results that the old man became his former | coughed slightly, as, taking off his cap, he self, sent for his fishing tackle, and even pro- bowed politely to the manager. Then in posed, I think, a bottle of his famous port. the prettiest broken English he comThe family were so scandalized by the intromenced, duction of such topics at a period when meditation on death seemed to them to be the only proper occupation, that they objected to any fresh administration of a similar cordial. He was equally ready to visit humbler friends who had fallen into any variety of distress. ALEX. H. JAPP. From Longman's Magazine. POOR PILUQUESNE. CHESTERFIELD is the little sleepy town in the Midlands, with the crooked spire, which lies amidst a congeries of colliers and coal-pits, and which you may see from the railway, midway betwixt Derby and Sheffield. Many years ago, in the midst of the Peninsular War, a number of French prisoners were interned there. Many years ago a famous company of players were acting there, in the dingy little theatre down a back yard. One night, when "The Magpie, or the Maid of Paliseau," was acted, it was noted that some half-dozen of the exiles, in whom the name of the play doubtless evoked some memory of their native land, came and paid their hardly hoarded pence to the gallery. Poor fellows! They took their pleasures as sadly as if they had been Englishmen of the fen country. The performer who interested them most was the magpie. When she filed across the stage with the spoon in her mouth they applauded incontinently. At her next aerial flight she stuck midway on the wire, and the curtain had to descend in order to extricate her from this perplexing predicament. The manager, an Irishman, and a great actor in his time, stood at the back of the gallery (a very scanty one), and wrathfully objurgated the property-man, adding various oaths to his seed, breed, and generation. Up went the curtain again, and once more the magpie tried her flight, but in vain, and the play had to end as best it could without the aid of so important a per former. "Pardon, mille pardons, Monsieur Directeur, la pauvre magpie no fly straight. make 'er skim along like a leetel butterfly." "Ah! be off wid your broken down English, boy," said the manager. "Spake to me in the language of La Belle France. Sure I'm native and to the manner born, for I got my twopennorth at Douay. Ici on parle Français. Ici!" he exclaimed, with a furious Irish accent, as he placed his hand on his capacious chest. Thus urged, the boy explained volubly in his native tongue that he would undertake to make the magpie fly across the stage without difficulty. The next minute they were behind the scenes. As they approached the propertyroom the manager roared, "Larry! Larry! Come out o' that, you thief of the world. I wonder you're not ashamed to luk me in the face!" "I am that same, your honor," responded the man; "but sure it wasn't Larry's fault that some blackguard was afther sticking a tinpenny nail in the ould magpie's gizzard. Bad luck to her, for a baste of a bird anyhow!" Well, here's a young gentleman all the way from France who's goin' to set the crayture right," said the manager. The French lad bowed ingratiatingly, and glanced wistfully at the property-man, who at first looked daggers, then he growled, "Young gintleman! Shure if it wasn't for the throwsers, it's a young lady he'd be afther makin', and a beauty too. Ah well! p'raps his father was in Bantry Bay in '98 wid Gineral Hoche, and the Shan van Voght, and the rest of the bhoys. Anyhow, he's a sthranger amongst these murthering Sassenachs, so give us a taste of your fist, ma boucchaleen bawn!" With that he nearly squeezed the lad's hand to a pulp. Whatever pain he endured, he only looked up and smiled. The smile went straight to Larry's heart, and from that moment they were brothers. In five minutes the boy put the magpie right. At this moment a fair, fragile boy of From that time forth he was scarcely seventeen, with flaxen hair and great blue ever out of the theatre. He soon made eyes with black lashes and eyebrows, tim. himself useful in a hundred ways to honidly approached the irate impresario, est Larry, who, although he couldn't speak The lad was clad in a much-worn and a word of French, was a capital pantomimstained French naval uniform. There ist, and succeeded in making himself unwas a hectic flush on his cheek, and he derstood. Whenever he came to a dead hitch he went to the beautiful Miss Vere, the leading lady, who had been educated in a convent in the Low Countries, and who spoke French, German, Italian, Dutch, and Walloon as fluently as her mother tongue. Then the manager, who had taken to the stranger, was always at hand with his atrocious Hibernian French; besides which poor Piluquèsne (that was the lad's name) spoke many English words, and the youngsters of the theatre spoke many French ones - very badly, it is true, but still intelligibly enough. They generally called him " Poor Pil," or Pil, for shortness. He told them that he was "the only son of his mother, and she was a widow," and that he had been a midshipman in the French navy. He was at liberty most of the day, but had to report himself every night at quarters prior to lock-up hours. At last, when the end of the season came, Poor Pil sought Miss Vere at her lodgings, and, breaking down in a paroxysm of grief terrible to behold, declared that