an' lost his arm an' his legs an' all the rest of it. An'-an'-" and there was the suspicion of a shamefaced break in the clear little voice-"an' I tried to do things as I thought he'd ha' like me to do 'em. An' it done me good, sir, so what's the odds?"

"Danny," I said, "you're a little trump. Now tell me one other thing. What were you saving the rest of that money for?"

"I were goin' to write myself some letters from Uncle Dan," he said, with a twinkle in his eyes.

"Well now, Danny, I'm going to make a proposal to you. You've got no Uncle Dan, and you want one badly, to be upsides with the other fellows. Will you let me be your Uncle Dan and look after you a bit?"

The blue eyes sparkled like diamonds, and filled suddenly, and his head went down into his arms on the table and he sobbed silently for the space of two minutes-an emotion that I should imagine was very foreign to him and my heart rejoiced exceedingly that this happy thought had been given to it.

I have never had one moment's cause to regret my self-election to the post of Dan's Uncle Dan, nor, I think, has Danny.

We corresponded with him regularly and visited him frequently in barracks when the regiment went home, and found more to like in him every time we saw him.

All that happened some years ago. Before me on my desk as I write lies a letter dated from Omdurman, September 3, 1898:

"Dear 'Uncle Dan'" (since he came to years of understanding Dan has Longman's Magazine.

never omitted the quotation marks),— "We had a tough time, as you will have seen from the papers; but I came through all right. They've made me full sergeant" (he was just turned twenty-two), "and I'm down for the V.C. But it was nothing. My sergeant (Braden, I've told you about him) was alongside me in the charge. We came on one nasty bit of ground where we had to jump our horses in and out, and not too much room, and the fuzzies slashing and shooting and howling like" (there is a word carefully inked over here and "mad" written in above it). "Braden's horse went down in a heap, and him with it. I was next him, and I saw it was only the horse was hurt. The black and white" (another word carefully inked over and "dervishes" written in above it) "came down on us like hail" (this word had also undergone revision), and began chop-chopping away-and I can tell you their swords do cut. My horse was a brick, and danced about round Braden till he got on to his feet again. Then we made a dash at the blacks and hurt several of them, I believe; and then the lieutenant came back for us with a score of the boys and we came out right except for a few cuts more or less. Everybody says it was a fine bit of work, for they were 3,000 and we not over 400. Everybody is talking of Colonel Macdonald. He did the hardest fighting of the day. He rose from the ranks, and I'm going to do the same.

"Love to all. Yours very gratefully, "Dan Rendle (Sergt., V.C.)."

I am proud to remember that I am Dan Rendle's Uncle Dan by adoption, and I think it likely I shall be prouder yet.

He sprang from nowhere in particular, but I think he will go far.

John Oxenham.

A sketch "from near at hand" has not the same meaning when we are speaking of Mrs. Gladstone as when we were speaking of her illustrious husband. There is in her case no distorting medium of political or theological prepossession. Her character, though not essentially simpler than was his to those who judged him simply or who saw him close, was less open to the possibility of misconstruction. A life of wifely devotion and of large-hearted beneficence is attractive, and is intelligible to everybody. But if the world at large could not be mistaken in the nature of the life, those who were nearest knew best the completeness of the devotion and the true warmth and largeness of the heart.

In writing of her it is almost necessary to treat separately the two purposes between which her life was divided; but the most remarkable feature in it was the instinctive skill with which she dovetailed the two into one another, throwing her whole soul into each, and never allowing one to mar the completeness of the other. It was interesting to compare her in this respect with Mr. Gladstone. He also lived two very full lives, in public affairs and in study; but though the energy was the same, the way in which it worked was as different as possible. His life was one of the strictest order and method. So far as the exigencies of public business allowed, every five minutes was apportioned. With her impulse took the place of method. She had even a horror (in every one but in him) of what she would have called "red tape." The framework of her days was given by his needs; but when these were satisfied the rest was a rush of multifarious occupations not

