new man.

We none of us know whose turn it will be to-morrow. With regard to pay—"

"I fear you have misunderstood me, sir. I can take no pay. I have made some money. It is not much, but it will last the time that is left for me." "As you please," said the Resident, a little wearily. "But you will need some sort of outfit.

"I have left a small chest on the dhow that brought me from Obbia. What else is required I shall find in the town, sir."

Accordingly it came to pass that Dr. Thornton was installed in the place of the dead man he had met on his arrival, and set to work to fight the pestilence.

Day after day he fought it, striving hand to hand, as it were, with Death. It seemed as though nothing could outweary the doctor. Early and late he labored, going the rounds of the garrison-they would not allow him in the fort, the telegraph quarters, and the town, till even the panic-stricken, nerved or shamed by his example, took heart of grace again; though still the little daily procession wound into the burial-ground, and still the wild lament went up from the native hovels in the town. Everywhere he went the gravefaced doctor left a joke and a brave word for the faint-hearted, and where he got the jokes from was a puzzle defying solution. The Colonel, who under the Resident was second in command of the garrison, remonstrated with him for overworking himself, and, failing to convince him, confided to the Resident his fears that Thornton would kill himself off before the new man could arrive.

The Resident, meeting him one day galloping in the heat of noon to treat a fresh victim, pulled him up.

"Doctor, we shall be burying you before long," he said. "Where will the garrison be then? They tell me you

hardly eat or sleep. Man, it can't be done!"

"It's got to be done, sir!" said the doctor, reining in his lathered horse. His gray eyes flashed. "You don't understand. I'm all right. You are looking worried and worn, sir. I'll send you something to tone you up tonight. We must keep the out-works in good trim, or the enemy may jump on us unawares."

He was gone at a hand-gallop ere the pale and weary Resident could reply.

Day followed day, and the doctor hardly knew one day from another as he went about his tireless work. Gradually, very gradually, the pestilence gave way, or declined in rigor. No one had come yet from Bombay, but there had been no deaths of white men for three days, when, after three weeks, the boat which went out to receive the mails from the passing liners brought back Sir James Mackinnon.

The famous London physician landed in the morning. In the afternoon he visited the European isolation hospital, where half a dozen patients, motionless and apathetic, or tormented by horrible cramps, lay slowly recovering from the dreadful stage of collapse. Before sunset Thornton took him at his own request to see some of the stricken natives. At midnight a hurried summons brought Thornton from his quarters, and in a few minutes the plucky physician was in the throes of the awful disease in the same building he had inspected a few short hours before.

All the rest of that night Thornton spent at his side. It was well on in the morning when he left him at last to make his round of inspection and to snatch a hasty meal. "Send for me directly if he seems to grow worse," he said to the orderly in charge of the ward, for there were no army nurses in those days at Aden. Don't hesitate. Dr. Mackinnon is one of the

most valuable men we have in England, my lad, and you and I must see to it that we pull him through."

In the afternoon he was back again. Dr. Mackinnon's was a rapid case, and already the critical stage was upon him. He lay bloodless and livid, his skin cold and clammy to the touch, his eyes bloodshot and deep sunk in the sockets, his breathing well-nigh imperceptible. Thornton listened anxiously through his stethoscope; the heart of the man who but a day gone was in the prime of his strength beat now so faintly that even with the aid of the instrument he could barely detect its pulsations. The brave physician lay far in the shadow of death. The very juices of his life seemed dried at their source.

In such a case the minutes are big with fateful possibility. Thornton sat by the bedside, watching with tense and almost painful eagerness his unconscious patient, and from time to time glancing at his watch. Would the longed-for reaction ever set in, and his life, so priceless to his country, be saved to continue its career of usefulness and to bring forth yet more beneficent fruits of humanitarian research? Or would the lingering spark die out altogether, and one of the greatest benefactors of his race lie here, where he had come to help, a useless sacrifice on the altar of humanity?

An hour passed, and there was no change; two hours, and still the coma lasted, and still Thornton kept desperate vigil, while the orderly glanced at him from time to time with a quiet curiosity.

But the long tension was relieved at last. Faintly, very faintly, the signs of life returned into the corpse-like face, the livid hues faded, and the death-like set of the features relaxed.

Thornton wiped the sweat from his

"Yes, I suppose so. I'm glad I have paid my passage."

"You have your programme ready! We shall be sorry to lose you, Dr. Thornton. Upon my word I don't like to think of the mess we should have been in if you had not taken us in hand. The men were getting into a thorough blue funk."

