The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 353, October 2, 1886

Certificates of the posting of parcels can be got at all post offices. If you have any doubt about the trustworthiness of the person entrusted with the posting of a parcel, instructions should be given to bring back a receipt. A few months ago the Post Office was charged at Liverpool with the non-delivery of a bottle of wine and a box of figs. It turned out, however, that the missing goods had never come under its charge, the person to whom the packet had been given to post having eaten the figs and drunk the wine.

Parcels can also be insured against loss and damage by the payment of a small sum. Paying a penny insures to the extent of £5 and twopence to the amount of £10.

In order to understand the outs and ins of the Post Office—and it is a subject with which every sensible person should be familiar—let a girl invest sixpence in a copy of the Post Office Guide, a publication of which an edition is issued every quarter. She will there find everything necessary to be known about the posting of letters, postcards, newspapers, book packets, and parcels to places in the United Kingdom, or abroad, the sending of telegrams, the rates for money and postal orders, and the regulations of the Savings Bank. To turn over its 300 pages or so is decidedly interesting. One sees what a complicated machinery is now employed for the convenience of the public, what wonders—to speak of letters alone—can be done for a penny, and how thousands of miles can be reduced to insignificance by the magic of twopence-halfpenny.

In the twelve months from the 31st of March, 1885, to the same day of this year, the number of letters delivered in the United Kingdom was 1,403,547,900, giving an average of 38.6 to each person in the kingdom. The total number of postcards was 171,290,000. Adding to the letters and postcards the book-packets, newspapers, and parcels which passed through the Post Office during the twelve months, we have a grand total of 2,091,183,822, which shows an average to each person of 57.5.

VARIETIES

The "Woman of Stenay."

"And so you have not heard the story of the 'Woman of Stenay'?" said a Lorraine peasant. "It was in war-time, and she offered a barrel of wine to a detachment of Austrians, saying—

"'You are thirsty, friends. Drink. You are welcome to all my store.' And as she spoke she drank a cupful in their honour.

"The soldiers accepted with pleasure, and in a few minutes four hundred men were writhing on the ground in agony.

"Then the 'Woman of Stenay' rose, and with her dying breath shrieked out—

"'You are all poisoned! Vive la France!'

"She then fell back a corpse."

This is the legend of Lorraine, and the memory of its heroine is revered by the peasantry as highly as that of Charlotte Corday.

Singing Servants

Tusser, in his "Points of Huswifry united to the Comforts of Husbandry," published in 1570, recommends the country housewife to select servants who sing at their work as being usually the most painstaking and the best. He says—

"Such servants are oftenest painful and good
That sing in their labour, as birds in the wood."

A Hint for Workers.—St. Bernard has said that the more he prayed and read his Bible the better he did his ordinary work and the more clearly and regularly did he conduct his correspondence. An increase of private devotion will be found not to lessen one's power of work or one's efficiency in ordinary duties.

Our Own Selves.—How can you learn self-knowledge? Never by meditation, but best by action. Try to do your duty, and you will soon find what you are worth. What is your duty? The exigency of the day.—Goethe.

Useless Anxiety.—I shall add to my list as the eighth deadly sin that of anxiety of mind, and resolve not to be pining and miserable when I ought to be grateful and happy.—Sir Thomas Barnard.

The Moonlight Sonata.—The "Moonlight Sonata" is an absurd title which has for years been attached, both in Germany and England, to one of Beethoven's sonatas. It is said to have been derived from the expression of a German critic comparing the first movement to a boat wandering by moonlight on the Lake of Lucerne.

THE SHEPHERD'S FAIRY

A PASTORALE

By DARLEY DALE, Author of "Fair Katherine," etc

CHAPTER I.

THE FAIRY'S ORIGIN

"Die Eifersucht ist eine Leidenschaft der mit Eifer sucht muss Leiden schaffen."—German Proverb.

Very many years ago, in a valley a few miles from the coast, there stood a French château, beautifully situated in a handsome park near the Norman village of Carolles. The rich woodland scenery, the green pastures with their large wild fences now laden with wild roses; the shady lanes, whose banks will soon be covered with the long, bright green fronds of the hartstongue, and the delicate drooping trichomanes; the fine timber, and the picturesque farmhouses with their thatched roofs nestling in the valleys—all tend to give a home-like English air to the scenery of Normandy. And the district in which the Château de Thorens stands possesses all these attractions for an English eye. Not that any English people lived in the château; the De Thorens were French, or rather Norman, to the backbone, descended from the great duke, and proud as Lucifer of their birth. Pride and poverty are generally supposed to go together; and though poor is perhaps hardly the word to apply to people who could afford to live in the ease and luxury which prevailed at Château de Thorens, yet for their rank the De Thorens were not rich, and, consequently, after the fashion of many French families, there were three generations of them now all living under the ancestral roof.

