were on duty round the house, build these expensive seats so who punctiliously saluted us. No time was lost in admitting us to the presence of the general. We found him and his staff poring over maps in a small room leading off the hall. They, too, were dressed more in mufti than in uniform, in what might without offence be styled "ratcatcher " hunting-kit; but they wore their Iron Crosses and badges of rank. The interview was not particularly cordial; but then one had no reason for expecting it to be. It was asking a good deal to request these people to withdraw, considering all the circumstances. In the end, however, we obtained all that we wanted. The general kindly lent us an orderly to show us the way to the wood in question, and we took our leave. Some weeks afterwards the withdrawal upon either side had been so faithfully carried out, and had progressed so far, that our own brigade headquarters were able to be established in Prince Hohenlohe's schloss, and the Union Jack was flying from its flagstaff. On a lovely summer's day I rode over from my gut to visit it. One now had ample opportunity to admire its magnificent rooms. There are many of these palatial residences scattered up and down the country. On the whole, both sides seem to have spared them, It is a little puzzling that the wealthy Prussian families should have chosen to near to the Polish border ; but the explanation is probably to be found in the excellence of the hunting. Also, the present situation could scarcely have occurred to any German potentate in the proud old pre-war days! Prince Hohenlohe's schloss at Slawentzitz is only one of his residences, but it is full of beautiful and costly things. The drawing-room, when I saw it, contained many interesting historical portraits by such artists as Kreul, Weygandt, G. Taubert, George des Marées, and Lauchert. There was a spirited portrait of Frederick William of "Borussia,' and the titles under all of them had a fine old ring about them (one must admit it): Christine Charlotte Sophie, Fürstin von den Osten Sacken; Marianne, Erbprinzessin zu Hohenlohe - Ingelfingen, geboren Gräfin von Hoym; Pauline, Fürstin zu Hohenlohe-Ohringen, geboren Prinzessin Fürstenberg - sunt lacrymæ rerum. zu The Kaiser used frequently to accept Prince Hohenlohe's hospitality at this schloss, for the hunting and shooting. In the smoking-room I noticed two large framed photographs depicting him and his host setting out for a day's shooting-outriders, postilions, fine liveries, spanking horses, &c.; and at all the upstairs windows a crowd of domestics, eager to obtain a glimpse of the All Highest. Life in Salesche-the village of starlings used to sweep of the gut went on in a sort of outward tranquillity, varied by periods of unrest, for some time longer. There was plenty of patrolling to be done, and thus plenty of opportunity for getting away into remote spots on horseback and alone, which to some is one of the chiefest joys of life. The peasants were full of interest, as are all peasants. They were mostly Poles, but speaking German as well as their own language. They appeared perfectly content to be under German rule, provided they were left in peace to attend to their husbandry. By the middle of June they had got all their hay in. Then there came a day on which I saw the village crier going round with his bell to proclaim something to the people. They told me he was announcing that the day had come when the harvesting of the rape crop might begin. Is not this, after all, just about the only right and proper sort of proclamation to make to peasants ? The weather now got very hot, working up at long intervals into terrific thunderstorms, with blinding flashes of lightning and deafening peals; but in spite of all this to-do only a few drops of warmish rain would at the end of it be wrung from the reluctant sky. These storms must be of frequent occurrence every summer, for the little children took no notice of them at all. Before they burst, great flocks about the sky and across the fields, and it was most interesting to watch their movements. At first sight they gave one the impression of some sort of rapidly expanding and contracting ball of vapour. Obeying to the instant a single impulse, they would wheel, tower, flatten out, swerve, land all together. They would appear and disappear while in the air, according to whether their wings were at right angles or end-on to the spectator. Sometimes they looked like a great plume of smoke, drifting with the breeze, or the puff of a shrapnel burst. Then the entire flock would go into a spin, and in gyrations and convolutions bands of light and shade would pass upwards through its axis. On Sunday mornings our detachment would parade for divine service in the village chapel. Mass was at eleven, and the chapel crowded to suffocation with Polish peasants-the men on one side, the women on the other, and all up the aisle, and, filling the space before the altar, swarms of children. There was little that was noteworthy about the building, whose rough stone walls were over-decorated with tawdry images and pictures; but the people's faith was real and touching. The congregational singing was beautiful, the children's voices rising pure and sweet, in great waves of melody. All Polish hymns have an uplift and