A GOLDEN SORROW.

Waikato Times, Volume IV, Issue 219, 4 October 1873, Page 2

A GOLDEN SORROW.

I swear, 'tis better to be lowly born, And range with humble livers in content, Than to be perked up in t glistering grief, And wear a golden «orro\v. Sh\h>i'E\re. CKAPI'KK XII.— EMANCIPATION, '.S the small circle within which the affairs of the household ittbeFii»pro(h<s3danydi * sion, the intelligence of Miriam Flint's approaching numiij,-; was received with some dive— litj of opinion, but with general curiosity. There was considerable inclination to depreciate Mr St Quentin's wealth, md to wonder how a girl of Miriam's ago could be so mer;euary. Mr and Mrs Cooke, however, took her part in all liscussions ; and the general dislike entertained towards her father pleaded for her, as the same fentiment pleaded for Walter, in the very different direction which his wilfulness •M\d given to his own fate. It lias been seen that Mr St Qentin had a rational dislike to delay in the transaction of any business at his time of life,, und it followed, therefore, as a matter of course, that lie waa anxious that his rash but succosaful proposal to Miriam, should be followed as speedily as possible by their marriage. He found his hopes of her acquiescence 111 the arrangement which her father disapproved, were well founded. Sliriam was quite content to forego a settlement, though her father told her, in the most amiable and unrestrained conversation they ever had together, that he considered her a great fool ft* yielding, and had no doubt, if she would only hold out, Mr St Quentm would yield. It was evident that that elderly gentleman was very much in love ; that the * admiration ' and ' regard ' he had expressed had developed themselves into much warmer sentiments, and that Miriam was acquiring inoi e mid more power over him day by day. But she told her father quite frankly that she would not us? it in the direction of inducing Mr St Quentin to do what lie declared his repugnance to doing. 'As long as he lives, I shall have as much money as I slyill want,' she said ; ' and if I survive him, I think I maj wifely^ ely upon hating enough influence over him to make him lu\e me well oil.' Thus the matter was left in abeyance, aud the murrijge was all arranged, without the intervention of one of Mr St Quentin'b especial aversions, the lawyers. 1 Happy the wooing that's sofc long o' doing,' is an adage more respectable, perhaps, by reason of its antiquity than of its abstract truth. The wooing in this case was effected with as much celerity as was compatible with the care and pains necessarily bestowed upon the important business of purchasing Miriam's trosseau. Mr Clint, having been with difficulty convinced that his daughter could not go up to. ♦own for the purpose accompanied only by her- maid, was with still greater difficulty induced to go with her, and to submit to the infliction of a throe weeks' sojourn in very comfortable apartments, secured for them by Miss Monitor, whose pleasure and fussiness at the prospect of her ex-pupil's marriage were extreme. Miss Monitor had always expected 1 her de<tr Miriam to do well in the matrimonial line, but in doing bo -\er> well as this, she had exceeded her ionderfc hopes. To any suggestion that the bridegroom might, with, advantage, have been a trifle younger, Miss Monitor would have turned a deaf ear. There wai no danger now of Miriam's being condemned to the rurality which she detested, and Mr St Quentin's appearance and manner were us unexceptionable as his position and fortune. Considering that, except on the part of the bridegroom, there was not the least assumption of feeling in the matter, the marriage was all that could be expected. Mr St. Quentin was an attentive, gallant, bjit, not importunate lover. He never intruded upon Miriam's morning houi-s. His habits were ;io\inatutinal, in which respect he differed from most Indian men ; and he took a good while to dress. He did it well, -with taate, care, and, gravity, and was perfectly alive to the importance of tho operation at his time of life. Without the least touch of that detestable creature, the elderly dandy, about him, ho always looked as he was, wellgot-up and precise, from the ton of his very slightly bald head to the toe of his wellfitting boots. This Bort of thing takes time, and Mr St. Quentin objected to being hurried. He liked to breakfast leisurely, to read his papers— he never received any letters, more interesting than Dills and prospectuses— leisurely ; to drive to a florist's for Miriam 1 " daily bouquet, without, hurrying himself, and to present himself at Cambridge Terrace, so as to have an interview of half-an-hour's duiation with his betrothed, before they went out fer the afternoon's shopping. To Miriam* great •atisfaption, she found that Mr St. Quentin