if left behind in that dreadful place he must die. Miss Vere was a young lady of resources. She had a man's heart in a woman's body, and, having given her word he should not be left behind, she there and then arranged a plan of action with Larry. On the last night the play was "Hamlet," which finished by half past ten. That evening Pil was conspicuous by his sence. Everybody was astonished but Miss Vere, Larry, and the manager. discussed between the lieutenant and Larry, Ophelia's coffin was brought out and carefully deposited on the cart beside Yorick's skull, the pickaxe, the spade, and the shrouding-sheet, etc. "That's a rum rig-out to travel with," growled the lieutenant. "Why, shure, captain," said Larry, "you wouldn't have us go borrowing the blessed paraphernalia in every town we go to. Suppose, now, the mistress happened to be stretched out wid her toes turned upwards, what would you think if we were to come and ax your honor's butler for the loan of a coffin?" "None of your lip, you impudent, bogtrotting paddy!" roared the enraged offi cer as he ordered his men to the "right about face; quick march." As the gallant lieutenant turned the corner, had he been able to look two ways at once, he might have seen the property. man executing an Assyrian hieroglyph in the rear. Perhaps it was just as well that he didn't witness that interesting performance. Half an hour later Larry made a start for Derby. When they were well out of the town he looked round to see that he was unobserved; then he undid the screws of Ophelia's coffin. There in the moon. light lay Poor Piluquèsne, sleeping like "the baby of a girl," and smiling in his sleep. "Aha! Misther Longlegs," cried Larry, ab."you can lock the stable door now that the horse has bolted; but you're not so cute as you think you are, for all you wear an epaulette on the one shoulder of you that's up to your ear.” Mr. Fitz Edmund, who played Hamlet, said he thought it strange that Piluquèsne had not turned up to say good-bye. The manager replied, "Monsieur Piluquèsne is a gentlemen, and knows what he is about." The performance was over altogether about eleven. The carts were waiting at the door, and Larry and the men were occupied in packing the properties and wardrobe for the next town, when Lieutenant Carter (a great, grim, lanky officer), who had charge of the depôt that night, came down with a file of men, and demanded to know, in the most peremptory manner, what had become of Piluquèsne. "Divil a wan of me knows," replied Larry. "Afther all I done for him, he might have been afther lukkin' round to give wan a leg up the last night; but it's just the way with them ungrateful thieves of foreigners. Bad luck to them; they're all alike, every mother's son of 'em!" While the subject was being thus hotly Day was breaking when they got to Derby; but, unseen and unsuspected, Larry contrived to smuggle his precious charge into the theatre, where "the boys and girls" kept him concealed for a week or two, till they had clubbed enough money to enable them to send him to London by mail, having previously "squared" the guard and driver. Now of course, all being smooth and the coast clear, Poor Pil ought to have got safely to London, from London to France, and to have "lived happy ever after" with his mother, or to have become an admiral, or a post-captain at least; but unfortunately fact and fate refuse to be "squared" by fiction, however guards or drivers of mail coaches may be. a A distinguished authoress, referring to little book of mine recently published, said to me at the Haymarket the other night, the night of the Bancrofts' farewell, "You shouldn't have made that poor young fellow die. I declare it makes me quite unhappy to think of his lying out there in the snow on her grave." Whereupon I replied, "My dear madam, I didn't make him die he did die." So Poor Pil- but I am anticipating. He had soft, pleasant ways, and beguiled the time by making little toys for the ladies, with whom he was an especial pet, and by assisting Larry, who became more and more attached to him. The poor lad had been ailing a long time was consumptive, and racked with a torturing and suffocating cough. The night before - before his departure Miss Vere and the girls had prepared him an omelette with sweet herbs, and some chicken broth, while the manager and the boys brought him a posset made with whey and white wine. The girls tucked him up in his comfortably improvised bed in the green-room, kissed him, and bade him good-night. The lads remained to cheer him up; some of them even talked of running over to see him at his home in Normandy. He brightened up wonderfully, sang them "L'Amour, l'Amour," and talked hopefully of his journey on the morrow. Larry was the last to leave him. "Embrassez-moi, mon cher Larrie!" said Poor Pil. The Irishman understood him well enough then, and he gently gathered him up in his strong arms and kissed him; then honest Larry broke down. "Don't you cry for me, mon cher Larrie," said the boy. "I shall soon be strong when I get home, and you will come and see me in La Belle France some day, will you not?" 66 Some day," said Larry, "yes, some day; but there, there, go to sleep, jewel go to sleep, avick! or you'll never be able to get up to-morrow." At last he did fall placidly to sleep, and Larry left him, to make the preparations for the journey. When they came at daybreak to see him off, Poor