feeling of satiety without satisfaction, and of repletion without sustenance.'

On this particular morning we had adjourned from the library to the breakfast-room, and were opening our letters in high spirits, spite 1 of Nathan the wise, and notwithstanding the bitter wind and the snow, when a hideous sound startled us. There, under the window, the snow steadily falling, drawn up in single file, were four human creatures, two males and two females, arrayed in outlandish attire, and every one of them playing hideously out of tune. It was a German band!

A more lugubrious spectacle than is presented by a German band, droning forth Herz, mein Herz'in front of your window in a snowstorm it would be difficult to imagine. We suffer much from German bands, but we have only ourselves to thank. I love music, and I am possessed by the delusion that it is my duty to encourage the practice of instrumental execution. Five or six years ago there was a band of eight or nine performers who perambulated Norfolk, and they came to me at least once a month. Whenever they appeared I went out to them and gave them a shilling, airing my small modicum of German periodically, and receiving flattering compliments upon my pronunciation, which gratified me exceedingly. These people disappeared at last, but they were succeeded by another band, and a very inferior one, and I took but little notice of them. There were seven of these performers, a cornet and two clarionets being prominent— very. However, they got their shilling, and vanished. Three days after their departure came another band: this time there were only four. I thought that rather shabby, but I was busy, did not take much notice of them, and again gave them a shilling. The cornet player was really quite respectable. Next day came four more, and there was no cornet, only the abominable clarionet. It was insufferable. I said I really must restrict myself to sixpence, and that was fourpence more than they were worth. Two days after their departure came a single solitary performer; he had a pan-pipe fastened under his chin, a peal of bells on his head, which he caused to peal by his nods, a pair of cymbals attached to one of his elbows, a big drum which he beat by the help of a crank that he worked with one of his feet, and a powerful concertina which he played with his hands. He led off with a dolorous chorale in a minor key. It was really more than flesh and blood could bear. Send him away, Jemima. Send him away!-instantly! Tell him I am sehr krank. Send him away!' The fellow smiled with unctuous complacency. But when he got only twopence, his face fell. Ach, nein! You plaise, ze professor,

Why will not the printers' readers let me use this word? I do use it every day of my life in talk'; why may I not write it and print it? It is very short, and it is perfectly harmless. I am afraid it must mean something bad in Finnish or some other strange tongue, for the reader always draws my attention to it.

he geeve one sheeling to ze band-I am ze band. He geeve ze band only twopence. He do not understand I am ze band! You plaise tell him I am ze band!' 'No! You're to go away. Master's very kranky!' Ze band loitered for half a minute, then it took itself to pieces and went its way. But the fellow's hint about the shilling was significant, and led to an investigation. Then it turned out that the band of seven or eight which was going its rounds that year, split itself up when it came into my neighbourhood, and, in view of my shilling, presented itself in two detachments, each of which reckoned on my shilling, and several times carried it off. Now I give one penny for each performer, and only when there is a cornet do I send out coffee to the instrumentalists.

It was, however, not in flesh and blood to withhold the shilling from the players of that quartette on that bitter morning. It was heart-rending to think of their having at the peril of their lives staggered through three miles of snow-drifts. It was inhuman to send them away without coffee. And they had it accordingly. Poor things! poor things! Where were they going? They were going back to the 'Red Lion,' a stone's throw off, where they had slept the night before, and where they meant to spend this night in delighting the hearts of the rustics by waltzes and polkas, and gathering not such a bad harvest for the nonce. 'Lor, sir!' said Mr. Style, 'to hear that there trombone a soleing" Rule Britannia"! That made you feel he was a real musician-that it did!'

