has felt so much and loved so much in those eighty years that it must needs be a little tired.

"Tell them that the Lady of the Manor always walks up."

How delicious it is in its appeal to human weakness! One can imagine some of the Londoners, overawed by the high-sounding title, getting down at the hill's foot and walking up. And there is hardly a creature in the country who will go up the worst hills behind the horses seeing that the Lady of the Manor always walks up!

There is a certain book called "Black Beauty," which inculcates, most successfully, I am told, the duty of kindness to horses. She has deposited the book in many hundreds of London cabs. Someone had a humorous vision of hundreds of cabmen arriving at Scotland Yard with hundreds of copies of "Black Beauty," found in their cabs, to be restored to the rightful

owners.

Once she found a poor dog, in blazing sunshine, tied to a stake in the middle of a field, without shelter, without water, and untied him, and bathed his poor head, and took him away with her. I should like to have heard what she said to the human being responsible-and I wonder if he was her tenant -for her wrath could be magnificent.

And this brings me to the dominance without which her sweetness would be less than queenly. She had been a widow for several years, and since she is sonless, and alas! childless, she has to be king and queen as well. She has much property and many manorial rights; and to some people it may have seemed easy enough to wrest this or that concession from a woman. But she has held her rights, the rights of those who are to come after her, like a queen. I should not care to be the man who dared to flout her.

She prefers to be the mother rather than the queen, and her motherliness

leans over all those who come to dwell in her precincts. I think she could not bear anyone to be sick or sorry or neglected or solitary if her motherliness could reach them, which makes it a singularly sociable country and a more than usually kindly one. She gives the example of a great charity. You could not well displease her more than by an unkindness or an uncharitable speech. I have heard of such being made at her table, and of the deft way she rebuked it by a gentle praise of the one belittled.

Her motherhood is over the place as well as the people. In the next village, where she is not, there is no such amity as prevails under her sway, though she is also Lady of its manor, and there is still the garden of her Manor House, where Cardinal Wolsey walked of a Shakespearean day. The loveliest common in England stretches before her door. It is soft as velvet under the foot. In May it is a golden common for the gorse, and smells like all nutty essences drenched in honey. A little later there will be green seas of bracken. In autumn, before the bracken turns, there are sheets of purple ling. There are great stretches of the bracken and the gorse and the ling, through which are many paths and here and there an historic tree. There is the tree under which Richard Crookback sat his horse while he cursed the women of the village who had mocked at his hump, decreeing for their punishment that no woman should inherit from her husband; which law survives to this day, for all a man has goes to his son or to his nearest male relative. I found a philosophic tramp there one day last autumn, lying on a purple bed fit for a king, who remarked to me that he didn't want no 'ouses so long as the fine weather stayed, and when it went there was the 'Ouse.

You may lose yourself among the

gorse paths and find yourself again by the landmark of the two tall Scotch firs which are called the Sisters. Or you may come out presently among the magnificent trees, for this is the county of trees. The pines smell wonderfully in the hot sun, and the deciduous forest trees make lovely vistas and arcades. One is reminded of the ages of faith in the naming of the Mounts, the little hillocks on which are grouped six or eight pine trees. They are only mounts to-day, but one suspects that they were once the Mount of Olives and the Mount of Calvary. Round the Fish Pond stand grouped the Twelve Apostles, twelve splendid beeches, or at least eleven and a younger one planted there to fill the gap made by some winter storm. Lovely are the pond and the Twelve Apostles, whether in the greenery of spring, the dark splendor of summer, the scarlet and orange of autumn, or the crowning loveliness of the bare boughs, and like what one dreams of Fairyland. The place is always quite solitary, except it might be for a village child, or, in these days of summer, a nurse and her charges sitting under a tree. No wonder she who is Queen of the Common loves it like a living thing.

And that reminds me of an odd thing. The pond, guarded by the Twelve Apostles, is a great breeding place for frogs. When they have passed the tadpole stage and the heat of summer begins to dry the pond, making the position somewhat congested, the frogs leave the pond, and, hopping across the common, travel by way of the Manor House and its garden to the river, some three miles away. Or at least it is said that they go to the river. No one has followed them beyond the Manor House garden to see. But it is certain that a long procession of them passes in at the Manor

House hall-door, which stands open pretty well all the year round, and out at the garden door which gives you a lovely vista as you stand outside gazing on green retreats, "a deare secret greenesse."