Pil had taken a much longer journey than they had anticipated. It was a lovely morning in the young spring, and the birds outside made the dismal place alive with music. The sun shone through the window on to the bed. The fair young face was bright and smiling. One drop of blood had trickled down the side of his mouth. It was quite dry now, and glittered like a ruby in the sunshine. The great blue eyes, open and staring wide, looked far away beyond even the fair France he loved so well. The players laid the poor French boy in the graveyard of the parish church; and there all that is mortal of him, save that which has returned to the resolving elements from whence he came, rests still. Miss Vere wrote the sad news to the poor mother at her home in far-away Normandy. Some months after there came a letter from the village curé, which I have ventured to put into English, thus: "MY DEAR MADAME, Thanks, and yet again thanks, for your esteemed favor. Alas! it is my painful duty to inform you that my sister, Madame Piluquèsne, whose grief for the expatriation of my nephew and her only son was incessant and inconsolable, is no more. It was my melanlast rites of our holy Church on the very choly privilege to administer to her the day on which our little Paul left us for a better inheritance. "She was sleeping, and I stayed to watch and pray by her to the last. That morning at the fifth hour she awoke and started as if she had seen something in the sunlight, which had just peeped in to give us good-morrow. "My boy! my boy!' she cried, 'I am coming! Stay but a little, and we will journey together to the promised land.' "And so she passed away. "I feel, I know that she had seen and heard something which my eyes and ears, of the earth, earthy,' could not see or hear. "I think it is your great poet (surely his masterpiece) who says, Such harmony is in immortal souls; But whilst this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close us in, we cannot hear it. "Again, and yet a thousand times again, I thank you for all your love and care for our little Paul. "Permit a poor priest, who admires the divine art of which mademoiselle is so distinguished an ornament, to present the assurances of the profound consideration with which he ventures to subscribe him. self, mademoiselle's grateful, humble ser vant, "PAUL PILUQUESNE, D.D. "Mademoiselle Hélène Vere." After Poor Pil's death all kinds of wild rumors obtained currency in the theatre. Larry swore that during the performance of "The Maid of Paliseau " he saw Pil in the property-room arranging the bird's wings. Mrs. Cassidy declared that one Saturday night, when she was rather late in cleaning the theatre, as Sunday morning dawned she saw him; nay, more, she heard him singing "Adeste, Fideles"; and the poor old soul fainted away with terror. Certain it is that even Manly, the manager, who was a sceptic, to Larry's delight withdrew the magpie piece from his repertory, and that Mrs. Cassidy for the future did her cleaning the first thing on Saturday morning. As for the actors— well, they are always more or less super stitious, and for many a year after that no actor could be induced to stay in the Derby Theatre after midnight. Once, indeed, Jack Holmes, a sailor, just returned to his native place after the war, and afflicted with a plethora of prize money, took a party of chums to the gallery to see "The Stranger," which im. pressed him so powerfully that he fell fast asleep. His friends, overtaken by Bacchus, forgot all about him. Equally oblivious of his presence, the servants of the theatre put out the lights, locked up, and left him to his slumbers. When honest Jack awoke in "the dead waste and middle of the night," he hadn't the faintest idea where he was. As soon as he pulled himself together he growled, "Where are those land lub bers? They've all sheered off, and left me at the masthead while they've crawled down below through lubber's hole.” At this moment he heard, or thought he heard, a soft voice singing in an unknown tongue. Looking down on the stage, he saw in the moonlight, which streamed through a circular opening at the back of the gal lery, a fair young boy in a frayed and worn foreign naval uniform. He had bright hair, great blue eyes, and an angel's face, and there was a drop of blood trick. ling from his pale lips. Hold hard, young powder-monkey," cried Jack. "I'm coming down on deck to have a jaw with you." With that, with the agility of a cat he scrambled down the side of the gallery and boxes, and leaped upon the stage. As he did so the figure faded into air. Wild with terror, the sailor shrieked and shouted until he alarmed the neighborhood. When they took him out swooning, folks said that he was drunk. Perhaps he was; but then perhaps he wasn't. At any rate, he swore to his dying day that he was sober; and all the king's horses and all the king's men could never induce Jack Holmes to cross the threshold of the theatre again. As regularly as the players came to Derby in the springtime, so regularly the poor French boy's grave was bedecked daily with fresh flowers. The years passed by, the good old manager died, the actors grew old and grey and were scattered half over the globe. Soon after "the three days in Paris,” he who writes these lines, then a wretched child, who had just lost some one nearer and dearer to him than all the world, was casting some flowers on a new-made