We

tions might be raised to the "service book" even if it could be bought at the nearest post office and the character stamp affixed by the post-master. are inclined to think that the best servants would welcome the innovation, which would inevitably bring the rank and file into line. Such a system would greatly facilitate the opening of public bureaux where employers and employed could register their wants, instead of as now employing expensive registry offices and advertising in the public prints. It is commonly supposed that these are safeguards, but the little "service book" would be a far more efficient safeguard, and would, we believe, greatly assist the modern housewife as well as the modern servant. The writer has been urged to put together these suggestions by the complaints of many servants as to the unsatisfactory nature of their position; she believes that they would welcome The Nineteenth Century and After.

the service book; but, book or no book, is it beyond the skill of the law to give some kind of sanction to the domestic contracts on which the comfort and happiness of every household depend, and so to guarantee that justice shall be done to the large and ever-growing class of domestic servants, who, as a class, render most admirable and efficient service to our commonwealth? It is quite impossible to exaggerate the heedlessness, the careless indifference with which characters of human beings are tossed about and flung to chance as it were. Can nothing be done to compel an employer to give a character to the man or woman who has served him, and eaten his bread? We must remember that the credit, happiness, nay the very chance of an honest livelihood, depends for thousands of our fellow-subjects upon the momentous question, character or no character?

B. B. Harrison.

The Speaker.

The first thought of a townsman on awakening in a country house will be, "This is not my own bed," his next, "How still it is!" It is this that has aroused him. As the dark hours rolled on, the porter sense, which never quite sleeps, has missed the familiar tramp of the policeman, the muffled rumble of underground trains, and growing uneasy at the unked silence at length has rung up consciousness.

Other impressions follow: sweetscented darkness for one; darkness unrelieved by dots and lines upon the ceiling from the lamp in the square.

Then come rustlings and chirrups among the wistaria leaves which brush the pane, and from somewhere aloft a thin strain tells that a lark is singing. One props oneself upon an elbow to catch the delicate trill, but it is lost already. Bird after bird breaks upon the quiet with a babel of sweet sounds, such an outburst as can only be heard in the dusk of a summer dawn.

Three cuckoos call incessantly, two clear-throated and close at hand, one from the copse with breaking voice. Thrushes beyond estimation, black

birds innumerable are singing one another down. Little breathless spurts of melody come from the sill where a wren is bobbing around his small wife with drooping wing and expanded tail. The drawl of the green-linnet, the dry chirp of the sparrows mingle with the "Conk . . . Conk-conk" of coots from the pond. The drumming crow of a pheasant is answered by a clear shout from the Hambro' pens.

Verily a joyful noise; but of brief duration; the light waxes and the merry din dwindles. Nestle down again into the pillows with the thought that you have enjoyed what the countryman hears but twice or thrice a year. He commonly sleeps through the chorale, arrives late at the porch of day and misses the introit.

After breakfast something is said about church. "Two miles by the footpath and no shade," observes the professor sententiously. Selecting a German review and a paper-knife he retires to the tent between the cedars nursing a tobacco-jar.

Yet it is a not unfruitful journey through the crops that clothe the white swells of the downs, sloping from the

woods to the grassy bed of the winterbourne winding between its alders.

Peace, peace seems all,

Saint Praxed's ever was the church for peace.

When was it otherwise, think you, in this sleepy hollow, this forgotten nook of the Midlands?

A fragment of ruddy flint in the footpath attracts the eye: there lie three more among the barley stems, small, angular, with the color of fire upon them; plainly some ancient burning, for their surfaces have the soapy glaze which only the centuries can give. There were no fired shards a stone's throw back, there are none a few strides further on, yet here, just here, are scores in the surface-soil which swells into a long low hillock. The wash of winter rains, the grooving share, the labors of the worm, "our busy brother," have all but obliterated an ancient monument, yet this is surely a Long Barrow.

