uncle, in talking; but it's no good for me to promise. I might want Mr. Maynard again, you know. He's very strong, and carries the basket much better than Harry Blake." With that the scarlet figure raced down the lawn and out of sight. The poor Vicar turned back into the drawing-room utterly at a loss; except for one resolve, which took the clearest and most determined form in his mind: namely, that he would find for both curates plenty of work through all the next day, and for many a day to come. With that end in view he sallied forth early next morning; and having laid his commands on Mr. Maynard, and, indeed, seen him start for the furthest houses in the furthest hamlets to look up truant children, he then proceeded to the dwelling of Mr. Smith, for whom he had arranged an equally engrossing mission. He knocked for some time at the door without receiving any answer, and when the landlady at last appeared, all the information he could gain from her was that Mr. Smith was "out." "Went out at half-past ten, and never said nothing about his dinner," concluded the much-injured woman. It is always dangerous to judge from appearances; but to do so in her case would inevitably have led to the inference that it was almost a farce for Mr. Smith to mention the meal in question, so incapable did she look of thinking of dinner, much less of cooking it. him to his curate had ever been before. Fastening it up, he laid it in a conspicuous position on the closed blotting-case, and then turned round to see what time it was by the mantelpiece clock, before he rose to go. But there was something propped up against it, so that he could only see the minute-hand-some dark object or other. He got up, and went towards the mantelpiece to remove it; but not until he actually stretched out his hand to take it, did his short-sighted eyes see what it was. Then he saw too clearly, too well. It was a photograph of Lily-Lily herself! The same that graced his own drawing-room table! "Bless my soul!" cried the agitated Vicar. "Can she have given it him? What are things coming to To think— to think that I never dreamt of this! I must hurry out and look for Smith, at once. He must be somewhere. And then; but dear me, dear me, what can I say to Lily?" But Smith was, apparently, nowhere. Every haunt the Vicar tried knew him not. Not even the aid of various zealous urchins set free from school, and only too willing to help "Muster Heathcote find the tall 'un," as Mr. Smith was familiarly known, could produce him. With a vexatious sense of failure and worry, the Vicar was fain, at twenty minutes to one, to seek his own mansion for luncheon. As he strolled, hot and tired, up the drive, a faint sound of voices fell on his ears from the thicket of rhododendrons on his right. Voices, no; it was one voice-a rather monotonous one. Heathcote stood still for a moment to listen. Then he pushed aside the rhododendrons hastily and went through. Mr. The Vicar ignored that delinquency on the part of his curate, and simply said that he would go up to Mr. Smith's room and write him a note. He ascended the narrow stairs and opened the door of that sanctum. From the mass of litter, clerical and otherwise, upon the table, he extricated writing-a-dozen paces brought him to two great materials and sat down. Something fell out of the blotting-case as he opened it, something that fluttered to the ground. He picked it up carefully. It was a note in a small, square envelope. Surely he knew the dashing handwriting, which nearly covered the limited surface; the enormous capital R of Reverend was familiar enough. It was—yes, it was, most certainly, a note from Lily to Mr. Smith. The Vicar looked aghast, indeed, as he laid it down on the table. Decidedly he had not taken the matter in hand a day too soon. Taking up a pen, he wrote his note quickly, making it shorter, sterner, and more peremptory than any note from Half ash-trees. They were very thick, and a tiny murmuring brook ran close beside them, making that part of the garden cool even on the hottest days. But the sight that met the Vicar's eyes at this moment took away from him all thought of cool, rest, or calm. In her hammock between the two ashtrees, swinging slowly, lay Lily; on a low branch of one of the trees sat Mr. Smith, reading aloud. Between them was a table with tumblers and lemon-squash. Both became aware of the Vicar's presence at the same instant. Mr. Smith started and let his book fall. Lily looked up and said, slowly : "Why, uncle, how hot you look! Why don't you come and sit here? Mr. Smith is reading me the 'Children of Gibeon.' It's much too hot to read to myself, and it's good practice for him. I think he reads very