INGENUE. A useful novelistic fiction. JESUIT. A clever scoundrel who sucDIARY. A vehicle for conveying incrim-ceeds in the first volume, is baffled in the inating information which otherwise could second, and shown up in the third. not possibly have been discovered. LAW. Always at fault, and never even

in their compartments by a considerate | mediately went to her publishers to say railway company, but also the directions that this title also had been forestalled. printed in small type on the backs of their She next proposed to call it "Barbara's tickets. Having regard to the probable History," but discovered that "Barbara's condition of the reader's mind under such History had already been written. circumstances, it would seem immaterial | Finally, the novel was christened, "The how the railway novel is composed. It Story of Barbara; Her Splendid Misery should, however, be light to hold in the and Her Gilded Cage." This shows the hand, and the leaves should be perforated need of aiming at originality in titles. near the back so that they can be easily None of the rest of the book need be intorn out and made into spills, etc. tentionally original. (See "Plagiarism.")

RELIGION. Nothing need be said on this subject.

SALE. If you follow the advice given in these Maxims you are pretty sure to be sold; the only question is, Will you be bought?

SECRETS. Are always divulged except when first mentioned towards the close of the book. The methods of divulging are six: 1. by leaving about papers on which the secret is written; 2. by talking loudly in the presence of those from whom it is desired the secret should be kept; 3. by somnambulism or talking in sleep; 4. by delirium; 5. by visions in dreams; and 6. by blotting paper.

SOCIAL NOVEL. A blue book with a yellow back.

SOCIETY. Use only the highest or the lowest, though you probably know nothing of either, and show only the "seamy side.' 99

SOMNAMBULISM. (See "Secret.") SPORTING NOVEL. Take two or three descriptions of runs from a sporting weekly; see that your heroine is always nearest the brush; make your hero speak of her as a "filly," and propose to her in hunting phraseology on a frosty morning in the kennels; spin the above material into three equal volumes, and you will find that such men as Surtees and Whyte Melville are not even in the same field with you.

SUICIDE. A convenient method of weeding out bad characters whom the rest are too virtuous to murder. (See also "Chloral.")

SUSPICION. Odium attached to the in

UNCLE (Avunculus legans). A person who makes money presents and leaves unexpected legacies. He must be carefully distinguished from the Fleet Street variety, Avunculus tripilaris.

VILLAIN.

When the villains fail or mend

The story always ought to end. VOLUMES. The first should titillate; the second, mystify; and the third, explain. WIDOW. A very wicked or a very pious female.

WIFE. If introduced as such at the commencement, a little dallying with the serpent is expected.

WILL. Is made to be altered, left about, or lost- if irretrievably, then see that a subsequent and more equitable will is discovered.

WORLD. Consists of Great Britain, Paris, the Riviera, Rome, Naples, Venice, and Homburg. Some novelists believe that there are other places, and occasion. ally allude to them; but it is unsafe to venture beyond the localities indicated. YEOMANRY. Give balls.

YOUNGER SONS. Call these "detrimentals," but make them better than their elder brothers. Of course you must never give them any money to begin with, but this need not prevent you putting them in EGOMET. the Blues or Life Guards.

From St. James's Gazette. FROZEN TO DEATH.

THE present memorable winter will have left no more striking a record than the list of deaths directly due to cold. The following are among the more noticeable cases: On December 15, an old man was found by the police at Totnes suffering from exposure. He was removed to the workhouse, but died on the way. On January 8 a laboring man was frozen to death near Limerick. The same day a woman was found by a policeman, at six o'clock in the morning, lying insensible in one of

A

but the struggle between life and death, and that is here reduced to a minimum. There is no obstinate encounter between a full-pulsed, vigorous vitality and a still more powerful enemy; as when, for instance, a strong man dies with a clot of blood in the lungs, fighting for life and full of it to the last. Nor is there prolonged torture, wearing out the strength by degrees, as in lingering and painful illness. Under the influence of cold the vital powers are stolen gradually away, and among the earliest is the power of feeling; insensibility comes long before death. We all know what being cold is like; it is very unpleasant, but not nearly so painful as a great many other things, such as toothache or a kick on the shins; and in all probability those who perish from it suffer no more than this, perhaps not so much. This is certainly the case with frost-bite, which is death from cold on a small scale; insensibility in the part affected sets in early. Chilblains, again a milder form of the same thing- are more painful for that very reason, the mortal process is incomplete.