a haunting sort We marched away to the east for four days, hard on the heels of the retiring Polish forces, each company marching on its own account, and billeting at night in villages and guts. As we crossed a commanding ridge we saw, far away to the south, the smudge across the sky which betokened the location of the industrial area, the division of which, as these lines are written, has occasioned so much heart-burning. We were glad that the direction of our march was taking us well to the north of it. We also got our first sight of Poland, across a great tract of forest. Through many quaint little country towns we marched, one of them being Tost, the legendary habitation of the goose that laid the golden egg. Movement through the forests was slow. Our march came to an end within watching distance of the Polish frontier. Detachment life tinued for some time longer, and in much the same manner con as before. In the writer's last detached station, Georgenberg (whose arms bear the same device as that which we used to see upon our golden coinage), there was an ancient church, built entirely of roughhewn tarred wood, bearing the date 1666-an ominous date, to our minds, for wooden churches! The forests round Georgenberg were full of bilberries, which the women and children used systematically to gather all day long, and a few herds of deer and roebuck, which had managed to survive the predatory bands let loose when the putsch began, roamed about the once carefully preserved coverts. The raiding by both sides, which had been such a feature of our stay in the western portion of the country, was confined, in the eastern portion, to the occasional looting by Polish badmashes of horses and cattle from German foresters' lodges and the like. There was also an annoying amount of obliterating and disfiguring of signposts and notice - boards. In one little frontier village on the Brinitza an official Prussian eagle was converted into a Polish one on six successive nights by the simple application of a coat of whitewash, and back again to German by means of tar. After a while our scattered detachments were withdrawn and concentrated. Once again the companies met, and battalion life was resumed. German barracks in the ancient town of Tarnowitz became our portion. Tarnowitz is affectionately termed by its inhabitants "die alte freie Bergstadt." It has narrowly missed becoming an industrial town, though disfigured to some extent by being a biggish railway junction. Its picturesque cobbled ring is bordered on one side by very old houses and arcades, and under the shadow of its church tower there nestles an inn, built in 1598, in which Augustus the Strong, of Saxony and Poland, once sojourned with one of his fair frail ladies. Goethe, too, stopped in a Tarnowitz inn on the 24th September 1790, having journeyed laboriously from Weimar to inspect a steam-engine which was being experimented with in the mines of Königshütte. On the walls are inscribed the famous lines which he wrote that day, beginning "Fern von gebildeten Menschen, am Ende des Reiches." Tarnowitz is not even in the Reich now! . . . VOL. CCXI.-NO. MCCLXXV. B A FISHING TRIP IN THE EMERALD ISLE. BY A. W. LONG. We found life at Rackrent Hall very pleasant, but, at the same time, very different to the life we led in Englanda life without any rough edges or harsh words, and, best of all, with plenty of elbow-room. Gradually we sank into the background of endless servants and took of its colour. Although the servants never appeared to really get down to any hard work, yet if you asked them to do any mortal thing on earth, even if they never did it, they would acquiesce with a pleasant and willing, "Indeed and I will, yer honour," or, "Sure, it's a pleasure to do that same for ye, miss" very different to the surly growl of an English servant when you ask him to do something outside his sphere of work. But, on the other hand, our Irish servants had not the remotest idea of time. Most of them could not even read the face of the clock, and the invaluable Patsey was as oblivious as the casual Porgeen. Further, if an Irish peasant cares for you, he will give you any answer sooner than none. Patsey and Robert were the biggest optimists I have ever met. Patsey when he called V. you, if asked was it a fine day, would reply with a laugh, "It is that, sorr, it's a grand day "; and when he drew the curtains you would see the rain coming down like water out of a worn-out sieve. And to your remark that it appeared to be raining, "Ah, that's only a morning mist; sure the sun'll be shining in the canopy of heaven by the time ye have yer breakfast taken." Even on a heavy windless day, with the river far below fishing height, Robert would encourage one with a, Sure, there's always a fool in the river, and yer honour will surely meet that same one.' When you stuck in a fish, he would make you think that it was all through your own cleverness, and if you lost it through your own stupidity, he always had a plausible excuse. Even Charles, downright Sassenach of the Sassenachs, grew more genial and readier to make allowances for the weaknesses of others; but though Mary strove laboriously and earnestly to adapt herself to her surroundings, she remained as obviously an Englishwoman as she would have appeared in Paris. |