ment the House of Lords had represented much more truly than the House of Commons the real sentiments of the country. Two other considerations have had much influence. English politicians who desired to see a powerful Upper Chamber established on a purely elective basis have always looked to the United States as furnishing the most successful model of such a chamber. The American Senate has long been regarded with profound reverence in England. It was believed to be the main regulating influence in your Constitution; to be itself wholly free from the taint of corruption and demagogism, and to be the most efficient of all guarantees against dishonest, rash, and aggressive policy. Rightly or wrongly, within the last few years this belief has almost disappeared. To a large number of careful English observers the deterioration in the character of the Senate appears to be one of the most evident and most ominous facts in American politics. Whether this impression is true or false, it has had an undoubted effect in increasing the indisposition among serious politicians to any organic change in the character of an Upper Chamber which, though certainly far from ideally perfect, may on the whole be said to work well. these courtesies reacts directly on the welfare of the patient. If accounts are delayed, new books and instruments are correspondingly lacking, and some one suffers. If the doctor is consulted, not in office hours but whenever he can be found at home, necessary microscopical and chemical examinations are interrupted and cases are treated with an imperfect conception of their nature. If the physician's rest is broken, night after night, so too is his power of clear and quick thought. The expectations which some persons have from medical treatment are at once flattering and exasperating, amusing and pathetic. I recall one patient who urged that certain asthmatic airtubes in the lungs should be cut out, and another who insisted that needed information about the state of the stomach should be obtained by cutting through the abdomen rather than by passing the stomach-tube down her throat. Every doctor has been called upon to render speedy relief and restore to health patients within a few hours of death. Comparatively frequent, also, is the patient who makes an odious comparison between our own small powers of diagnosis and the miraculous ability of old Dr. So-and-so, who “had only to look at me and ask a few questions, and tell just what ailed me." A From "Conservatism of the British Democracy." physician thoroughly familiar with a By W. E. H. Lecky. From The Cosmopolitan. PHYSICIAN AND PATIENT. The obligation between physician and patient is a mutual one. The latter expects prompt and efficient service, at the sacrifice of convenience, social engagements, and, if necessary, of comfort and health, on the part of the former. On the other hand, the physician has a right to expect prompt and full payment of financial obligations and the consideration of his convenience and recreation when emergencies do not prevent. A failure to observe person's temperament, physical condition and previous history, can guess very shrewdly at the nature of his trouble and may be quite justified in assuring some nervous individual that he has not typhus fever, which has scarcely visited our country for a generation; or small-pox. against which he has been recently vaccinated, or some other equally improbable disease. But, with such exceptions, the physician who makes a diagnosis without a careful investigation-usually including physical, chemical or microscopical examinations, or all three-is taking heavy risks of being in error, and, if he habitually follows such a course of inaction, he is simply an impostor. A. L. Benedict, M.D. THE NINE AT DELHI. But if the schoolmaster of one school lay dead in the sunlight there was another, well able to teach a useful lesson, left alive; and his school remains for all time as a place where men may learn what men can do. marked the Head-of-the-nine, as he paused in passing a gun to look to something in its gear with swift professional eye. "I don't quite see how the nine of us are to work the ten guns." "Oh! we'll manage somehow," said his second in command, "the native es For about three hundred yards from the deserted college, about six huu- tablishment-perhapsdred from the main-guard of the Cash mere gate, stood the magazine, to which the two young Englishmen, followed by a burlier one, had walked back quietly after one of them had remarked that he could hold his own. For there were gates to be barred, four walls to be seen to, and various other preparations to be made before the nine men who formed the garrison could be certain of holding their own. And their own meant much to others; for with the stores and the munitions of war safe the city might rise, but it would be unarmed; but with them at the mercy of the rabble every pitiful pillager could become a recruit to the disloyal regiments. George Willoughby, the Head-of-the nine, looked at the sullen group of dark faces lounging distrustfully within those barred doors, and his own face grew stern. Well, if they would not work, they should at least stay and look on-stay till the end. Then he took out his watch. "The mine's about finished now, sir," said Conductor Buckley, saluting gravely as he looked critically down a line ending in the powder magazine. "And, askin' your pardon, sir, mightn't it be as well to settle a signal beforehand, sir; in case it's wanted? And, if you have no objection, sir. here's Sergeant Scully here, sir, saying he would look on it as a kind favor—-” A man with a spade glanced up a trifle anxiously for the answer as he went on with his work. "All right! Scully shall fire it. If you finish it there in the middle by that little lemon-tree, we shan't forget the exact spot. Scully must see to having the portfire ready for himself. I'll give the word to you, as your gun will be near mine, and you can pass it on by raising your cap. That will do, I think." "Twelve! The Meerut troops will be in soon-if they started at dawn." There was the finest inflection of scorn in his voice. "They must have started," began his companion. But the tall figure with the grave young