That does finish our

So you see we began the day with a band of music. not sound so bad. But the band being dismissed, we breakfast and retire to the library. We do not go empty-handed. Each of us carries a plate piled up high with bread cut up for the birds that are waiting to be fed. A space under the window is swept clear from snow, and there the birds are, ready for their breakfast. Sparrows by the score, robins that will hardly wait till the window is opened, chaffinches and tomtits, dunnocks, blackbirds and thrushes, linnets and—jackdaws, yes! and watching very warily for a chance, a dozen or so of rooks in the trees in yonder plantation, very much excited, very restless, very shy, but ready to come down and gobble up the morsels if we keep ourselves out of sight. As to the robins, there is no mauvaise honte about them; they will almost fly on to the plate. Sometimes I send a shower of morsels quite over the robins, and they greatly enjoy the fun. One saucy little fellow last week laughed out loud at me. 'Laughed?' Yes, laughed! I've known a robin laugh convulsively. But then it was not under a street lamp.

It is one of the laws of this palace that we do not begin real work before half-past nine. And before that time arrives there is usually a good half-hour for reading aloud by the Lady Shepherd. What is the Shepherd doing meanwhile? He is not going to tell you any

thing more than this, that he is devoting himself during that halfhour to preventing the ravages of moths and bookworms. You people who suppose we poor country folk must be horribly dull and depressed may as well understand that this library in which I am sitting is thirty feet long, and that this is an apartment that for a country parsonage may be regarded as palatial. Pray haven't I a right to have one good room in my house? One thing I know, and that is that I am rated as if I lived in a house of 430l. a year, and if I must pay rates on that amount I may as well have something to show for

Also I would have you to know that the walls of this library are lined with books from floor to ceiling. Then there are flowers all about-grown on the premises, mind you-none of your bought blossoms stuck on to a bit of stick with a bit of wire, but live flowers. that turn and look at you-at any rate, they certainly do turn and look out at the window if you give them a chance. Moreover, they are not under the dominion of a morose stipendiary, for the sufficient reason that the head gardener is the Lady Shepherd, and the under gardener only comes three times a week, and Jabez has his hands. full, and Ishmael is no servant of ours, but the servant of the maids in the kitchen; and when you're snowed up Ishmael must give his life to the solemn duties of a stoker and filler of coal-scuttles, and to shovelling away the snow, and to running errands. There is no doubt about the seriousness of that boy. He is oppressed by the sense of his responsibility, and convinced that he occupies the position of the divine being in Plato's Theatetus. As long as rò ov kept his hand upon the world it went round all right; when he took it off, the world straightway spun round the wrong way. That being Ishmael's view, he is naturally grave. When the maids shriek at him he exhibits a terror-stricken alacrity, but when I tell him to do this or that he looks at me with a cunning expression as if he would say, 'Do you really mean that? Well, you must take the consequences.' Then he glides off. From Ishmael not much is to be expected in the greenhouse. But when half-past nine strikes I roll my table into position and set to work, my head gardener puts on her apron and gathers up her skirts, and starts forth with her basket on her arm, equipped for her day's work.

Now, if a man has four good hours in the morning which he may call his own, it's a great deal more than most men have, and there's no saying what may be done in such hours as these. But if you allow morning callers to disturb you, then it's-I was going to say a bad word!

I had just settled myself to work in earnest when Jemima's head appeared. Please, sir, Tinker George wants to speak to you.' 'Tell your mistress.' And I thought no more about it, but went on with what I was doing. If Tinker George had been one of my parishioners I should have jumped up and heard him patiently, but Tinker George

does not belong to me, but to the next parish, and as his usual object in coming to see me is to show me his poetry, I passed him on this time, knowing very certainly that he would not be the worse for my not seeing him. An hour later I got up to warm myself. May I speak?' said the Lady Shepherd. 'I let Tinker George go away, but I'm afraid you'll be sorry I did. I think you would have liked to see him.' 'What's the matter?' He's been writing to the dear Queen' (the Lady Shepherd always speaks of the dear Queen'), and he came to show you the letter, and to ask what address he should put on it.'

