it, or are you a philospher, and able to
despise anything that a woman can do to
hurt you? If the latter, come up to town
at once, and I will exhibit you in a show
as a lusus naturæ, and we will divide the
profits and make our fortunes.

"And while on that subject, Walter, let
me drop my old cynical fun, and talk to
you for a minute honestly and with all the
affection of which my hard, warped, crabbed
nature is capable. I can write to you what
I couldn't say to you, my boy, and you
won't think me gushing when I tell you that
my heart had been tight locked and barred
for years before I saw you, and that I
don't think I've been any the worse since
you found a key somehow—God knows
how—to unlock it. Now then, after that
little bit of maudlin nonsense, to what I
was going to say. The first time we were
ever in my old room together talking over
your future, I proposed to start you for
Australia. You declined, saying that you
couldn't possibly leave England, and when
I pressed you about the ties that bound you
here, and learned that you had no father or
mother, you boggled, and hesitated, and
broke down, and I was obliged to help you
out of your sentence by changing the
subject. Do you remember all that? And
do you think I didn't know what it all
meant? That marvellous stupidity of
young men, which prevents them from
thinking that any one has ever been young,
but themselves! I knew that it meant that
you were in love, Walter, and that's what
I want to ask you about. From that hour
until the day we pressed hands in farewell
at Euston-square, you never alluded to her
again! In the long letter which you sent
me, and which now lies before me, a letter
treating fully of your present and your
future life, there is no word of her! Don't
think I am surprised at a fine, generous,
hearty, hopeful young fellow not giving his
love-confidence to a withered, dried-up old
skittle like myself; I never expected it; I
should not mention it now, save that I fear
that the state of affairs can be scarcely
satisfactory between you, or you, who have
placed your whole story unreservedly
before me, would not have hidden this
most important part of it. Nor do I want
to ask you for a confidence which you have
not volunteered. I only wish you to examine
the matter calmly, quietly, and under the
exercise of your common sense, of which
you have plenty. And if it is unsatisfactory
in any way—give it up! Yes, Walter, give
it up! It sounds harshly, ridiculously, I
know, but it is honest advice, and if I had
had any one to say it to me, years and
years ago, and to enforce my adoption of
it, I should have been a very different man.
Believe in no woman's love, Walter, trust
no woman's looks, or words, or vows,
'First of all would I fly from the cruel
madness of love,' says Mr. Tennyson, and
he is right. Cruel madness, indeed! we
laugh at the wretched lunatic who dons a
paper crown, and holds a straw for a
sceptre, while all the time we are hugging
our own tinsel vanities, and exulting in our
own sham state! That's where the swells
have the pull, my boy! They have no
nonsense about mutual love, and fitness, and
congeniality, and all that stuff, which is
fitted for nothing but Valentine-mongers
and penny romancists; they are not very
wise, but they know that the dominant
passion in a man's heart is admiration of
beauty, the dominant passion in a woman's
is ambition, and they go quietly into the
mart and arrange the affair, on the
excellent principle of barter. When I was
your age I could not believe in this, had
high hopes and aspirations, and scouted the
idea of woman's inconstancy—went on
loving, and hoping, and trusting, from
month to month, and from year to year,
wore out my youth and my freshness and
my hope, and was then flung aside and
discarded, the victim of 'better opportunities'
and 'improved position.' Oh, Lord!
I never intended to open my mouth, about
this, but if you ever want to hear the whole
story, I'll tell you some day. Meanwhile,
think over these hints, my boy! Life's
too short and too hard as it is, and—
verbum sap.

"Most probably you'll never take any
further notice of me, after that. If you
have corns, I must have been hard and
heavy upon them, and you'll curse my
impertinence; if you haven't you'll think me
the prosiest of old bores. Just like me. I
see plainly that I must have made a mess
of it, which ever way it turns up.

"You tell me to send you news. Not
much about; but what there is, encouraging
and good for the cause. There is very
little doubt that at the general election,
which will come off in a few months, we
shall be stronger by far than we ever
expected, and shall cut the combs of some of
those aristocrats and plutocrats very close
indeed. There is a general feeling that
blood and money bags have divided the
spoil too long, and that worth and intellect
may be allowed a chance of being brought