laid out before, but growing one out of another. She was indefatigable with her pen. She forgot nobody and nothing in which her sympathy was once enlisted, and she had a genius for making every expedition of charity yield double and treble fruit by kind things got in by this way. Her care of her husband began with their married life. He had already been in Parliament seven years, had been Under Secretary of State, and was within a few months of entering on the apprenticeship at the Board of Trade which determined the chief interest of a large part of his political lfe. His health which, thanks to her watchfulness and his own temperate and ordered life, stood him in good stead for so many years, was not in the beginning such as to exempt him from the need of considerable care. The beautiful verses have been often quoted in which his friend Sir Francis Doyle drew the picture of what the wife of such a man should be, and it was more than a poet's dream. It would be difficult to say how much he owed in freedom for his proper work, in the peace and strength that come from sympathy, to "his answering spirit-bride." Her efforts were unresting, and rarely unsuccessful, to economize his strength and time by giving him all the comfort of home and none of its worries. It is a touching witness in a small matter, to the master-purpose, that in the wanderings of her failing life one of the very last fancies which expressed itself in intelligible words was that a carriage which should have been ready for him was after time. She scolded the nurse and sent urgent messages, and then turning, as she thought, to him, with her old tact, changing her voice that he

might not guess that there was any delay or difficulty, said "Shall you be ready soon to start, darling?" Within his own house and without it, as towards servants, as towards his children, his guests, everything that could burden him was deftly and without his consciousness taken upon her shoulders. She remembered faces better than he did, and could save him sometimes from giving unintended offense. She was his constant companion in society, on visits, at political gatherings, always on the watch to help or shield him, and charming friends, great and humble, by her gracious and cordial manner. In his study at Hawarden (the "Temple of Peace"), and even in his official room in Downing Street when he was alone, she had her own table and was busy silently writing. And he leaned upon her greatly. She was not a great reader but by nature a politician,' but she had a very keen and quick intelligence, excellent natural memory, a woman's wit in piercing things together, and an absorbing interest in what interested him. There were no secrets between them, and, in spite of the impulsive and sympathetic nature, she was his most discreet confidante. "She has known every secret," we are told he said, "and has never betrayed one." When apart, they corresponded daily, and his letters to her are a complete record of his thoughts and aims.

We may measure how completely she lived for and in her care of him by the collapse of vital force which she showed when his public life with its heavy calls upon her ceased abruptly six years ago. She rallied a good deal as soon his illness brought back the old preoccupations, but after May 28, 1898, she was

as

'So far as heredity goes she should have had in her the elements of a politician, for her grandmother (Catherine, Lady Braybrooke,) was the sister of one Prime Minister (Lord Grenville), the

never herself again. Her life was over.

When we speak of her charitable work we naturally think in the first instance of movements for the relief of suffering in which she was a pioneer or gave the first effective impulse. Such was the establishment of the Newport Market Refuge, which was due to her initiation. She got together the committee which found the disused slaughter-houses in Soho in which the Refuge was first established, and partly by means of meetings, at which Mr. Gladstone spoke, partly by endless personal correspondence, and by appeals through The Times, she raised the funds both for the start and for the subsequent developments. It was a new departure in the effort to grapple with the problem of the shelterless wanderer at night in the streets of London. At that time only a few of the workhouses had even opened casual wards and no attempt had been made to distinguish those whom misfortune had made for the moment homeless from the inveterate and professional tramp. It had its marked effect on public opinion and upon the development of Poor Law administration, and it was the precursor of the many other refuges since opened, which aim at helping those who are capable of being really helped.

Another institution, also the first of its kind, which owed its conception and commencement to her, is the Free Convalescent Home so long located at Woodford Hall. That, like the Industrial school attached to the Newport Market Refuge and her own Orphanage for Boys at Hawarden, grew out of the needs of which she had had personal experience in the London Hospital during the great cholera epidemic in 1867. There were two novelties in

daughter of another (Mr. Grenville), and the first cousin of a third, the greatest of them (Mr. Pitt).

