same part of the country, I revisited the scene.
It was a bright still morning when I walked over
the ground, and I could with difficulty realise
the fact that on that very spot we had been
exposed to a murderous fire. The ground
itself was changed. The little stream at the foot
of the slope had been deepened into a drainage
canal. A railway ran obliquely across the way by
which we had advanced, and a bungalow belonging
to one of the officials had been built on the
very spot where the enemy's guns had been
posted.

         CHESTERFIELD JUNIOR.
  A SON'S ADVICE TO HIS FATHER.

MY DEAR FATHER,—I have undertaken to
make you acquainted with some of the leading
characteristics of the times we live in, and I
must not shrink from my undertaking. I think
it is desirable that I should now say something
to you about what they call the rising generation
—-the young people of the day, my
contemporaries, and still more my juniors. I
cannot help thinking, from certain observations
which I have made, that you really do stand in
special need of a hint or two to assist you in
understanding this very important section of
modern society.

Yes, dear sir, I say "important" advisedly,
and because I think that you are not sufficiently
impressed with the enormous difference between
the young people of this day and those who
flourished when you were young. I dare say
at that time the opinions and the feelings of
what you are pleased to call "boys," were
not much considered. You were snubbed,
sir, I suspect, and kept under in your youth,
and hoodwinked into a belief that you were
but an unfledged ignorant creature, and that
every person who had the advantage of you in
point of age was necessarily wiser and more
worthy of respect. Allow me to suggest, sir,
that such sentiments might do very well at the
time I am speaking of, but that they will not do
now.

As I have it greatly at heart to form your
character, so that you shall become in all
respects a person capable of mixing with the
society of the day, it is necessary that I should
be perfectly frank and open with you in all
things, and that I should point out undisguisedly
all such deficiencies as I may chance to observe
in your conduct: especially any want of readiness
to conform to the dictates laid down on all
subjects whatsoever by the men of this great
and glorious period.

I must mention then—-and one instance will
serve as well as a great many—-that I could not
help being a good deal struck the other day by
your treatment of young Mr. Pettiford when
you met him at dinner, at the house of our friend
Colonel Stopper. And here, if you will allow
me, I would take the opportunity (parenthetically)
of offering you a word of advice on your
choice of friends. I would ask you—-Is the
society of Colonel Stopper, and men of his stamp,
altogether good for you? Is not your advance
hopeless while you associate with such persons?
I have no doubt, because you say so, that Colonel
Stopper is possessed of many good and estimable
qualities; but I cannot resist the evidence of
my own senses, which tell me that he is, beyond
all the men whom it has ever been my lot
to encounter, opinionated and prejudiced. He
objects to railroads; he openly states that his
servants have orders to refuse admission at the
doors to any telegraphic despatch which may
be brought to the house; and he retired from
the army when he found out that the old
"Brown Bess" was really about to be
superseded by the modern rifle.  Is this man—-
a man, too, who, I am obliged to remind you,
is in the habit of garnishing his conversation
with many strange and most unnecessary
expletives, with which the present generation is
altogether unacquainted—-the kind of person with
whom it is good and profitable for the parent,
whose welfare I have so much at heart, to
associate? Surely not.  It is my duty to warn
you against him. And not against him only,
but against all the other members of that shocking
old club, the Retrogresssæum, to which I
cannot conceal my regret that you will still
continue to belong. What good can come of
such a club? They resist all modern improvements
Its members still play at long whist.
They drink port wine, though their old limbs
suffer so much in consequence that they are all
obliged to sit with their legs propped upon a
kind of stool shaped like a T, and so completely
an institution of the past that I really do not know
what it is called. The club envelopes are not
adhesive, as I remarked when going over the
establishment in your company, and no periodicals
of more recent date than the Quarterly and
the Edinburgh are admitted to the library table.

Never in my life have I heard such conversation
as I listened to at that club, when you,
dear sir, with the kindest and best intentions,
gave me a dinner there.  A great deal of the
talk was entirely unintelligible to me; but I
could understand enough of it to perceive that
it was all directed against modern institutions
and the new generation, and that, upon the
whole, everything that tends to make life
endurable was stigmatised as a "new-fangled
invention brought about by those d—-d railroads
and those d—-d penny newspapers between
them." My good sir, the Retrogressæmm is no
place for you, and perhaps you will allow me to
send in your resignation.

But I must return to your misapprehension
of the new generation and its characteristics,
and your treatment of young Pettiford, of the
Civil Service. It appeared to me as if both you
and Colonel Stopper were disposed to ignore
this young man's existence. It seemed as if you
had made up your minds that nothing which he
could by any possibility say upon any subject
could be worth a moment's attention, and that
whenever he attempted to speak, that was to be
the signal for you or the colonel to cut in and