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ON HER MAJESTY'S SERVICE.

Old John Morgan and his wife were people of some repute in the village. The repute was not due to social position, for social position was not a factor in the life of the community; nor yet was it due to the fact that John Morgan's croft and dwelling-house were somewhat more pretentious than those of his neighbors; it was due to the striking originality of John Morgan's personality and character, and to that only. It is true that John Morgan's wife shared her husband's distinction, but that was because she was John Morgan's wife,-a quiet, motherly little woman, she reflected John Morgan's greatness as the moon reflects the rays of the sun, by doing nothing but passively allowing King Sol to shine upon her.

Mrs. Morgan's passivity, however, did not have the effect of causing her to be a nonentity in the Morgan entitynot at all; she was the means of completing it, and John Morgan without his wife would have been like Punch without his hump, only half a personality.

John Morgan was energy personified. His work was performed with all the vigor of a stripling in his twenties; and in all matters affecting the public weal, concerning which men debate with the freedom of irresponsibility, his voice was continually heard. It was his unfailing power of silencing an opponent that made him so formidable an antagonist in the village Witenagemot, and the ferocious, impatient expression of his smooth, ruddy countenance, fenced in as it was by a short, curly, white beard, brought more than one well-informed debater to a stammering conclusion in a much more effectual manner than a calmly reasoned exposition from a more authoritative source could VOL. VII. 375

LIVING AGE.

have done. It sometimes happened that a scrupulously fair-minded opponent, with labored utterance and remonstrating manner, sought to hold him tightly to the point at issue, but the futility of the effort was only equalled by the thankless reception it received at the hands of a jeering audience rendered partial by long usage; and the invariable result was that the bewildered opponent had to retire in aggrieved disgust from the unequal conflict, to reappear on some future occasion an interested spectator of the very drama in which he had played so sorry a part.

There was somewhat of a malicious genius in the man who had caused it at one time to be whispered abroad that John Morgan was unable to read, that to him the writing of an epistle was an unknown art, and that the weekly newspaper which came to him addressed to "John Morgan, Esquire," was, so far as his ability to peruse it was concerned, simply a mass of inky, meaningless marks; and, furthermore, that it was due to the scholarly attainments of his little grandchild of twelve that he was able to gleam from the print the miscellany of broken facts upon which he founded his arguments. Only a genius could have conceived so preposterous a notion, and one so much at variance with the opinion universally entertained concerning John Morgan and his attainments. Read plain English! now had it been Latin--and with reference to the malicious rumor, he had been heard to suggest, merely to suggest or to hint vaguely, that, as he himself expressed it, "he might be able to take bits out of the Latin too."

There was no denying the fact, however, that, great as was the curiosity to hear him read, actually to observe him

spell out and repeat the news, word for word as set down in the paper, no one had ever, so far as was kuown, been able to observe him accomplish the feat. There was a tale told of himand his detractors made of it what could be made that one day as he sat with the newspaper ostentatiously spread out in front of him, a near neighbor of an inquisitive turn of mind desired to be told the news of the day. It was known to the interrogator that the alleged assistant of tender years was absent, and there was that in bis eye which seemed to indicate a malicious expectancy. For the moment John Morgan was nonplussed, but quickly recovering himself, he lay back in his chair, and in a tone in which sympathy for the untoward events was blended with a restrained satisfaction at being able to recite the tale of them, replied, "Oh, wrecks, George, shipwrecks on all hands; it's peetiful, it's peetiful." The print which his eyes were devouring with so muh avidity, and from which he professedly was gleaning the distressing intelligence, was held by him upside down; and consequently the pictorial representations of steamers and sailing-ships, by means of which enterprising shipping companies are wont to attract the public attention, were naturally upside down as well, and the worthy man's conclusion was obvious. A ship represented upside down assuredly meant a ship wrecked, whatever the printed matter might say to the contrary. Such was the tale; but John Morgan went on his way unnoticing, and left to his many believers what task of actual verbal refutation might be necessary.

II.

It was a matter for regretful reflection to John Morgan and his wife that they had been but meagrely blessed in the matter of a family. There had been

born to them a son and daughter, but the daughter had passed from them even at the age when her presence had become a necessity to the old people, and although years had sped since then it was known that the mother had never ceased bitterly to mourn her loss; in secret, it is true, for with all the energy of his energetic nature John Morgan had fought against his grief; he would drive it away from him and from others too. To sorrow was useless, he roared in wrathful grief, reasoning with the unconvincing logic of blurred common-sense; it was worse than useless, it was vain, it was-ah, God! and then he too broke down.

