into a well-worn groove will put the mind of the partizany instantly out of gear.) We parted, more in anger than in sorrow, and I telephoned down the kitchen stairs to ask who was in the Blue Room.

As I am not a Cabinet Minister there was nothing to fear, really. But I did my breathing exercises in the hall, went hurriedly through my physical drill, and then swung jauntily into the room, humming a merry stave.

But the music died on my lips as her eye fell upon me. For twenty minutes by the clock, and with only two semicolons, she told me that my sisters and my cousins and my aunts, as well as my fourteen daughters, were slaves and helots. "And now, Sir," she said, considering my plate-glass windows with an interest I did not at all care for,-"and now, Sir, have you made up your mind to do us justice at last?"

"Madam," I replied, seeing my opening here,-"Madam, it would be difficult indeed to do you justice." She looked by turns mollified, doubtful, and then dangerous; and I had to warn one of my varlets, who was sweeping imaginary leaves into heaps outside, to take particular heed that she did not indulge an all-too-likely propensity for roof-climbing. Then I went to the Red Room.

I have an idea that he once misspent a day putting my bath-taps out of order, under pretence of being a plumber. But he was quite ready to mend the constitution, and he talked of how our forefathers bled-Heavens! how they bled!

He shed a stream of pamphlets entitled "The Dukes: Who the Deuce are they?" all the way to the front-door.

"Are there any in the box-room, the bath-room, or under the beds?" I telephoned downstairs.

"There's her in the Yaller Room," came the resentful answer. So I went to the Yellow Room and sat down beside her on the sofa.

"My dear lady," I said-for she was young and very, very beautiful,-"my dear lady, if I have a vote doesn't it strike you that I have made up my mind how to use it. years and years ago? I am whole-heartedly for a Tarifferendum, and these visits, though pleasant, seem to a busy man so unnecessary"

Her eyes swam, and the mute reproach in them stabbed me. "I only came," she faltered, "at the cost of much violence to my not unnatural feelings of diffidence, to thank you a thousand times for giving to the world that beautiful, beautiful book, The Heart that Overfloweth."

And I had so often wondered who had bought it-the sole copy of a stillborn masterpiece that did not figure in the publisher's statement under the head of "free copies."

But she was gone-and for ever!

And so it has come to this: that a man cannot tell friend from foe in the privacy of his own castle.

They come and go, canvasser and candidate, big loafer, little loafer, word-spinner, crank. And "Lor! the sweeping up after 'em!" as my head servitor justly remarks. And it is all the fault of the ruthless oligarchs, who will have it that I must be consulted about the taxes I pay! (Tyrants! of course they'll have to go after this.)

My head servitor has given a month's notice.

Proud Lansdowne, see your work!

Laziness is certainly not the vice of to-day. Even the idle are active, and let off their energies in odd jobs. Oc casionally these are found for them by Satan, but more often by that angel of good nature who attends continually upon the underworked comfortable. There are in the world certain able people who are sometimes counted with the "odd jobbers," but who ought perhaps to come under some other category. Owing to some temperamental peculiarity, they cannot do their best unless their work is varied. Sometimes they have a dash of quixotry in their natures. There is a delightful illjudged goodness about them, a goodness with which such a profitable quality as sustained industry seems incompatible. They have many irons in the fire, and they hammer upon each in turn with hopeful and fervent activity, but of long concentration they are incapable. As a rule they are without the capacity to make money, and without the desire to do so. If they are born with enough to live on, they are often delightful characters, free of the self-interest which it is so difficult to divorce from ambition, and of the frivolity which idleness fosters. But suppose they belong to the working classes? The thought of them brings us face to face with one of the most difficult and discouraging of modern problems, the question of the effect of poverty and wealth upon the moral nature.

Born in the upper classes, such men belong to the best; born below a certain level, and they sink almost inevitably to the bottom, involving their families in their ruin. The present writer was talking lately of these energetic haters of monotony to an educated woman living among the poor of Southwark. The only hope for such men lies, she said, in a trade which of

fers constant change and entertainment, such as costermonging. Even here, if they cannot stand some monotony, they cannot keep their heads above water. 'The coster who sells one thing always, and is always to be found in the same place or on the same beat, is usually a very respectable man. If he sells two or three things, according to the season, he may still do well. But if he sells what he calls "everything," and that all over the place, there is no hope for him; he must become a tramp.