Thornton thanked the Colonel and walked on till he found himself on the barren, sunbaked black hills above the town. From an eminence he looked over the town and the sea, at the small shipping in the Back-bay, and at the diminishing bulk of a big steamer, which he judged to be the Indus. His face, as he gazed after her longingly, had a far-away look. She was homeward bound from India. It was nearly twenty years since he had seen England.

Returning from his walk he found everything going well in the ward, where he introduced himself to his successor. A few hours had made all the difference to Sir James Mackinnon; and though he was still at death's door from utter prostration, his face was

Thornton

now turned away from it. went to his quarters and flung himself down to sleep.

There would be no homeward vessel calling for a fortnight. The European quarter was practically free now, but there were still frequent deaths from cholera among the composite native population, among whom the plague continued to rage. Thornton took leave of the Resident and the officers of the garrison, and established himself among the frightened Arabs and Somalis, finding lodgment among them so as not to carry the infection back to his fellows.

Day by day he continued to fight the abating pestilence that was devouring the unclean, ignorant natives. Their sullen suspicions succumbed before the ministrations of one who could abuse them roundly in their own tongue while risking his life to cure them. Scowling dark faces relaxed as he passed; his ears were saluted with "Mort, mort!" (welcome) as he paced the narrow alleys on his saving mission; and now and again he would be blessed with a grateful "Kul liban, aban," by victims he had dragged from the clutch of the pestilence.

On the day before the steamer was due Thornton passed through the European quarter to make some necessary purchases. He stood bargaining in a store, and while he was yet speaking a horrid spasm seized him. Gasping at the pain, he grasped for support at the door, and turned white with sudden apprehension. A second spasm took him as he turned to leave the place, and in half an hour he was in the cholera ward. Finlayson, the new garrison doctor, shook his head when he saw him.

"Poor devil, I don't think he has the stamina to pull through. He looks worn out. And it strikes me that this is not his first bout."

The orderly, who had conceived an

affection for the quiet, gray-haired man to whom the garrison owed so much, tended him like a brother to the very end. His agony was short and sharp. "Is the ship come?" he groaned once in delirium. "I've paid my passage."

The orderly reported the phrase to the Colonel, when he came to ask after the patient, and had to be told that he was gone. The Colonel repeated it

again to the Resident, who came on the same errand. "And the ship had just dropped her anchor in the Bay," he commented. "We owe him something for pulling us through a tight pinch."

"It was a man's work," said the Resident, "and manfully done. He told me he was a soldier in his time, but they kicked him out of the army. He didn't tell me why. God knows. He wanted to lie in an English churchyard."

"Poor beggar!" said the Colonel.

"Cover him with the flag," said the Resident, "and lay him among the regiment."

So it came to pass that Dr. Thornton too was borne out on a gun carriage when the time came-and came quickly in that warm climate-for his last journey.

"God rest his soul!" said the Colonel. "By Jove, look at the niggers! They're coming to the funeral."

"Well they may! He gave them his life," said the Resident.

"Pity to waste it so," the Colonel commented.

"I don't know," said the Resident slowly. "We have sown a few lives like this up and down the Empire. They bring us a better harvest than Maxim bullets, in the long run."

Timidly, and at a respectful distance, a motley crowd of skinny half-caste Arabs and wild high-cheeked Somalis hung on the flanks of the procession.

"Wa-wa! brother," said a ragged camel-driver to his mate. "The cursed

drum shakes my heart. Why do the unbelievers beat the war drum over their dead?"

"It is to drive away the spirits, fool, of those the warrior has slain."

"But this was no warrior."

"I know not. But he was a true man, and laughed in the eyes of death. He saved my son, brother."

Good Words.

"See-they are at the burying-place! Allah give him paradise!"

A volley rang out over the grave. "Ekh! That is for the evil spirits! Wa-wa, brothers, he is gone! Allah akbar!"

And from the huddled crowd of natives there went up a long-drawn, doleful cry.

Richard Polsue.

Can the great gift of oratory, the art of giving to noble thought worthy expression in spoken language, or even the lesser faculty of pleasant, attractive, persuasive speaking, be taught or acquired, or is it entirely an inborn endowment by nature? One night at the famous Literary Club, of which we are told so much by Boswell, the subject of conversation was a speech that Edmund Burke had just delivered in the House of Commons. Goldsmith asserted that "speechifying was all a knack," and rashly declared he could make as good an oration as Burke any day. The company, playfully taking him at his word, demanded a proof of his oratorical powers. The poet instantly mounted to a chair, and began a speech; but after a few minutes his powers of ready thought and expression were exhausted. "Well," said he, jumping down, "I find this won't do; therefore I'll write my speech." "No, Doctor," said the company; "we don't question your talents for writing, it was speaking you engaged for." "Well, well," responded Goldsmith, unwilling to admit himself beaten, "I'm out of luck now; but you may depend upon it, as I said before, that oratory is a mere knack, which any man of education may practice with success in a very little time."

