Read Ebook: The Girl's Own Paper Vol. XX. No. 1012 May 20 1899 by Various

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 262 lines and 21353 words, and 6 pages

"I'm not sure that Sheila and I wish any distinction made between ourselves and our cousins," said Oscar a little stiffly; but Cyril laughed in his good-humoured way.

"Oh, you needn't be as straight-laced as all that, Oscar. People can't help knowing the difference between--what shall we call it?--the real thing and the imitation! There are some really nice people I should like Sheila to know. Their name is Lawrence, and they do call here. They bought or took a place about five miles away some little time ago, and the mater was induced to call. They don't come often; but most likely the girl would be glad to help in these goings on. Mr. Ransom knows the Lawrences. You would quite like them if you once knew them."

Sheila was interested at once, and asked a good many questions. Her life, though pleasant and easy, was rather monotonous, and, so far, she had made no friends except her cousins, who, though very good-natured and kind, were not particularly congenial to her. So the prospect of a possible girl friend of a different stamp was not without its attractions.

"I shall try to bring that off," said Cyril to himself as the carriage drove off at last. "I often think that May Lawrence would be a very good second string to my bow; for though Effie is an heiress, I sometimes think I should soon be sick to death of her 'I,' 'I,' 'I,' and should chuck up the whole thing in three months, if it ever got as far as an engagement!"

OLD ENGLISH COTTAGE HOMES;

OR,

VILLAGE ARCHITECTURE OF BYGONE TIMES.

In the first number of these papers we pointed out the fact that the cottages and small houses in fortified villages exhibited a totally different character from those in open and unwalled villages. Owing to the space being confined within the walls, any increase in the number of inhabitants had either to be provided with accommodation by adding to the height of the existing habitations or by setting up dwelling-houses in out-of-the-way places. Our sketch of Lyme Regis shows the outlet of a river which here flows into the sea; the fortified walls are continued along the banks; the principal street of the village is carried over the river by a bridge consisting of a lofty and elegantly proportioned Gothic arch, evidently of thirteenth century date. Cottages or small habitations cling to the walls supported upon wooden corbels, and are bracketed out from the parapets of the bridge, giving the latter more the effect of a gateway than of a bridge. The whole scene is strange though very picturesque, and those who are accustomed to the ordinary English village, with its detached cottages, surrounded by gardens, are naturally surprised at the singular effect brought about by such changed conditions. Those, however, who know the fortified villages of Germany, France, and the Low Countries, are quite familiar with such scenes, and regard them as usual in villages prepared for war, as contrasted with the ordinary villages of our country where peace was the normal condition.

It is indeed a matter of congratulation that our English ancestors were able to live in abodes unsurrounded by fortifications, and to pursue their humble avocations without the dread of invasion by some foreign foe; but as it does not seem to be the design of Divine Providence that man should pass this life without troubles and anxiety, civil wars were not unfrequent, even in this happy isle. And even when this affliction was absent, our towns were visited by pestilence, for our historians tell us that in the neighbourhood of Warwick alone thirty villages were depopulated and allowed to fall to ruin during that fearful visitation called the "Black Death." Their very sites cannot now be traced, and their names are mere tradition. Even where they were partially spared, the population of many villages was so reduced as to cause a very singular arrangement. We refer to the distance between the church and the village. Now there can be no doubt that parish churches in the country were nearly always in former times erected in the villages or towns they were intended to serve, and the only way of accounting for their now being at a distance from one another is by supposing that some great pestilence has at some period swept away the population of that part of the village which adjoined the church. That the pestilence should attack that particular portion of the village more than another is highly probable, because its proximity to the church and churchyard would render it more liable to infection. This, however, is a very gloomy subject to contemplate, and we refer to it only to account for certain peculiarities which it has introduced into old villages.

Our other sketch represents a cottage or village house of much later times, probably the Hanoverian period, built of various coloured bricks, in some places arranged in patterns. The great peculiarity of the design, however, is its diminutive scale. Were it not for the fact that the presence of any human being near to it immediately dwarfs it, the front might be that of an important house. This is a well-known fact in architecture. There is nothing for bringing down the scale of a building like a very tall girl. An architect we know built a beautiful little church on a small scale, but he was shocked to find that a very tall, and it must be confessed graceful, girl sat close to the first column of the nave. Our friend said, "Really that girl completely dwarfs my columns. I shall have to speak to the clergyman and see whether she can be prevailed upon to take a seat in a less conspicuous place." He suggested this idea to the reverend gentleman, who seemed a little confused.

"Well," said he, "I fear that can scarcely be done, as that young lady will in all probability become more closely connected with the church. The fact is, we are going to be married next month."

It is rather a strange thing that a tall man does not "bring down" the scale of a building to the same extent as a tall woman. Probably the dress of the latter is accountable for this.

The diminutive scale of the house at Amersham has its counterpart in many Georgian buildings--Hamper Mill and the old school-house at Watford, for instance. Yet we can scarcely charge the architects of that time with an attempt to give a false scale to their buildings, as they seem so well suited to their surroundings.

LETTERS FROM A LAWYER.

The Temple.

MY DEAR DOROTHY,--It is perfectly astounding to me that people not absolutely devoid of common sense should be taken in by the so-called confidence trick, a device so transparent that it seems incredible that any sane man could be deceived by it. I am bound to say in justice to your sex that I have never heard of a case when a woman was a victim to the confidence trick. I suppose it does not appeal to them in the same way that it seems to do to some men.