But to return to the idle men and women who delight in odd jobs. The best of them are attracted by philanthropy in the technical sense-i.c., by benevolence towards the poor-and very often they put through a really good piece of work, if only it is short. "Odd jobbers" come fresh and full of the high spirits which hard work inevitably breaks to whatever job they undertake, and very often they come with some very useful illusions. The first of these is that all persons suffering from signal misfortunes, especially if those misfortunes are connected with oppression, are good, or at least lovable. This is one of those noble illusions which the regular worker loses with the greatest pang, but it is one which while it lasts gives a wonderful zest to the righter of wrongs. It is true that it sometimes leads to injustice, but it is an injustice which falls as a rule upon two very broad backs,-that of the oppressor, who does not care, and that of the hard-working philanthropist, who is used to it.

With those spasmodically energetic persons who look for odd jobs chiefly within their own circle match-making is a great favorite. The desire to "match-make" is natural to most women, and probably on the whole it is

beneficial to society. Generally it is undertaken with mixed motives. Without cynicism, we believe that the most prevalent motive is simply a wish for entertainment. A match in making, if only one can watch it from close by, is the most interesting of all comedies. According to the match-maker's character, she enjoys the sight of happiness or the unfolding of plot and intrigue. The spectacle renews her youth. It is a piece of work which may have great results, may be productive of a good deal of gratitude, and at least can never be undone. The rôle of Providence is intensely attractive. We doubt whether there is any woman who does not hope to play it and shine in it before her death. Not that men never give their attention to matchmaking, but we think their point of view is somewhat different. They are actuated as a rule by a great desire to serve or please one of the parties concerned, not by the delight of the drama. They desire the end, they do not want to see the working. Match-making on the part of a mother is not, of course, an odd job. It is, or she thinks it to be, part of her regular work, the finishing touch to the happiness of her child, which has been her duty since its birth.

Prominent among those who love odd jobs are hardy persons, who mix themselves up in quarrels with a view to effecting reconciliations. Sometimes they are actuated by a noble desire for peace, mitigated, no doubt, by a wish to be in the thick of any interesting situation. Sometimes also they do good-when the quarrel is not a family affair. From such a quarrel friends, acquaintances, and even "in-law” relations had better stand aside, not so much lest the fate of the rash person who interposes befall them, but lest they make the breach worse. No physician from the outside can judge of the seriousness of wounds given in a

family fight. Wounds which seem fatal to affection heal at once, and scratches fester and cannot be mollified. The affection which is the natural and usual outcome of relationship may be counted on with too much certainty; but the members of one family, though they may not like, do in a marvellous way understand one another. It is true that sympathy is the great enlightener, but it is not the only one. Blood gives a comprehension which common interests, and even great affection, often fail to impart. Not every quarrel is a misunderstanding It is possible for two persons to know one another so well as to make each sure that his aversion is unconquerable. There are people whose only chance of mutual forgiveness lies in their not meeting; to bring them together in person is a sure method of parting them for ever in soul. They can act justly, even generously, if they do not see one another. The man or woman bent upon a job of reconciliation never realizes this.

A few people who are not positively bad are born with a horrible desire to punish. The love of justice is tainted in their hearts. Like a vicious horse, they do best in steady work. Laziness is not in them, and if they are free of the necessity of earning their bread they let off nefarious steam in odd jobs. No one believes himself to be malevolent, or even revengeful; and these intrinsically unkind people hide from their consciences behind a screen upon which they write the words "public spiritedness." They never have so good an appetite, nor feel so happy or so much alive, as when they are holding up to public ignominy some unhappy clerk or public servant, or even shopman, who has done them some trifling wrong. With them there is no forgiveness for a rough word, a mistake, a moment's unpunctuality, or the slightest dereliction of duty. The of

fender is hunted to justice, and the accuser loves the sport. It is big game, this destruction of prospects and reputations, and it is dangerous, for the victims, however humble, live to hate. Probably these malevolent "odd jobbers" are not quite so bad as they seem. The worst of all “odd jobbing" is that it destroys the power of mental The Spectator.

focus. Regular work as a rule enables a man to measure the importance of his own undertakings. Without it the power to weigh our own wrongs and other men's rights in a just balance is rare. The perpetual refastening of the attention upon new work destroys the sense of proportion.