The boy had gone into the army. Some people said that the step was a necessity of his failure in the more conventional walks of life, but that could scarcely be, seeing that John Morgan himself was at the time daily impressing people with the fact that had he been allowed to choose his career as a boy the trade of arms would have been his choice; that was a career for a man of mettle, and what other! But Mrs. Morgan over her knitting-needles must needs again weep, more and more silently and more and more secretly, it is true; for along with the energy and bustle and movement which characterized her lord and master, in what from her point of view almost seemed a second bereavement, there was noticeable a faint irritability, as of a tired man striving to show that he is far from being tired. It was faintly noticeable, but it was there, and it did more to make Mrs. Morgan cease to mourn than all the blowings and blusterings of reasoned wrathful sermons which her husband could inflict upon her in a month. For the little woman had a great silent love and respect for this fresh, blustering spouse of hers, and as for John Morgan, it was known through the village how his reason almost left him for two dreary nights

during which the doctor held it not improbable that his wife would pass from him.

It was only in the fitness of things that, when the political horizon became overcast and the war-cloud did at last burst, the village should wait with a complacent curiosity to hear what John Morgan had to say before making up its mind definitely on the issues involved in the conflict; and while the nightly little crowd, assembled at the postoffice, dogmatized considerably concerning each fresh piece of news, there was always left open a loophole for escape, or rather retreat, should the position to be taken up by John Morgan, when he appeared, make a recantation necessary. The postoffice, pending the arrival of the evening mail, was the village St. Stephen's, and John Morgan represented equally the positions of Speaker, Leader of the House, aud, when necessary, the whole Opposition. There was, consequently, no little consternation and not a little wonder when the time came that John Morgan ceased altogether from his attendance at the scene of debate, and those who

were

skilled in noting such things dated his absence from the day on which news came to him that his son's regiment was ordered on active service. "He's feared for the day's news, and that's what's the matter wi' him," said one man, and the villagers did not speak in dispraise of such unspartanlike conduct, although they smiled furtively as certain loud-voiced declamations concerning the virtue of hardhood kept ringing in their ears; and they listened in silence when John Morgan, loud-voiced and emphatic as usual, gave it as his explanation that the post was always late and the evenings were chilly as winter drew near.

As was the case of Mahomet and the mountain, however, so was it with John Morgan and the villagers; if he would not come to them, they assur

edly would find themselves gliding up to him where he sat ensconced in his comfortable armchair in the house on the hill, and from the vantage-ground of his own fireside he would enunciate the correct attitude to be adopted concerning the war and its consequences.

"I take my facs from the ofeeshal reports in the paper there, where ye can see them for yerselves if ye want to," were the closing words wherewith he invariably fortified an argument which, standing by itself as a mere statement unsupported by external authority, might seem somewhat shaky; and the emphasis of the delivery generally ensured silence, if not verbal acquiescence. Mrs. Morgan, at the opposite side of the fire, swiftly clicked her knitting-needles, and, with a faith beautiful in its simplicity, reconciled without effort the numberless contradictions--so they seemed to her which characterized her husband's many utterances in the course of the day.

Few of the villagers were in the way of receiving daily papers, and so it happened that by the time when the weekly news budget should arrive a great and decisive battle had been fought, and throughout the land the first thin wail of grief was spreading and spreading as names of men who had once been fathers, brothers, lovers were placed upon the nation's list of dead. The sorrow wail was spreading daily, but as yet it had not reached the northern village, and by John Morgan's cosy fireside the chances of the impending fight were being discussed with an earnestness which the gravity of the situation easily rendered excusable. John Morgan's arrangement of the forces, as told to the rather unusually crowded audience, was sublime; but a difficulty, unfortunate inasmuch that upon a satisfactory explanation and solution of it depended his entire position, had arisen, and John Morgan was

more than ordinarily loud-voiced and more than ordinarily aggressive and emphatic as objection after objection, tendered with a quiet assurance and firm, were urged against his theory. He had uttered his usual concluding dictum, but it failed to silence the persistent objector, who went the length of asking to be shown where in the public print a certain statement was to be found, and John Morgan, with much external gravity and a soul-consuming perplexity and suffocating wrath, was ostentatiously hunting for a passage which he was well aware was not to be found in the rustling pages of the paper. The deadlock thus occasioned was on the point of becoming irksome to the audience when the outer door was opened, and a neighbor on his way up from the postoffice stepped into the heated circle and laid a letter on John Morgan's knee. "It's from the seat of war," he said, sententiously, as he sat down; "a see 'On her Majesty's service' on the envelope," having said which he threw himself back in his chair and wiped his forehead with his red pocket-handkerchief after the manner of one who has done his duty.