face was straining its eyes from the bastion they were passing; it gave upon the bridge of boats and the lessening white streak of road. He was looking for a cloud of dust upon it; but there was none. "I hope so," he remarked as he went on. He gave a half-involuntary glance back, however, to the stunted lemonbush. There was a black streak by it, which might be relied upon to give aid at dawn or dusk, or noon; high noon as it was now. The chime of it echoed methodically as ever from the main-guard, making a cheerful young voice in the officer's room say, "Well! the enemy is passing, anyhow. The reliefs can't be long if they started at dawn." "If they had started when they ought to have started, they would have been here hours ago," said an older man, almost petulantly, as he rose and wandered to the door, to stand looking out on the baking court where his menthe two companies of the 54th, who "Nicely, sir," said Conductor Buck- had come down under his charge after ley, saluting again. those under Colonel Riply had shot down their officers by the church- were lounging about sullenly. These men might have shot nim also but for the timely arrival of the two guns; might have shot at him, even now, but for those loyal 74th over-awing them. He turned and looked at some of the latter with a sort of envy. These men had come forward in a body when the regiment was called upon by its commandant to give hon est volunteers to keep order in the city. What had they had, which his men had lacked? Nothing that he knew of. And then, inevitably, he thought of his six murdered friends and comrades, officers apparently as popular as he, whose bodies were lying in the next room waiting for a cart to remove them to the Ridge. For even Major Paterson, saddened, depressed, looked forward to decent sepulture for his comrades by and by-by and by when the Meerut troops should arrive. And the half dozen or more of women up-stairs were comforting each other with the same hope, and crushing down the cry that it seemed an eternity, already, since they had waited for that little cloud of dust upon the Meerut road. But for that hope they might have gone Meerutward them selves; for the country was peaceful. Even in Duryagunj, though by noon it was a charnelhouse, the score or so of men who kept cowards at bay in a miserable storehouse comforted themselves with the same hope; and women with the long languid eyes of one race, looked out of them with the temper and fire of the other, saying in soft staccato voices-"It will not be long now. They will be here soon, for they would start at dawn." "They will come soon," said a young telegraph clerk coolly, as he stood by his instrument hoping for a welcome kling; sending finally, that bulletin northward which ended with the re luctant admission, "we must shut up." Must indeed; seeing that some ruffians rushed in and sabered him with his hands still on the levers. "They will be here soon," agreed the compositors of the Delhi Gazette as they worked at the strangest piece of printing the world is ever likely to see. That famous extra, wedged in between English election news, which told in bald journalese of a crisis, which became the crisis of their own lives before the whole edition was sent out. But down in the palace Zeenut Maihl had been watching that white streak of road also, and as the hours passed, let her her wild impatience would watch it no longer. She paced up and down the queen's bastion like a caged tigress, leaving Hâfzan to take her place at the lattice. No sign of an avenging army yet! Then the troopers' tale must be true. The hour of decisive action had come, it was slipping past, the king was in the hands of Ahsan-Oolah, and Elahi Buksh, whose face was set both ways, like the physician's. And she, helpless, half in disgrace, caged, veiled, screened, unable to lay hands on any one. Oh! why was she not a man! Why had she not a man to deal with. Her hennastained nails bit into her palms as she clenched her hands, then in sheer childish passion tore off her hampering veil and, rolling it into a ball, flung it at the head of a drowsy eunuch in the outside arcade the nearest thing to a man within her reach. "No sign yet, Hâfzan?" she asked fiercely. "No sign, my queen," replied Hâfzan, with an odd, derisive smile. There was no sound in the room save that strange hum from the gar dens outside, which at this hour of the day were generally wrapped in sundrugged slumbers. But the world beyond, toward which the old king's lusterless eyes looked as he lay on the river balcony, was sleepy, sun-drugged as ever. Througo the tracery-set arches showed yellow stretches of sand and curving river, with tussocks of tall tiger-grass hiding the slender stems of the palm-trees which shot up here and there into the blue sky; blue with the yellow glaze upon it which comes from sheer sunlight. A row of saringhi players squat. ted in the room behind the balcony, "That is the best couplet my lord has done," she said superbly. "That must be signed and sealed." So must a paper be, which lay concealed in her bosom. And as she spoke she drew the signet ring lovingly, playfully from the king's finger and walked over to where the scribe sat crouched on the floor. thrumming softly, so as to hide that thanking Heaven piously for having strange hum of life which reached sent him back to her apron string in even here. For the king was writing the very nick of time. Sent him, and a couplet and was in difficulties with Hussan Askuri, and pen and ink within a rhyme for cartouche (cartridge); since reach of her quick wit. he was a stickler for form, holding that the keynote of the lines should jingle. And this couplet was to epitomize the situation on the other side of the saringhies. Cartouche? Cartouche? Suddenly he sat up. "Quick! send for Hussan Askuri; or stay!" he hesitated for an instant. Hussan Askuri would be with the queen, and no one ever admired his couplets as she did. How many hours was it since he had seen her? And what was the use of making couplets, if you were denied their just meed of praise? "Stay," he repeated, "I will go myself." It was a relief to feel himself on the way back to be led by the nose, and as they helped him across the intervening courtyard