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    Jacob's Room
    Jacob's Room
    Jacob's Room
    Ebook217 pages7 hours

    Jacob's Room

    By Virginia Woolf

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    Jacob's Room is the third novel by Virginia Woolf, first published on 26 October 1922.
    The novel centres, in a very ambiguous way, around the life story of the protagonist Jacob Flanders and is presented almost entirely through the impressions other characters have of Jacob.
    Jacob is described to us, but in such indirect terms that it would seem better to view him as an amalgam of the different perceptions of the characters and narrator. He does not exist as a concrete reality, but rather as a collection of memories and sensations.
    Set in pre-war England, the novel begins in Jacob's childhood and follows him through college at Cambridge and into adulthood. The story is told mainly through the perspectives of the women in Jacob's life, including the repressed Clara Durrant and the uninhibited young art student Florinda, with whom he has an affair.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherVirginia Woolf
    Release dateSep 25, 2015
    ISBN9788893154246
    Author

    Virginia Woolf

    VIRGINIA WOOLF (1882–1941) was one of the major literary figures of the twentieth century. An admired literary critic, she authored many essays, letters, journals, and short stories in addition to her groundbreaking novels, including Mrs. Dalloway, To The Lighthouse, and Orlando.

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    • 5/5
      I read this one in college, but that was over 20 years ago so I didn't retain much beyond a generally positive feeling. Reading it now in the context of my very serious Virginia Woolf bookclub (reading everything she published in chronological order) really highlights how Woolf expands into herself with this novel. It has some of the Britishness and relationship stuff of Night and Day, the experimentation of Kew Gardens, the travelogue nature of the Voyage Out, and the playfulness with authorial perspective that weaves in and out of Monday or Tuesday. Jacob is an unknowable cipher, even though we stick with him till the end. But, in trying to know him, we end up knowing a lot about everything else. Which is kind of the way life works. Which is why I love Virginia Woolf.
    • 1/5
      Although I understand that the style is experimental, I found it too rough. The constant leaps from one POV to another is bewildering and much of the information we receive consists of useless filler material. The true bulk of the content lies in the loosely strung together metaphors, some of which appear almost as half-finished thoughts.
    • 4/5
      This novel, published in 1922, the same year as Joyce's Ulysses and Eliot's The Waste Land, is acknowledged as a landmark Modernist text. Having previously read Woolf’s To the Lighthouse and Mrs Dalloway during my undergraduate years, and having enjoyed those novels, I came to Jacob’s Room with certain expectations. For one, I expected it to be challenging, and challenging it was. But it is also very short (around a 120 pages) and therefore more manageable than Joyce’s magnum opus. It also illustrates some of the problems I have with Modernist fiction in general, and Woolf specifically.More on that later. First, let me expound on the technique of the book. Whereas Woolf’s first two novels were, according to what I have read, fairly straightforward, in this novel, Woolf takes a much more impressionistic approach to novel-writing. Jacob’s Room has barely any plot. Ostensibly being about the life of Jacob Flanders (supposedly based on Woolf's brother, Thoby), the book presents snatches from many different points of view on Jacob, and, sometimes, from Jacob’s point of view. Despite being presented in chronological order, these impressions are disjointed, and it often takes some effort to make sense of what is going on. This creates a collage effect, very different from most novels that one might encounter.I liked Woolf’s attention to detail and her way of turning a phrase. She creates an intense emotional portrait of Jacob, even though he is not really the protagonist of the novel; no-one is. To get an idea of what Woolf is endeavouring to do, here is a short passage from the novel:It is thus that we live, they say, driven by an unseizable force. They say that the novelists never catch it; that it goes hurtling through their nets and leaves them torn to ribbons. This, they say, is what we live by – this unseizable force.Although Woolf displays some scepticism in this extract – all those ‘they say’s – it is still evident throughout the quasi-novel of Jacob’s Room that it is exactly this ‘unseizable force’ that she is trying to grasp. It is the ineffable quality of life that Woolf tries to represent, precisely by going against the supposed realism of the Realist writers, such as Arnold Bennett.Her characterisation is fluid to the point of flowing down the drain, at