The Afridis meanwhile remained steeped in what might be termed absolutely obtrusive virtue. At last the strain became more than the proud young soldier could bear, and Gunga Singh left us to woo fortune afresh, still beneath the banner of the Great Sirkar, but under far distant skies. murmur and with the stead- natives of India-and Gunga fast courage of a true Sikh, Singh became daily more and came back to the regiment miserable. prepared to take up the thread of life where he had left it. This, however, he w&s not allowed to do. He met with no overt hostility; no one abused him or threw the past in his teeth, yet Gunga Singh found it impossible to settle down in his old place. It was not that his brother Sikhs had not forgiven him; they had received him back into their midst with every token of good comradeship, and even his stern old company officer had bade him a gruff but kindly welcome. Nevertheless, even the British officers could not but be sensible that a subtle influence was at work throughout the regiment that strange indefinable suggestion of "something wrong, "which none know so well how to inspire as the On his departure the Afridis regained their normal high spirits, and once more the "defaulter's call" sounded through the lines with monotonous regularity. "Gunga Singh's Cow" has become a regimental legend, and any newcomer who seeks enlightenment on the subject, or is curious to know "how the cow got there," is advised to ask the Afridi Company! THE PRIDE OF PRAYER. “What are we, that our prayers should change the courses of the suns?” I. WAS it in pride, O sons of light, So swift, so swift to out-soar your sires, II. Last night I saw a little child Kneeling beside her snow-white bed: III. Doubt not that you had bound it fast! And hurled it, bleeding, to its place! IV. Your lowliness of heart we see: And even this new humility, So swift to quench the vital spark, V. Was it in pride that child-like eyes Grew wide with heaven where ours grow blind? Bound by the laws of their own mind! VI. The simple heart, the child-like soul, And, at each bed-side Bethlehem, VII. They found the circle of Thy love Angel and flower and child's young face; VIII. And if they knew not all they knew; Yet was Thy heaven of such as these! IX. O, not in pride those faltering ories Once more, a little child behold! X. Father, to whom the ephemeral scope Who canst enfold our finite hope And make it one with Thine own will, Out of Thine infinite might, O hear, Grant, as last night, Thy children's prayer. XI. They dreamed that Thou couldst hear them pray, And from Thine unspent Orient draw If lesser laws withheld the day Full morning by a mightier law! This they believed, in joy and grief, Help Thou, help Thou, our unbelief. ALFRED NOYES. ABOUT MARIE-CLAIRE.' BY MOIRA O'NEILL. THE story of how this beautiful book was written is as simple, as pathetic and wonderful, as the book itself. There was a seamstress named Marguerite Audoux, as poor as any other seamstress working for her bread in Paris, where, it is said, the working time was eleven hours a day and six days a week. Marguerite Audoux was delicate and suffered so much from her eyes that she was finally warned by the hospital doctor to stop sewing on pain of losing her eyesight. Unable to sew and unable to read, alone for long hours of every day, she beguiled her loneliness and her sore anxiety by writing the memoirs of her own childhood on odd scraps of paper. This untaught woman had not the least hope of supporting herself by writing; but she had the instinct for writing as certainly as she had the instinct for literature. What we mean by the instinct for writing none of us can exactly explain; but it is something quite distinct from the desire for a publisher, or for daily bread, or for future fame. François Villon was driven by that instinct when he lay in prison on the last night with his fellow-thieves and outthroats, all in the dismal certainty of being hanged next morning, and what was François Villon doing? Writing a ballade; a ballade which re This is an extreme instance of the power of the instinct for writing; it does not of course explain it. One hardly seeks to explain an instinct. Marguerite Audoux was not without friends. One of them had taken her to a sort of club where various kinds of people met, some of them literary and some not. They found her interesting and attractive, and all were friendly to her, knowing nothing of her writing. She listened to their discussions on literature and their own work, and finally confessed that she too wrote things for her own pleasure. They persuaded her to bring some of these and read them aloud. Perhaps they were only kind and sympathetic, expecting no great pleasure from the reading. But what she brought to the next meeting was the first part of 'Marie-Claire,' and she read it beautifully. Their ears, their hearts and minds, were all taken captive; they bade her bring more, bring all she had written, and nothing loath she brought more and read to them. With one accord they saluted the new genius, the star that had risen in their midst. How they must have rejoiced, these kind French hearts, to find that the poor young seamstress threatened with blindness and hunger to-day, had the means in her own hand of winning freedom and happiness and fame to-morrow! To my mind quite the most delightful part of this true romance is the conduct of the members of the club, true lovers of literature and true friends of the gentle genius whom they praised and encouraged to the utmost, while with perfect tact they refrained from over-advising her. She worked on now in the sunshine of appreciation and sympathy; she is a slow worker, and 'MarieClaire' was not written in one year. to Her friends, of whom CharlesLouis Philippe was one of the most admiring, exerted themselves manfully on her behalf, though well accustomed exert themselves vainly on their own. It was Françis Jourdain who finally brought the manuscript when complete to the notice of the potent Octave Mirbeau; and he, as we are informed, having once decided that it should be published, worked with incredible fury for long months, preparing the way for the new masterpiece. mysterious necessity for a preface written by some other than the author. In the present instance we find the Preface to Marie-Claire' written by M. Mirbeau unusually interesting, for without it we should not have known the pathetically interesting facts of the writer's life. And though it may be said that these have nothing to do with the permanent value of her book, the one fact that she wrote without any intellectual training or preparation is really of surpassing importance. For had we not been told of this, we should all have said : "This is the book of a very experienced writer. It has an exquisite simplicity of language that must have cost years of hard work to acquire. It has distinction, certainty of touch, and the very finest economy in the use of materials. These are all the gains of experience." Well, it seems that some of the acute critics in Paris were so much puzzled by the discrepancy between the inexperience of the writer and the technical perfection of her book, that they jumped to the conclusion that a good deal of it must be the work not of poor Marguerite Audoux, but of her gifted literary friends. That was a silly conclusion, but a To the lay mind there is serious charge to make; and something mysterious here. so it happened that a Select We cannot understand, or ex- Committee of the Académie pect to understand, why such Française sat to consider the heroic measures are necessary matter. On due consideration before the appearance of a sucit pronounced Marie-Claire' cessful new book. Of course to be indubitably the work we have long resigned our- of one hand; after which selves perforce to the other the writer was triumphantly |