badly in church, don't you? I've told him so- Oh, is it lunch-time?" as the Vicar said, with a sort of gasp: ་་ Smith, there's a note at your rooms from me; Lily, it is one o'clock," and strode indoors forthwith. WILFUL WASTE. thistles and ragwort, such as you look for in the worst parts of Ireland; and poor Hodge, for lack of employment, swarming into the already over-full country towns, or making his way to unhealthy Queensland, the only colony that will assist his passage. All this; and yet the "artisan capitalist" goes abroad for his cheese and butter and butcher's-meat, forgetting that, though he gains just now perhaps a penny in the pound by so doing, he stands to lose ten times more than that in the near future, because every guinea that he spends abroad diminishes labourer's, farmer's, aye, landlord's, power of purchasing what he makes; and must soon, therefore, circumscribe his market. No doubt, at bottom, the fault is with the farmer. It is just the case of the Co-operative Stores over again. If the London shopkeepers had listened reason, the Stores would never have been started. But, despite all warnings, the urban and suburban retailers would keep up the old credit prices. And now more than half their custom is gone; and, alas, their stubbornness has half-ruined the THAT "wilful waste makes woeful want," is an old tried proverb; and equally true it is that "a house divided against itself cannot stand." Yet, as if we were a nation of fools, we English are going dead against botb. Take the latter first. There's the strike, which has cost the dock companies they say two millions, besides what it has cost every family among the strikers. But, worse than this, because less notorious, is the yearly loss, through the want of patriotism of our workers. The Wholesale Co-operative Societies, whose headquarters are in Manchester, thrive ex-country shopkeeper, who can't help ceedingly. Their yearly sales in England alone-and they have branches in Scotland -amount to nearly six millions, of which three-fourths are for provisions. Yet of this they spend a million and a half on foreign produce. Their buyers go to Denmark, Germany, America, everywhere, for what, with a little management, might be produced better, and more cheaply, at home. There's the rub-the little management. Who is to give it? The foundryman can't be expected to, nor the millhand, nor the miner. He has enough to do to make his Co-operative Society a success. A success many of them are. Last year a meeting of delegates from several co-operative societies declared so large an unused balance that they carried a resolution to start a cheese-factory in America, so as to get their cheese without the middleman. It was only by great persuasion, and after a regular outcry in the local papers, that they were persuaded to compromise, and to found their factory in Canada, instead of in the States. Here was want of patriotism with a vengeance. Thousands of English acres going out of cultivation; landlords taking to gamebreeding as a business, because tenants can't be had at any rent; tenants stinting the land of the needful labour, so that in "high-farming counties" you find fields of charging a little more than "My Lady," or the parson's or doctor's wife gives at the Stores, and without whom country life would be at a standstill, seeing that two-thirds of the labourers in the parish are in his debt. So the farmer has been content that English corn, and even English meat, and butter, and cheese, should be beaten out of the market in our great manufacturing centres by the greater cheapness of the foreign article; and yet, strangest thing of all, the farmer did not get after all the high prices that English articles used to command. He has been, all round, the dupe of the middlemen: of miller and corn factor, of grazier and butcher. What the co-operative artisans should have done-had their wisdom and their patriotism been equal to their faculty for making bargains-is to have put pressure on the farmers. "We mean to have our meat at the American price," they should have said; "and we are sure that, with proper management you can afford to sell it to us as cheap as they do." So he could, as Mr. Tallerman, famous for tinned meat, magnanimously explains in his book on "Agricultural Distress." The secret is, for farmers to combine and slaughter their beasts themselves, instead of having to "sink the offal," and thereby lose at least a fifth of the value. It seems simple enough; the difficulty is how to get it done. The farmers, seemingly, cannot combine. A few did open a little store in London; but the thing must be taken in hand at a dozen centres, and there you must have proper