How looked the green country-side, think you, when the chief lay dead upon the bavins, his finery and weapons about him, a crowd of hoppled captives filling the penfold, sullen, hopeless, awaiting the feeding tongues of flame? What manner of men were those who planned the thing and watched it out? Who, when the fire died down and the horrid glee was over, hasted dog-like to scratch the kindly moulds over their works ere they slunk away? Small and shaggy and foul, narrow of brow and hard of heart were those from whose loins we sprung, that unacknowledged, miscreant ancestry, our veritable fathers -thine, my friend, and mine!

Does not the horror of the awful past draw a shadow across the sun? It is good, methinks, at times, to lay hand on mouth and peer in silence into

digged.

And lo, the tiny church among the hills, asleep in the sunshine, for we are early. Not wholly lonely, for a lady moves among the graves with flowers in her hands. In the dark interior someone is playing; through the low dentelled arch thrills the sweet sorrow of Beethoven; otherwise are no signs of worshippers without or within.

The plan of the little sanctuary tells its own tale. Here are four stone walls and a tiled roof, neither vestry, aisle, porch nor transept complicates this example of a church in its simplest expression. Plain; how else? Uninteresting; by no means. Every stone is tangible history. Will you read with me?

The oldest and stoutest work is the small, four-square, unbuttressed tower, solid and dark as a keep. Eastward of this run the walls of the nave, pierced by two round-headed doors and a window of Saxon times. Half-way to the pulpit newer work begins upon a broader ground-plan, lighted by straight lancets of great but uncertain age, uncertain, since the chancel-arch beyond them is semi-circular and square in section, possibly dating from the eleventh century or even earlier.

So much we discern despite the twilight, and sinking into an empty pew enjoy the coolness and quaint fusty smell of the pious place, and fall a-wondering what rude imagery of the last assize the blistered whitewash conceals.

The chancel is all air and sunshine; the flicker of leaves and murmur of bees-blameless Sabbathbreakerscome in through the low, five-lighted windows, last effort of English pointed. It hardly needs the MDCXXXVIII cut in the tie-beam to mark this as work of the first Anglican revival. Dunstan here joins hands with Laud

yonder across the worn sill of that chancel-arch.

Meanwhile the corners of pews are getting themselves filled; a congregation for the most part of elderly laboring folk slip into our cool dusk from the glare outside, abase reverent, wrinkled faces for a minute before passing the red handkerchief over the sweaty front, which done the worshipper settles himself to wait. Men these for the most part, the wives will attend the afternoon service, being otherwise occupied in the meantime, for man must dine.

The squeak and clank of the small bell overhead stop. The organ wheezes. As we get to our feet two men enter; elderly, bronzed, iron-gray at the temples; alike in coloring and build, alike in gait and bearing, stamped, too, with the same expression. One drops into the pew beneath the pulpit, his twin, who wears the surplice, kneels at the desk. Squire and parson, noticeable men of a type fast disappearing, one brief description shall serve for both. The square, close-cropped heads sit well upon broad shoulders and deep chests, heads not easily turned. These are tenacious men, of a pleasant, patient tenacity, of some few prejudices and no theories; Tory and five-feet-six, how else? Which of us by taking thought can add a cubit unto his stature? Not my old friends here, whose Toryism, by the way, is of a lovable, humane sort, grounded upon the assumption that the laboring man must live; holding to a pious belief in a five-shilling duty on wheat which there is no use in pressing for, and cheerfully recognizing the predestined Radicalism (and consequent ruin) of our dear native land-a recognition which need not, and shall not, embitter intercourse with "the other side."

Nor shall the impending bankruptcy of the landed interest spoil the appetite. They grow a little poorer every

year, "selling out," as they confess, a few this or a few that to make good the leakage from the land; but here you have them, still at their posts, serving their God, and doing their duties. For the rest the good gray head bent over the folded surplice-sleeves, no less than its facsimile in the pew below, belongs to an all-round man, a clean, quick shot at rocketting pheasant, a dependable partner at whist (half-penny points) a humanizing influence at the meet and on the board, at fireside and sick-bed side; a staunch friend, a good listener, an arrant and incurable peacemaker, beloved of the laboring folk among whom he has spent his life.