least at times. That is one problem I had with her writing. Despite beautifully lyrical and elegiac passages, the book sometimes felt insubstantial – ‘flimsy’, maybe. Perhaps this is because of its lack of plot and other anchoring points, such as relatable characters and substantial events. Woolf sacrifices these on purposes, but it sometimes felt like the book was an experiment that either went too far, or did not go far enough. To the Lighthouse and Mrs Dalloway seemed comparably more successful attempts at marrying traditional novelistic techniques to Modernist experiments in narration. Ulysses, which uses similar techniques, also seems more successful, as it goes the whole hog in rejecting Realism. That said, I read Jacob’s Room without any guide, so I might have missed out on some of Woolf’s intentions with the novel.On the whole, an interesting, if flawed, attempt at presenting a life as it is really experienced, and not as it is usually channelised into easily digested fiction.
    • 3/5
      Virginia Woolf is an author I've always felt I should have read so I was thrilled when this novella showed up in the mail as part of the book club I belong too. The synapses didn't sound exactly thrilling but I was certainly game to reading this. The book started out great for me a we got to know Betty Flanders, and through her, her little boy, the middle son, Jacob. Then suddenly we are transported to Jacob at college and the story became very heavy for me as Jacob, his friend and professors rambled through academia. Oh my, I wanted to use my 50-page rule and DNF this book around this point but I decided to persevere because 1) the purpose of my belonging to this book club is to widen my range of "classic" authors and 2) it wouldn't take me that long to read it. So I gave myself 50 pages a day to read and finished in 4 days. As I started each day it was a hard slog but as I got into it about 25 pages I was enjoying the experience and pleased with my read at the end of my daily "section". There really isn't any plot here, I found Woolf's writing very vivid and expressive but sometimes was not sure what the point was. I enjoyed the parts where the women were the main focus and we learned of Jacob through their eyes, though we never really know Jacob at all. The parts where Jacob is the main focus or that are all men were really boring for me; I felt like Jacob needed a woman's touch to be interesting. I've heard Woolf's style of writing, "stream of consciousness" talked about so often that I was rather disappointed that I didn't really see what the big deal was. The narration does flow in a distracted sort of way with themes and topics popping up here and there as they come to mind but that didn't bother me; the only thing that annoyed me with the writing was that the omniscient, unknown narrator of this story would occasionally refer to themselves in the first person (*I* this, *I* that). Who are they and why do I care what they think? This suddenly feels like the author popping in and reminding me that I'm just reading her story. I'm glad I read this; I didn't dislike it; I wasn't entertained but I did find it interesting. I would, and do want to read Woolf's two famous books "To the Lighthouse" and "Mrs. Dalloway", just to say I have, and now at least I know what to expect and am not so daunted in picking them up.
    • 3/5
      I suspect that I chose the wrong Virginia Woolf book for my first read. Jacob’s Room was beautifully written, full of descriptive passages, original in both outlook and style but for most of the book I had not clue as to what was happening. The author after giving us glimpses and hints, leaves it up to her reader to put the pieces together. The words “stream of consciousness” come to mind and I admit I was put off by the disjointedness and lack of plot.Jacob’s Room appears to be the life story of a young man and it unfolds in a series of scenes from his childhood, his time at Cambridge, his love affairs, his travels and on to his apparent death in World War I. The author’s intention in showing fragments of his life and leaving the whole picture elusive and incomplete is perhaps her way of making Jacob a symbol for an entire generation. This was a poetic, layered, confusing and intriguing read. For much of the book I felt the author was immersed in her own nostalgia and sadness, but I was never totally drawn in and didn’t feel any sense of connection to the story. I fully intend to read more of Virginia Woolf’s writing and perhaps I can learn to appreciate an author who makes her readers work to understand the whys and wherefores of her writing.
    • 4/5
