call, and walked bravely through the gate of
the paddock left open for her. But it did not
answer. That paddock was too small for her ample
creamy limbs; the roof-tree too narrow to
harbour love and happiness and grandeur in a row;
her baby elephants tossed up their trunks
indeed, but it was in disdain at the coarse poor
halm which barely covered their baby toes in
place of the sweet venial grass which should
have grown above their knees; and when, in
disgust at the poverty of the provisions offered,
she broke down the paddock-gate and marched
out into the open, she led her owner into a
morass whence he never shook himself free,
until he crawled under the harrow of the
Insolvents' Court, and emerged with scratches on
his back that bled and festered always. His white
elephant did for him what all white elephants do
for their owners; and when the end of time came,
he lay on the road of life, a mangled wreck, with
the print of an elephant's foot on his head.

Another white elephant that I know of
brought her own trappings and provision with
her. She was a rich wife, with a dowry that
would have satisfied the most exacting. Surely
there was no ruin looming in the distance here!
If a creature brings its own com, may it not eat
safely in your manger? If it supplies its own
silk and satin, can you not stitch up its howdah
without pricking your fingers to the bone? The
fortunate possessor of this special white elephant
brought her to his home which her gold had
gilded, and led her into the park which her acorns
had planted; and he gave her full permission to
walk beneath her own avenues, and eat the
topmost branches of her own seedlings; to strengthen
her manger with golden plates if she liked,
provided she hammered them herself out of the
nuggets of her own gold mines. So she did.
But she ate so many more seedlings than her
own acorns had planted, and she strengthened
her manger with golden plates so outrageously
thick, that in time she exhausted her supplies.
Then she fed out of her owner's manger until she
ate him up, body and bones. The wife was rich,
but the woman was extravagant; and this special
white elephant turned out in the end one of
the most destructive of the tribe.

And among the biggest and whitest of the
herd, are, and have been, royal visits to favoured
noblemen. Very much flattered and honoured
was courtly Leicester when the high starched
ruff of the Leonine Virgin quivered beneath the
lights of Kenilworth. Here was a white
elephant whose sleek sides were worthy to be
regarded and envied of all mankind! Here was a
quadruped of strength, with dim forecastings of
possible howdahs, and a swift and steady bearing
to the highest point of the hill of fortune! But
poor Leicester was no better off than the
Siamese nobleman whom his king delights to favour
left-handedly. His queen's grace was the white
elephant of his life; mowing down irresistibly
all the virtues and noblenesses of soul that
might have borne goodly crops. If he had
never been so gifted, he might have lived a
happy man and have died an honest one, and
the shade of poor pale Amy would not have
haunted his waking hours, and crime and
dishonour would not have howled from the
depths of the troubled past. But he kow-towed
to his white elephant, and fell down and
worshipped it, and kissed the dust from its feet,
and spread out the tender branches of love and
honour in its way, and the big feet trampled
them down step by step, and tossed them like
refuse: and then he died, and he, too, was
counted but as refuse among men. Essex did the
same; but he crawled about the white elephant's
feet with such abased hardihood, that at last he
got kicked heavily out of the way, with his life
torn right asunder and the manhood trampled
out of him. All for the sake of kow-towing to a
queen, and bartering truth and life for a crowned
old coquette's false smiles.

I remember how mightily I was enchanted
and honoured when my Lady Fairstar did me
the unfathomable honour of asking me to dine
at her splendid mansion in a glorified region
of Belgravia! It seemed to me, then a poor
struggling barrister on a mythical yearly allowance,
that I was on the high road to fortune at
once; and that I had only to follow my Lady
Fairstar's cavalcade to be landed safe in the
very heart of the gardens of Aidann without
delay. I went. I made no manner of doubt that
I went to fascinate and to subdue, and that I
should make such deep dints on the heart of our
delightful hostess as not even the incessant
rubbing of high life would be able to efface.
And certainly my lady was gracious to me. But I
found, in the end,that all I had made by the white
elephant of her countenance, was a portentous
bill at my tailor's, another portentous bill at my
bootmaker's, an unnecessary supply of embroidered
shirt-fronts and French cambric
handkerchiefs, and my laundress left unpaid owing
to the transfer of her funds to the pockets of
the cabmen. That was what I found, when I
took the two columns and added up the cost and
the gain of my Lady Fairstar's Russian dinners,
with scented ringlets laughingly shaken, and
bewildering smiles prodigally bestowed. It was a
white elephant; nothing but a white elephant;
and I ran away from it. Those grand visits are
terrible matters generally. You are asked to a
country-house. You are acknowledged to be
a crack shot and a first-rate rider, you tell a
story capitally, and pocket every ball on the
board; but at what a cost do you thus
administer to the white elephant of your pride?
At the cost of a year's income compressed
into the six weeks of your stay. Butlers
and footmen and pages and grooms and gillies
and coachmen and the odd men about the
place, and the odd women too—all to fee, all
to pay—and the little wife left at home to fight
with an unruly butcher who has undisciplined
notions of trade, and to tell taradiddles to the
landlord, who finds himself under the necessity
of "looking you up." That is your white
elephant when you get Lord Darkstar's invitation,
to his country-seat in the hunting season.

There are all sorts of white elephants in our