cattle lairs and slaughter - houses, such as those at Barrow-in-Furness. Paris owed to the first Napoleon the suppression of private slaughter-houses and the setting up of five "abattoirs"-just lately concentrated into one, in which nothing is lost, and everything is utilised at once. Under our system, the farmer sells a whole live beast to the dealer at the price which it is supposed its two sides will weigh after killing; all the rest he has to throw in gratis. The butcher loses, too, for he has to buy the whole beast, when, perhaps, his class of customers only take prime joints, when, at any rate, he has no use for horns, and hide, and fat, and tripe. Who does not know what a wretchedly foul place a country butcher's slaughterhouse usually is, and what waste goes on there, from the blood, which has many uses, to the fat, which regraters buy upoften after it has got quite stale—and export to Holland at twopence a pound, whence it comes back to us as margarine, and is sold for eightpence? That is the mischief. At all our multitudinous little slaughter-houses things wait about till they are more than half spoiled. This makes the difference between the vile, leathery garbage, called tripe, which you see dished up in frowsy little shops in the dreary back streets of our big towns, and the appetising "tripe de Caen," a staple Parisian dainty. Go over an "abattoir," and note how everything is cleansed and prepared and made the most of at once; and then watch a Northern railway, bringing to some Lancashire town, its morning load of bullocks' paunches, gathered from half a hundred slaughter-houses. They have been emptied? Yes; and that's all. They are lying in filth; the stench from them is enough to make you abjure tripe for all the rest of your days. tion in rent, and by employing even less labour than he now does. The butcher loses, too. He has to sell, for next to nothing, the inferior pieces to the EastEnders or Clare-Marketers, who display them in uninviting morsels under their flaring gas-lights, and tempt passing buyers with their monotonous chant of "6 Buy, buy; buy, buy." He, of course, rights himself by charging more for what he does sell; but the mischief remains, and is just this: so much produce is wasted, and no one profits but the salesman, whom we could all so well do without. In America they do things as neatly and economically as in France. Pickled tripe, brawn, and half-a-dozen other tinned luxuries are the outcome of that "offal" which we leave till it gets half spoiled. You know the country proverb about the pig: "Not a bit of him is wasted." Why? because Hodge takes care of that. His rent-payer is killed under his own eyes. He does not "sink the offal." Neighbours, when they hear the well-known squeal, compete with one another for this "offal." And when the parson's pig is killed, his cook makes up half-a-dozen dishes of "meat," which go to the maimed or the widows. The farmer is at another disadvantage. His beasts generally have to make a journey which lessens both weight and quality. Knowing men, like Professor Gamgee, calculate the loss at eight pounds a day on a quiet road-that is, in five days forty pounds of the best meat; while on the rail from Aberdeen to London the loss is five per cent. of the gross weight. And it is not the bones, and horns, and hoofs, and sinews that shrink, but the nourishing parts. To a well-fed bullock, nursed in its stall like a baby in the cradle, sheltered from fierce sun, jealously guarded from noises of all kinds, the journey to the cattle-market must be the worst of torments. The hooting and howling, the thirst caused by fright; no wonder Scotch-killed beef brings, as a rule, twopence a stone-that is, a farthing a pound -more in the Central Meat Market than the same beef killed in London. The Irish beasts have the worst time of all. Have you ever travelled across in a cattlesteamer, and seen the poor things in a gale? Here is waste at both ends. The farmer loses, Mr. Tallerman calculates, nearly a struggling mass of horns, and tails, three pounds sterling on every beast he sells, and undulating backs, along which "Jack," making a total of more than five millions when a rope wants hauling in, runs as that is, nearly the cost of all the meat that nimbly as if he was on the main deck. we import on all the cattle sent to market. Things are so bad-the bruised state of the He, poor man, cannot recoup himself, ex-beasts when they arrive makes the meat cept by standing out for yet more reduc- so unsatisfactory—that early this year meetings of dealers were held at Glasgow and Liverpool, and the Lord Lieutenant was memorialised on the subject. But cattle still land in the larger island often twenty and thirty per cent. worse than when they left the smaller one. Buyers secure themselves by paying ten per cent. less for Irish beasts. The only way, says Mr. Tallerman, is for the Irish to kill their own cattle, and send the meat over in refrigerators. The farmer will then be able to pay a better rent, for he will get the worth of his beast; and many industries-tanning, boot-making, etc.