BARREN HONOUR:


              A TALE.



BY TILE AUTHOR OF  GUY LIVINGSTONE, X SC SWORD AND GOWN), ETC.



           CHAPTER L

           NEW AND OLD.

  A vYER central place is Newmanham,
both by local and commercial position
-a big, black, busy town, waxing bigger
and blacker and busier day by day. For
more than a century that Queen of Trade
has worn her iron crown right worthily;
her pulse beats, now, sonorously with
the clang of a myriad of steam-ham-
mers; her veins swell almost to bursting
with the ceaseless currents of molten
metals; and her breath goes up to
heaven, heavy and vaporous with the
blasts of many furnaces.
  Whenever I pass that way, as a born
Briton, an unit of a great mercantile na-
tion, I feel or suppose myself to feel, a
certain amount of pride and satisfaction
in witnessing so many evidences of my
country's wealth and prosperity; they
are very palpable indeed, those eviden-
ces, and not one of the senses will be in-
clined to dispute their existence. If I
chance to have an exiled Neapolitan
prince, or a deposed grand-duke, or any
other potentate in difficulties, staying
with me (which, of course, happens con-
stantly), I make a point of beguiling the
illustrious foreigner into the dingy laby-
rinth of Newmanham, from which he
escapes not till he has done justice to
every one of its marvels. Nevertheless,
as an individual whose only relations
with commerce consist in always want-
ing to buy more things than one can



possibly afford, and in never, by any
chance, having anything to sell, except
now and then a horse or two, more or
less "screwed," or a parcel of ideas, more
or less trivial-as such an one, I say, I
am free to confess, that my first and
abiding emotion, after being ten min-
utes in that great emporium, is a deso-
late sense of having no earthly business
there, and of being very much in every-
body's way-a sentiment which the na-
tives seem perfectly to fathom and coin-
cide with.
  It is not that they make themselves
in any wise disagreeable, or east you
forth with contumely from their hive.
The operative element does not greet
the stranger with the "1'eave of a arf-
brick," after the genial custom of the
minink districts; neither is he put to
confusion by a broad stare, breaking up
into a broader grin, as sometimes oc-
curs in our polite sea-port towns. A
quick careless glance, as if the gazer had
no time even for curiosity, is the worst
ordeal you will have to encounter in
passing a group of the inhabitants,
whether at work, or by a rare chance,
resting from their labours. There are
is roughs" to be found there more dan-
gerous, they say, than in most places:
but these do not show much in daylight
or frequented thoroughfares. They have
their own haunts, and when the sun
arises they lie down in their dens. In
deed, the upper Ten Thousand-the
great manufacturers and iron-founders
or their representatives-will treat you