CRYSTAL PALACE Astounding Performance TIGER DRIVING GOAT…enough of that.
MASSAGE AND ELECTRICITY
(Weir Mitchell system) with Swedish and German movements combined. As each LESSON of two hours' duration is given daily on a living subject, pupils can be perfected in a fortnight. No bruising; those who bruise have been improperly taught…
Mary Jane Heathcote, 28, was indicted for the willful murder of Florence Heathcote… her little girl… aged five years and six months…
At Clerkenwell, Henry Bazley, 29, bookbinder, was… charged with having taken away out of the possession and control of her mother a girl named Elizabeth Morey… aged 16 years 10 months. She was traced to Highgate, where she lodged in a room for which the prisoner was found to be paying 5 shillings a week, and where he visited her… Detective-sergeant Drew, who had executed the warrant for the prisoner's arrest, said that he found him at home hiding in a backyard. The prisoner was a married man with four children. When told the charge he said it was a lie. On the application of the prosecutor the prisoner was remanded…
… Do you doubt I can remember all these items as they were? Well, I found them memorable. Check your library's microfilm files of the Times if you doubt me.
(To the editor) Sir-Contrary to my inclination, it has fallen to my lot to refute the theory put forward by my friend Mr. Haliburton at the Oriental Congress that a race of dwarfs exists between the Atlas and the Sahara…
Jas. Ed. Budgett Meakin
Sir-The necessity for a ready communication between the front door and the upper floor of a house in case of fire or other urgent need… is so obvious as to require no comment… I have thought of the following simple contrivance: A loud-ringing bell is hung in the upper floor; the wire of this bell terminates at its lower end on a chain and hook in the basement of the house. At night the hook is attached to the crank of the ordinary housebell and is detached in the morning… by this means also the filthy and insanitary practice of having a manservant sleeping in the pantry, that fertile source of much immorality, both in and out of doors, may be avoided.
Yours, amp; C. H.
PICCADILLY (Overlooking Green Park)-self-contained FLAT-four rooms, bath room, lift, etc., to be LET, on LEASE, and Furniture sold. Apply Housekeeper, 98, Piccadilly, W.
… That was interesting. But I would rather buy than rent, wanting nothing to do with nosy landlords.
Sir-If one of the delegates who spoke so strongly in favor of the eight-hours movement was, on his return home, seized with a sudden and dangerous illness; and if, on sending for his doctor, he got an answer to say that the latter had just finished eight hours of work, and that for the next sixteen hours he was going to rest and enjoy himself, what would he think of the new arrangement?
Yours truly, J.R.T.
And back to the front page…
MOULE'S PATENT EARTH-CLOSET COMPANY (Limited)
Garrick-street Covent-garden, LONDON
MOULE'S COMPANY NOW MAKES:
CLOSETS-for the garden
CLOSETS-for shooting boxes
CLOSETS-for cottages
CLOSETS-for anywhere
CLOSETS-Complete are now made, fitted with "pull out" apparatus
CLOSETS-fitted with "pull up" apparatus
CLOSETS-fitted with self-acting apparatus
CLOSETS-made of galvanized, corrugated iron
CLOSETS-to take to pieces, for easy transport
CLOSETS-can be put together in two hours.
CLOSETS-to work satisfactorily
CLOSETS-only require to be supplied
CLOSETS-with fine and dry mold
CLOSETS-on this principle never fail
CLOSETS-if supplied with dry earth…
The litany went on, and I read it, eyes almost in hypnotic bondage. But my higher attention was still back with that manservant sleeping in the pantry. Why was his condition so "filthy and insanitary"? Had he his feet resting on the bacon, or was his foul breath contaminating bags of sugar? And where exactly in the "fertile source" did the noxious weeds of "immorality" sprout? Was I to read into the letter dark implications of the deadly sin of gluttony?
The London papers, that in my own homeland had seemed to promise marvels, seemed only to grow more bewildering the longer I dwelt amid the world which they described. It would take time, I comforted myself, and threw my paper into a dustbin nearby-the park was very neat. Getting to my feet, I strolled on to the zoo. The day was overcast, and, top-hatted like a proper gentleman, I found the sun scarcely bothersome at all.
It was a relief to reach the zoo and see more animals than people round me for a while. Great throngs of humanity, though I had sought them out and still found pleasure in them, still were wearying to one who like myself had been so long removed from crowds. A stranger in a strange land was I indeed, notwithstanding a reasonable facility in the English speech and an appearance acceptable in the metropolis.
Naturally enough I gravitated toward the cage of wolves, where three gray beauties suffered with innate dignity their ignominious confinement. Although I at first made no effort to converse, one wolf of them knew me; more accurately, he knew that I was not as common men, and that I was far closer kin to him than any two-legged creature he had ever seen before. He knew that I knew what it was to run on four gray paws, and leap to the kill, and drink the raw red blood from flesh my teeth had torn. He knew, and could not decently contain his knowledge. While the other two in the cage, who may have known something too but did not care, lay drowsing and wondering at him, he bounded like a madwolf against the bars, and let his feelings out in the only kind of voice he had.
An elderly keeper came from somewhere and regarded me with suspicion. There was no one else about at the time and I was obviously at the focal point of lupine uproar.
I was not in London to be mysterious, but to bind myself more closely to the great mass of humanity. "Keeper," I said, to have something to say, "these wolves seem upset at something."
"Maybe it's you," the man retorted, and his gloomily surly manner reminded me of a Turkish jailer I once had, and the resemblance made me smile even as it aroused my further sympathy for the confined wolf.
"Oh, no, they wouldn't like me," I answered vaguely, distracted by a communication from another source. Freedom, the wolf was saying, looking out. It was not a question but a complete declarative sentence.
I cannot give you that. I answered him. Take it for yourself and it is yours.
"Ow yes they would," the old man answered me, impertinent with the privilege of crabbed and independent age. "They always like a bone or two t' clean their teeth on about teatime, of which you 'as a bagful."
Freedom! came from the gray iron cage.
Take it. Transcend. Do you want it more than food, more than retaining your own wolf nature? Will you put by your very body and its known comforts to have this thing you say you want? Simply to be free of your cage?
And the early years of Turkish imprisonment were once more very clear to me. Radu was then a mere child, a small child, too easily frightened to offer any sport at all to our inventive jailers. But I was fourteen years old when they began on me…
The animal's brain was churning with unworded thoughts, but for the moment it quieted and lay down. The keeper looked at it in puzzlement, looked back to me, and then walked over to the cage and reached inside to stroke the ears of the panting beast. To startle the old man I did the same, and had my reward in his expression.
"Tyke care!" he said. "Berserker here is quick!"
"Never mind, I'm used to them." The wolf's eyes were not on me but fixed on distance now, as he thought of running in unbarred, unbounded space.