      This short novel was my first experience of Virginia Woolf's writings. It is quickly read and not difficult at all to enjoy, like a walk through a park on a sunny day with interesting companions and only the weight of a picnic on your shoulders. Though there is not much plot to this, it doesn't seem to matter; it is a literary novel.What we do not learn about the characters is compensated by what we learn about how the world is variously perceived, or can be perceived. This is a novel of impressions of the world, recorded for their aesthetic qualities and largely indifferent to their moral or practical consequences for the characters. Hence it provides relief from the heavy novel. What it did more than anything was inspire me to get up and just experience the world outside, anything, just to receive impressions of things for their own sake. This was perhaps not solely due to aesthetic stimulation, but also due to the ennui that seems contagious among the characters.I would recommend this work and will read more Woolf in the future.
    • 4/5
      The first of Virginia Woolf's novels that sought a new way of writing fiction tells the story of a young man who is to be killed on the battlefields of WWI. This edition includes a forward by her nephew Quentin Bell.
    • 5/5
      Jacob's Room was an experimental book for Woolf in 1922 but it certainly stands the test of time for good literature, and is generally an easy read. I lost my way once or twice about who was speaking or how much time has passed but not as much as I thought I might and quickly picked up the thread again. The story follows a young man through his life in the early part of the twentieth century leading up to the first World War. I enjoyed it and though the ending seemed abrupt, I believe that was the point about life in general. I can certainly recommend it . I have enjoyed Woolf's non fiction, essays, and A Room of One's Own tremendously but never got around to her fiction, except for Orlando, which is very interesting. I will be reading more of Woolf's fiction very soon.
    • 2/5
      Seemed boring to me; maybe it was just a bad chosen moment to read it. Or maybe... I just don't really like VW's books focusing on men ?!Worth reading again, sometime.
    • 3/5
      I didn't really care for this. Not surprisingly, the writing is good, there were a few lines I especially liked; but the (very loose) story... just not for me. I didn't mind the odd style of telling it, I don't think, though it's hard to say so clearly when you're not very fond of what's being told. But, the kind of vaguely sad, ambling, not much plot... I just didn't care much for it. And for me I think it's less the plotless/ambling aspect than the fact that I'm just really not keen on the kind of, sad look back on life sort of thing. The "feel" (so to speak) of the novel is just not the kind of thing I enjoy. I'd put it in the same kind of class as Age of Innocence or Brideshead Revisited, Crome Yellow perhaps. It's just not my thing. But it was a short quick read, so eh.I am curious to read other Woolf and see what I think of the more hyped titles.
    • 2/5
      Jacob's Room by Virginia Woolf - I approached it with no trepidation at all, because I read Mrs. Dalloway a number of years ago and really enjoyed it, even with the page-long sentences. With that, and the fact that this is really a novella, I settled in for a quick read. How wrong I was on all counts. I had not thought about the fact that Woolf was a member of the Bloomsbury Group and envelope-pusher in literature until I got about 30 pages into this book and I really had no idea what was going on.My impressions of this impressionistic book: There's Jacob, and he's a kid and he's up on a giant rock by the ocean. I think he's going to fall off. Oh, I guess not. Okay now we're at a dinner party and Jacob's in college. He hates dinner parties. In fact, as we find out from the seemingly endless dinner parties we'll have to attend with him, he's like the Holden Caulfield of the 1920s and really doesn't think much of society. Now he's on a boat with a friend and they're talking endlessly about the Greeks and is this friend in love with him or what? Now we're in Italy and Jacob's on his way to Greece and talking philosophy and he doesn't like French women and oh dear god how many more pages of this are left? Oh good, I'm done.Then I went and read up a bit on the book to see if I missed something grand (it's been known to happen) and the answer is: well, if you like experimental literature and important milestones in postmodernism and books without a real protagonist or any plot to speak of, this book's for you. Otherwise, read Mrs. Dalloway.
    • 5/5
      How have I missed this before? Could it have been something as trivial as not liking the previous copies I've started, which were scruffy hardbacks? I mean, I've read The years and The waves, for goodness sake!Anyway this is superb. Woolf at her finest. Great descriptions of London and nature and scenery. Hinting at characters, capturing the sense of life as I experience it, puzzling me and then revealing more to satisfy and keep me alert. I want to re-read it at once - but of course I won't as there is too much else waiting to be read. But I will come back to this. The personal associations (connections with her brother Thoby), her femininism, her revelations of what life was like at that time are all fascinating.

