require the art of getting rid of it. You have yet
to learn that instead of turning everything into
gold, like Midas, you can turn gold into
everything. It is the true secret of the transmutation
of metal."

"Shall I be any the wiser or happier for this
knowledge?" asked Saxon, with a sigh.

"You cannot help being the wiser," laughed
his cousin; "nor, I should think, the happier.
You will cease to be 'dreary,' in the first place.
He who has plenty of money and knows how to
spend it, is never in want of entertainment."

"Ay, 'and knows how to spend it!' There is
my difficulty."

"If you had read Molière," replied Mr.
Trefalden, " you would be aware that a rich man has
discernment in his purse."

"Cousin, you are laughing at me."

It was said with perfect good humour, but with
such directness that even Mr. Trefalden's
practised self-possession was momentarily troubled.

"But I suppose you think a rich fellow can
afford to be laughed at," added Saxon, "and I
am quite of your opinion. It will help to
civilise me; and that, you know, is your mission.
And now for a lesson in alchemy. What shall
I transmute my gold into first?"

"Nay, into whatever seems to you to be best
worth the trouble," replied Mr. Trefalden.
"First of all, I should say, into a certain amount
of superfine Saxony and other cloths; into a
large stock of French kid and French cambric—
and a valet. After that—well, after that,
suppose you ask Lord Castletowers' opinion."

"I vote for a tall horse, a short tiger, and a
cab," said the young Earl.

"And chambers in St. James's-street,
suggested the lawyer.

"And a stall at Gye's."

"And all the flowers, pictures, Baskerville
editions, Delphin classics, organs, and Etruscan
antiquities you take it into your head to desire!
That's the way to transmute your metal, you
happy fellow! Taken as a philosophical
experiment, I know nothing more beautiful, simple,
and satisfactory."

"You bewilder me," said poor Saxon. "You
speak a language which is partly jest and partly
earnest, and I know not where the earnestness
ends, nor where the jest begins. What is it that
you really mean? I am quite willing to do what
you conceive a man in my position should do;
but you must show me how to set about it."

"I am here to-day for no other purpose."

"And more than this, you must give me leave
to reject your system, if I dislike, or grow weary
of it."

"What! return to roots and woad after Kühn
and Stultz?"

"Certainly, if I find the roots more palatable,
and the woad more becoming."

"Agreed. Then we begin at once. You shall
put yourself under my guidance, and that of
Lord Castletowers. You shall obey us implicitly
for the next six or eight hours; and you shall
begin by writing a cheque for five hundred, which
we can cash at Drummond's as we go along."

"With all my heart," said Saxon; and so
aided by his cousin's instructions, sat down and
wrote his first cheque.

"He's a capital fellow," said Lord
Castletowers to Mr. Trefalden, as they went down the
hotel stairs; "a splendid fellow, and I like him
thoroughly. Shall I propose him at the
Erectheum? He ought to belong to a club; and I
know some men there who would be delighted
to do what they could for any member of my
introduction."

"By all means. It is the very thing for him,"
replied Mr. Trefalden. "He must have
acquaintances, you know; and it is out of the question
that a busy man like myself should do the
honours of town to him, or any one. Were he
my own brother, I would not undertake it."

"And I am never here myself for many days
at a time," said the Earl. "London is an
expensive luxury, and I am obliged to make a little
of it go a long way. However, while I am here,
and whenever I am here, it will give me a great
deal of pleasure to show Mr. Saxon Trefalden
any attention in my power."

"You are very kind. Saxon, my dear fellow,
Lord Castletowers is so good as to offer to get
you into the Erectheum."

"The Erectheum of Athens?" exclaimed
Saxon, opening his blue eyes in laughing
astonishment.

"Nonsense—of Pall Mall. It is a fashionable
club."

"I am much obliged to Lord Castletowers,"
replied Saxon, vaguely. But he had no more
notion of the nature, objects, or aims of a
fashionable club than a Bedouin Arab.

INSURANCE AND ASSURANCE.

ABOUT five years ago I returned from India,
with my pension of a thousand a year, as a
retired civilian. During the thirty-five years
I had lived in that land of the sun, I had
managed to save ten thousand pounds, which,
being invested at ten per cent, gave me another
thousand a year. With an income of two
thousand pounds, and all our children provided
for, my wife and I not unreasonably hoped
and expected to live comfortably, the more so
as neither of us was given to extravagance, and
we both cared little for the fashionable
conventionalities of life. When we came home from the
East, I was fifty-five years of age, and my better
half ten years my junior: ages at which people
look forward rather to quiet enjoyment of life
than to making a show, or cutting a dash, in
the world. We took a small house in
Kensington, laid out a few hundred pounds in
furnishing it, jobbed a neat one-horse brougham
by the month, engaged a cook, a housemaid,
and a parlour-maid, and set ourselves to work
to renew old friendships and re-make old
acquaintances, which in our long long exile had