-which once throve in Ireland, will have a chance of reviving. Of all "Irish ideas," the most ridiculous is that they, with the best pastures in the world-in Limerick and Tipperary-should send over their lean stock instead of fattening it themselves. The whole plan is ruinous. At the worst of the bad time, when "horn" was down as low as "1 corn " -instead of one being up, as used to be in the old days-I have known "lean Irish stock," which had tramped right across England, sold in a little Norfolk town for less than it had cost to bring them there. Even in the hottest weather, the freezingchamber, properly managed, is a complete safeguard. What is the use of living on the verge of the twentieth century, when farmers still do as they used to do in Charles the Second's time? The worst of Irish tyrants is the "salesmaster." He fiercely opposes every move in the right direction, because he lives, and buys land, and sets up for a "jintleman intirely" on what he robs from the farmer. A notable case of this occurred lately in Dublin. The Corporation erected on the city boundary excellent abattoirs. Unfortunately, they are just outside it, instead of inside; therefore, the butchers refuse to use them, and cannot be compelled to do so, because the bye-laws do not ex tend an inch beyond the boundary line. Vested interests, and those of very modera growth, are at least as strong in London as in Dublin. Not long ago an Essex, or Surrey, or Middlesex farmer could bring up his meat and sell it himself, his wife coming with him and bringing her poultry or butter. Now everything must be done through a salesman. The Corporation has actually leased all the shops in the Central Meat Market to dealers, to the virtual exclusion of the producers or their agents. These "Bummarees," as they are called, who number a hundred and fifty-four in the Meat Market, and fifty-six in the Poultry Market, get little or no meat from the farmers direct, but are mostly carcasebutchers, who buy live stock at Islington, slaughter it, and then sell at the Central. Their minimum commission is two and a half per cent. ; and the value of last year's sales having exceeded fourteen and a half millions, this amounts to over three hundred and sixty thousand pounds, of which the producer is mulcted, the other gains of the dealers making the sum up to at least a million sterling-a large sum for the struggling meat-grower to lose in only one of the many departments which come between him and the consumer. Nor have consumers any freer access to the Central Market than producers. Except on Saturday afternoons, when there is a lot of deteriorated meat to be got rid of, and when some of "the two hundred and ten deign to sublet their stands, the public are strictly shut out. And yet the "Central" was meant to be a market, that is, a place set apart for public convenience, the tolls from which should be just enough to keep it in decent order. You try to sell your nice little pigs, just proper London weight, and not too fat. I tried once, and what with commission and expenses, I found I got about two pence a stone less than I could have sold them for in the village. There are too many middlemen, and they make too good a thing of it. They are as bad as the regraters, against whom our grandfathers used to rail when corn was dear. "Live and let live" is a good motto; but these fellows live so well that the farmer goes bankrupt, and the public has to pay more than a fair price; and the amount of waste, over and above the money loss, is enough to make farming pay, instead of being a losing game, if the farmer could get it. What is to be done? The "agricultural interest" has to be considered. If we ruin the farmer, we ruin Hodge along with him; and a country that depends on the foreigner for its food supply is, even in these days of steam, in a bad way. Besides, you must pay for your imported food; and every year the manu facturing competition becomes keener, and the protection, against us Quixotic freetraders, more rigorous. Mr. Tallerman's plan is virtual Protection without Act of Parliament. To the buyers he says: "You spend thirty-four millions on food. You have every right to do the best for yourselves-to buy in the cheapest market. I don't want you to give a penny more for a thing because