    Book preview

    Jacob's Room - Virginia Woolf

    ROOM

    CHAPTER ONE

    So of course, wrote Betty Flanders, pressing her heels rather deeper in the sand, there was nothing for it but to leave.

    Slowly welling from the point of her gold nib, pale blue ink dissolved the full stop; for there her pen stuck; her eyes fixed, and tears slowly filled them. The entire bay quivered; the lighthouse wobbled; and she had the illusion that the mast of Mr. Connor's little yacht was bending like a wax candle in the sun. She winked quickly. Accidents were awful things. She winked again. The mast was straight; the waves were regular; the lighthouse was upright; but the blot had spread.

    … nothing for it but to leave, she read.

    Well, if Jacob doesn't want to play (the shadow of Archer, her eldest son, fell across the notepaper and looked blue on the sand, and she felt chilly—it was the third of September already), if Jacob doesn't want to play—what a horrid blot! It must be getting late.

    Where IS that tiresome little boy? she said. I don't see him. Run and find him. Tell him to come at once. … but mercifully, she scribbled, ignoring the full stop, everything seems satisfactorily arranged, packed though we are like herrings in a barrel, and forced to stand the perambulator which the landlady quite naturally won't allow….

    Such were Betty Flanders's letters to Captain Barfoot—many-paged, tear-stained. Scarborough is seven hundred miles from Cornwall: Captain Barfoot is in Scarborough: Seabrook is dead. Tears made all the dahlias in her garden undulate in red waves and flashed the glass house in her eyes, and spangled the kitchen with bright knives, and made Mrs. Jarvis, the rector's wife, think at church, while the hymn-tune played and Mrs. Flanders bent low over her little boys' heads, that marriage is a fortress and widows stray solitary in the open fields, picking up stones, gleaning a few golden straws, lonely, unprotected, poor creatures. Mrs. Flanders had been a widow for these two years.

    Ja—cob! Ja—cob! Archer shouted.

    Scarborough, Mrs. Flanders wrote on the envelope, and dashed a bold line beneath; it was her native town; the hub of the universe. But a stamp? She ferreted in her bag; then held it up mouth downwards; then fumbled in her lap, all so vigorously that Charles Steele in the Panama hat suspended his paint-brush.

    Like the antennae of some irritable insect it positively trembled. Here was that woman moving—actually going to get up—confound her! He struck the canvas a hasty violet-black dab. For the landscape needed it. It was too pale—greys flowing into lavenders, and one star or a white gull suspended just so—too pale as usual. The critics would say it was too pale, for he was an unknown man exhibiting obscurely, a favourite with his landladies' children, wearing a cross on his watch chain, and much gratified if his landladies liked his pictures—which they often did.

    Ja—cob! Ja—cob! Archer shouted.

    Exasperated by the noise, yet loving children, Steele picked nervously at the dark little coils on his palette.

    I saw your brother—I saw your brother, he said, nodding his head, as Archer lagged past him, trailing his spade, and scowling at the old gentleman in spectacles.

    Over there—by the rock, Steele muttered, with his brush between his teeth, squeezing out raw sienna, and keeping his eyes fixed on Betty Flanders's back.

    Ja—cob! Ja—cob! shouted Archer, lagging on after a second.