had a liking for theatrical entertainments, and her father did not object to them so, strenuously as he objected to most things fronj which other people derived pleasure. Consequently the tediousness of an uncongenial association of three, in the evening's, or the awkwardness of a tete-a-tete with a. lover,, with whom she was not the lsast in love, wa* very frequently spared to Miriam. When the party went out in, the evenipg's, Miriam was distressed at being obliged to . leave Florence alone, but her sister-in-law condoled her by,a perfectly sincere assurance that she never felt lonely. She passed the peaceful hours with her books, her needle- . work, and the interminable letters to Walter, of \*hich, she always had one on hand. The morning hours being entirely free from intrusion on, Mr St Quentin's part, and her father holding himself as. much aloof from Miriaax in town as he did- in the country — though their scanty association waa l»ss unpleasant — the sisters-in-law went out together without— the door, once closed behind them— keeping up the fiction of thensupposed mutual position. They enjoyed these expeditions very much, and Florence had, early in their sojourn in, London, taken Miriam to see the city boarding-house m , which she and Walter had lived during the months which immediately succeeded their marriage. They had also gone to the cottage on the Eastern Counties' line, and walked up and down the lane, looking tearfully at the tiny garden, and the little window, from which Florence, her fair head framed in climbing roses and honeysuckles,, used to watch for Walter in the early summer-time. Ihere were no roses and no green leaves now, and the window was filled up by a ponderous chair, in which sat an imbecile old man, propped up with pillows, who waggled his rickety head at the young women as they lingered near the little gate. It was all so different, so unlike her recollection of it, that Florence was gladjto tnrn away, apdi lose sight of the place. Miriam, especially, wished to visit the 'old JhouMi in the dull crescent in Bloomsbury where her brother and Florence had first met, but. there were difficulties in the way. To go to the house, and, if there were lodgings to be let there, to go in under pretext of requiring them, would be rasy; but, supposing Martha still in the service of Mrs Reeve's successors, and that she recognised Florence, as she certainly would, and were thus set gossiping about her to any of Walter's former acquaintances, who knew nothing about his wife's position at present ? Miriam acknowledged that this would be a risk, not to be incurred without folly, and therefore they agreed that she should goto the house in the crescent alone One morning, when the trosscau was almost complete, and the much taxed patience of Mr Clint was nearly exhausted, Miriam and her maid set out as usual, soon after breakfast. Miriam had not seen her father that morning* but she had an uncomfortable conyiotian that he was m a specially bad humour. He had made himielf almost unbearably disagreeable to Mr St Quentin on the previous evening, and had been positively brutal to her. She and Florence had come ifi. the conclusion that he was again taking to solitary drinking, and had been wishing he was at home, w here they- could bring Mr Martin's influence to bear upon him. They drove to the well-remembered crescent in Blooms I . ury, and directed the cabman to pull up on the earn© side as that on which Florence's former house stood, but a few doors higher up. These orders were being executed in a slow and lumbering fashion by the driver, and Miriam had her hand on the door of the cab, and was ready to step out, when a handsom passed them rapidly, and pulled up at the door of the identical house for which Miriam was bound. I There's some one going in,' said Miriam, looking out of the cab window, but not opening the door. ' A gentleman. Good gracious, Rose, it's my father ! ' ' Your father ! Are you sure ? ' • Yes, quite sure. There, he has knocked at the door : his back is towards ipt now.— Don't get down, please ' (this to iho driver). — ' A servant is ipeaking to him ; a tall, darkhaired woman/ • Yes, yes ; that's Martha!' 4He has gone in, and the door is shut. Rose, what can this mean ? ' I 1 don't know ; lam afraid to think !^ Let us get away as quickly as possible ; he may come out,' Miriam directed the bewildered cabman to dnve to a. draper's »hop in Oxford street, and 1 the two young women sat hack in the cab and looked at one another m amazement. Rose was the first to speak. 