anything but sweet and low. High above the
growling bass of our generally phlegmatic
gardener-groom (our man What-Not as I
called him) whistled the shrieking treble of
Matilda Kitchener's tones, as the hot altercations
between her and What-Not rose and
fell, from day to day, only to rise again. I
found out afterwards that they took place
mostly on the subject of tea.

We dined at five. But, although Matilda
Kitchener, with the rest of the strictly
domestic circle, dined at two, she could not,
she said, send up her parlour dinner as she
could wish unless she had a strong cup of tea
first. The gratification of this necessity, by
which the kitchen teapot was impoverished
to that degree that it yielded little better
fluid than water at the legitimate tea-hour of
half-past six, when the other servants were
in the habit of sitting down comfortably to
that meal, exasperated the aforesaid What-Not
to such an extent (not so much on his
own account, as he said, but because he
could not abide seein' the housemaid put
upon, as was too quiet to take her own
part), that "if she (Matilda) had not been
a woman, and he a man, he must have struck
her."

Of her piety, or rather, her tendency to
piety, I had very soon a sufficient proof in
the lecture she delivered, by no means sotto
voce, and doubtless intended for my ears, as
I left the kitchen on the second Sunday after
she came. The marrow of it was a dilatation
on the horror she had experienced in hearing
me "a-scolding on the Sabbath, which she
had been used to see kep' very different;" a
somewhat exaggerated mode of characterising
a mild reproof which I had seen occasion to
administer, about the lateness of the kitchen
breakfast-hour, in reference to getting ready
for church.

As I am determined not to tire anybody
with this woman, and her sayings and doings,
as she tired me, I shall conclude what I have
to say respecting her, by stating that she
very soon found herself again on the list of
the Servants' Register Office; that she never
asked me for a character, and so deprived
me of the satisfaction I should otherwise
have had in the opportunity of doing her
justice.

The consideration of how it comes about
that testimonials are not of more value,
involves one in the most uncomfortable
speculations. For instance: Has the world fallen
into the reprehensible habit of winking? Has
it contracted, by that means, a moral squint,
which prevents it from seeing any one in his
or her true colours? Do beneticed clergymen
attest credentials without knowing what they
are about? Are conscientious mistresses
deluded by an idea that it is uncharitable to
speak the truth, when the truth is really fittest
to be spoken? And that it is charitable to
suppress the truth, and shoulder its inconveniences
away upon innocent people? Of
course they none of them seriously mean to
favour dishonesty, or disappoint their neighbours.
Yet the fact is very stubborn, that
the highest testimonials are constantly turning
out but little better than so much waste
paper.

           GOING TO AFRICA.

ALTHOUGH I know about as much of Africa
as the intrepid French navigator to Pegwell
Bay would know of England, if he took his
impressions from that shrimpy shore alone, I
must assert that that one foot-touch of the
shore of Barbary from which the
conquerors of Spain once launched their
galleys, has given a sense of reality to my
thoughts and reading, whether I take up
Livingstone, Livy, or the great sporting
traveller Gordion Cramming, that, nothing
else could have implanted in me. If I
have not seen Tunis, have I not seen the
range of the Lower Atlas, the Rif pirate
country, and forty miles or so of the torrid
shore bearing away from the Ape's-Hill
opposite Gibraltar to Tetuan and Tangiers?
If I have not been on a camel in Fez, I have
met men with faces still scorched by that
city's sun. Have I not been on vantage
ground where, like Moses, if I could not
enter, I could see the Promised Land of the
Future, and the golden region of the Past.
Though condemned to cackle and strut about
the narrow poultry-yard of my Spanish experiences,
have I not once been able to flutter up
to the out-side paling, and get a glimpse of
the adjoining fields? But I shall never get to
Ceuta, the Spanish outpost on the African
shore, if I do not get back to Gibraltar and
the table d'hôte dinner, where I and Fluker,
the artist, organised the expedition.

The brazen gong had just called together the
incongruous guests at the Club House hotel,
when a pluffy Indian curry-skinned Major
going home on furlough—who had been
manœuvring, by help of one of the fluttering
tiptoe waiters, a perfect howitzer of a telescope,
which was erected as if to answer the fire of
the batteries just outside the hostelry—
announced something doing with the telegraph.
The telescope commanded, as I had been
respectfully instructed by a one-eyed waiter with
his arm in a bandage, a view of the flag-staff
that stood like a washing pole up by the evening
gun on a ledge at the top of the rock, whose
signals, instantly reported to the governor,
who lives in the cozy convent down in the
town, inform him of every vessel that passes
the Gut.

About this staff and its doings every
Gibraltar man is perpetually talking, when
he is not cursing the five days' parade, the
heat, the Spaniards, his barracks—colonel—
or his cursed luck at unlimited loo. All
eyes at spare moments turn to this brazen
serpent—this standing column of news—this
Daily Telegraph. At garrison parties, sickly-