There are few things pleasanter than picking up one's cards at an old-fashioned game of whist. The dealer turns up the trump card on the table, and then comes the leisurely arrangement of the alternate suits of red and black in the proper order of the têtes and pips. The turning up of the trump card, and the leaving it uncovered till the first trick is played is of the essence of the old, delightful game. The selection of the trumps should surely be the work of destiny, not of any human agent, as when Archbishop Howley, playing whist with his chaplains, chose his own strong suit, or as in the new, fantastic game of bridge, where the whole question is in a state of irritating suspense and doubt for some time after the picking up of the cards, too often to be followed by the declaration of spades, and the consequent throwing down of the hand. The mention of bridge touches a sore spot for the few remaining lovers of the incomparable game. In a restless generation the sufferings of the conservative minority are rarely apprehended with any degree of sympathy, but they must always appeal strongly to the truly humane mind. The present writer for one can never regard bridge as anything else than a violent perversion, in the interests of gambling, of the best game in the world. It altogether lacks the repose, the simplicity, the continu

ity of the older game, the qualities so essential to a good game, which whist possessed in such an eminent degree. The arbitrary variation in the value of the suits is peculiarly irritating to a whist player. Bridge surely can never become such an abiding source of human solace as the whist known to Mrs. Battle and the Dowagers with whom Mr. Pickwick played at Bath. In English literature whist holds a high affectionate place; if when bridge has run its inevitable course it is found to have left any mark at all, its connotation will be wholly bad.

There are still out-of-the-way corners of the land where the old game is played. The writer remembers, in a remote Yorkshire valley, four old farmers who met regularly for their rubber once or twice a week. One thing only troubled their enjoyment of the game, and that was, that with all their efforts they could never succeed in remembering to whom the deal rightfully belonged. The device they finally adopted was that the dealer should wear a nightcap, which was handed on with the cards to each player in turn. One sees the scene even now; the winter night outside with the world "happed up wi' snaw." as in that country we used to say, and within, the four old neighbors, with the dealer nightcap-crowned, in the cheerful warmth, and the silence broken only

by the ticking of the grandfather's clock, at peace in the ease and abandonment of the game.

Cards, indeed, make their appeal to all sorts and conditions of men-from the rag-and-bone man to the Summus Pontifex. They have been a favorite solace of many ecclesiastics-Popes, and even canonized Saints. Picquet must have lightened the fatigues of journeying for many an old country bishop going about his diocese in bad weather over impassable roads in seventeenth century France. Leo X. is said to have practised "bluffing," and St. Francis de Sales sometimes to have cheated at cards. One hopes, indeed, that the present Pontiff, amid so many cares and scandals (as he thinks, for instance, of the death of Ferrer, and of Leopold, faring forth on his long journey, fortified with the Apostolic blessing, and laden with baskets of human hands), can find a brief forgetfulness in the "tresette" he so loved as Patriarch of Venice, and as a humble parish priest. "Tresette" belongs to some simple presbytery of the Veneto, far from these grisly things. The name suggests a fire of roaring logs, and chestnuts, and white wine. For humbler people in quiet places, cards often pleasantly fill up the long candle-light leisure of winter evenings. Round the green meadow of the card table, a summer in the midst of winter, the strife and rumor of the world is still. What a picture of intimate and careless ease is called up by the words of the old dame in the play of "Gammer Gurton's Needle"

What, Diccon, come nere, ye be no stranger,

We be fast set at trump, man, hard by the fire.

This play was published in 1551, and it rejoices one to think that such scenes of quiet human enjoyment were going on all through the hangings, and burnings, and bowellings of that atro

cious time. The sixteenth century "trump" is probably the same game as our whist. It was also called "ruff," and to this day trumping is spoken of as "ruffing."

These lines must not be taken as an apology for "bumble puppy," but the writer believes that whist was killed by becoming too scientific-there passed away from it the breathless excitement felt by the old uncertain players, the sense of adventure with which, as third player, they played their highest card, the literal "triumph" with which they produced the last hoarded trumps. They played badly, often, no doubt, but they played with an absorbed interest and a keen enjoyment. One has heard an Italian lady, when her Knave was swallowed up by the next player's Queen, exclaim, "Mio Dio," with the accent of one who beholds the catastrophe of Messina. This was doubtless southern, but English people played with the same intent

ness.

Sarah Battle delighted, it will be remembered, in the "imagery" of the game. She denied the right of chess to knights and castles. "Those hardhead contests can in no instance ally with the fancy. They reject form and color. A pencil and a slate (she used to say) were the proper arena for such combatants." In France the "imagery" of the cards is more romantic than with us. The court cards (they used sometimes, by the way, to be spoken of as "coat cards") all bear the names of kings and knights and ladies of romance. These have varied from time to time, but the names that have survived are Charles, Cæsar, Alexander, David, for the Kings; Judith, Rachel, Argine, Pallas, for the Queens; La Hire, Hector, Lancelot, Hogier, for the Knaves. The writer confesses his ignorance as to who Argine was. Hogier is, of course, the Dane, and La Hire the Squire of Jeanne the Maid.