at my window looking at the effect of moonlight
on the Falls. It seemed to me as though in the
grand spectacle before my eyes I beheld a sort
of illustration of my own nature, wherein generous
emotions could come gushing, foaming,
and falling, and yet the source be never exhausted,
the flood ever at full. I ought parenthetically
to observe that the champagne was
excellent, and that I had drunk the third glass
of the second bottle to the health of the Widow
Cliquot herself. Thus standing and musing, I
was startled by a noise behind me, amd, turning
round, I saw one of the smallest of men in a little
red Greek jacket and short yellow breeches,
carefully engaged in spreading a small piece of
carpet on the floor, a strip like a very diminutive
hearth-rug. This done, he gave a little wild
exclamation of " Ho!" and cut a somersault in
the air, alighting on the flat of his back, which
he announced by a like cry of " Ha!" He was
up again, however, in an instant, and repeated
the performance three times. He was about, as
I judged by the arrangement of certain chairs,
to proceed to other exercises equally diverting,
when I stopped him by asking who he was.

"Your excellency," said he, drawing himself
up to his full height of, say, four feet, " I am
Vaterchen!"

Every one knows what provoking things are
certain chance resemblances, how disturbing to
the right current of thought, how subverting
to the free exercise of reason. Now, this creature
before me, in his deeply indented temples,
high narrow forehead, aquiline nose, and resolute
chin, was marvellously like a certain great field-
marshal with whose features, notwithstanding
the portraits of him, we are all familiar. It was
not of the least use to me that I knew he was not
the illustrious general, but simply a mountebank.
There, were the stern traits, haughty and
defiant, and do what I would, the thought of the
great man would clash with the capers of the
little one. Owing to this impression, it was impossible
for me to address him without a certain
sense of deference and respect.

"Will you not be seated?" said I, offering
him a chair, and taking one myself. He accepted
with all the quiet ease of good breeding, and
smiled courteously as I filled a glass and passed
it towards him.

I pressed my hand across my eyes for a
moment while I reflected, and I muttered to
myself,

"Oh, Potts, if instead of a tumbler this had
really been the hero, what an evening might this
be! Lives there that man in Europe so capable
of feeling in all its intensity the glorious privilege
of such a meeting? Who, like you, would
listen to the wisdom distilling from those lips?
"Who would treasure up every trait of voice, accent,
and manner, remembering, not alone every
anecdote, but every expression? Who, like you,
could have gracefully led the conversation so as
to range over the whole wide ocean of that great
life, taking in battles, and sieges, and stormings,
and congresses, and scenes of all that is most
varied and exciting in existence? Would not
the record of one such night, drawn by you, have
been worth all the cold compilations and bleak
biographies that ever were written? You would
have presented him as he sat there in front of
you." I opened my eyes to paint from the model,
ami there was the little dog, with his legs
straight up on each side of his head and forming
a sort of gothic arch over his face. The wretch
had done the feat to amuse me, and I almost
fainted with horror as I saw it.

"Sit down, sir," said I, in a voice of stern
command. " You little know the misery you
have caused me."

I refilled his glass and closed my eyes once
more. In my old pharmaceutical experiences
I had often made bread pills, and remembered
well how, almost invariably, they had been
deemed successful. What relief from pain to
the agonised sufferer had they not given! What
slumber to the sleepless! What appetite, what
vigour, what excitement! Why should not the
same treatment apply to morals as to medicine?
Why, with faith to aid one, cannot he induce
every wished-for mood of mind and thought?
The lay figure to support the drapery suffices for
the artist, the Venus herself is in his brain.
Now, if that little fellow there would neither
cut capers nor speak, I ask no more of him.
Let him sit firmly as he does now, staring me
boldly in the face that way.

"Yes," said I, " lay your hand on the arm of
your chair so, and let the other be clenched
thus." And so I placed him. " Never utter a
word, but nod to me at rare intervals."

He has since acknowledged that he believed
me to be deranged, but as I seemed a harmless
case, and he could rely on his activity for escape,
he made no objection to my directions. The
less, too, that he enjoyed his wine immensely,
and was at liberty to drink as he pleased.

"Now," thought I, " one glance, only one,
to see that he poses properly."

All right, nothing could be better. His face
was turned slightly to one side, giving what the
painters call action to the head, and he was perfect.
I now resigned myself to the working of
the spell, and already I felt its influence over me.
Where and with what was I to begin? Numberless
questions thronged to my mind. I
wanted to know a thousand disputed things,
and fully as many that were only disputed by
myself. I felt that as such another opportunity
would assuredly never present itself twice in my
life, that the really great use of the occasion
would be to make every inquiry subsidiary to
my own case, to make all my investigations
what Germans would call " Potts- wise." My
intensest anxiety was then to ascertain if, like
myself, his grace started in life with very grand
aspirations.

"Did you feel, for instance, when playing
practical jokes on the maids of honour in
Dublin, some sixty odd years ago, that you were
only in sportive vein throwing off so much light
ballast to make room for the weightier material
that was to steady you in the storm-tossed sea
before you? Have you experienced the almost