errand. For the Brompton Hospital was going
to send twenty-four consumptive patients, of
whom there was yet hope, to winter in Madeira;
and he was going down the river with them to
see them off. I asked him to come in and dine
with me when he returned, and tell me all
about it. He said he would, and he did. And
this is his report, delivered as we sat over a
snug fire, with fog shut out, and curtains drawn,
and glasses filled.

"You know what a wretched day it was."

"And is."

"Ah, yes. It would make one shiver to look
at it as it lies dead in the streets in its damp
shroud; it must be a wretched night upon the
river, and that steamer with its little cargo of
consumptives hasn't started yet; won't start
until two in the morning; and may not be
ready then."

"Why were they not sent out in October,
before this raw season set in?"

"Well, I asked that question too, but found,
as usual, that many a thing seeming wrong is
right, Parnell's Hermit, to wit. There are not
many passenger steamers to Madeira. The P.
and O. boats, as they touch at Malta, because
of the cholera, there would be put in quarantine
if they went to Madeira now. So they don't
go. There's only a short season of other
passenger traffic for the benefit of invalids, and the
last boat that went would have reached Madeira
before the end of the hot season. If patients
had been sent by that, they would have run a
new risk from vicissitude of climate. And so,
no steamer would do but this, and she was to
sail this evening. They will get to Madeira in
about eleven days."

"Well, Timid, now tell us all about it."

"Do you want to know the history of the
hospital, and how it is built in the form of the
letter H,—H was a Hospital, and so on?
Because I've got all these sort of facts in my
pocket."

"A very good place for them. I wouldn't
have them disturbed on any account. But
what did you see?"

"Oh, a very nice place. I had some lunch
at the Brompton Boilers."

"Had you really? That's important. Well."

"Well, the travellers were to dine at half-
past twelve, and I didn't arrive at the hospital
in the shape of a H till twenty-five minutes to
one."

"Well?"

"Well; through being late, I regret that I
shall be unable to state to the distinguished
journal for which you know I report, what
meat they had. When I saw them they were
eating pudding. Plum-pudding and, I inferred,
roast beef, and shall roundly assert roast beef
when I write my report, with all the statistics
out of my pocket, and the graphic details. You
know how we do it. ' On Tuesday last the polite
and usually quiet neighbourhood of Brompton
was—- ' you start as for a Fire or Murder;
parade your figures out of the report," put in your
facts pictorially, and end by patting somebody
upon the head. Uncertainty won't do in public
writing. If you believe its beef you must assert
beef roundly. But I won't mention beef to you,
either roast or round, because you are a confidential
friend. The travellers whom I saw eating
pudding were all men: in my paper, I should say
' of the male sex;' to you I say only that they
were men. Then I was taken to" the board-room
to see the committee, also, to the best of my
belief, all men, eating soup. Through leaving
them too soon it happens that I do not know
what meat the committee ate, for when I came
back into the board-room they also were eating
pudding."

"All those details are very important, Timid;
pray make much of them. Pudding. And you
had none?"

"You see I had lunched at Brompton Boilers,
and there was a chair beside the chairman—
evidently a most excellent man the chairman, I
have got his name in my pocket—and on the
other side of the empty chair was a stout literary
gentleman. He was eating soup when I first saw
him, and he was eating pudding—well, it might
be pie—when I saw him next. You know I
am constitutionally nervous, and I was a little
flustered on the subject of that vacant chair, in
awe of the stout literary gentleman, who might
have eaten me. Besides, I had my umbrella in
my hand, and you may not eat your soup with
an umbrella. The first doubt on my mind was,
Whose chair is this? You remember, of course,
that the vacant seat at King Arthur's Round
Table was called Seat Perilous, and that courteous
knight the secretary, whose time I was taking
up, might be the very Sir Galahad for whom
this empty chair was destined. If I sat in it,
and took his soup, should I go down, as the
wrongful occupant of the Seat Perilous was to
go down, into the bowels of the earth, while the
first mouthful of the soup that was another's
was yet going down into my stomach? It would
have cost me a tough reading of Hegel to get
to the bottom of all that nice reasoning; so as I
was sure they had not Hegel on the premises
to lend me, I said I would have no soup. Besides,
I am a journalist."

"And, as such, have forsworn soup?"

" No. But a practice has sprung up lately,
and is becoming a great deal too common,
of stroking the stomachs of newspaper
reporters. A hotel opens: will the press come
and be fed, and qualify itself for a report
upon its cellar? A great exhibition opens:
will the press come to a supper and become
acquainted with its merits? To all which
invitations, so far as I can represent the
press, I flatly reply—No, I won't; and I do
wish, most heartily, that each of my brother-
reporters would say with me: ' I will not be fed
by any man who knows and can care nothing
about me personally, and can see in me only a
machine to grease. I will faithfully and simply
do my work, and eat the fruit of my own labour,
convivial only with my own friends.' That
repast in the board-room was a little too much
for a lunch, and a good deal too early for a