of full-flavored Cubas" attending Mr. Allen, we must, of course, put that down to Dickens's ignorance of "the noxious weed." We may be quite sure that the tobacco which gentlemen in their position would have smoked would never have sprung from the favored soil of that tropical island. It is rather by the irony of fate that the name of a man who evidently had such a horror of the weed should have been associated a few years later with a brand of cigars of a quality other than that of those which come from Havana, under the name, used with a familiarity which is scarcely less than blasphemous, of "Pickwicks."

We have further indications, besides this just referred to, that demeanor in the public streets was studied with much attention. If we move into another class of society, and consider for a moment the incidents revolving round the "swarree" at Bath as their focus and centre, we find that even in that provincial town (though no doubt it was the resort of all the fashion of the day) it was "to the great horror of Mr. John Smauker when Sam Weller began to whistle" as they went along the street. We have, of course, to be careful how we criticise in company that is too high for us, and, again, to guard ourselves from misconception with some suspicion that perhaps our author's account of this society which he depicts so much to our edification may be due to the splendid fertility of his imagination, like his report of the Dingley Dell cricket match. We had perhaps do better to move to more assured ground. This we probably reach when we come to the description of the assembly in the same town. This is surely a rich mine. For one incidental point, the time of assemblage is notable "precisely twenty minutes before eight o'clock that night, Angelo Cyrus Bantam, Esq., the Master of the Ceremonies,

emerged from his chariot at the door of the Assembly Rooms." And so on. That marks the hour. There was dancing, there were cards, and there was tea, at 6d. a cup, but it does not appear that there was anything of a stronger nature, either in the way of solids or fluids. It was not until after his return to the "White Hart" that Mr. Pickwick "soothed his feelings with something hot." They had sat at the card table till ten minutes past eleven, and perhaps it was partly this prolonged and unaccustomed absti nence from anything stronger than tea that led Mr. Pickwick to play, in a manner scarcely worthy of his great intellectual powers, with the painful result that "Miss Bolo rose from the table considerably agitated, and went straight home, in a flood of tears and a sedan chair."

It was an age, it may be observed, in which ladies burst into tears, or fell into faints, on every conceivable occasion and on very slight excuse. The widow Bardell in the embarrassed embraces of Mr. Pickwick, the unconsciousness and ingenuous self-betrayal of the maiden aunt when Mr. Tracy Tupman met with his unhappy accident at the hands of Mr. Winkle and many more cases might be cited from the pages of this story, but it is not a point on which it is worth while dwelling because it is illustrated in so many other contemporary stories of comparatively little note. Miss Bolo's going off in the sedan chair really suggests a more interesting line of criticism than her flood of tears. In Bath, it appears, they were the mode, and the fact reappears with all the agitating circumstances which culminated with Mr. Winkle, in light attire, bouncing first into, and shortly after out of, the sedan chair already occupied by Mrs. Dowler. It would seem, however, as if these "sedantary" means of conveyance, as some shameless punster has

dared to name them, were certainly not the ordinary vehicles for gentlemen to use in London, whatever they may have been for the ladies in Bath. We may distinguish several kinds of equipage.

There is the chariot in various designs, amongst which the mail cart of Lord Mutanhed has perhaps first claims on our admiration, and other different kinds of private carriage, such as the open barouche in which Mr. Wardle and family first make their benevolent appearance. There are the regular coaches, with Mr. Weller, Senior, and other gentlemen of the boiled-beef complexion on the driver's seat, posting along the roads, and there are post-chaises, which can be hired privately on great occasions, such as that triumphal progress in which Mr. Bob Sawyer figured on the roof of the conveyance, brandishing a flag in one hand and a bottle of punch in the other. It is, however, obviously useless to attempt to go through the whole list of carriages of the day, when the great master himself could arrive no closer to the description of one of them than by the strictly negative process of remarking that "the vehicle was not exactly a gig, neither was it a stanhope. It was not what is commonly denominated a dog-cart, neither was it a taxed cart, nor a chaise cart, nor a guillotined cabriolet."

Now one of the questions in the famous Pickwick examination paper set by Mr. Calverley (C.S.C.) might well have been a definition of a "guillotined cabriolet." Did Dickens by this phrase suggest the guillotining off of the head of the word, "cab," leaving "riolet" for any etymological scavenger to carry away? I do not know. This I know, that they had cabs in London of the Pickwickian day, that they also had the hackney coach, and that the latter was of the greater glory; but their exact relations still seem a little obscure. Mr. Samuel Weller, in conversation

