ly. . . . That fellow, when he had the drink he wanted-he wasn't a drunkardwould put on this sort of sly, modest air. . . . But since the captain committed suicide, he says, I have been sitting here thinking it out. All sorts of things happen. Conspiracy to lose the ship-attempted murder-and this suicide. For if it was not suicide, Mr. Cloete, then I know of a victim of the most cruel, coldblooded attempt at murder; somebody who has suffered a thousand deaths. And that makes the thousand pounds of which we spoke once a quite insignificant sum. Look how very convenient this suicide is. . ..

...

"He looks up at Cloete then, who smiles at him and comes quite close to the table. "You killed Harry Dunbar, he whispers. . . The fellow glares at him and shows his teeth: Of course I did! I had been in that cabin for an hour and a half like a rat in a trap. . . . Shut up and left to drown in that wreck. Let flesh and blood judge. Of course I shot him! I thought it was you, you murdering scoundrel, come back to settle me. opens the door flying and tumbles right down upon me; I had a revolver in my hand, and I shot him. I was crazy. Men have gone crazy for less.

He

"Cloete looks at him without flinching. Aha! That's your story, is it? . . And he shakes the table a little in his passion as he speaks. . . . Now listen to mine. What's this conspiracy? Who's going to prove it? You were there to rob. You were rifling his cabin; he came upon you unawares with your hands in the drawer; and you shot him with his own revolver. You killed to steal-to steal! His brother and the clerks in the office know that he took sixty pounds with him to sea. Sixty pounds in gold in a canvas bag. He told me where they The coxswain of the life-boat can swear to it that the drawers were all empty. And you are such a fool that before you're half an hour ashore you change a sovereign to pay for a drink. Listen to me. If you don't turn up day after to-morrow at George Dunbar's solicitors to make the proper deposition as to the loss of the ship I shall set the police on your track. Day after to-morrow.

were.

Stafford begins to tear his hair. Just SO Tugs at it with both hands without saying anything. Cloete gives a push to the table which nearly sends the fellow off his chair, tumbling inside the fender; so that he has got to catch hold of it to save himself. . . .

“You know the sort of man I am, Cloete says, fiercely. I've got to a point that I don't care what happens to me. I would shoot you now for tuppence.

"At this the cur dodges under the table. Then Cloete goes out, and as he turns in the street-you know, little fishermen's cottages, all dark; raining in torrents, too-the other opens the window of the parlor and speaks in a sort of crying voice:

"You low Yankee fiend-I'll pay you off some day.

"Cloete passes by with a damn bitter laugh, because he thinks that the fellow in a way has paid him off already, if he only knew it."

My impressive ruffian drank what remained of his beer, while his black, sunken eyes looked at me over the rim. "I don't quite understand this." I said. "In what way?"

He unbent a little and explained without too much scorn that Captain Harry being dead, his half of the insurance money went to his wife, and her trustees of course bought consols with it. Enough to keep her comfortable. George Dunbar's half, as Cloete feared from the first, did not prove sufficient to launch the medicine well; other moneyed men stepped in, and these two had to go out of that business, pretty nearly shorn of everything.

"I am curious," I said, " to learn what the impelling force of this tragic affair s-I mean the patent medicine. Do you know?"

was

cargo-boat from Albert Dock. The night before he sailed he met him wandering about the quays, and took him home for a drink. "Funny chap, Cloete. We sat all night drinking grogs, till it was time for him to go on board."

It was then that Cloete, unembittered but weary, must have told him this story, with that utterly unconscious frankness of a patent-medicine man void of all moral standards. He concluded by remarking that he had "had enough of the old country." George Dunbar had turned on him, too, in the end. Cloete was clearly somewhat disillusioned.

As to Stafford, he died, professed loafer, in some East End hospital or other, and on his last day clamored "for a parson," because his conscience worried him for killing an innocent man. "Wanted somebody to tell him it was all right," growled my old rufflan, contemptuously. "He told the parson that I knew this Cloete who had tried to murder him, and so the parson (he worked among the

dock laborers) once spoke to me about it."

The old fellow struck the table with his ponderous fist.

"What makes me sick is to hear these silly boatmen telling people the captain committed suicide. Pah! Captain Harry was a man that could face his Maker any time up there, and here below, too. He wasn't the sort to slink out of life. Not he! He was a good man down to the ground. He gave me my first job as stevedore only three days after I got married."

As the vindication of Captain Harry from the charge of suicide seemed to be his only object, I did not thank him very effusively. This story really should have been transposed to the South Seas to be really acceptable. It's too startling to think that such things happen in our respectable Channel. But it would have been too much trouble. And so here it is as told but unfortunately robbed of the impressive effect of the narrator.

Τ

HERE is a peculiar satisfaction in the expression of novel views with which everybody will agree. But little inferior is the satisfaction of expressing views with which nobody will agree. In this latter case exceptional keenness is added to the enjoyment when one recognizes that the sentiments set forth will meet not merely with dissent, but with unqualified condemnation from every right-thinking person: that these views will be fortunate indeed if they succeed in escaping the designation of diabolical. As a consequence, the utterer sinks so low in the estimation of the judicious that it becomes simply impossible for him to sink lower.

It is to a pleasure of this sort that I am about to treat myself by a discussion of that kind of theme-writing which goes with us under the name of college compositions. Along with it comes up for consideration the attitude of the public in regard to the desirability and importance of such compositions. The readiness I shall here exhibit in offering myself as a scapegoat to bear into the wilderness the iniquities of myself and my brethren may be taken as an apology, if it cannot be deemed an excuse, for the occasional record found here of personal experiences and the frequent employment of the pronoun of the first person.

It therefore seems right to say at the outset that there is one serious disadvantage under which I labor in discussing the subject. For about a quarter of a century a distinctly recognizable share of my time was spent in reading and correcting college themes. I have consequently had a good deal of experience in dealing with the questions to be considered. To the unthinking this may seem a help toward their proper treatment. On the contrary, it is a positive hindrance. There is nothing so certain to warp the conclusions of the

pure intellect working on this subject as actual experience. Familiarity, either wearisome or disturbing, with details deprives the critical soul of the power of considering the various problems involved with full detachment from the notions and prejudices which these details beget. Accordingly more confidence is generally felt by the public, and invariably far more by the utterer himself, in the conclusions of him whose happy lot it has been to escape this drudgery. He can take a commanding view of the whole situation, unaffected by the intrusion of doubts which arise from the knowledge of discordant and disturbing fact. He can put forth dicta as to what ought and what ought not to be done, unembarrassed by beliefs born of experience in the class-room as to what can and what cannot be done.

There are those who will recall the fact that some forty years ago a great wave of educational reform swept over the land. Attention was directed to many subjects; but the one that concerns us here is English language and literature. It is to be borne in mind that at the time this agitation began there had never been any real requirement in the study of either, certainly no more than that which exists still in the two great English universities. Work of the sort now implied by it was then a novelty in American institutions of learning. The attention at present paid to English language and literature is not only modern, it is late modern. Knowledge of it as a requirement for entrance is even more modern. It was not until some years after the Civil War that the study of English literature was generally taken up in our higher institutions of learning. If provision chanced to be made for it anywhere previously, it was accidental, depending upon the desire or caprice of the instructor, not upon the policy