III.

To appear to be moved at the receipt of a letter, even with such high external credentials as the one before him, would have been unworthy of a man of John Morgan's high reputation among his fellows; and while a sudden pause of expectancy fell upon the little assembly, John Morgan took up the letter leisurely and glanced at the superscription with a careless negligence. "Ay, a see it's on 'Her Majesty's service;' a saw that at once from the outside-just so, just so." The muttered exclamation concealed his startled perplexity, and was intended to insinuate a perfect familiarity with documents of this class.

But there was no such tranquillity evinced on the opposite side of the fire, where Mrs. Morgan sat, her glasses in her hand, and her eyes staring in startled wonder at the blue cold-looking document which her husband held in his hand. Her heart's action had all but stopped at the first glimpse of it, and she was waiting, eagerly waiting, until the covering should be unfastened and the contents divulged for good or ill.

"It'll be from Sandy," she said faintly, and the tension evidenced by her voice communicated itself to those around her, and the complacent expectancy gave way to a grave foreboding. The situation had become tragic.

But beyond a swift glance almost as of fear in the direction of his wife, John Morgan made no sign. "It's on her Majesty's service," he kept muttering as he bent over the document; "a noticed that on the outside-ay, a noticed that at once."

"Will ye no read it, John?" said his wife, gently, as she bent forward and touched his hand.

He started up violently at the touch. "O' course a can read it. What makes ye think a canna read it?" he said, angrily; "it'll no take me long to do that."

The suggestion of his illiteracy at such a time, among so many of his fellows, brought him to himself with a shock, and he struggled to resume his old important manner as he proceeded slowly and with difficulty to unfasten the unfamiliar covering.

There was a terrible struggle going on in his mind. He recognized that he was expected to read the letter, and that immediately-the silent gravity of those around him told of an interested, sympathetic expectancy-and the hour had now come when it was for him, John Morgan, the man of reputed learning, and the recognized leader in his native place, to choose whether he

was publicly to confess before all his fellows that his profession of learning was a fraud, and that he himself was and had been an impostor among them all his days. How could he be able to hold up his head among them in future? would the very children,-the idea was torture, it was not to be thought of; and yet, on the other hand, when the thought of his soldier son, and what news of him the letter might contain, rushed upon his mind, his resolve almost gave way, and he made as if to hand the letter to one of those around him. But his vanity conquered even as he did so, and in the desperation of despair and perplexity he held the letter closely up to his wellnigh bloodless face, and cleared his throat.

"Ahem," he began. "Dear Father and"-but his voice dwindled away; he could not bring himself to say "mother" with that terror-stricken face opposite him. "This is to say-ahem! -that I am well-quite well"-here a heavy fit of prolonged coughing overtook him-"well, and hoping you are the same. Love ahem!-love to all at home-hoping you are the same, from your affectionate son, Sandy."

He forced a laugh from his parched throat as he lamely concluded the woebegone epistle, and even to himself his voice sounded far away. "There's no Blackwood's Magazine.

much news in that-on her Majesty's service from the seat o' war."

An oppressive silence prevailed throughout the little room, and the vacuous smile which John Morgan strove to assume died away drearily on his lips, and his white head fell heavily on his breast. His reading was a lie, and instinctively they all knew it.

There was a slight movement in the stillness of the room as a venerablelooking old man stepped forward and took the letter in his hand.

"Maybe a can read it for ye, John," he said simply.

Slowly he pulled his glasses from their case, and with much care adjusted them on his forehead. "Sir," he began, as he held the letter to the light, "I regret to have to inform you," and then he stopped abruptly.

"Neebors," he said, quietly, turning to those around him, "this is no place for you now," and as the last of them glided in silent swiftness out of the room, there fell upon his ear the first low moan from the stricken mother as she received the dread intelligence of her soldier son's death.

And all through that dreary miserable night John Morgan, as one of his reason bereft, kept muttering to himself. "On her Majesty's serviceMajesty's service-a saw that at once --from the seat o' war."

A. B. Fletcher.

THE AUTOCRAT OF THE DINNER TABLE.

The twenty years of John Selden's life began with the England of the great Queen, and ended with the England of the great Protector. Mark Pattison regarded him, not without reason, as a typical Englishman. He was never out of England, but, as Ben Jonson said of him, though he stayed at

home, he knew the world. His learning was prodigious, even for a learned age, and yet he was conspicuously practical, even in the practical art of politics. He was one of the few lawyers who attained great eminence in the House of Commons, and one of the few statesmen who ever held their own

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