    The voice had an extraordinary sadness. Pure from all body, pure from all passion, going out into the world, solitary, unanswered, breaking against rocks—so it sounded.

    Steele frowned; but was pleased by the effect of the black—it was just THAT note which brought the rest together. Ah, one may learn to paint at fifty! There's Titian… and so, having found the right tint, up he looked and saw to his horror a cloud over the bay.

    Mrs. Flanders rose, slapped her coat this side and that to get the sand off, and picked up her black parasol.

    The rock was one of those tremendously solid brown, or rather black, rocks which emerge from the sand like something primitive. Rough with crinkled limpet shells and sparsely strewn with locks of dry seaweed, a small boy has to stretch his legs far apart, and indeed to feel rather heroic, before he gets to the top.

    But there, on the very top, is a hollow full of water, with a sandy bottom; with a blob of jelly stuck to the side, and some mussels. A fish darts across. The fringe of yellow-brown seaweed flutters, and out pushes an opal-shelled crab—

    Oh, a huge crab, Jacob murmured—and begins his journey on weakly legs on the sandy bottom. Now! Jacob plunged his hand. The crab was cool and very light. But the water was thick with sand, and so, scrambling down, Jacob was about to jump, holding his bucket in front of him, when he saw, stretched entirely rigid, side by side, their faces very red, an enormous man and woman.

    An enormous man and woman (it was early-closing day) were stretched motionless, with their heads on pocket-handkerchiefs, side by side, within a few feet of the sea, while two or three gulls gracefully skirted the incoming waves, and settled near their boots.

    The large red faces lying on the bandanna handkerchiefs stared up at Jacob. Jacob stared down at them. Holding his bucket very carefully, Jacob then jumped deliberately and trotted away very nonchalantly at first, but faster and faster as the waves came creaming up to him and he had to swerve to avoid them, and the gulls rose in front of him and floated out and settled again a little farther on. A large black woman was sitting on the sand. He ran towards her.

    Nanny! Nanny! he cried, sobbing the words out on the crest of each gasping breath.

    The waves came round her. She was a rock. She was covered with the seaweed which pops when it is pressed. He was lost.

    There he stood. His face composed itself. He was about to roar when, lying among the black sticks and straw under the cliff, he saw a whole skull—perhaps a cow's skull, a skull, perhaps, with the teeth in it. Sobbing, but absent-mindedly, he ran farther and farther away until he held the skull in his arms.

    There he is! cried Mrs. Flanders, coming round the rock and covering the whole space of the beach in a few seconds. What has he got hold of? Put it down, Jacob! Drop it this moment! Something horrid, I know. Why didn't you stay with us? Naughty little boy! Now put it down. Now come along both of you, and she swept round, holding Archer by one hand and fumbling for Jacob's arm with the other. But he ducked down and picked up the sheep's jaw, which was loose.

    Swinging her bag, clutching her parasol, holding Archer's hand, and telling the story of the gunpowder explosion in which poor Mr. Curnow had lost his eye, Mrs. Flanders hurried up the steep lane, aware all the time in the depths of her mind of some buried discomfort.

    There on the sand not far from the lovers lay the old sheep's skull without its jaw. Clean, white, wind-swept, sand-rubbed, a more unpolluted piece of bone existed nowhere on the coast of Cornwall. The sea holly would grow through the eye-sockets; it would turn to powder, or some golfer, hitting his ball one fine day, would disperse a little dust—No, but not in lodgings, thought Mrs. Flanders. It's a great experiment coming so far with young children. There's no man to help with the perambulator. And Jacob is such a handful; so obstinate already.

    Throw it away, dear, do, she said, as they got into the road; but Jacob squirmed away from her; and the wind rising, she took out her bonnet-pin, looked at the sea, and stuck it in afresh. The wind was rising. The waves showed that uneasiness, like something alive, restive, expecting the whip, of waves before a storm. The fishing-boats were leaning to the water's brim. A pale yellow light shot across the purple sea; and shut. The lighthouse was lit. Come along, said Betty Flanders. The sun blazed in their faces and gilded the great blackberries trembling out from the hedge which Archer tried to strip as they passed.