Unquestionably, the orator, like the

poet, the painter, the man of letters, is born, not made. There are certain qualities which must be native to a man if he is to become an orator. From what we know of Goldsmith, with his self-consciousness, and stutter, and awkwardness, and confusion of utterance, it is impossible to suppose that he could ever have attained a mastery of the art of spontaneous, graceful, and impressive utterance. In truth, success in oratory requires a rare union of mental and physical gifts which, if they are not conferred by Nature on a man at his birth, he can never acquire by study, or practice, or discipline. He must have a ready command of language; he must have a well-regulated and most retentive memory; he must have imagination, passion, emotion. These mental qualities, which are absolutely essential to the orator, are natural endowments. Then come the outward graces of oratory-the striking presence; the clear and plastic voice, capable of conveying varied inflections of feeling; the distinct enunciation; the happy dramatic gesture. These physical qualifications are, perhaps, not absolutely indispensable to the orator, but they are all highly valuable adjuncts to the mental endowments; and some of them, such as enunciation and gesture, may be acquired. We all know how Demosthenes combated

overcame

and his impediment of speech. The picture of the greatest orator of antiquity speaking with his mouth full of pebbles while he ran uphill, or declaiming to the surging sea waves, in order to cure his stutter, is not without a touch of the ludicrous. Macready, the actor, while staying at an hotel in the provinces, locked himself up in his bedroom, and for two hours shouted "Murder!" in varying tones of voice. The terror of the occupants of the hotel was extreme; the proprietor was alarmed for the good name of his establishment, and when, at last, Macready opened the door and explained, "I am endeavoring to find the one intonation which will produce the effect I desire," the wonder is that the infuriated company did not compel him to shout "Murder!" as it comes from a man stricken with the fear that death by violence is imminent. The tone and pitch of the voice are of the highest importance in oratory, and even an ordinary voice can, by practice, be made an effective instrument of the art, capable of swaying, arousing, calming an audience; but perhaps most people with oratorical ambitions, but lacking declamatory power, would prefer to retain their deficiency than to remedy it by the methods of Demosthenes and Macready.

There have been instances of men who attained to high position and commanding influence in Parliament by their oratory, despite physical defects of voice and manner and person. William Wilberforce was a little man, with a thin, shrill voice. Boswell, who heard him at York, thus inelegantly describes him: "I saw what seemed a mere shrimp mount upon the table; but, as I listened, he grew and grew until the shrimp became a whale." Henry Grattan had some odd oratorical mannerisms. "He bent his body almost to the ground, swung his arms over his head, up and down and around

him," says Charles Phillips; "and added to the grotesqueness of his manner a hesitating tone and a drawling emphasis." Richard Lalor Sheil thrilled the Irish people in the movement for Catholic Emancipation, despite his dwarfish frame and his shrill, irritating voice, which has been likened to "something between the yell of a peacock and the squeak of a slate pencil." Lord John Russell was a frail little man, with a weak voice and an affected mincing manner. But these examples of men who, though Nature had been niggardly to them in the bestowal of physical gifts, achieved the highest successes in oratory are exceedingly rare. Dr. Johnson, indeed, ridiculed the notion that gesture or action contributes to the force and persuasiveness of oratory. "Neither the judges of our laws, nor the representatives of our people," he writes in one of his "Idler" papers, "would be much affected by labored gesticulations, or believe any man the more because he rolled his eyes, or puffed his cheeks, or spread abroad his arms, or stamped the ground, or thumped his breast, or turned his eyes sometimes to the ceiling and sometimes to the floor." Surely the Doctor saw only one-half of the point. Of course, ungainly movements of the hands and grotesque facial contortions would transform the most sublime utterances of the orator into nonsense the most ridiculous. It is unquestionable, however, that gesture, graceful and dignified and appropriate to the subject, enhances the effect of eloquence. My experience as a Parliamentary reporter is that in the achievement of the main purpose of oratory, which is the influencing of the audience, manner is often more important than matter. The great charm and power of the art lies not so much in what the speech contains as in how it is delivered.

But even if a man have all the natu