to have, it would be churlish not to apply it.
"And yet I don't know," he thought; "people
would say it was affectation. But I declare
genuinely I take no trouble about it; the thing
comes to my lips of itself."

Between the two gardens there was only a
low wall. Taking his cigar in the morning,
which he did about as regularly as he did his
roll and coffee, he could see the "poor invalid"
already disposed on her cushions; and leaning
on the wall, he wished her good morning, and
asked how she did. He was going to "touch"
again, as the kings used to do. His eye noted
a little change—a red bow on her neck, and an
ornament or two.

He began again. He made the το εγω or
"I," leap the wall backwards and forwards, and
perform all manner of gambols. "You think
me affected. I know you do; yet I don't call
it affectation. It really is not my way, &c.,"
according to the usual formula.

Fermor was "refined looking," and though
only visible as a sort of Elgin marble, by reason
of the wall, it was a very effective torso. He
travelled through a couple of cigars before he
had finished his monologue. Then he thought,
with his skilful powers, he would examine this
"child" on her history, about which he was a
little curious, which made her talk, and the
simplicity of her narrative amused him. Then he
tried her on reading, she saying that she read a
good deal. Did she read French? Indeed!
Had she ever read a thing of Roger le Garçon,
called La Rose en Evidence? No? Then would
she let him send it in to her?

"Common people," said Fermor, "taking up
that book, would say it was a common thing.
Of course they would. I found it out. Mind,
I don't want you to take my view. You must,
of course, judge for yourself. I only say this,
that if you want philosophy, sense, wit, and
human nature, you have it there. Above all,"
said Fermor, becoming deeply grave, "it is fit
for any lady's perusal. I am always most careful,
I assure you."

In the evening arrived Roger le Garçon,
in paper swaddling-clothes, and sealed with
pink sealing-wax. Roger le Garçon had not
made his fame as yet, nor did he enjoy the
esteem on railway stall or bookseller's shelf,
which Fermor awarded him. Some day, no
doubt, it would come. There was a picture
or two by an artist of the name of
Calkinwood, who had been much neglected by the
public, and a song or two by an undiscovered
composer, in which he discovered beauties
corresponding to those of Roger le Garçon, and
thus literature, music, and painting, were
embodied in Calkinwood, Roger le Garçon, and the
undiscovered composer. But the little pale
green Roger had gone on many visits to ladies'
houses, and had travelled round the country
like the Kensington Loan Collection.

It was the calumet or pipe of peace of all
Fermor's intimacies. Once it had passed into
her room, a telegraphic cable had been successfully
laid. This was but the first step; then
there was to follow a little series of lectures
and illustrations of the beauties of Roger le
Garçon.

THE LIVES AND DEATHS OF THE PEOPLE.

THE Medical Officer of the Privy Council is
required by the Public Health Act of the year
'fifty-eight, to submit to the Lords of Council
for presentation to Parliament a yearly report of
the proceedings which their lordships, with his
advice, have directed to be taken under that act.
The actual work thus done under authority of
Privy Council has been of a kind to attest the
worth of the services of Mr. John Simon as a
first-rate sanitary officer, empowered to feel the
pulse of the country. His series of reports
represents, in fact, a continuous inquiry into the
cause and distribution of diseases that may be
abated or abolished. There is no feeble
endeavour to take in at one grasp the whole vast
argument; but having set out in the report of
'fifty-eight with an argument "on the preventability
of certain kinds of premature death"
which served as a programme to the inquiry,
Mr. Simon has worked year after year in steady
pursuance of a single plan. And so he is
gathering slowly and surely into the series of his
annual reports a harmonised body of the most
practical information on the causes and the
distribution of disease. Thus, in 'fifty-nine, he set on
foot a skilled inquiry into the social and personal
conditions tending to produce diarrhœa and
diphtheria. In the two following years he
directed investigation of the facts connected
with the prevalence of consumption and diseases
of the lungs. In 'sixty-two he instituted
inquiries into the effects of working with
arsenical green and with phosphorus. Every year,
but especially in the year 'sixty, he has pursued
inquiry into the conditions producing typhoid
fever, and the variations in its relative mortality.
This year's report, published a few weeks ago,
while it adds largely to the information given
last year upon the state of vaccination in this
country and the consequences of neglect, takes
up several fresh topics in the study of preventable
disease; the most prominent being an
inquiry into the sufficiency of the food taken by
different classes of the people.

As to the state of public vaccination, our chief
officer of health may well push forward an active
system of inquiry, since small-pox, which has
not killed one person in the last eight years in
the Grand Duchy of Baden, and has not
destroyed a life in Copenhagen for the last
thirteen years, killed two thousand persons last
year in London only. By experience of what
has actually been done elsewhere, it has been
clearly proved that the disease can be
extinguished by a complete system of efficient vaccination;
very great importance attaches, therefore,
to the report of the physicians, Dr. Seaton and
Dr. Buchanan, who were directed by the Privy
Council to inquire into the state of vaccination