    Don't lag, boys. You've got nothing to change into, said Betty, pulling them along, and looking with uneasy emotion at the earth displayed so luridly, with sudden sparks of light from greenhouses in gardens, with a sort of yellow and black mutability, against this blazing sunset, this astonishing agitation and vitality of colour, which stirred Betty Flanders and made her think of responsibility and danger. She gripped Archer's hand. On she plodded up the hill.

    What did I ask you to remember? she said.

    I don't know, said Archer.

    Well, I don't know either, said Betty, humorously and simply, and who shall deny that this blankness of mind, when combined with profusion, mother wit, old wives' tales, haphazard ways, moments of astonishing daring, humour, and sentimentality—who shall deny that in these respects every woman is nicer than any man?

    Well, Betty Flanders, to begin with.

    She had her hand upon the garden gate.

    The meat! she exclaimed, striking the latch down.

    She had forgotten the meat.

    There was Rebecca at the window.

    The bareness of Mrs. Pearce's front room was fully displayed at ten o'clock at night when a powerful oil lamp stood on the middle of the table. The harsh light fell on the garden; cut straight across the lawn; lit up a child's bucket and a purple aster and reached the hedge. Mrs. Flanders had left her sewing on the table. There were her large reels of white cotton and her steel spectacles; her needle-case; her brown wool wound round an old postcard. There were the bulrushes and the Strand magazines; and the linoleum sandy from the boys' boots. A daddy-long-legs shot from corner to corner and hit the lamp globe. The wind blew straight dashes of rain across the window, which flashed silver as they passed through the light. A single leaf tapped hurriedly, persistently, upon the glass. There was a hurricane out at sea.

    Archer could not sleep.

    Mrs. Flanders stooped over him. Think of the fairies, said Betty Flanders. Think of the lovely, lovely birds settling down on their nests. Now shut your eyes and see the old mother bird with a worm in her beak. Now turn and shut your eyes, she murmured, and shut your eyes.

    The lodging-house seemed full of gurgling and rushing; the cistern overflowing; water bubbling and squeaking and running along the pipes and streaming down the windows.

    What's all that water rushing in? murmured Archer.

    It's only the bath water running away, said Mrs. Flanders.

    Something snapped out of doors.

    I say, won't that steamer sink? said Archer, opening his eyes.

    Of course it won't, said Mrs. Flanders. The Captain's in bed long ago. Shut your eyes, and think of the fairies, fast asleep, under the flowers.

    I thought he'd never get off—such a hurricane, she whispered to

    Rebecca, who was bending over a spirit-lamp in the small room next door.

    The wind rushed outside, but the small flame of the spirit-lamp burnt

    quietly, shaded from the cot by a book stood on edge.

    Did he take his bottle well? Mrs. Flanders whispered, and Rebecca nodded and went to the cot and turned down the quilt, and Mrs. Flanders bent over and looked anxiously at the baby, asleep, but frowning. The window shook, and Rebecca stole like a cat and wedged it.

    The two women murmured over the spirit-lamp, plotting the eternal conspiracy of hush and clean bottles while the wind raged and gave a sudden wrench at the cheap fastenings.

    Both looked round at the cot. Their lips were pursed. Mrs. Flanders crossed over to the cot.

    Asleep? whispered Rebecca, looking at the cot.

    Mrs. Flanders nodded.

    Good-night, Rebecca, Mrs. Flanders murmured, and Rebecca called her ma'm, though they were conspirators plotting the eternal conspiracy of hush and clean bottles.

    Mrs. Flanders had left the lamp burning in the front room. There were her spectacles, her sewing; and a letter with the Scarborough postmark. She had not drawn the curtains either.

