s hushed and broken, as he
said to me:--

"Minnie, I believe that, under God, our lives were saved by Kenneth
Moore. Did you not hear that cry of his when we were about to crash into
the face of the cliff?"

"Yes, Phillip," I answered, sobbing, "and I missed him suddenly as the
balloon rose."

"You heard the words of that parting cry?"

"Yes, oh, yes! He said: '_A Wedding Gift! Minnie! A Wedding Gift!_'"

"And then?"

"He left us together."

[Illustration]

HANDS

BY BECKLES WILSON

The hand, like the face, is indicative or representative of character.
Even those who find the path to belief in the doctrines of the palmist
and chirognomist paved with innumerable thorns, cannot fail to be
interested in the illustrious manual examples, collected from the
studios of various sculptors, which accompany this article.

Mr. Adams-Acton, a distinguished sculptor, tells me his belief that
there is as great expression in the hand as in the face; and another
great artist, Mr. Alfred Gilbert, R.A., goes even a step further: he
invests the bare knee with expression and vital identity. There would,
indeed, appear to be no portion of the human frame which is incapable of
giving forth some measure of the inherent distinctiveness of its owner.
This is, I think, especially true of the hand. No one who was fortunate
enough to observe the slender, tapering fingers and singular grace of
the hand of the deceased Poet Laureate could possibly believe it the
extremity of a coarse or narrow-minded person. In the accompanying
photographs, the hand of a cool, yet enthusiastic, ratiocinative spirit
will be found to bear a palpable affinity to others whose possessors
come under this head, and yet be utterly antagonistic to Carlyle's, or
to another type, Cardinal Manning's.

[Illustration: QUEEN VICTORIA'S HANDS.]

We have here spread out for our edification hands of majesty, hands of
power; of artistic creativeness; of cunning; hands of the ruler, the
statesman, the soldier, the author, and the artist. To philosophers
disposed to resolve a science from representative examples here is
surely no lack of matter. It would, on the whole, be difficult to garner
from the century's history a more glittering array of celebrities in all
the various departments of endeavour than is here presented.

[Illustration: PRINCESS ALICE'S HAND.]

First and foremost, entitled to precedence almost by a double right, for
this cast antedates, wit