the recesses on London Bridge. She was frozen to death sounds a most dreadful taken to Guy's Hospital, but life was ex- and painful thing; but, happily, there are tinct. This is an interesting case, because good grounds for thinking that it is not an inquest was held at which the following so. The capacity to feel pain (to experifacts came out. The woman was fifty-ence vivid sensations) is a sign of vitality. three years of age, of sober habits, and In fact, it is not death which is painful, worked as charwoman in the City. She left home at half past five the same morning to go to work. When discovered she had 18s. 6d. in silver upon her. The house-surgeon who made an examination found the body well nourished and healthy, and in his opinion death was due to shock caused by the cold. On the ninth a tramp was found near Whitstable frozen to death in a barn, in which he had passed the night. On the following day, in the early morning, a poorly clad man was noticed by a policeman leaning against a wall in Tanner Street, Bermondsey. He was shivering violently, and complained of feeling very cold, having passed the night in the streets. The constable offered to take him to the workhouse or the hospital; but he presently fell down insensible and died. Inquest was also held in London about the same time on two women between seventy and eighty years of age; and in both cases death was attributed to cold. Another woman was found at this time frozen to death on a waste piece of ground at Fenton, near Stoke-on-Trent. On January 15 an inquest was held at Nottingham upon a remarkable case. A young lady travelled from London to Nottingham on the night of December 27. The weather was very cold, and she was four hours on the journey. It is sup-ature. We have Sir W. Thomson's posed that she fell down on the floor, as authority for it that the hand is quite as her father, who came to meet her, looked accurate in determining temperature as in the carriages but failed to see her. The the ordinary thermometer, and may be carriage was then shunted into a siding. relied on to detect differences between The young lady regained consciousness, two liquids with absolute certainty with but was unable to get out. After two one-fifth of a degree Centigrade. This hours' imprisonment she succeeded in irritation of the nerves is accompanied by attracting some one's notice and was re-pain -the pain of "feeling cold; but leased. On reaching home she com- the after and more serious effects are free plained of cold and numbness and was put from it. The next thing which happens to bed, but never recovered. is slowing of the circulation. The arteries contract, tension is increased, and the heart beats more slowly. Then respiration becomes slower. These effects are seen in the natives of cold countries and in hybernating animals. The Greenlander's pulse only beats from twenty to forty times in a minute, instead of from seventy to eighty, and in winter the marmot's breathing sinks from thirty to seven or eight, its pulse from ninety to eight or nine per minute. If exposure now ceases, a reaction takes place and in any case this is so with the strong; but if it be

On the Continent, where the cold has been greater, deaths have been more numerous; but the cases cited above illustrate fairly well the class of persons to whom such severe cold as we have is directly fatal. They are essentially the weak; and weakness may be due to one or more of four things-age, illness, starvation, and exhaustion. The effect of cold is to "lower the vitality" to use a vague but serviceable expression-and in those whose vitality is already low the process is necessarily attended by danger. To be

This view is borne out by what we know of the physiology of cold. Its first effect is to irritate the nerves, which are extremely sensitive to changes of temper

continued the effects deepen. The bloodstream gets slower and slower in the extremities, and finally stops; then frost-bite may occur. The muscles are affected, combustion proceeds more slowly in them, they quiver, and then become stiff; the nerves also cease to perform their functions; numbness ensues - that is, insensiability and paralysis. The subject becomes light-headed, and there is often a desire to sleep. Then death is not far off; it occurs through stoppage of the heart, either (as in the weak) from sheer inability to drive the blood through the contracted vessels or from paralysis. The strong suffer more than the weak, because they do not succumb so soon; and in prolonged exposure, as in the Arctic regions, they are often tormented by thirst. Put in its most elementary form, what cold does is to destroy the activity of the cell; which becomes motionless, congealed, and then dies. The process occurs in all the tissues, blood, nerves, muscles, brain, etc., alike.

From The Army and Navy Gazette. MODERN FIGHTING AND FIREARMS. A WRITER in the Militär Wochenblatt has been discussing the future of infantry tactics. The flatness of trajectory and power of penetration of the new small bores is fatal, he holds, to the present fire formations. Although we have already given up column for linear movements under fire, still the last development of the rifle's penetrating powers shows, he argues, that this is not sufficient. Putting extreme ranges on one side, every shot will penetrate two or more men if they are standing behind one another. This proves, says the writer, that no other for. mation than a single rank with intervals can be used for the firing-line and its immediate supports. This formation has the advantage of only exposing to the enemy a target one man deep, and being that formation which most readily adapts itself to any existing cover. Against it, however, is the almost insuperable disadvantage that it calls into creation lines so It is easy to see from the foregoing how long as to be from the outset utterly uncold kills the weak; but among the "frozen manageable. A company at war-strength to death" is another and quite different standing in line requires a front of one class - the intemperate. Cases of this hundred paces to its two hundred men in kind, no doubt, occur in every very severe two ranks, and is then hard to handle; winter, but they are seldom easily traced but put these men in single rank at one to their cause. Some good instances, and a half pace interval, and a front of however, are on record. In the very cold three hundred paces is provided. Even winter of 1811 a country gentleman named allowing it to be possible for a single comLambe was found frozen to death. He pany to manoeuvre with a front of this had been "spending the evening conviv- breadth, it would necessitate the battalion ially," to use the euphemism of the period following in a kind of open column, each and the cold overcame him on his way company being in extended order. In the home. Of the numerous victims which matter of fire-discipline, it is supposed every winter claims in Russia, many meet that each company independently would their fate through alcohol; but an astound- form an extended column, each Zug forming, almost incredible, proof is on recording an extended line, following the other as having occurred in St. Petersburg two Züge coming up in similar formation under the minister Potemkin. A large at regulated intervals. "Supposing," says distiller gave a public féte at which brandy the writer, "that the company is two hunflowed like water. The night was ex-dred strong, this would give a Zug of ceedingly cold, and from fifteen to eighteen sixty-six men at one and a half pace thousand persons were frozen to death on interval a front of about one hundred the spot or in the streets. The phenome- paces. This would be no broader than non has a double explanation. Alcohol the present company-line front, and thereincreases susceptibility to cold, and cold fore no cry could be raised against the increases the intoxicating effects of alco-extended column' on account of its exhol. The "cool night air" has not the sobering effect invariably attributed to it by the lady novelist (it is to her credit that she doesn't know better), but just the opposite. A man may still be able to leave the table and go forth; but if the air be cold he soon becomes more intoxicated, his limbs refuse to carry him, he falls down, goes to sleep, and is found in the morning "frozen to death."

cessive breadth." The next question is, How great should be the interval between successive Züge? The writer proceeds:

66

Taking one hundred metres interval, the centre line of the trajectory cone of the 1888 rifle shows that from two thousand and fifty to five hundred and fifty metres no shot passes over the head of a man. This theoretically proves that the extended column would suffer less than the two