_New Whip_ (_rib-roasting very bad cub-hunter_). "'TAIN'T SAFE TO GO NEAR 'EM WITH THIS 'ORSE; THEY MIGHT THINK 'E WAS FOR EATIN'."] * * * * * THE BEN AND THE BOOT. Whither in these littered and overcrowded islands should one flee to escape the spectacle of outworn and discarded boots? I should go to a mountain-top and amongst mountain-tops I should choose the highest. I should scale the summit of Ben Nevis. Yet it is but a few days since I saw on that proud eminence the unmistakable remains of an ordinary walking boot. It reposed on the perilous edge of a snowdrift that even in summer curves giddily over the lip of the dreadful gulf over which the eastern precipice beetles. There is ever a certain pathos about discarded articles of apparel: a baby's outgrown shoe, a girl's forgotten glove, an abandoned bowler; but the situation of this boot, thus high uplifted towards the eternal stars, gave to it a mystery, a grandeur, a sublimity that held me long in contemplation. How came it there? The path that winds up that grey mountain is rough; its harsh stones and remorseless gradients take toll of leather as of flesh. Yet half a sole and a sound upper are better than no boot; and what climber but would postpone till after his descent the discarding of his damaged footgear? Could it be, I asked myself, the relic and evidence of an inhuman crime? Was it possible that some party of climbers, arriving at the top lunchless and desperately hungry, had sacrificed their plumpest, disposing of his clothes over the cliff, but failing to hole out with this tell-tale boot? But no, I bethought me of the price of leather. They would have reserved the boots, even at the risk of suspicion. Moreover, no one would ever reach that exacting altitude in a state of succulence. A glow of sympathy, a thrill of appreciation swept through me as I realised what was at once the worthiest and the likeliest explanation. Who shall plumb the depths of the affection of a true pedestrian for his boots, the companions and comfort of so many a pilgrimage? Who but the climber, the hill-tramp, knows the pang of regret with which he faces at last the truth that his favourite boots are past repair, the sorrow and self-reproach with which he permits them to be consigned to Erebus? I saw it all. As the Roman veteran hung upon the temple wall of Mars the arms he might no longer wield, so hither came some lofty-minded climber, bearing in devoted hands his outworn and faithful boot, to leave it sadly and with reverence in this most worthy resting-place, here to repose at the end of all the roads it had trod, on the highest of all the native hills it had climbed. W.K.H. * * * * * =Another Impending Apology.= "Mr. Roberts, Member of Parliament, has arrived. Mr. Roberts is a tall and well-built gentleman with a posing appearance." _Mysore Patriot_. * * * * *