keeper—a tall thin one-eyed white-haired old
man, who had been a soldier, and who, whether
he walked or rode, was always accompanied by
an orange-coloured ape from South America. He
had a grown-up son, whom he treated like a
child, and it was this son's duty to kill the deer
sent away for venison.

Our only companion was the parson's son, a
boy of our own age. He had a famous pony,
and our farmer soon found one for us. It was
there we learned to ride, in a way that all the
schools of Europe could never have taught us.
Under the patronage of the gamekeeper, we two
boys were made useful in helping to ride down
and cut off from the herd, the deer that he picked
out to shoot. It was a wild park, full of old timber,
with varieties of hill and dale, all in a state of
nature, as unlike the trim parks of the midland
counties as Kensington Gardens resemble a
Derbyshire moor. No colonel of cavalry was ever
better obeyed than the old gamekeeper, as, glass
in hand, he took his place on a convenient
eminence and gave his orders. We were to
keep our eyes on the buck, and never think about
a fall. And we didn't. We raced up and down
hill, twirled through trees, jumped ditches, and
rolled over unexpected trunks of fallen trees,
ponies and all, and then up and at it again!
Never were boys more happy. Besides these
deer hunts, we had slow rides through the woods,
over hundreds of acres of grass-grown rides, alive
with pheasants and rabbits. In the evenings
we read Robinson Crusoe, Pope's Homer, and
Walter Scott's Poems, and made ourselves the
heroes of our reading. Only pony-riding
romantic boys could have so enjoyed the sights and
sounds of those deserted gardens and park.

As a final word, we would again say to fathers
to whose purses the stable-door is open, in the
course of education don't neglect the pony.
Remember that your boy can never be a horseman
until he has learned to gallop up and down
dale with slight hand, all rules forgotten, and
keeping his seat by instinct.

WOLFISH HUMANITY.

EVERY superstition must have had a material
beginning—some natural cause out of which it
has grown like a gnarled and crooked tree
from a shapely seed; there being no such thing
possible, to humanity, say the philosophers, as
an original lie—lies being only exaggerations,
distortions, or mistakes. A superstition,
puzzling enough as it stands, is that which
believes in the power of men to turn themselves
into wolves and other wild beasts; what the
Greeks used to call lycanthropy, and the
Germans the wehr-wolf; what was the loup-garou in
French and the vargr in Norse—the last word
meaning a wolf or a godless man, at pleasure.
It seems strange how such a superstition could
have arisen at all; how, by what process of
exaggeration or mistake, it could be said that men
had actually been seen to transform themselves
into howling beasts of prey, and then to run off
into the woods to slay and devour according to
their kind. But here is a book* which, if it does
not pretend to exhaust the subject from beginning
to end, at least has gathered together some
of its chief legends and most striking tales;
beside giving a few rational hints and explanations,
which help to make a trifle plainer and more
intelligible one of the most obscure subjects we
possess.
* The Book of Were-Wolves, by Sabine Baring
Gould.

The world has always believed in what, for
the convenience of a generic term, we will call
lycanthropy; that is, the power of certain godless
men and women to change their form for that of
a wild beast—the kind selected at pleasure and
according to the laws of physical geography—
as wolves where wolves abound, bears where
there are bears, dogs, cats, snakes, or hares, just
as the country people are best accustomed or
have been most annoyed. The Greeks believed
in this power; so did the Romans; in the
East, it has always been a popular creed; the
northern and midland countries of Europe have
been overrun with were-wolves seeking their
prey, but not exactly from heaven. Norway
and Iceland were the haunts of this dreaded
power. The expression there for men who
were lycanthropists was eigi einhamir—"not of
one skin"—a graphic and pictorial touch, like
much in that terse old northern tongue. When
a man changed himself into a beast, he doubled
or quadrupled his powers, having acquired the
strength and capabilities of the beast into whose
body he had travelled, in addition to the strength
and capabilities of his natural and human state.
He could do all that man or beast could do. If
a fish he could swim, if a bird he could fly, if a
wolf he could rend and tear and flee; always
preserving the powers belonging to his human
condition. Entirely bestial as to his form, he
was nevertheless to be recognised by his eyes,
which, let his transformation be as complete as
it might, always remained human. If, as it has
been suggested, the were-wolf were oftentimes
an outlaw living in fastnesses, and clothed in
the skin of a beast for his disguise (vargr meant
outlaw, fiend, and wolf indiscriminately), that
would account for the human expression of the
eyes, the only feature which could not be
concealed.

The story of Björn and Bera—perhaps of
Beauty and the Beast—is to be so interpreted.
Hring, the old king of Norway, being a widower,
sent out his messengers to seek him a second
wife. After a little wandering they found
one, a bad and beautiful woman called Hvit,
whom they brought home to King Hring to be
made his queen and wedded wife; as came
about in due course. Now Hring had a young
son called Björn, a fine and comely lad well
skilled in all manly sports and exercises, and
growing daily in fame and strength. Bjorn's
great friend and playfellow was Bera, the only
daughter of a carle who owned a farm not far
from the king's house; and Björn, the king's