Transcriber’s Notes: Title and Table of Contents added.
THE IDLER MAGAZINE.
AN ILLUSTRATED MONTHLY.
July 1893.
CONTENTS.
THE WOMAN OF THE SAETER.
by Jerome K. Jerome.
ALPHONSE DAUDET AT HOME.
by Marie Adelaide Belloc.
THE DISMAL THRONG.
by Robert Buchanan.
IN THE HANDS OF JEFFERSON.
by Eden Phillpotts.
MY FIRST BOOK.
by I. Zangwill.
BY THE LIGHT OF THE LAMP.
by Hilda Newman.
MEMOIRS OF A FEMALE NIHILIST.
III.—ONE DAY.
by Sophie Wassilieff.
A SLAVE OF THE RING.
by Alfred Berlyn.
PEOPLE I HAVE NEVER MET.
by Scott Rankin.
THE IDLER’S CLUB
“TIPPING.”
the vengeance of hund.The Woman of the Saeter.
By Jerome K. Jerome.
Illustrations by A. S. Boyd.
Wild-Reindeer stalking is hardly so exciting a sport as the evening’sverandah talk in Norroway hotels would lead the trustful traveller tosuppose. Under the charge of your guide, a very young man with thedreamy, wistful eyes of those who live in valleys, you leave thefarmstead early in the forenoon, arriving towards twilight at thedesolate hut which, for so long as you remain upon the uplands, will beyour somewhat cheerless headquarters.
Next morning, in the chill, mist-laden dawn you rise; and, after abreakfast of coffee and dried fish, shoulder your Remington, and stepforth silently into the raw, damp air; the guide locking the door behindyou, the key grating harshly in the rusty lock.
For hour after hour you toil over the steep, stony ground, or windthrough the pines, speaking in whispers, lest your voice reach the quickears of your prey, that keeps its head ever pressed against the wind.Here and there, in the hollows of the hills, lie wide fields of snow,over which you pick your steps thoughtfully, listening to the smotheredthunder of the torrent, tunnelling its way beneath your feet, andwondering whether the frozen arch above it be at all points as firm asis desirable. Now and again, as in single file you walk cautiously alongsome jagged ridge, you catch glimpses of the green world, three thousandfeet below you; though you gaze not long upon the view, for yourattention is chiefly directed to watching the footprints of the guide,lest by deviating to the right or left you find yourself at one strideback in the valley—or, to be more correct, are found there.
These things you do, and as exercise they are healthful andinvigorating. But a reindeer you never see, and unless, overcoming theprejudices of your British-bred conscience, you care to take anoccasional pop a