—y' understand—with the second violin
thrust into your fingers? Take a friend's
advice, and keep the position you're
entitled to as master in your own house.
However, all this is neither here nor there.
Of course, I don't want to come to any
house where it is desired I should be absent
by both parties. My sole object," added
the Doctor, as if making a speech, " was
to assert myself, to vindicate myself under
oppression. To prevent myself being trampled
under foot before the servants. Well,
I have done so, I have ray'abilitated myself
successfully, and gained my ends, and now
take leave to withdraw." And with great
dignity the Doctor bowed to all round, and
retired. He certainly had been worsted in
this skirmish, though he had withdrawn
in good order; but he had too much tact
not to see that if he continued the struggle
further after the present demonstration he
would be " in the wrong box." He never
lost dignity in defeat. And so bowing to
all round, he withdrew.

THE HOTEL CHAOS.

To say that Chaos is come again is a
tolerably common locution for expressing an
excessive amount of confusion; but there
need not be the slightest fear of the
return of the Hotel Chaos. It can never
come again. It was too rich of its kind,
too peculiar, too overwhelming in its
characteristics, to bear repetition. Among
chaotic things it was unique, and, on the
whole, it may be esteemed a matter for
congratulation that there never could have
been by any possibility but one Hotel Chaos,
and that, in all human probability, there
never will be another. There are limits
even to disorder, and the acutest ravings
of mania must have their turn. The Hotel
Chaos was the maddest hostelry ever
known, or ever dreamt of. It did its
work; it reached its consummation; it
burst; and it can be no more restored to
its pristine shape than can one of those
paper bags which schoolboys inflate with
their breath until they are as plump as a
balloon ready to start, and then, with
smart concussion from the palms of their
hands, rend into irremediable fragments.

I never enjoyed the felicity of a bed at
the Hotel Chaos, which, to have been
consistent, should have been fitted up, in
the way of sleeping accommodation, with
padded rooms, frequented by laundresses
bringing home nothing but strait-waist-coats
as clean linen from the wash. A
room at the Hotel Chaos! Bless you, such
a thing was an infinity of cuts above me,
and was meat for my masters—marshals
of France, grand provosts, and similar
grandees. I. don't think they took in
anybody lower in rank than a deputy-assistant
commissary-general, and it is not probable
that I shall ever attain a grade so exalted.
There had been, to be sure, a few modest
civilians, despicable creatures, with not so
much as a solitary ribbon of the Legion
of Honour among them, who had been
fortunate enough to obtain apartments
at the Chaos, before the hotel went
hopelessly and stark- staringly mad; and as
these contemptible creatures (who were
mainly Englishmen) were content to pay
about seventy-five per cent more for their
board and lodging than the grandees were
willing to disburse, the landlord—a covetous
rogue with but scant patriotism in him
—was naturally reluctant to turn these
ignoble, but lucrative, customers into the
street. Ere long, however, a dashing member
of the staff of Field-Marshal Bombastes-Furioso
was heard to ask the proprietor how
long it would be before he put " tout ce tas
de pékins à la porte"—before he expelled
all those cads of civilians; and so shortly
afterwards the proprietor—really much
against the grain, I am willing to believe—
began to grow insolent to the civilian cads,
and to hint that their rooms were required
for " Messieurs les Militaires;" that General
Fusbos couldn't wait any longer, that
Colonel Grosventre must really be
accommodated, and that Milord Smith, Count
Thompson, and Sir Brown must find lodgings
elsewhere. Smith, Brown, and Thompson,
quiet souls, well aware that in war
time the toga must cede to the tunic,
meekly withdrew from the foul and wretched
garrets where for sums varying from ten to
fifteen francs a day they had been suffered
to hide their degraded heads; but, although
ostracised from the upper rooms, they were
by no means free, financially, from the
exaction of the Hotel Chaos. It was one
of the myriad humours of this bedlamite
establishment that your bill, if you didn't
stop in the house, had a tendency to grow
longer than had been its custom when you
did stop. But how was a bill possible at all,
you may ask. Thus. The Hotel Chaos was
the only place in the maniacal city of Moriah
where you could get a decent breakfast or
dinner, and where tolerable coffee, liquors,
and cigars could be obtained. Moreover,
as the chief madmen of Moriah were