But the War between the States has changed all that, and Lichfield endures to-day only as a pleasant backwater.

I never dreamed that you would stay a month in this backwater.

The place was peaceful and quiet, as only a backwater of London can be.

Apart from the inconvenience which it would have entailed, to be arrested for blowing up a bit of mud in a Thames backwater would have been a sad come-down for a convicted murderer!

ON CERTAIN ADVANTAGES OF A BACKWATER. XX.

Then from some far-off aerie would ring the tocsin of an elfin silversmith, fast, furious, and tiny: "Ping-ping-ping-ping-ping-ping-ping-ping!" We surmised that a retired Swiss bell-ringer had secluded himself in our remote backwater of the great city to mature fresh combinations of his art.

And, as the habit grew upon me thereafter of dropping in to listen to the remote, restful, unworldly quaintnesses of his philosophy, fragments, dropped here and there, built up the outline of the tragedy which had left him stranded in our little backwater of quiet.

It must first be soaked for some months in a pit on the slimy bank of the backwater, until all the stuff that holds it together in a stiff and obdurate mass has rotted away and set free those hard and smooth fibres which nothing can rot.

What would all the boats do that traverse the backwater, or lie at anchor in the bay, or line the sandy beach?

"Let us go the longer way," pleaded Phil, who did not care for the solemn stretches of green swamp on either side of the backwater.

The snake must have been swimming in the water (as they are known to do occasionally), and the trout being in a backwater, where food was scarce, must have seized the snake and choked himself in his efforts to bolt it This was a remarkable occurrence, because a Coln trout is most particular as to his bill of fare, and snakes are certainly not usually included in the list.

We were roaming around in the backwater of war, you might say.

Not so many years ago Westbury was in a backwater, if that term may be applied to railways, but now that it is on the new main route to Devon and Cornwall the industrial aspect of the town may increase greatly during the next few years.

Our upper-class schools are out of touch with the thought of the time, in a backwater of intellectual apathy.

If you are a poet, and we are all poets nowadays, you dream yourself into a punt on the Sonning backwater, wondering if the summer was ever so amazing before, nearly being shipwrecked on a sandy spit, startling moorfowl or it may be dabchicks, sending a frisson into the fritillaries, losing and regaining your punt-pole, always believing that the next bend

In a backwater whispered over by willows and sung over by birds, a sort of water-side graveyard, eleven old barges were ingloriously rotting, unwept and unhonoured.

She had come round by way of Victorine's small, tight-fenced garden of crape-myrtles, oleanders and pomegranateswhere also the water was in the streets, backwater from the overflowed swamp-forests between city and lakeand had sent her to Charlie's bedside.

STRIBLING, T. S. Backwater.

T. S. Stribling (A); 2Jan57; R184040. Backwater.

STRIBLING, T. S. Backwater.

T. S. Stribling (A); 2Jan57; R184040. Backwater.

They have only remained here to meet us, and they proceed to Kashmir to-morrow, sleeping in a carriage in the quiet backwater of a siding, to save themselves the worry of a desperately early start to-morrow morning.

Here it lay in the peaceful backwater of a native caravansary, piled high on a bullock-cart, whose placid team lay near pensively chewing the "cud of sweet and bitter fancy," and apparently quite innocent of any intention of moving for a week or two!

As usual, mother and daughter stood irresolutely, caught like two trembling leaves in the backwater of a swirling eddy.

Passing it lately, I made the rough sketch which appears on next page, and which shows all that is left of this pleasant old London backwater.