GIRLS' SCHOOLS ST. JAMES SCHOOL Episcopal A select home school for BOYS of the GRADES. Ideally situated on a beautiful tract of 180 acres. MILITARY. All sports under supervision. Parental care. Limited number. Small classes. Individual attention. Graduates enter all leading secondary schools. 25th year. For catalogue address College of St. Elizabeth FREDERICK E. JENKINS, Headmaster Convent Station, New Jersey 45 Minutes from New York Catholic College for Women Standard College Preparatory Courses Saint Mary's School Mount Saint Gabriel PEEKSKILL-ON-THE-HUDSON, N. Y. Boarding School for Girls Under the charge of the Sisters of St. Mary New fireproof building beautifully situated For catalogues address The Sister Superior CHEVY CHASE SCHOOL Residential school for girls. Senior high school, with two years advanced work beyond. Twelve-acre campus. FREDERIC ERNEST FARRINGTON, Ph. D., Address CHEVY CHASE SCHOOL, Box N. Box S. Faribault Minnesota Second Educational Section, Third Cover Page BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE. No. MCCCXLVI. DECEMBER 1927. VOL. CCXXII. TREATMENT. BY HUMFREY JORDAN. REACTING immediately to the altered throb of the engines, the passengers in the saloon gulped down the remainder of their dinners and hurried on deck, lining up along the starboard rails. The great ship slid with a gentle hiss through the quiet sea, going dead slow, a phosphorescent ripple at the stem, a smooth untroubled water astern, and all about her the sparkling softness of unruffled star-lit sea. After many days passed in the same uneventful fashion, remote in their floating hostelry out an across the waters of the world was strange followed the example of the others, and recognising the smell of land, that compound of many odours that reaches far out into the clean sweetness of salt air, thrilled to a new experience. Away on the starboard bow lights, which had not the twinkle of stars, which did not rise and fall gently as the lights of passing ships, showed in a strung out cluster; beyond the lights, vague shadows of deep violet and purple, appeared the highlands of Ceylon. And those lights and those vague shadows loosed the tongues of the passengers. As the liner moved gently forward waiting for the signal which should permit her entry into the harbour of Colombo, those travellers who were not embroiled in a final rush of preparation found after weeks empty sea, the passengers along the rails chatted eagerly. The men and women who professed a hatred of ocean voyaging sniffed contentedly and murmured "Thank God"; those persons who give to the wide seas a simple and unchanging devotion also sniffed the air; and those few passengers to whom the business of sailing of familiar intercourse a new VOL. CCXXII.-NO. MCCCXLVI. 2 D eagerness in conversation. As usual, some worthy and assured soul positively and emphatically identified the lights of the hotel at Mount Lavinia on the wrong side of the town; there was, as usual, a heated argument as to which illuminated group indicated the G.O.H., and, arising out of that, the inevitable comparison of the merits of that hotel with those of the Galle Face. Planters, who had made the island their home for thirty years and more, who had gone on leave a dozen times or so to an England growing increasingly strange and unfamiliar, who had seen both hotels enlarged, improved, rebuilt, championed the peculiar merits of their first love. The pro-G.O.H.s declared that in first making choice of a pub and in sticking to their choice they proved themselves sane men; the Galle Face supporters wondered at the stark ignorance concerning hotel comforts in the East which stalked the world of travelled men. But both parties would fall gladly upon any unwary creature who admitted not having had the elementary prudence to book a room, assuring him that in the best hotel in Colombo, whichever it might be, he could not hope to find accommodation. A Yankee globe-trotting craft would be in, swamping the place with tourists. There always was one in when a liner from home arrived. Then signal lamps flashed out at the distant pierhead; above the awnings on the un seen bridge the engine-room telegraph sounded; the vessel shivered, quickening her pace, and a new turn was given to the gabble of talk along the rails. This," said a man, who knew the ship and spoke of her captain without reverence, "is well up to Bonzo's usual form. We shall be tied up by ten o'clock, and he will start working cargo straight away and keep it up all night. He always plays that trick if he can, the little devil." "Then," a masterful dame announced with decision, “I shall insist on being moved into another cabin; mine is over the steam-pipe for the winches. If this Company thinks that it can drive me to the expense of going ashore for the night or can make me go without sleep, it is very much mistaken." So for a time the people who were going on, the people whose business took them farther across the seas, held the talk. They debated the usual topics eagerly: the thoughtlessness of steamship companies in making their passengers uncomfortable in ports of call; the chances of finding better accommodation aboard when the shore-going crowd had left ; the skill of thieves, and the necessity for keeping cabins closed and locked; the amusements provided by Colombo; the likelihood of the ship stopping long enough to make a trip to Kandi or Nuralia worth doing; the singular absence of any officers able or willing to give definite information launch with a clean bill of about what was going to happen. As the ship slipped past the pierheads and entered the wide harbour of one of the greatest sea junctions of the world, as the wideness of ocean left her and she was wrapped round with the sights, the sounds, the bustle of the land, a man standing near the entrance to the smoking-room turned to a passenger beside him. "I feel," he said, "like a confounded tourist. The last time I came this way I was one of you fellows. Had a job of work in the East. Now! nothing to do but look on." health; the Customs officials and police came aboard; and a swarm of launches, sampans, and odd craft manœuvred and fought noisily for position. Bag Within a minute or two after the arrival of the officials the decks and the public rooms were crowded. Half-caste hotel and motor-car touts thrust professional cards into the hands. of anything that looked like a passenger, and were ejected by harried stewards from the vicinity of staterooms. gage got jammed in narrow places and impeded movement. Friends and relations met, and lost each other again in the crowd. Many people, for completely inadequate reasons, suddenly became the victims of breathless hurry. Native porters scurried about barefoot under vast loads of hand baggage. Anxious stewards kept careful watch over those passengers who were dilatory with tips. A decent segment of the white population of Colombo appeared to have arrived on board for a mild form of free entertainment. A more purposeful section of the same population pressed their way steadily into the smoking-room, quietly determined to consume as much of the ship's liquor as time and the generosity of their acquaintances permitted. The sedate neatness and order of a ship voyaging the high seas vanished before the assault of a noisy throng, heedless of the importance of sailormen and their methodical discipline. Without taking any active |