There is a day in autumn, just about the time it begins to be a little mournful and the country needs something to cheer it, when the Hunt meets on the common. It is a gay and cheerful scene horses and hounds, and the scarlet-coated hunting men, and the huntsman and the whipper-in, and the people who come to look on in carriages or afoot. It is all grouped about the Manor House gates; and the scene brings a strange delight and exhilaration with it. Then, as at a signal, though I saw none, the beautiful iron gates open and the most beautiful old lady in the world comes out and speaks graciously to this one and that one; and refreshments are carried round, and, these partaken of, the business of the day begins.

She is lavishly hospitable and entertains all the year round. Beautiful it is to see her wait on her guests; and I confess I was rather scandalized at first to see her carry chairs and find places. Later I understood that it was her will, and none thinks of disputing her will. She is an exquisite hostess. Not the lowliest nor the least is overlooked or forgotten. Whether her hospitality is official or personal it is the same; whether she waits on the Brigade boys, to whom she gives a tea on the common, or on special, honored guests of her own, it is always the same.

It seems a sacrilege to think of age in her connection. She does not think of it herself, although she has been known to speak of "a chit of thirty." She postpones the day of wearing glasses, "not liking to begin too soon," and she has been known to ascribe to influenza the cessation of her walking

powers. She keeps old age at bay by her great heart and courage, and also by her trust of the elements, which are kindly to those who trust them. Younger women grumble at the tenuity of the rug with which she and they protect their knees against a winter blast when she drives in her open carriage, as she will nearly every day of the year. You meet her driving fifteen miles in an open carriage in such a North-easter as makes a younger person cling to the shelter of the hedge; nor will she look pinched and miserable as her younger companion very likely will. No, indeed; the wind will have only set fresh roses in her beautiful old face.

She is almost old-fashionedly feminine so far as her own tastes are regarded, though she is so great minded and hearted that she will have tolerance even for a Suffragist. Yet she is very masculine. She is, in fact,

that blend of the man and the woman which makes up the fine flower of human nature. She is in a manner of speaking full-blooded. A staunch Churchwoman, a sound Tory, she would have little sympathy with the thin-blooded virtues which one associates somehow with Radicalism and the Nonconformist conscience. She likes people to enjoy their wine, for instance, and would think it unworthy of a gentleman to be a total abstainer. The punch given at her annual tenants' dinner, brewed after a famous recipe, is a drink for giants and fighting men. She loves sport indeed, she hunted till she was sixty and sat out the last Eton and Harrow match in floods of rain. She was only afraid her visitors might think the weather prohibitive; and that was a shrewd and kindly one who, watching the disappointment of her face while the morning hours darkened, said cheerfully at last, as one might to an expectant child: "Well, never mind, let us go

all the same." And go she did, and missed no point of the play despite the downpour.

To be sure she is little more than a girl by the old cricketer who is her near neighbor, who played his first match for Harrow in '32, and captured Harrow against Eton in '36, and has never missed a match since. He resents not being invited even to late Bridge parties with supper to follow. "I mightn't go," he says, "but I like to be asked." They were certainly giants in those days, and our age seems sadly puny by comparison.

She has that quality without which no human being, whatever his or her gifts, is complete the delightful sense of humor. She has a fresh, overflowing sense of humor, and she has a charming wit. There is positive genius in her capacity for saying the right thing. To the parents of a small boy who had made his third run-away from school she, with her dear old hand on theirs, said: "My dears, but how very flattering!" What a contrast to the excellent bourgeoisie who, to a man, or a woman, suggested the stick! Fortunately the bourgeoisie have not often fine and delicate stuff to handle. The same little runaway, having had a stand-up fight with a boy, younger, indeed, than himself, but of quite abnormal weight and height, because of the young giant's good-natured but somewhat dangerous gambols with the small girls-you could as well imagine a steam-roller gambolling-was pitched into all round because the fight had taken place on a festive occasion, and had only not been serious since the grown-ups had separated the combatants. Said the youngest old lady in the world to the smaller combatant:

"Was it a good fight? And what a pity it wasn't fought out! For the honor of our village I should have liked my boy to win."

There would be small sympathy there with Disarmament or Peace Society, any more than with Vegetarianism, or Total Abstinence, or any other fad.

She is devoted to children and waits on them hand and foot. There is one child whom she sometimes has to lunch, who, being an only child, lives in a world of imaginary persons. There is the Prince. Of course, when Ruth comes to lunch the Prince also is invited. He is visible only to Ruth and his hostess; but of course he must be there, for his place is set and his plate is put before him; and even though the food does not seem to disappear, princes, especially fairy princes, have sometimes delicate appetites, you know. After the lunch the most gracious hostess in the world has been known to dance with the Prince, setting to partners charmingly and doing everything a small imperious child suggests as though she were not the Queen; and a Fairy Queen and a Fairy Godmother at that.