!

her scheme: the absence of nomination, payment, etc., and the attachment of the Convalescent Home to a great hospital. As Mrs. Gladstone had been its foundress, so she watched over it, visiting it constantly, and taking the largest part in the labor of raising funds for its support. Till the end of her London life every Monday afternoon saw her on her way to Whitechapel to sit on the committee at the London Hospital, by which cases to be drafted to it were selected.

These institutions-and others might be added-bear witness to the foresight, resource and energy which she carried into all her works of charity; but by themselves they give an inadequate idea of the warmth and largeness of heart of which they were only one channel. The touching telegram from the Queen "She was always kind to me," if it says much of the simplicity and true womanliness of the Royal sender, is also a striking testimony to the personality of her of whom it speaks. She had profound reverence (like her husband, a good old-fashioned reverence) for the Queen's high office, and a most affectionate loyalty to her person, but what stood out most in the Queen's own memory was her power of simple human sympathy in the sorrows which do not respect persons. Suffering in any form and in any rank appealed at once to her motherly instinct. In the cholera wards of the London Hospital,' among the distressed operatives in the Lancashire cotton famine, as in any hillside cottage in her own neighborhood at Hawarden, she was always first to be on the spot where there was distress or calamity. She never had a thought of personal risk or trouble or fatigue. It struck no one as anything but what was natural in her that in the first hours after Mr.

It was here that she made the acquaintance and learned the worth of her life-long friend and counsellor in good works, Sir Andrew Clark.

Gladstone's death she should have driven up the village to comfort the new-made widow of a collier who had been killed that morning in a mining accident.

On

degrees, her whom she

She had an untiring and a graphic pen, as relations and friends had reason to know, especially any who were in trouble, or whom she felt would like to be remembered; but the bulk of her large correspondence was A on cases of distress put before her. characteristic story occurs to me, both of her impulsive ways and of the wide net which she cast for objects of charity. She was travelling down to Woodford. The footman had taken her ticket when she started, and she had no money, having left her purse at home, or (as she often did) emptied it. the way she entered into conversation with a sad-looking young lady in the carriage and learned, by trouble-a sick husband for was just sending off a voyage to Australia as a chance for his life, but whom she could not afford to accompany. In the interest of the story she overran her station. As she got out, remembering that she had no money, she borrowed a shilling of her travelling companion, and then gave her her address in St. James's Square and asked her to call, telling her that she would see what could be done for her. The same evening, at a smart dinner, she told the story with such effect that, with her own promised contribution, enough was promised to pay the second passage to Australia. Next morning the young wife came, and with her to the door her husband, who was afraid she might have been hoaxed, but she was warmly received, and the story being fully verified, she was made happy by being enabled to accompany her husband on his voyage.

Even a large and a warm heart are not such uncommon gifts, but they

were combined in Mrs. Gladstone with some rare powers of command and of attraction. As a girl she had had her own way. Losing her father in her infancy and with a mother in deepening ill-health, adored by sisters and brothers, among whom she was the leading spirit, the idol of humbler neighbors, she started under the conditions which, without the nobler impulses and the great attachment which moulded her life, might have developed a character of mere self-will. She had a great insight into motive and character. In her charitable undertakings she was singularly fortunate in her chief agents, which means, generally, singularly wise in selecting and skilful in handling them. She commanded confidence by her promptness, courage and unerring instincts. And she was very attractive to people of all ranks and posiGood Words.

tions. This was partly the result of her perfect manner, her beauty which lasted to the end, her simple exhibition of natural feeling; but there was also something that touched people more closely. It is difficult to define. Though she was a religious woman, it would be scarcely true to say that there was in her that visible sense of another world which to those who saw him close was such a key to Mr. Gladstone's life. But there was a remarkable absence of what we describe often by the term "worldliness." There was not only transparent simplicity of motive and indifference to the world's standards and luxuries and ambitions; there was what is very rare indeed, complete forgetfulness of self. She lived entirely for others. It was a life of continuous self-sacrifice a life to attract and a life to inspire.

E. C. Wickham.