sepulchre, when he caught sight of a venerable and beautiful woman clad in the garb of a sister of the Sacré Cœur engaged in the same pious office at an adjacent grave. The lady was attended by a tall, thin, white headed old man, who, from his peculiar dress and demeanor, appeared to be a foreigner. The grave at the foot of which they stood had been neglected, the sexton said, for years. It had, however, that very morning been covered with fresh green turf and flowers, and a small mural cross with an inscription now stood at its head. As the lady returned the basket which had contained the flowers to her attendant she said in a singularly sweet and distinct voice, "Ah! mon ami! How bright and beautiful it seemed when this poor boy was taken from us, thirty years ago! But now, how sordid, and squalid, and miserably provincial it all is! Even the little theatre in which we strutted and fretted our fiery hours away in the springtime of our lives the theatre, which we thought a veritable palace of enchantment - what is it now?" Let us get out o' this; for shure the heart is sore within me when I think of the poor boy lying here in the cowld." The lady entered the coach, her attendant mounted the box beside the coachman, and the carriage drove away. Ten years later, the writer happened to mention this occurrence to the late William Robertson, father to Tom Robertson, the dramatist, who strangely enough turned out to be one of the actors in the foregoing events, and from his lips this little memento mori was taken down. When last I was in Derby, a neglected grave, overgrown with dank, rank weeds, and a time-worn fragment of a shattered cross, on which is inscribed two words, without date, comment, or text, were all that remained to remind one of "Poor Piluquèsne." JOHN COLEMAN. From All The Year Round. DURING the ensuing six or seven hours of the day, the population of Thorshavn received increase after increase. The beach in front of our house was soon quite crowded with Faroe boats, and the ducks, which ordinarily had that part of the bay to themselves, and quacked only when an occasional wave caught them un warily and took them off their legs, spent the afternoon in dismal lamentations, as they strutted wearily hither and thither under the bows of the multitude of craft. superior taste and fortune, and as quick to envy. As for the Faroe men, they had their rendezvous in different parts of the town. Forty or fifty of them were sitting about the boats in the bay, exchanging the gossip of the northern and southern isles for that of Thorshavn currency. The Faroese are prodigious chatterers, and when a joke was started among this gath ering, the laugh soon grew to a roar, like a tempest of wind. But there was serious talk as well; they had their rye, barley, and grass to discuss; their sheep, cows, and dogs; the purchasing price of butter, cheese, and wool, and their hopes about the herd of "grind" said to have been sighted off the northern isles the other day. A catch of whales would be a glori ous consummation of a St. Olaf's Day, though they should ruin their best clothes with blood and grease. And not a few men in the one liquor shop of the town were fast getting tipsy over the wellspiced, thirst-inspiring wine, of which they can buy twelve glasses for sixpence. The weather grew dull towards the evening. Fog closed in round Naalsoe, cut off the Glovernos Point, and hour by hour lessened the horizon both of land and sea. But what mattered it? Faroe people are used to fog, and nothing less than a plague of darkness or a full northeastern hurricane would interfere with the dancing by-and-by. At eight o'clock it was time to go to the supper. I found a dozen of the guests already strolling up and down the rugged track alongside the Lagthing house, careless of the cold fog which surged from the hills and wrapped them round. The gov ernor had not yet appeared, and it would be uncivil to precede the host into the supper room. In a few minutes our number was enWork was almost suspended. So much larged by the addition of the dean, the so, that one man, who had climbed on to schoolmaster, the sheriff, two or three the roof of his house, and was thence cut- citizens, and the apothecary. Now and ting the grass with a scythe, became a again, moreover, a smiling man with a big spectacle for the holiday-makers. Laugh- brown pie, an armful of plates, or a bun ing, blue-eyed lasses, their attractive pig- dle of dips, passed through the throng tails bound with scarlet ribbon, went arm-into the building; and it was cheerful to in-arm up and down the street, curtly acknowledging the lifting of caps and looks of admiration of the Faroe youth. The Thorshavn ladies, more demurely, also passed to and fro, busy in paying calls on the many acquaintances whom St. Olaf's Day had brought to town. They were not in gay colors like the country girls, but these latter were quick to discern the demi-crinolines of the latest Copenhagen fashion which marked their note the warm glow which shone out by the windows of the room as candle after candle was lighted inside. But the fog soon damped the glass, and then the illumination was blurred like that of the London street lamps in December. At length, however, satisfaction and appetite were quickened to the full as the governor came towards us, with a genial welcome and shake of the hand for every one, and in a twinkling all the thirty |