First there was the old baroness, a picturesque old lady with very white hair and piercing black eyes, with whom we have very little to do; then there was her eldest son, the present baron, for his father had been dead some years, and his beautiful young wife, whom he was so passionately fond of that he was jealous—dreadfully jealous—of her love for her baby, a little girl a few months old; and, lastly, there were the baron's three younger brothers, who with Père Yvon, the chaplain, made up the family party. The two younger brothers were mere boys, still under Père Yvon's charge, for he acted as tutor to them as well as chaplain; but Léon de Thorens was a young man of five-and-twenty, only a year or two younger than the baron. He was a fine, handsome man, tall and thin, with his mother's fine black eyes and small well-cut nose and mouth. He was of a bold, reckless nature, full of animal spirits, the very life of the house when he was at home, which was seldom, as he owned a yacht, in which he spent a great deal of his time. He was his mother's favourite son, and both he and she had often privately regretted that he was not the eldest.

The baron was smaller and fairer than Léon, and not so handsome, though there was a strong family likeness between the brothers. He was of a quieter disposition, and his restlessness took an intellectual rather than a physical form, his wanderings being confined to the shelves of the valuable library which the château boasted, instead of extending over the seas on which Léon spent so much of his time. The baron's studious nature had endeared him very much to Père Yvon, with whom he was a prime favourite, and who had never shown him any of the severity of which the other brothers often complained, but, on the contrary, had erred on the opposite side with the baron, whose wishes had never been crossed in any way, and who had grown up to think himself the one important person in the world to whom the convenience of everyone else must be sacrificed.

For the first year of their married life the pretty baroness had contributed as much as Père Yvon to spoil her husband, whose every whim she had humoured until her baby was born, and then, much to his astonishment, the baron found that his beautiful, gentle wife had a will of her own, and, what was still worse in his eyes, a large place in her heart for someone else besides himself, and although that someone else was only his infant daughter, the baron was jealous.

In vain had he urged that the baby should be sent away to some peasant to nurse until it was a year or two old, as he and all his brothers had been, after a very common custom in French families. No, the baroness would not hear of such a thing; she could not live without her baby, and every moment she could spare she spent by its cradle. Indeed, so infatuated was she with her new possession, whose every movement was a delight to her, that she did not notice the baron became daily more and more morose, and that an ominous frown had settled on his fine forehead, while his mouth was closed with a determination that boded ill for his wife and daughter. But the baroness lived so much in her child that she did not observe the change in her husband; and as he never allowed the baby to be brought into his presence, the baroness saw but little of him except at meals, when all the others were present, and Léon's wild spirits covered his brother's depression and silence.

At last, one fine June morning, matters reached a climax, when the family sat down to their one o'clock déjeuner. The baroness was late; the first course was finished, and still she did not appear.

"Where is Mathilde, Arnaut?" asked the old baroness.

"I don't know," said the baron, sulkily.

"I do," said Léon; "she is worshipping at the shrine of that precious baby of yours, Arnaut. Why on earth don't you send it away till it is old enough to amuse us?"

"Go and tell Madame la Baronne the soup is already finished," said the baron to a servant at his elbow; but he vouchsafed no further answer.

"I think Arnaut has suggested that the baby should be sent away, but Mathilde objects," remarked the old baroness.

"Send it away without asking her, then. Give her a pug instead; it will be much more amusing, and not half the trouble the baby is," said Léon.

Here the servant returned to say madame would take her déjeuner in the nursery, as the nurse was out and she could not leave the baby.

"Really, Mathilde is too absurd, when there are at least three or four other servants in the house who could look after the baby as well as the nurse," said the old baroness, helping herself to some omelette.

"She is mad," muttered the baron, angrily.

"Quite, all women are; there can be no doubt about that. Look here, Arnaut, it is quite clear if you don't send that infant away, you might just as well live en garçon, like me, as I foresee you won't have much of Mathilde's society now," said Léon.

"It does not require much foresight to predict that," said the baron, bitterly.

"Well, if Mathilde won't send it away, just hand it over to me the next time I take a cruise, which will be as soon as ever there is wind enough to fill my sails, and I'll place the child somewhere where there is no fear of Mathilde getting it again till it is of a reasonable age," said Léon.

The idea of handing the baby over to the tender mercies of Léon struck them all as so comic that a general laugh, in which all but the baron joined, greeted this speech, which was forgotten as soon as it was uttered by the speaker.

A few days after Léon announced that he was going on board his yacht that evening; a south wind was blowing, and he should take a cruise up the Channel. Would the baron go with him? They were sure to have fine weather, and it would be delightful at sea in this heat. The baron declined the invitation, as he was a wretched sailor; but that evening, when he and Léon were smoking after dinner, he said, suddenly, "Where are you going, Léon?"

"I don't know; it depends on the wind. I may run over to England, or I may only go to the Channel Isles. I shall see."

"Shall you touch anywhere?"

"Oh, yes, I shall go ashore; I shan't take provisions for more than a week. Why?"