1 What a blessing you had not got out ! What a bles - sing he did pot see you ! He has, heard something, and gone there to inquire ; that must be it. Just think, if Walter had not made me change my name. ' Then they keenly discussed the matter. Lould it be a mere coincidence ? They could not hope tnafc. What had Mr Clint heard ; and how had he heard it ? Apprehension and anxiety took hold of them ; and Miriam dreaded their being kept in ignorance almost as much as she dreaded the effects of a discovery, . > • Depend upon it, we shall not be able to find out, if it s anything s,hort of his know ing the whole truth. ' ' And if he does know the whole truth— what then ?' said Florence, clinging to Miriam, and trembling. • Then he will turn me out of doors. I hope nothing, oxpect nothing less. O Rose, what a blessing it is to think that now it cannot so much matter if he does. Fancy if this— what we think this is— had happened befoie I knew Mr St. Quentin ! What would have become of us ? But now, we need not in ml, at least iot in cowpinson ; for if he tuins you out <>t his house, j ou will have mine to. cuuie to '

Lifk in a Cakkiagk am< Cart -We have now done with Hyde Park m tbe p«lmy days of Count d'Orsay, Beau Drummel and George the Fourth, the turbaned lurks and Foreign Ambassadors, and the powdered laequays of Lady Jersey Lady Londonderry , nad Lady Bles^ington, with their ■superb turnout", who held their »w ay in their caparisoned, emblazoned, and well-built town coaches, with the burlywigged body coachman— the bigger the better— and the two stalwart Greaaiier looking footmen, keeping watch ijxi ward with gold-headed e.mes. We w ere not in tlio^e day ■* terrified to death by pretty horse breakers— Cliloe, Lni>, and other Cyprians, as delightful m dangerous, us fair a« Heaven and as false as ; but it was common enough for iidresbes to captivate and cajole into marriage dukes, earls, and marquises and lome of them turned out better than was expected. Expediency now is the order of the day, and if a man bus money he may go any whore and almost into any society. We hare a member of our club, a retired knacker, who calls himself a guano merchant. A cat's-meat mau is now a purveyor j but what does it matter so that ho can make the mare qo 9 Diplomacy is in t ie ascendant, and although an unwelcome truth to have forced on the nnnd, one half the world doe« not care or know how the other half live, so that they do live. Each plays the great game, or the roy al game, of goose vol , l, e lp me ; I will help you if I ean — attack the defence; surrender or not surrender. Life in a cart is somewhat different to a life in u carnage, n« most people will allow ; but #ich is life — a nnr» farce to the lich, a toincdy to the wise, but a severe and p.i.nlul tragody to the poor. We behold in our ramble* through the great metropolis and elsewhere the young aspirants to parliamentary or family honors gazing out of the bay window-, of White's or Urookes's fresh from college, deep in tl c ! lue books, dee]) n 1 >ye and debt ; while the Coung millo Vure, with »U the meiins and appliances < f old Dobbs, his City siro, and who hardly knows Marsala from Madeira, is obliged to vegetate at the Grand Junction ordinary. Mill he bins livge studs of horao-f at Ttittcr»aH's nl immense prices, whilst hn friend the senator looks on wistfully at the succession of his eldest brother to the estates fit Cloverly Court. .Anxious mothers bail them both with dolight, high-bred daughters dance with them in ecstacy, and cossip with them about the o\er-night ball as they lein in their sprightly hacks in the morning in Kottea How. Our old friend Harry Hiuhorer, in his work on " The World and How to Square it," says :— " Many men fancy that in boasting of their carelessness of the opinion of the world they evince a greater superiority of mind than those who shape their course with a proper deference to the usages of society. If they really think so they are only laying bare the shallowness of their own mind, instead of manifesting the supposed superiority of it." But, whether in carriage or cart, wo are all influenced by the same common instincts of humanity. I lwe lived in a cart. I have driven my own cattle — and do now, for that matter— dow nto Epsom. I began my experience among the gipsies on Salisbury Plains. I once he.ird thnt Tom Taylor took a holiday among the red faces, and enjoyed himself. I think I was happy in a cart. It wns a swell cart, mine, with green shut tors and everything handsome. Ido not think my lews are so broad or my opinions 30 sound m a carriage as they \ er» in a cart. lam lure I was surrounded by * higher morality than I am now, with my box in the himilands and my chambers in Piccadilly. The upper classes are certainly "going it," as young Lord X used to ssiy. I am an old man; I have had a chequei ed existence ; and I can truly say that as a nation we are degenerating m elm airy, etiquatte, truth, honesty, and morality. Hut wiiat is worse, the decay is in Belgravia ruther than in llethnal Green — Gentleman's Magazine.