with his father, and perhaps paying him, by subtle inference, a delicate compliment on the superiority of the mail coach to other vehicles, replies to his father's question as to whether Mr. Pickwick was arriving by cab with "Yes, he's a-havin' two mile o' danger at eightpence," thus indirectly throwing an illuminating ray on the scale of charges at that period. The relatively greater glory of the hackney coach, as compared with the cab, is: sufficiently indicated by the arrangement of a certain very melancholy procession in which "a coach having been procured, the four Pickwickians and Mr. Perker esconced themselves therein, and drove to the Guildhall, Sam Weller, Mr. Lowther and the blue bag following in a cab." It is evident, from the company which it accommodated, that the coach must have been of respectable dimensions. . It does not seem, however, that the pace of even this more glorious mode of conveyance usually erred on the side of excess, though apparently with two horses attached to it, for on another occasion it is stated that, although "the horses 'went better' when they had anything before them," they accommodated their pace to a cart immediately preceding them all along Fleet Street. But "Time performs wonders. By the powerful old gentleman's aid even a hackney coach gets over half a mile of ground." Though this may be the language of just criticism, it can hardly be said to be the language of eulogy of the pace at which the journey was accomplished. Some further light is thrown on the correct fares on a very early page of the story, by the comment of the driver of the cab which Mr. Pickwick engaged at St. Martin'sle-Grand to. take him to the "Golden Cross." "'Only a bob's vorth, Tommy,' cried the driver, sulkily, for the information of his friend the waterman, as the cab drove off." Some

doubts on the veracity of the calculator may be suggested by the striking information which he gave Mr. Pickwick as to the age of the horse and the periods for which it was commonly kept out at a time, but it would not seem that this gratuitous statement to the waterman was affected by any motive which could reasonably tempt him to untruthfulness. It is to be admitted that the cab-driver proved himself truly akin with his brethren of the present day by refusing his proper fare with contumely, and even with pugnacity, when it was proffered, and though he was eventually induced to accept it, this drive was probably the most costly which Mr. Pickwick ever undertook, even in the course of his exceptionally eventful life, since it gained him the expensive privilege of the acquaintance of Mr. Jingle.

The illustrations of Seymour and "Phiz" may be accepted, with a certain discount allowed for their quite conscious and intentional tendency to caricature, as giving us accurate pictures of the scenes in which the great drama is played. They give us a cab, and many other styles of vehicle, but we have to look elsewhere for a hackney coach.

It has been very often remarked that Dickens's conception of his central character altered, much for the better and nobler, as the story went forward. His first idea, undoubtedly, was to make him a ridiculous old gentleman, the butt of all the world. As the tale proceeds the author grows enamored with his great creation, that central figure develops a benevolence, even a wisdom, though tempered by an ineradicable simplicity which led such a sagacious judge of men as Sam Weller to speak of him as an angel in tights.

It has been noted less often that during the course of the tale Mr. Winkle and Mr. Snodgrass become progresLIVING AGE. VOL. XLIV. 2318

sively more juvenile. At first no hint is given of any great difference in the ages of the four members of the Pickwick Club, nor do the early illustrations convey the difference to us with any distinctness. It seems to have been only when he had brought them into the delightful circle of Mr. Wardle's family party that the author entertained the idea of making Mr. Winkle and Mr. Snodgrass suitable in point of age to be claimants for the hands of Miss Emily Wardle and Miss Arabella Allen. From that point the relation of Mr. Pickwick towards them becomes ever more and more paternal. It is not until Mr. Winkle had collided violently with Mr. Sawyer on the ice and Mr. Pickwick issues the peremptory order "Take of his skates" that we hear the first sound of the paternal note. In course of that flagitious trial in which so much aspersion is thrown on the character of the best of men, we find Mr. Winkle informing Mr. Phunky that Mr. Pickwick is "old enough to be his father," and finally, in his match-making interview with Mr. Winkle, Senior, Mr. Pickwick appears avowedly in the light of a second parent to this rejuvenated protégé.

These are but incidental developments in the course of the best of all good histories. It is the incidental lights that it has been the aim of this paper to bring into relief. Such stern and conscientious portrait painting as that of the Fleet Prison and the Eatanswill election is "another story," and told for us in such a way as to need no commentator. It is the sidelights which are apt to escape him who reads as he runs. Mr. Pickwick kissing all the ladies as he says good-bye at Manor Farm and tapping the rosy cheeks of all the female servants as he presses what we may be very sure was an extremely liberal tip into the hand of each-these and the like-are the points which are apt to escape no

triumphantly vivid.

labored to make

Horace G. Hutchinson.

XXV.

