and only men are sent this year, because the
experiment would be too much complicated by a
mixture of the sexes. Next year it should be
the women's turn to go. It is the first time
that, in case of consumption, one of the most
inestimable advantages of wealth has been
extended to the poor. If the success expected be
attained, there will be help wanted at home to
secure the permanence and the extension of so
beneficent a scheme. The interest felt by the
patients throughout the hospital in the start of
this little detachment of their comrades was
very manifest. Surely all hearts were warmer
for the sense of sympathy that stretched its
helping hand to them from far away over the
sea. The attendants and nurses seemed to be
in a pleased flutter of kindly excitement. There
was the heap of wrappers and of boxes in the
hall; a box of ice for the voyage, a book-box
for winter readings, and there were boxes
uniform in size and colour containing the kit of
each of the twenty patients, labelled not with
names, but with all the letters of the alphabet
excepting U, V, W, X, Y, Z.

"About the boxes there were the twenty
travellers to whom the chaplain had spoken his
wise and generous farewells before they rose
from their last dinner in England. Now they
were breaking out with little cordial farewells
and hand-graspings with fellow- patients and
with friendly nurses. The captain of their
band, one of themselves, was a lame man, who
had been a seafarer. He told me that he had
been in the hospital ten years ago for
consumption, and gone away well. But now his
lungs were touched again, wherefore he was
come back, and expected that Madeira would
make a sound man of him once more. He had
the friendship of his comrades, but indeed it
was noticeable how the common danger and
common hope seemed to have drawn them
all into quiet but strong friendship with one
another. Omnibuses came—two of them—
gratuitously placed at the service of these
fugitives before the march of Winter by the General
Omnibus Company. The omnibuses were only to
take them with their baggage to the Chelsea pier,
where a steamer of the London and Westminster
Company's was waiting for them; also placed
gratuitously at their service. Had the weather
been too rough for the boat passage down the
river, the two omnibuses had been offered to
carry the whole party with their friends to the
Hermitage pier below London Bridge, off which
lay the Portuguese vessel that was to land them
at Madeira. Up went the boxes. A, B, C, D, E,
F, G,—the best part of the British alphabet
was making its escape from us. Then, with
more farewells, the travellers were packed, and
then the omnibus wheels grated on the gravel,
and at the windows stood the comrades in
sickness whom they left behind, waving God speed
to the poor fugitives. And at the hospital doors,
and on the steps, stood patients, doctors, porters,
nurses, and white-aproned maids, and from all
these cheers were given, in which the kindly
notes of women's voices were most heard, while
all the windows were astir with waving
handkerchiefs. I was a stranger, yet, as I looked
back on the scene from outside the gates, it
brought some of the prevailing damp into my
eyes. Under the chill and dull November skies
it seemed for a moment that one saw unclouded
heaven through the hearts of men.

"Well, then, I walked to the pier and joined
the sick wayfarers on the steamer, where they
were packed comfortably round the walls of a
warm cabin with a very bright fire in the middle
of it, and sat, one with a sister, one with a
brother, one with a wife, huddled close. The
chaplain and chairman spoke to them a few
more words of simple sympathy in wishing them
good speed, and shook hands with them all. So
we went down the river till, beyond the bridge,
we came alongside the Lisbon steamer, in which
the whole fore-cabin had been taken for their
exclusive use.

"The steamer was coaling dirtily and taking
in a cargo of oil, which suggested the question
whether we export train-oil to the south of
Europe, and get it back in salad oil, as we
export corn spirit and get it returned in port wine.
We lost ourselves then among the coal-dirt, saw
the alphabet safely stowed, admired the handsome
state-cabin, thought the fore-cabin accommodations
disproportionately narrow; and, as
we returned to the river steamer, saw groups of
our poor consumptive friends gathering to look
down upon us from the rails of the quarter-deck.
And there also already one or two young English
ladies were having their shawls adjusted, or
caressing the pet dog that was to fly with them from
the perils of which the gathering winter mist
upon the river was as the great visible shadow.
Through the mist at last we parted from our
poor friends, taking among us the brothers and
the sisters and wives furtively rubbing their
eyes with the corners of their shawls, and with
exchange of little cheerings. May those
fugitives find Madeira skies as genial as the
sympathies that opened for them the way to such a
wintering! And may they bring back next May
a bill of health that shall establish the success of
this experiment, and cause it, with English help,
to be repeated every winter to the end of time!"

To all which, being of one mind with my friend
Timid, I said Amen! As who would not?

THE ROUGHS' GUIDE.

MY sporting information is derived from
sources altogether distinct from that Guide to the
Turf which is issued periodically by the ingenious
Mr. Ruff. It is served up to me every Wednesday
and Saturday, at the moderate charge of
One Penny, and I am advised, admonished,
warned, and instructed, with a vigour, prescience,
and versatility perfectly astonishing to myself.
Carping critics say that my guide is the favourite
organ of the Roughs, and that it is to be found
in the parlours of pugilism, and in houses where
out-door betting-men and fraudulent " welshers"
chiefly congregate. The same objection would
apply to the air we breathe and the bread we
eat. As a humble disciple of an able teacher,