Our Pki'sem 1 Position and Probuu-e Future in India. —No thoughtful student of ledin, history can ha^e overlooked the fact thnt in many of the most dangerous periods in English rule in the East, that ruled, imperilled by headstrong and injudicious, or weak and timid acts, or counsols, was saved by a far-sighted, just, and forbearing policy which, somelww came in, as at the very nick of time, when only the help of Heaven seemed to be of am avail. Often, indeed, as lias the empire been saved by valour and capacity in war, it has oftener bedi sa\ed by sound policy and high statesmanship. We still need— nay, we need more than ever —that clear-seeing, ju»t, and generous statesmanship, before which self-seeking and oppression vanish, in whatever strength they may be arrayed, and whatever may be their confidence in' their power and right to do what if permitted to be done could only end in deserved ruin. Some people suppose, but their could not well be a greater mistake, that ,he lutives of India, taking the empire as a whole, are exceptionally difficult to govern. The fact that a number of Englishman, some of course of greit iibility, but in the ma«s siinpl} the kind of men against whom anyone moring through the streets of Jjowclon brushes at e^ery step of his walk, ihould exercise an influence paramount over rank, caste, ineage, wealth, and high attainments in India, ought to ihow that in spite of existing elements of discord, we are lot dealing with a people difficult, but in some respects exceptionally easy, to govern. All the strength of the Anglo-3-erman character certainly is brought out in India by the icope afforded for its exercise. A man m high office has ittle limit to his power. Mr Fitzjames Stephen, in about hree years, effected w. ithout any great difficulty more fundanenta'l, and m the main beneficial, changes in the law of ndia than a whole generation of law reformers — sturdy, ble, and unflinching men — were able to effect in England. Vnd what a high official can do in legislation, a lower one an do m district administration. When, however, we have lattered our national self-love to the utmost, we must eoness that to rule India something more than ordinary English [ualitiei m administration is required ; something that is upplied in the character of the vast populations. Burning \ ith warlike ambition, as many of the races are, few of them, n the mass (always influenced by some wise head), are unble to recognise un accomplished fact, especially if decided >y bit tie. We have won: we hold the reins of empire; he forces are clearly on our side, and India, admitting the act, simply demands protection and good rule ; a demand, ■yen whore not put into words, always floating — you may tlmost feel it — on the air of the nathc life of India Not [overnment on correct theories. Eastern races are singularly ibtuse as to mere theory of government. What they seek or are personal freedom, protection for persons and instituions, scope for indiyidual advancement, and some kind of itatus insuring to a man the individual position to which he as attained by bii ]bh or merit. Tnoughtful nnd able EngUh statesmen have always recognised nnd acted upon these 'reat features in native character ; an ambition for State imployment, and a rooted self-respect, only subordinate to ho still tr.ore ?joted respect for the institutions of the race md faith. Thoughtless English men in any number will .ell jou that no such features exist, and that to talk to them ndicates ignorance and sentimental fancy. The result h hat a learned pundit or moutaie, to whom every man of his >wn race will bow, runs an hourly risk, out of his own house, )f being treated as no better than a vagrant by Englishmen. [ say that this is an infinitely greater danger than Russia n Khiva. A favorite expression among a class of our KUintrymen in India is, " You never understand the native jharacter ; when you have been five years in the country, fou think that you perfectly understand it ; when you h.ive jeen ten, you doubt that you do so ; when yon have been ,wenty, you are quite satisfied that you do not understand tin the least." There may be some scrap of truth in this spigrammatic commonplace ; but men who have carried not nerely ability, but also sympathy for the people, to their york in Iqdia, haye always understood enough for every purpose which binds man to man. ftuch persons learn both rom history and life that a native of India can be faithful ,o the last degree to friend or salt ; only, as in everything ;lse, he has hii own way of being faithful. That there is in inmense amount of petty lying, one soon finds. That there s also a large amount of deep ycjracity, one finds by degrees. —Macqi Ulan' t Mn/jazi ne.

A Paris Ivdustrt. — There is in Paris nn as»ed woman irho has for the last 30 years supported herself by an inlustry of which, wo believe, she enjoys a complete monopoly. i\\o supplies the fl-nrden of Acclimatisation m Paris with bod for the pheasant*, which food consists entirely of anlV .qg 9 . These she collects in the woods around Paris, and eccires about 12 fnncs for the quantity she brings back rom each of hop for!i£[in<j expedition!. These generally last hree or four <liys, durins wlit^li slio nWps on the field of iction, in order to w.itch the invrts at dawn, and to find her vay to their treasures She i< almost devoured by the ants, m inconreMtMioo of which she t.ikes little notice, but at the ■nd of her harvest time, whioh huts from the month ot June a the end of September, her whole body is in a truly pitiable •ondition. Her services are, of course, h'ghly valued, for, ns there is tt presont no pjpipelition in this line of industry, it would be difficult to supply her plaef.