it's English grown, unless it's plainly seen to be a penny better. All I say is, look at home, and see if, by putting pressure on the right people, by squeezing out the middleman, or at least by giving him rather less free play than he now has, you cannot get things here cheaper than you can abroad. Take your time; consider well; for, if you go on as you're going, you'll just deprive labourer and farmer and landlord of their 'purchasing power;' and they, you know, are after all your best customers." To the farmers he says: Children's dinners, too, have become an educational fact. In some places, half-adozen societies are providing them free, or under cost price. These must combine. Why not? There will be fewer secretaries, one "staff" instead of half-a-dozen, that is, less subscription money spent in salaries. If they combine and deal first-hand with the local farmers' abattoir, we may say, Q E. F., as Euclid does, "what was required is done;" everything will come right for everybody. The "made goods " will be taken up at once, the marbled fat and lean pieces, minced with rice or lentils, will make the most appetising of dishes. The farmer will get a good price for all he now "sinks" into the dealer's pocket, and the poor, little, undeveloped town child will grow up into something like what an English child ought to be; aye, and an Irish child, too. For Ireland suffers far worse than England from the present system. "What a strange thing it is that your fathers made money when the price of stock was low, while you were losing during all those golden years when it was high. I know the rinderpest, and footand-mouth disease, and such like, partly due to your own mania for overfeeding. Really prime beasts are sadly few compared with the population; and inferior qualities you are forced to sell for anything' now so much comes in from abroad. Well, what you have got to do is to grow the best of meat, and combine so as to get it killed for you instead of 'sinking the offal.' Moreover, let each butcher buy just what he wants. Some will buy only prime joints; some, all sorts. But each, not having to buy what he doesn't want, will be able to give more for what he does. Use up your tripe and such like while it is good. Do not send it a long journey to get half spoiled and then made unwholesome by being set right again with chemicals. Make your own margarine; do not let the Dutch do it, at a loss to the British nation of sixpence per pound. And did you never hear of what the Yankees call 'small goods'-sausages, collared head, dressed beef? Out of every animal you can, if you work while it is fresh, make a hundred and fifty pounds of these things, and can then well afford to sell them at half what they cost in-will be drunk. American or Australian tins." But all this, of course, means co-operation, that is, working together. In every district the farmers must set up something like what has been started at Barrow, the big new town-mostly due to one man's enterprise, as Fleetwood was to Mr. Whitworth's-which has grown up near the ruins of famous old Furness abbey. And in many districts tinning will be needless; there will be a demand for "small goods as fast as they are made. I pay a shilling a pound for the best Limerick ham. It is as good as the world can produce; and I bless Messrs. Matheson for so bravely keeping up the trade begun by Mr. Russell, the Cumberland man, who took his energy to Ireland. But I can well understand Pat cursing the Saxon when, judging by what he gets out of the bargain, he fancies I only pay sevenpence instead of a shilling. The conditions of the problem are these: Ireland is a food-producing country; the Irish farmer has for some time been getting ruinously low prices, and he has laid the fault on the English purchaser, whereas the real sinner is the middleman, whether grazier or salesmaster. Let Ireland kill her own beasts, and send over the best joints in cool chambers, using up the small goods "to feed her own sadly underfed people," and then two good results will be attained less political "gas" of an explosive character will be let loose in the sister isle, and less whisky-for which an empty stomach acquires a craving There is sense in all this; and, seeing the yearly meat-crop brings in seventy millions to the salesmen, and to the butcher nearly ninety millions-is, in fact, far the richest of our crops it is worth the farmer's while to see if he cannot manage to live by all this outlay. He must be a farmer of the new and improved kind, not one who is chiefly intent on himself laying on flesh, as if to illustrate the proverb, "who feeds fat oxen should himself be fat." Not a man who is content to sit for |