Norris did not allow any grass to grow under his feet. He knew with what rapidity the flame of insurrection can spread at times in Oriental lands; he remembered the reputation for pugnacity and lawlessness which the people of Pelesu had borne twenty years earlier, when he had filled the post of Political Agent at the King's court; he was watching the growth of the As-Senusi Brotherhood throughout Malaya with keen anxiety, recognizing in it a new force the effect of whose operation remained yet to be determined. All things combined to make delay fatal. From the first, too, he had excellent information. Of old he had known, or had been known by, every man, woman and child in the State, and had won for himself a name among the natives as a good man to deal with and a bad man to cross. Now old acquaintances seemed to spring out of the ground on every side, ready to aid him with news, with transport, with men. Wilson could not understand the sudden transformation wrought in his people, who, a few days earlier, had been such slug. gards in the white man's cause, but in truth the reasons were simple enough. The abortive attack on Kuala Pûlas had dealt a severe blow to the prestige of Raja Pahlawan Indut, and had shown the natives that Saleh's was, from the outset, a lost cause. Now the rail-sitters were scrambling down hastily upon the Government side of the fence, and were eager to obliterate the memory of past lukewarmness by present zeal. Also the coming of

Jack Norris had impressed the popular mind with the notion that the Government meant business, and that that business would now be done with thoroughness.

Norris's force moved swiftly up the Pûlas valley, partly by river, partly by land, sweeping all before them, meeting with only a fitful and sporadic resistance, losing a considerable number of men in ambushes, but suffering nothing to check the steady advance. The villages were mostly deserted, and showed signs of the evil things which they had suffered during the six weeks that had seen the resurrection of native rule. At every stage of the journey fugitives joined them in shoals, for Saleh's supporters were melting away like snow under a strong sun. It was nearing crop-time and the peasants were anxious to get back to their fields; the month and a half during which they had once more been at the mercy of a Malayan râja and his followers had caused them to accumulate a number of unenviable experiences; moreover, Saleh's cause was now, in the eyes of the blindest, a forlorn-hope.

Saleh witnessed the defection of his people with a species of cold despair. Their fickleness, their lack of continuity of purpose, their inability to fight an uphill fight sturdily and with constant hearts, the speed with which adversity cooled their fiery enthusiasm, all filled him with disgust. These things seemed to seal the race to which he belonged with the curse of Reuben: "Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel."

In Raja Pahlawan Indut (Raja Haji

Every

Abdullah, prudent soul, had decided not to join the force until the turn events were likely to take was more clearly indicated) the wholesale desertion roused fury and rage which seemed to threaten apoplexy. He raved through the camp like one possessed by devils, cursing, exhorting, trying to shame his followers into fidelity, seeking, but in vain, to inspire them with courage and constancy; but all his efforts were fruitless. hour saw the number of the insurgents dwindling apace. At last, even he was forced to admit that the game was lost. Norris's force was distant barely half a dozen miles from Saleh's stockade at Ulu Penyûdah; the bulk of several of the parties sent out to lay ambushes and arrest his progress had deserted incontinently to the white men. On the morrow he would be at the doors of the stockade, and only a handful of Saleh's adherents remained to man the defences.

Raja Pahlawan, glowering and fuming, explained these things to Saleh, and pointed with his chin, Malay fashion, in the direction of the forest, which rose in a vast, sombre wall half a mile across the grazing-grounds.

"When the big house is untenable. the little house avails: when the houseprop snaps, one must be content to substitute a rough-hewn pole," he said, quoting a proverb of his people. "We must get us to the jungle yonder. There alone lieth safety. The white men will follow, but they will never catch us. These rotten-livered folk who will not stand by us, will yet aid us to hide and to escape. In the end, Allah being willing, we shall win free of this land of Pelesu, and in exile find safety."

But Saleh would have nought of such counsel. This futile attempt to raise the green standard of the Prophet, and, rallying the warriors of Pelesu about it, to drive the white folk

from the land, had been yet another, and his greatest, failure: but it should be his last. The crowning ignominy, he felt, would be to seek safety in flight ere he had struck so much as a blow with his own hand in the war which was of his making. Also, he

had no further use for life. He had no place either amid the new conditions or the old. It remained only to ring down the curtain.

Finding him fixed in his resolve, Râja Pahlawan, albeit cursing, not for the first time, the teaching of the devils by which the white men had caused his prince to be possessed, decided on his part to make a virtue of necessity. His code of chivalry forbade the idea of desertion. He would stand by Saleh and perhaps a score of his followers would do the like. Those who desired to depart were set free to follow their inclination; the men who remained swore on the Kurân to abide with Saleh while life still was in him.

Then grimly they set about preparing for the fight which they felt was to be the last that many of them would ever see.

XXVI.

Ulu Penyudah is a compact village, situated in the heart of a valley, shaped like a horse-shoe, enclosed by jungle-covered hills. The Penyûdah, a little sparkling stream, barely two feet in depth, tumbles out of the forest, and chatters down the valley, tossing a glistening mane of splashing, broken water. To the right and the left ricefields and grazing-grounds, dotted sparsely with tiny villages set upou little hills under the shade of coco-nut palms, spread away to the edge of the lowering forest. The place is, as it were, a green oasis of cultivation and clearing in the broad desert of woodland. It was in the village of Ulu Penyûdah, on the right bank of the stream, and surrounded by wide riceswamps, that Saleh had his stockade.