Page:Once a Week Volume 8.djvu/210

202 have morning-mare instead of night-mare. That’s all the mystery. Sir, have some luncheon before we go to the inquest."

“Yes, that’s all very well; but the books on the table—and the servants—they saw him.”

“You said you had seen him, and they had no reason to suppose that Wednesday was different from Monday and Tuesday. And did you examine the books very carefully? Are there no two books bound alike in your library?”

“But the MS.—the writing—I saw him write—with my own eyes. I saw the ink wet—here, I have it in my pocket. I will swear this last page was not written yesterday. I will swear—”

“Don’t swear till you get to the inquest, and trust anything rather than your own eyes. You think the ink was wet. I daresay it was greasy, and shone in the light. You didn’t turn over the last page yesterday. If you have no better evidence than this for your ghost, I think you had better say nothing about it. Come,—have a sherry and soda, and come off to Street. You will find the door of the old fellow’s room has been locked since you left him yesterday.”

The invincible unbelief of my friend did little to satisfy myself, although I felt that in the face of what he said I could adduce little proof to satisfy others. I drove with him to Street. It still wanted some time of the hour fixed for the inquest. The slattern was ready to bind herself by any oath to prove that the door of the old man’s room had never been unlocked since I had left him. We went up to see the corpse again. I gazed with strange interest. It seemed to me—though I did not communicate my thought—that the face expressed something more than it did on the previous day. There was content as well as rest. It might have been mere fancy, but I seemed to read in the expression of the face satisfaction at having completed a labour.

There were the preparatory ceremonies of the inquest, and the verdict of “Accidental Death,” and then came the quiet funeral. No one ever answered my advertisements as to the next-of-kin of James Smith. Indeed, they would have heard of little to their advantage. No one had any claim on the little property except the landlady for an infinitesimal amount of rent. I took possession of the books and the great MS. The former were all but worthless. The latter was—shall I say it?—almost worthless too. It was a long, rambling, historical treatise, very diffuse and very unpractical. I never succeeded in reading it through, but I read enough to learn that publishers would have given little to the old man for his labour.

And was it a ghost or an hallucination? I have said what I saw. I have said what the world, through the mouth of my medical friend, said to what I saw. I believe there is one of the attendants of the Museum, who refuses to be persuaded that he was mistaken in thinking that he saw old Mr. Smith on the morning of that particular Wednesday. Is he mad as well as I?

At least I know that since that day I have never sat at D. 7, and I never see, without a strange feeling of uneasiness and a deep sense of mystery and awe, D. 8.

are indebted to the United States for this elegant and useful invention, which is rapidly finding its way into every household,

Our American neighbours have been successful in producing many ingenious applications of mechanics to the details of common life, having for their end the saving of manual labour in the domestic economy. Such are wringing-machines, egg-whips, baby-jumpers, and various other inventions, not ambitious in character but neat and complete in themselves, and setting free by their use portions of time for other purposes, ordinarily consumed, as a matter of course, in the daily round of household work.

It is, however, the tendency of all processes for saving or dispensing with manual labour to produce, or to induce, other labour. The energy which perfects a time-saving machine will not be content to sit afterwards with folded hands and see it work. Attention, but of a more intellectual kind, and labour, but of a more skilled character, must be given even to the machine-work which is most automatous; and new branches of industry open out in unexpected directions as the fruits of inventive talent. Besides which, facility of production leads to a larger quantity of the particular object made being produced and used; so that if demand brings about supply as a natural consequence, abundant supply in its turn generates an increased consumption, often unexpectedly great. The facilities for travelling given by the construction of railways led to an expansion of travelling that could not have been predicted; many thousands of pounds being spent by persons who travel without object, urged by the restlessness which the constant sight of locomotion produces. It may be safely said that as a consequence of the introduction of sewing-machines in this country more work will be done, more stitches made than were done before, or appeared necessary to be done. Work is now performed in many houses for amusement, or for pleasure. A clergyman meditating his Sunday’s sermon finds his ideas flow more readily whilst his foot is on the treddle of the working-machine, and his hands are running a long seam for his wife. The lawyer, wearied by head-work, finds refreshment, as he sits by the fire after dinner, in stitching himself half-a-dozen pairs of wrist-bands for his shirts; and our dolls are getting better dressed as our children are allowed the privilege of working for a few minutes at a time with mamma’s sewing-machine.

From the first conception, that of seaming and stitching woven fabrics, modifications have been made, so as to render the sewing-machine capable of making boots and shoes, gloves, and doing other leather-work; and the improvement introduced of looping the stitches has very much reduced the danger which machine-work was at first subject to, of the work coming undone when a single stitch gave way. The “inexorable logic” which made every step dependent on the previous one is now provided against.