pain-but my head is heavy. I thought Walter was here. I suppose I was dreaming.' He spoke very slowly, and with gaps between the words. Then, after another pause, he went on: 'I must have been dreaming that Walter was here, and there was something he wanted to tell me. I have not seen him for a long time.'

'So I have heard, Florence ventured to say. 'I thought he would have come back sooner, but I suppose he is doing no good out there.'

I have been told that your son is doing well, sir, and that he hopes to return very soon, and prove to you that he has profited by his experi

ence.'

'Ah!'-in a vague manner-'it will be too late soon.' He drew his breath heavily, and his chest laboured. Florence rose, gave him some wine, which he drank without eagerness, and then quietly resumed her former attitude. Walter and Miriam,' he said, 'Walter and Miriam.' 'Should you be glad if they were here, sir? Do you wish to see your daughter? Do you want her?'

"No!' but there was no fierceness in his tone, no scornful repudiation of feeling; 'I don't want her-I don't want any one but you.' No words came to Florence.

may have thought me. I know very well what you have been to me. I might have died like a dog in a ditch if it had not been for you, and I don't want any one else now.'

'O sir, don't say that! If only for my sake, don't say that!' Florence had found words now, and was holding his passive hand in both hers, while still the ghastly eyes gazed into her face. 'If I have been of any service, of any comfort to you, I ask for only one acknowledgment, for only one reward. Let me tell your children that you have thought of them with affection, that whatever the cloud was which came between you and them so long ago, it has quite cleared away. Let me tell them this-to the daughter who will come to you at once, and to the son who will not be long in coming. I hope, I pray, I believe he is on his way already. But whether he comes soon, or not until he cannot hear it from your own lips, let him know that he is forgiven. Whatever his faults towards you were, he has deeply, bitterly repented of them; he would give all the world can ever bring him to undo them, or to know that they no longer dwell in your memory.'

Unheeded, unconscious tears were streaming from Florence's eyes, and falling on her hands, and on that one which she held.

'Think of his long banishment from home, of his kind and loving heart-I do not think you ever knew him rightly-and spare him the anguish of knowing that you had left him unreconciled to him, that there was bitterness in your heart. I pray that you may be left with us until he comes home; but, lest it may not be so, say some words of comfort for him to me. Do say them-ever so few-here, now, to me!'

Her earnestness hurried her away from all caution and restraint, and yet she did not lose sight of her patient's state; her voice was not raised, and she knelt quite still.

'I dared not mention his name,' she went on, "though I have so longed to speak it to you, all these months; but now, now that you have spoken it to me yourself, I do no wrong. Give me a message of reconciliation to your son.'

'Give you the message? What do you know about my son? Why are you pleading his cause?'

Florence took a desperate resolution. She had not any doubt that Mr Clint was dying. His son should not carry through life the burden she had found well nigh intolerable for a few years. She resolved to tell him the truth.

'Sir,' she said, 'you have to forgive him many things, but one thing above all, and it is because of that great fault, that great sin against you, that I am pleading to you now. Only for that, I should not be here, and Walter would be beside you. I entreat you to pardon him, and me too, for I am Walter's wife!'

'Walter's wife? You!'

There was surprise in the feeble voice, but not anger. There was something like awe, but not 'Yes, I-I, the girl you were told about-I, Florence Reeve.'

scorn.