he kept repeating his treasure, imagining her face when she heard it. Kuchch Chil-i-Room nahin kya, ya Shahi-Roos, nahin "Ink it well, Pir-jee," she said, keeping her back to the king; "the impression must be as immortal as the verse." Despite the warning, a very keen ear might have detected a double sound, as if the seal had needed a second pressure. That was all. So it came about that, half an hour or so afterward, the Head-of-the-nine at the magazine was looking contemptuously at a paper brought by the PalaceGuards, and passed under the door, ordering its instant opening. George Willoughby laughed; but some of the Eight Jo Kuchch kya na sara se, so cartouche dashed people's impudence and cursed ne. A couplet, which, lingering still in the mouths of the people, warrants the old poetaster's conceit of it, and-doganglicized-runs thus: Nor czar nor sultan made the conquest easy, The only weapon was a cartridge greasy. "The queen? Where is the queen?" fumed the old man, when he found an empty room instead of instant flattery; for he was, after all, the Great Moghul. "She prays for the king's recovery,' said Fatma readily. "I will inform her that her prayer is granted." But as she passed on her errand, she winked at a companion, who hid her giggle in her veil; for Grand Turk or not, the women hold all the trump cards in seclusion. So how was the old man to know that the one who came in radiant with exaggerated delight at his return, had been interviewing his eldest son behind decorous screens, and that she was their cheek! Yet, after the laugh, the Head-of-the-nine walked over, yet another time, to that river bastion to look down at that white streak of road. How many times he had looked already, Heaven knows; but his grave race had grown graver, though it brightened again after a glance at the lemon-bush. The black streak there would not fail them. "In the king's name open!" The demand came from Mirza Moghul himself this time, for the palace was without arms, without ammunition; and if they queen's idea, against all comers, till were to defend it, according to the there was time for other regiments to rebel, this matter of the magazine was important. Abool-Bukr was with him, of valor; for a scout sent by the queen half-drunk, wholly incapable, but full had returned with the news that no English soldier was within ten miles of Delhi, and within the last half hour an ominous word had begun to pass from lip to lip in the city. Helpless! The masters were helpless. Past two o'clock and not a blow in revenge. Helpless! The word made cowards brave, and brave folk cowards. And many who had spent the long hours in peeping from their closed doors at each fresh clatter in the street, hoping it was the master, looked at each other with startled eyes. Helpless! Helpless! The echo of the thought reached the main-guard, still in touch with the outside world, whence, as the day dragged by, fresh tidings of danger drifted down from the Ridge, where men, women, and children lay huddled help lessly in the Flagstaff Tower, watching the white streak of road. It seems like a bad dream, that hopeless, paralyzing strain of the eyes for a cloud of dust. But the echo won no way into the magazine, for the simple reason that it knew it was not hopeless. It could hold its own. "Shoot that man Kureem Buksh, please, Forrest, if he comes bothering round the gate again. He is really very annoying. I have told him several times to keep back; so it is no use his trying to give information to the people outside." For the Head-of-the-nine was very courteous. "Scaling ladders?" he echoed, when a native superintendent told him that the princes, finding him obdurate, had gone to send some down from the palace. "Oh! by all means let them scale if they like." Some of the Eight, hearing the reply, smiled grimly. By all means let the flies walk into the parlor; for if that straight streak of road was really going to remain empty, the fuller the four lemon-bush square walls round the could be, the better. "That's them, sir," said one of the Eight cheerfully, as a grating noise rose above the hum outside. "That's the grapnels." And as he turned to his particular gun of the ten. he told himself that he would nick the first head or two with his rifle and keep the grape for the bunches. So he smiled at his own little joke and waited. All the Nine waited, each to a gun, and of course there was one gun over, but, as the head of them had said, that could not be helped. And so the rifle-triggers clicked, and the stocks came up to the shoulders; and then?-then there was a sort of laugh. and some one said under his breath, "Well, I'm blowed!" And his mind went back to the streets of London, and he wondered how many years it was since he had seen a lamplighter. For up ropes and poles, on roofs and outhouses, somehow, clinging like limpets, running like squirrels along the top of the wall, upsetting the besiegers, monopolizing the ladders, was a rush, not of attack but of escape! Let what fool who liked scale the wall and come into the parlor of the Nine, those who knew the secret of the lemon-bush were off. No safety there beside the Nine! No life-insurance possible while that lay ready to their hand! Would he ever see a lamplighter again? The trivial thought was with the bearded man who stood by his gun, the real self in him, hidden behind the reserve of courage, asking other questions too, as he waited for the upward rush of fugitives to change into a downward rush of foes worthy of good powder and shot. It came at last-and the grape came too, mowing the intruders down in bunches. And these were no mere rabble of the city. They were the pick of the trained mutineers swarming over the wall to stand on the outhouse roofs and fire at the Nine; and so, pressed in gradually from behind, coming nearer and nearer, dropping to the ground in solid ranks, firing in platoons; so by degrees hemming in the Nine, hemming in the lemon-bush. But the Nine were busy with the guns. They had to be served quickly. and that left no time for thought. Then the smoke, and the flashes, and the yells, and the curses, filled up the rest of the world for the present. "This is the last round, I'm afraid. sir: we shan't have time for another." |