For the service, it seems, as I understand the matter, neither "high" nor "low." Possibly for want of a vestry no Geneva gown makes its appearance, but we see less significance than our fathers saw in the Geneva gown, or are better content to let the man who does the work do it in his own way. So the stout laced boots and trousers of Oxford mixture peep from beneath white folds of ephod through service and sermon.

"Give peace in our time, O Lord!" This is good discourse; he is speaking of what he knows and withal pitches his message neither at our heads nor over them. Keeps a good distance, medium pace, and seems dead on the -where was I? . .

...

Thoughts suggested ramify, wander even, if you must have it. Warm weather, very. . . . The grave, familiar tones run together with a pleasant indistinctness, but one is perfectly conscious, quite perceptive, you know.

...

There seems more of a congregation than one had fancied; kneeling, too, unusual perhaps, but all right. One finds oneself without surprise kneeling close-packed among the crowd upon the cool flags. Someone is praying

fast and loud, but one catches nothing of the sense. Beyond the chancel-arch candles are winking in the slant sunbeam that strains through a louvered window. Tinkle! Somebody is holding something aloft in a napkin. The hush, the heat, the sense of human proximity grow oppressive. A subdued clink and jingle here and there among us betray the presence of iron. One's neighbors to right and left and the man in front wear their hair longer than is customary. All are in a state of suppressed excitement.

At the altar step kneel two great pink-faced youths with shocks of sandy hair falling over their shoulders. The mutterings, the restlessness, the play of hot breaths become unbearable. One finds oneself outside.

Here the crowd is greater but less dense; at each window-slit stand men straining eye and ear to catch the service, crossing themselves fast and fervently at each tinkle of the sacringbell within. Among the graves kneel men grown and bearded, weeping hotly upon little crosses of peeled elder, or praying upon sword-hilts.

Swords, swords everywhere, in the hands of leathern-jacketed smiths, athwart the knees of smocked carters and buskinned ploughmen who sit astride the green hillocks honing the bright edges whilst their lips move in half-conscious prayer. Bucklers, too, rows of them, clean and new, white wood and fresh-stript hide, lean on the churchyard fence.

Westward the lanes are blocked as far as one can see with tilted waggons; in the nearest two women seated upon the sacks are twirling a handquern.

There are glints of bright metal among the beeches upon the hilltops left and right; against the sky-line of the bare down to eastward stands out a solitary mounted scout.

We are no heroic figures, nor do we posture or straddle in blusterous wise, nor fall into picture-book groupings. For the more part we are common men, clumsy and slow-gaited, meanly dressed and pitifully armed, sweaty and dusty, too, for some of us have come far and lain rough for a week past.

Field hands are we with the marks of field labor upon us; short of stature, round-shouldered and wooden-featured; mere loam, but loam that is alight at last and, kiln-like, hot to the heartroots with dull-glowing, unquenchable resolve.

It seems to me that I have seen the men before, the brown kindly faces are all so neighborly. These stubbly chins and sunburned thatches of hair hang around the inn-yards of Hungerford and Newbury at the October hiring-fairs. Just such men have I met in the Hampshire woods at bark-stripping time, when the tall oaks lay naked and sallow athwart sheets of bluebells. I am among my brothers and know them all, and what they will do at a pinch.

My mind seems clouded with a sense of woe, whether overpast or impending I cannot just say. It is with me as with one who has fallen asleep under an intolerable sense of loss, a burden upon the heart that no sighing will heave away, who awakes in the first dusk, crying feebly, "O what has happened?" and again, "O do not tell me!"

And lo, from the tension and fear and high-strung resolve around me comes a clearness, an understanding of what it all means, and I know that the enemy is in the heart of my country, that he has careened his heels upon the King's Meadow and made the land of the Radingas his horse-pasture; that Englishmen are working under the whips at his staked dyke between Thames and Kennet-men