August 7, 1G15. 
LAND AND WATER, 
But patience joined itself to guile, aud, step by stop, 
the was seduced. 
Biscuit she loved was steeped in sugared water — to teach 
her drinking from a el.iss or tankard. Slie learnt this lesson 
quickly. Beer was then slowly added to the syrup, and, as 
she grew accustomed to the beer, the sugar was withdrawn. 
She soon despised her pannikin, and left it with a scum 
of dust to foul it. 
The beer at first enlivened her. 
She clacked all day, jumped chair to chair, pecked 
boldly at Man's hand. She tittuped up and down before the 
cat. The cat stared superciliously. She tweaked the dog's 
tail with such viciousness, tweaked it so repeatedly, that even 
he lost patience and snapped back. 
This counter seemed to fluster her. 
She straddled with her legs apart, upraised short wings 
and spoke her mind. A scolding fish-wife, planted arms 
akimbo, had been soft-voiced beside her. A stream of cluck- 
ing ribaldry, which spent it-self in endless repetitions, poured 
for three solid minutes from her throat. 
Then, as though drunk with her own eloquence, she 
crept behind the coal-scuttle and slept. 
Each day she drank more beer; each day she grew more 
captious. The dog now growled at her approach; she learnt 
the feel of .swinging boot; of cat's claw sweeping sideways. 
Water became distasteful; she pecked the spiteful hand 
which offered it — or overturned the glass. 
She snapped all that was offered her, to eat, or hide. 
She snapped the burning end of a cigar. 
It frizzled the sharp edges of her beak. The smell of 
singeing horn rose noisome, pungent. She screamed with 
pain, and dashed about the room — to whoops of mocking 
laughter. 
Two days she sat with beak agape — and neither ate nor 
drank. 
The pain, the fast restored her natural balance. She 
sought her pannikin once more. 
But soon she lapsed. She craved for beer, and beer was 
freely offered her. She ceased to play. The poison had laid 
kold on her. 
Crooning one sing-song plaint from morn to eve, like 
■ome old beldame, drivelling in her dotage; crammed, morn 
to eve, with glutting, noisome offal; forgetful of the savage 
dignity with which at first she had repelled her gaolers; 
Margot, her every natural impulse curbed and stifled, had 
ceased to care. 
Gone were the leafy corridors of green; gone the slow- 
billowing sea of forest-verdure; gone the broad-bosomed 
kindly oaks, on which her youth had wantoned. 
The snare, the gun, the birdlime, the decoy — all had 
been aimed at her in vain; and this — this was the end. 
Her pluiues were draggled, her eyes closed, her head 
sunk in her breast. 
The lamplight, streaming pa.st her eyes, was mirrored in 
her brain. She dreamt she was attacked by cats and hens, 
armed all with white-hot branding-irons. She stirred her 
feet alternately, she kept her wounded beak tight-closed, and 
presently heard, in her dream, the syllables of her name. 
'Ma.rgot! Mavffot! 
She opened eyes and closed them for the glare. 
Again the call rang in her dream. 
'Ma.rffotf M.a.Y<jot! 
She did not budge. The nightmare shaped it-self afresh. 
The cats, the hens pressed round her. Closer they came, and 
closer still. Her feet were birdlimed to the ground, her 
wings were nailed. The irons were reaching out to her, were 
touching her, were branding her. 
Ma,r ffot/ M.a.Tffot/ 
A pair of hands had flung her on the table, close to the 
lamp. 
Its fierce heat scorched her feathers, its glare confused 
aud blinded her. She swung about aud found herself 
hemmed in by cruel, mocking faoes. 
" 'Ave a drink, Margot? " 
The glass was thrust towards her, one of a dozen littering 
the table. 
Marjgot kept beak and eyes tight-closed. 
" She don't like beer — give 'er a drop o' gin ! " 
" Drink it, yer muckslut, drink it ! " 
The beak remained tight-closed. 
" Bli'me, but you shall drink it! " 
A pair of hands forced wide her beak, a third hanj 
emptied down her throat three spoonfuls of neat spirit. 
Margot stood up. Her every feather poiut-ed from her body. 
She swelled gigantic. Her eyeballs started from her head. 
Her wings whirred like a drone-fly's. 
So she poised, monstrous, menacing. 
She stared into the lamp-flame, fixed rigid, bloodshot 
eyes on it, and, before hand could check her madness, 
charged it. 
Some freak of her disordered brain traced to its glare 
the torturing fires which burnt into her entrails. 
The lamp rolled sideways, crashed upon the floor. A 
sheet of flame fla.shed upwards to the roof, and in that flame 
was Margot. 
The oil burnt itself out. 
Stretched on the ground lay what had been a bird — a 
shapeless, blackened, sticky mass, with splintered bones 
protruding. 
A Man's hand picked it up, a Man's tongue voiced his 
fellows' careless verdict. 
" Well, if that weren't a bit of orlright — s'elp me, no* 
'arf." 
PROGRESS AND REACTION. 
By L. March Poillipps. 
NO word is oftcner on the lips of our generation 
than the word progress. Tlie meaning we 
attach to it may be indefinite, but, at least, 
vaguely we imply by it a society not sta- 
tionary, but moving onward, making its 
to-day's goal its to-morrow's starting point : in short, 
growing. Our faith in this process is instinctive. We 
all more or less, 1 believe, hold with profound assurance 
the behef tliat man is slowly but surely leaving behind 
him the ages of darkness, ignorance, and superstition, 
and emerging into higher realms of prosperity, know- 
ledge, and light. So deep does this conviction go 
into modern life that it is diflicult for us to imagine 
life without it. For us who conceive of national exist- 
ence as a perpetual climbing upward it would seem that 
life on the flat, as it were, a life uninspired by any desire 
to better itself, but moving in a perpetual groove, would 
scarcely be worth calling life at all. It seems, in short, 
that this hope, this in.spiration, must be natural to man, 
iund must always have affected his thoughts and mental 
outlook. 
But a moment's reflection shows that this is not so. 
For obviously the belief in change, in progress, never 
could have arisen out of a stationary order of things. If 
we ourselves believe in progress it is because progress, 
from the Dark Ages to tlie present, has, in our ex- 
perience as a nation, actually occurred. The progress is 
di.scernible in our hi.story which lias passed into our 
minds. But had it not entered ©ur history it is hard to 
see how it would have entered our thoughts. There exist 
on the banks of the Nile, the same to-day as for many 
a thousand years, pumps driven by oxen, who move in 
a ring, round and round, treading and retreading the 
same perpetual circle, while the large wheel revolves and 
the water gushes into the trough. Since the days of the 
first Pliaraoh, Egyptian life has been like that, has 
known no more progress than that, has been a constant 
repetition of a formula, each generation in turn doing, 
thinking, and believing exactly wiiat a thousiind 
previous generations had done and thought and 
believed. This is life on the flat. Wiiy siiouid ihe 
idea of progress, as proper to man and inherent in his 
nature, ari.se out of sucii a life as this? (Jbviou.sly it 
could not ; tiiere is nothing for it to arise out of. 
And if we were to continue our survey we should 
find that, among the great empires of the world generally, 
stagnation had been the rule, progress the exception, 
There have been more empires on the l£g) ptian model 
17 