    The light blazed out across the patch of grass; fell on the child's green bucket with the gold line round it, and upon the aster which trembled violently beside it. For the wind was tearing across the coast, hurling itself at the hills, and leaping, in sudden gusts, on top of its own back. How it spread over the town in the hollow! How the lights seemed to wink and quiver in its fury, lights in the harbour, lights in bedroom windows high up! And rolling dark waves before it, it raced over the Atlantic, jerking the stars above the ships this way and that.

    There was a click in the front sitting-room. Mr. Pearce had extinguished the lamp. The garden went out. It was but a dark patch. Every inch was rained upon. Every blade of grass was bent by rain. Eyelids would have been fastened down by the rain. Lying on one's back one would have seen nothing but muddle and confusion—clouds turning and turning, and something yellow-tinted and sulphurous in the darkness.

    The little boys in the front bedroom had thrown off their blankets and lay under the sheets. It was hot; rather sticky and steamy. Archer lay spread out, with one arm striking across the pillow. He was flushed; and when the heavy curtain blew out a little he turned and half-opened his eyes. The wind actually stirred the cloth on the chest of drawers, and let in a little light, so that the sharp edge of the chest of drawers was visible, running straight up, until a white shape bulged out; and a silver streak showed in the looking-glass.

    In the other bed by the door Jacob lay asleep, fast asleep, profoundly unconscious. The sheep's jaw with the big yellow teeth in it lay at his feet. He had kicked it against the iron bed-rail.

    Outside the rain poured down more directly and powerfully as the wind fell in the early hours of the morning. The aster was beaten to the earth. The child's bucket was half-full of rainwater; and the opal-shelled crab slowly circled round the bottom, trying with its weakly legs to climb the steep side; trying again and falling back, and trying again and again.

    CHAPTER TWO

    MRS. FLANDERS—Poor Betty Flanders—Dear Betty—She's very attractive still—Odd she don't marry again! There's Captain Barfoot to be sure—calls every Wednesday as regular as clockwork, and never brings his wife.

    But that's Ellen Barfoot's fault, the ladies of Scarborough said. She don't put herself out for no one.

    A man likes to have a son—that we know.

    Some tumours have to be cut; but the sort my mother had you bear with for years and years, and never even have a cup of tea brought up to you in bed.

    (Mrs. Barfoot was an invalid.)

    Elizabeth Flanders, of whom this and much more than this had been said and would be said, was, of course, a widow in her prime. She was half-way between forty and fifty. Years and sorrow between them; the death of Seabrook, her husband; three boys; poverty; a house on the outskirts of Scarborough; her brother, poor Morty's, downfall and possible demise—for where was he? what was he? Shading her eyes, she looked along the road for Captain Barfoot—yes, there he was, punctual as ever; the attentions of the Captain—all ripened Betty Flanders, enlarged her figure, tinged her face with jollity, and flooded her eyes for no reason that any one could see perhaps three times a day.

    True, there's no harm in crying for one's husband, and the tombstone, though plain, was a solid piece of work, and on summer's days when the widow brought her boys to stand there one felt kindly towards her. Hats were raised higher than usual; wives tugged their husbands' arms. Seabrook lay six foot beneath, dead these many years; enclosed in three shells; the crevices sealed with lead, so that, had earth and wood been glass, doubtless his very face lay visible beneath, the face of a young man whiskered, shapely, who had gone out duck-shooting and refused to change his boots.

    Merchant of this city, the tombstone said; though why Betty Flanders had chosen so to call him when, as many still remembered, he had only sat behind an office window for three months, and before that had broken horses, ridden to hounds, farmed a few fields, and run a little wild—well, she had to call him something. An example for the boys.

    Had he, then, been nothing? An unanswerable question, since even if it weren't the habit of the undertaker to close the eyes, the light so soon goes out of them. At first, part of herself; now one of a company, he had merged in the grass, the sloping hillside, the

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