Good

She never misses a joke, and her laughter is fresher than a girl's. She has been known to rush into a dread silence at a dull dinner-table with a joke which, she confessed ruefully, was misunderstood after all. To be sure it was misunderstood. commonplace people could not be expected to understand a jest on the lips of eighty, nor to see how beautiful a thing it is when the spirit asserts its everlasting youth, laughing in the grim faces of the years.

By the way, when I talked of children I should have mentioned the child of the house, the little gentle spirit which seems somehow to keep it in innocent guardianship. Her portrait hangs in the dim, rich, sweetly scented drawing-room, a little stiff figure swathed in white satin, with more than a suspicion of stays. Little Mary M., the only child born in the

Manor House for two hundred years, lies buried, side by side with a Crusader and his wife, in the church of the neighboring village. She was five years old when she died; and when I look at her I think of Evelyn's son, "that pretty person," who died also at five, pressed down by a premature weight of learning. Also I think of the lovely epitaph on a child at Reigate Churchyard, which somehow I associate with Mary M. in her white satin gown:

In quiete sleepe here lies the dear remayne

Of a sweet Babe her father's joye and payne.

A pretty Infant, loved and lovynge, she Was Bewtye's abstract, Love's epit

ome.

A Lyttle Volvme but divine, whearein Were seen both Paradise and Chervbin.

While she lived heare which was byt lyttle space

A few shorte years Earth had a heavenly face.

And dead she lookt a lovelye piece of claye

After her shinynge soule was fled awaye.

Reader, had'st thou her dissolvtion

seene

Thou would'st have wept had'st thou this marble beene.

Mary M. and the wonderful old Lady of the House. They seem to me intimately wrought with the atmosphere of the house and a part of its fabric, and I cannot think of it without the one and the other.

I have said of her that some great hand should have limned her. She ought to stand in literature as certain beautiful old ladies stand in art; as, in our own days, Whistler's portrait of his mother and Sargent's portrait of Miss Octavia Hill. No writer and no painter could have a more delightful subject. A great poet or painter

might have done justice to her infinite variety. None knows better than myself the inadequacy of my poor treatThe Cornhill Magazine.

ment. But I am glad that a good Fate and a good Fortune led me to know her.

Katharine Tynan.

Why Silvio Sanchez got the name of Mirahuano was difficult to say. Perhaps for the same reason that the Arabs call lead "the light," for certainly he was the blackest of his race, a tall, lop-sided negro, with elephantine ears, thick lips, teeth like a narwhale's tusks, and Mirahuano is a cottony, white stuff used to fill cushions, and light as thistledown. Although he was so black and so uncouth, he had the sweetest smile imaginable, and through his eyes, which at first sight looked hideous, with their saffron-colored whites, there shone a light, as if a spirit chained in the dungeon of his flesh was struggling to be free. A citizen of a republic in which by theory all men were free and equal by the law, the stronger canon enacted by humanity, confirmed by prejudice, and enforced by centuries of use, had set a bar between him and his white brethren in the Lord, which nothing, neither his talents, lovable nature, nor the esteem of every one who knew him, could ever draw aside. Fate having doubly cursed him with a black skin and an aspiring intellect, he passed his life, just as a fish might live in an aquarium, or a caged bird, if they had been brought up to think intelligently on their lost liberty.

The kindly customs of the republic, either derived from democratic Spain or taken unawares from the gentler races of the New World, admitted him, partly by virtue of his talents, for he was born a poet, in a land where all write verses, on almost equal terms to the society of men. Still there were little differences that they observed as

if by instinct, almost involuntarily, due partly to the lack of human dignity conspicuous in his race; a lack which in his case, as if the very powers of nature were in league against him, seemed intensified, and made him, as it were, on one hand an archetype, so negroid that he almost seemed an ape, and yet in intellect superior to the majority of those who laughed at him. No one was ever heard to call him Don, and yet the roughest muleteer from Antióquia claimed and received the title as a right, as soon as he had made sufficient money to purchase a black coat.

In the interminable sessions in the cafés, where men sat talking politics by hours, or broached their theories at great length, on poetry, on international law, on government, on literature and art, with much gesticulation, and with their voices raised to their highest pitch-for arguments are twice as cogent when delivered shrilly, and with much banging on the table-the uncouth negro did not suffer in his pride, for there he shouted with the rest, and plunged into a world of dialectics with the best of them. His Calvary came later, for when at last the apologetic Genoese who kept the café, politely told his customers that it was time to close, and all strolled out together through the arcaded, silent streets built by the Conquerors, and stood about for a last wrangle in the plaza, under the China trees, as sometimes happened, one or two would go away together to finish off their talk at home. Then Mirahuano silently would walk away, watching the