Tinker-George-writing to-the-Queen! What did the man want? He wanted to be allowed to keep a dog without paying tax for it. George goes about with a wheel, and he calls for broken pots and pans. Sometimes he finds the boys extremely annoying, they will persist in turning his wheel when his back is turned and he has gone into a house for orders. Now, you see, if he had a dog of spirit and ferocity chained to his wheel, George might leave that wheel in charge of that dog; but then a dog is an expensive luxury when there is the initial outlay of seven shillings and sixpence for the tax. So he wrote to the Queen, and he put it into the post, and I never saw it. This was just one of those things which cause a man lifelong regret, all the more poignant because so vain. The Lady Shepherd is the most passionately loyal person in England, and she firmly believes that there will come a holograph reply from her Majesty in the course of a few days addressed to Tinker George, promptly and graciously granting him his very reasonable request. "I've promised Tinker George,' she added, 'to give him a sovereign for the letter when it comes, and it shall have a box all to itself among my autographs.'

Be pleased to observe that it was only just noon, and two events of some interest had happened already, though we were snowed up. But at this point I must needs inform you who we are. In the first place there are the Shepherd and the Lady Shepherd; in the second place there are the Shepherd's dogs. No shepherd can live without dogs-it would not be safe. No man ever pulled another man out of the snow: it is perfectly well known that men don't know how to do it. Till lately we had three of these protectors. But— eheu fugaces!-we have only two now: one a blue Skye, silky, surly, and exceptionally stubborn; and a big colley, to whom his master is the Almighty and the All-wise. I do not wish to claim more for my friends than is due to them. Ours are only average dogs; but they are average dogs. And if any one will have the hardihood to assert that he holds the average man to be equal to the average dog in morals, manners, and intelligence, I will not condescend to argue with that purblind personage. I will only say that he knows no more about dogs than I do about moles, and I never kept a tame mole.

1

Nothing perplexes some of my friends more than to hear that I do not belong to a single London club. Not belong to a club? One man was struck dumb at the intelligence; he looked at me gravelysuspicion in every wrinkle of his face, perplexity in the very buttons of his waistcoat. He was working out the problem mentally. I saw into his brain. I almost heard him say to himself, 'Not belong to a club? Holloa! Ever been had up for larceny ? Been a bankrupt? Wonder why they all blackballed him?—give it up!' He evidently wanted to ask what it meant-there must be something wrong which he did not like to pry into: a skeleton in the cupboard, in fact.

'I said a London club!' I added, to relieve his embarrassment. 'Of course I do belong to a club here-the Arcadian Club. It's a very select club, too, and we can introduce strangers, which is an advantage, as you may perhaps yourself have felt if you have ever been kept for ten minutes stamping on the door-mat of the Athenæum with the porter watching you while that arch boy was sauntering about, pretending to carry your card to your friend upstairs. We are rational beings in our club, and I'll introduce you at onceColonel Culpepper, Toby! Colonel Culpepper, Mr. Bob.' Neither Toby nor Mr. Bob took the least notice of the gallant colonel, who seemed rather shy himself. They're dangerous dogs are colleys, so I'm told. In London it does not so much matter, because, you see, they must go about with a muzzle. And this is really all the club you belong to?'

Yes. This, and no other; the peculiarities of our club being that false witness, lying, and slandering were never so much as known among the members. There is a house dinner every day, music every evening, no sneering, no spite, no gossip, no entrance fee, no annual subscription, no blackballing, no gambling, no betting, and no dry champagne or dry anything. Show me a club like that, my dear colonel, and I'll join it to-morrow, whether in Pall Mall or in the planet Jupiter. At the present moment I know of only one such club, and it is here-the Arcadian Club! Enjoy its privileges while you may, and be grateful.

Seriously, I defy any club in England or anywhere else to produce me fifty per cent. of its members so entirely courteous, cordial, and clubbable-so graceful, intelligent, and generous-such thorough gentlemen, and so entirely guiltless of talking nonsense, as our friends Toby and Mr. Bob. Of course there are the infirmities which all flesh is heir to, and jealousy is one of these. But put the case that you should to a little man, say 'You may sleep inside that door on a cushion by the fire,' and say to a big man, You're to sleep outside that same door on the mat!' and put the case that each of those men knew he was member of the same club to which the fire, the cushion, and the mat belonged:-and pray what modus vivendi could be