believe that it is the custom of the British
nobleman to saunter down to breakfast, in a
society of ladies, clad in a gorgeous Eastern
robe-de-chambre, of which he gracefully swings
and twirls the tassels as he engages in light and
elegant badinage. Yet, how can we believe
this?

I wonder—but no, it's impossible—if any new
limits will ever be assigned to that custom of
soliloquising, which is certainly an integral
element in the " legitimate." Those long and
highly-finished monologues, with which we are
all so well acquainted, are an awful trial.
Soliloquy is usually resorted to by some individual
who is in a decided " fix," and this is tolerably
true to nature. But oh, how different is the
soliloquy of ordinary life from the soliloquy with
which we are familiar on the stage! When a
gentleman is really " up a tree," his soliloquy is
generally conducted something in this fashion: He
flops down on a chair, stretches his legs quite
straight out in front of him, digs his hands down
into the pockets of his unspeakables, and with
his head thrust rather forward, stares with might
and main at the fire in the grate. After the lapse
of about five minutes he gives a kind of grunt,
which in literature we can only express very
inadequately by the word "humph." In five
minutes more, he will probably change the
position of his legs, and mutter, " Confound the
thing!" or " Infernal fellow!" He will then—if
the soliloquy be a very long one—sit perfectly
still for an additional five minutes, at the expiration
of which time he will jump up very
suddenly, and saying, "Well, there's no help for
it," will make his exit by door in wall of dining-
room. This is the soliloquy of real life.

The " aside" system again. It would be a
soothing and comforting thing to the feelings, if
that could in some way be a little mitigated. It
is altogether legitimate, but still one does
sometimes find it a little trying when an evil-doer
conveys to you a piece of information which you,
seated at the back of the dress-circle, are to hear
quite distinctly, while the victim concerning
whom the words are spoken stands only two yards
off and hears not a sound. When VICTIM
stands at the foot of the stage meditating, and
VILLAIN, just before making his exit at the back,
turns round and says, in a voice of thunder, " I
will make him my tool, look ye; I'll drain him
dry as hay; I'll suck the goodness of the fruit,
and fling the useless rrrrrhind upon the dunghill
to rot"—it is almost trespassing too much
on your credulity to tell you that the subject of
these unpleasant remarks does not hear them,
when they actually come to you in a distant part
of the building, over the very top of his luckless
head. And the benevolent asides are quite as bad.
When the aged guardian, with his wild but
goodhearted nephew two yards away from where he
stands, informs the gallery in a stentorian voice
that he " pretends to be angry" with the said
nephew, " but that he loves the young dog all
the time, and will leave him every penny he
possesses"—when this happens, it is a rather strong
affront to one's understanding to pretend that
the " young dog" is perfectly unconscious of his
uncle's benevolent intentions.

Disguises again! Bless my heart alive what
a noodle the Legitimate Drama takes one for, in
connexion with disguises! A gentleman with
whose figure, gestures, and voice, all the
characters of the drama are supposed to be
perfectly familiar, has only to pull his sombrero
over his eyes, and to put on a cloak, and lo!
he can be present at conferences, at junketings,
wherever he is not wanted; can listen to, nay,
even engage in, conversations concerning
himself; and when he has been sufficiently abused,
can fling aside his cloak and exclaim with simple
dignity, " I am Sir Jasper Sniggletop, himself."
Oh dear, dear me, if a limp wide-awake and an
Inverness cape were such effective disguises as
that, I would mingle with the giddy herd of my
acquaintances before I was a day older, and
when they had committed themselves irrevocably
on the subject of this very series of papers, I
would fling aside my Inverness, and exclaim,
with a slap on my breast, "I am the SMALL-
BEER CHRONICLER!"

ONLY ONE ROOM.

"CHANGE carriages here, gentlemen, on
account of the Russian frontier. Every one
descends. Pardon, gnadiger Herr, but you must
remove your effects, for the visite de douane."
Thus, the civil Prussian guard of the train.

Out we got accordingly. There were a good
many passengers, mostly Germans or German
Jews, somehow connected with the trade in
corn, feathers, tallow, Riga hemp, and Memel
timber; for the station was Eydtkuhnen, on the
Eastern Railroad. The flat-capped porters laid
violent hands upon the luggage, and we all went
through the Prussian bureau and across to that
over which was painted the black eagle of Russia,
and through the dim glass of whose windows
appeared the green uniforms and glistening
pewter medals of the Russian frontier guard.
For myself, I felt slightly nervous, as an
Englishman often does when he first enters the
Czar's dominions, and when all the stories he has
ever heard of prison, knout, and Siberia, come
crowding on his mind. But I put a good face
upon it, and walked into the custom-house along
with the rest, carrying my railway rugs over one
arm, and in the other hand the small but weighty
portmanteau which I had received especial
instructions never to trust out of my sight.

This was my first northern journey, and it was
undertaken chiefly, though not entirely, on
account of business. I was not, strictly speaking,
a business man, being, in fact, a sleeping partner
in the old-established house of Hutchmere,
Lowndes, and Co., bankers, of Lothbury, London,
E.C. Old Mr. Hutchmere and a deceased uncle
of mine had been first-cousins, and the latter
had bequeathed to me the small interest he
possessed in the firm. The share of the profits
thus accruing to me was enough to defray my
expenses during the years I had spent in qualifying
myself for practice at the bar, and in