Perhaps the true explanation of the gullibility of mankind was that given by a rogue who was had up and convicted at the Old Bailey. When asked what he wished to say, why he should not receive punishment for this offence, he replied that he ought to be treated as a great moral teacher, because the confidence trick could only succeed with people who were covetous and desirous of acquiring other people's money without giving an equivalent for it, and that when they found that they had lost their money, it taught them to be more cautious and less grasping.

There was some truth in what this "great moral teacher" said, but unfortunately for him he had also a lesson to learn, and the Recorder gave him several months in which he might give it his careful consideration.

The "Free Portrait" scheme is a bait which allures a good many people. They cannot resist the temptation of getting something for nothing. A man calling himself A. Tanquerey or F. Schneider, and giving an address in Paris, is, I believe, the author of this ingenious system of extracting money from the unwilling pockets of the public. He professes in his circulars and advertisements to send you a crayon enlargement of any photograph you send him "absolutely free of charge."

After you have sent him the photograph, which is generally one of special value to yourself, being, we will suppose, the only portrait you possess, of a deceased parent, friend or relation, you receive a letter stating that the portrait is ready and will be forwarded to you on the receipt of two or three guineas for the frame.

If you decline to purchase a frame, and write telling him to return your photograph, you receive no reply to your letter, and finally, to recover the photograph which you value, you send the money for the frame, and receive a fairly good crayon enlargement of your photograph in a frame which has cost you as many guineas as it is worth shillings.

There is a class of advertisement which may be seen in almost any weekly paper which just borders on the fraudulent. Even if they are genuine in themselves--and some undoubtedly are not--they open the door to fraud. I refer to those advertisements offering articles for sale in connection with monetary prizes to every purchaser and winner in a competition which can be guessed at a glance.

Every purchaser is told in the advertisement that he will be entitled to receive a prize of ?10 if he guesses rightly; but when he has made his purchase and sent in his solution, he will find that either only the first letter opened gets the prize, or that every competitor having guessed correctly, he is only entitled to receive a halfpenny for his share of the money. In this last case, of course, the thing is a swindle because no one would have purchased the article and answered the competition if they thought the money was going to be divided amongst the winners.

I tried one of these competitions myself, not because I thought it was genuine, but because I wanted to see how it was worked. The task I had to accomplish was something like the following:

"Give the names of the fruits and flowers mentioned below--Soer, Reap, Liput, Cepah, Socruc, Ragone."

Well, you can see at a glance they are rose, pear, tulip, peach, crocus, orange. I sent in my answer and a shilling and a penny stamp, and in due course received a puzzle worth about twopence.

Later on I received a letter stating that my solution of all the words was correct, and enclosing my share of the prize--a halfpenny stamp.

In a similar competition I saw it stated in the papers that 6,000 answers had been received, which shows that the game must be a very paying one for those who issue the advertisements.

One has to be very sharp, but the sharpest of us are sometimes taken in, including even

Your affectionate cousin, BOB BRIEFLESS.

GIRLS AS I HAVE KNOWN THEM.

THE ATHLETIC GIRL.

WANTED: A groom, tall, good-looking, steady.

WANTED: A housemaid, neat, respectable, no fringe.

WANTED: A cook, good, plain.

So run certain familiar advertisements. They are cited here as containing the descriptive words which have a particular applicability to the athletic girl, who, to state the general case in regard to her, is tall, good-looking, steady; neat, respectable, with no fringe; good, plain.

Not always, but very often, the athletic girl's is the prosaic type of mind, concerning which Lowell writes--

"The danger of the prosaic type of mind lies in the stolid sense of superiority which blinds it to everything ideal, to the use of everything that does not serve the practical purposes of life. Do we not remember how the all-observing and all-fathoming Shakespeare has typified this in Bottom the Weaver? Surrounded by all the fairy creations of fancy, he sends one to fetch him the bag of a humble-bee, and can find no better employment for Mustard-seed than to help Cavalero Cobweb scratch his ass's head between the ears. When Titania, queen of that fair, ideal world, offers him a feast of beauty, he says he has a good stomach to a pottle of hay!"

The athletic girl easily thus runs to prose. Sometimes her prose is very funny. She looked up lately from a novel with the speech--

"There's one thing I do want to know most awfully, Daddy--how people 'gnash' their teeth. Is it anything like this--or this--or this?"

Each question was accompanied by a facial illustration. Daddy is a serious man, but he laughed heartily.

Sometimes, however, Daddy shakes his head. The following is a case in point.

"Do you know, my dear," he asked, "the difference between a soprano and a contralto?"

"Why, of course, Dad," was the answer. "The one's a squeak and the other's a squawk."

Such a girl has some knowledge, but she lacks some grace. Very often the athletic girl lacks both knowledge and grace. Sometimes, too, she lacks brains. The outward marks by which you shall know her in that case are that she has large ears and a little forehead. There are exceptions to this rule, but they are not many.

Of accomplishments the average athletic girl has few. All the French she knows she puts into a smile, and that smile is the one with which she meets any references to customs of the good old time. It says--

"The garrison at least numbered one thousand pioneers or delvers, three thousand fighting men, and about three hundred fighting women. This last was a most efficient corps, all females of respectable character, armed with sword, musket, and dagger. Their chief, Frau Kenau Hasselaer, was a widow of distinguished family and unblemished character, about forty-seven years of age, who, at the head of her Amazons, participated in many of the most fiercely contested actions of the siege, both within and without the walls."

As a letter-writer the average athletic girl does not shine. First, as for her handwriting, it is perhaps best described in some words which Goldsmith gives to Tony Lumpkin--

"Here are such handles and shanks and dashes that one can scarcely know the head from the tail."

It is not that the athletic girl has no heart. There follows here her description of a parting scene in which she was one of two.

"I made an owl of myself, got the gulps, and could not even say good-bye."

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet