called it, at Whittlemere, with only his. lordship's valet and her ladyship's maid and the third and fourth footmen and the first kitchen-maid and the still-room maid and one housemaid to supply their wants, and made their state entry in the train of their establishment to Whittlemere House, Belgrave Square, where they spent May, June, and July.

But while they were in the country no distraction consequent on hunting or shooting parties diverted them from their mission in life, which was to behave like Whittlemeres. About two hundred and thirty years ago, it is true, a certain Lord Whittlemere had had "passages," so to speak, with a female who was not Lady Whittlemere, but since then the whole efforts of the family had been devoted to wiping out this deplorable lapse. Wet or fine, hunting and shooting notwithstanding, Lord Whittlemere gave audience every Thursday to his estate-manager, who laid before him accounts and submitted reports. Nothing diverted him from this duty, any more than it did from distributing the honors of his shooting lunches among the big farmer-tenants of the neighborhood. There was a regular cycle of these, and duly Lord Whittlemere and his guests lunched (the lunch in its entirety being brought out in hampers from the house) at Farmer Jones's and Farmer Smith's and Farmer Robertson's, complimented Mrs. Jones, Smith, and Robertson on the neatness of their gardens and the rosy-facedness of their children, and gave each of them a pheasant or a hare.

Similarly, whatever highnesses and duchesses were staying at the house, Lady Whittlemere went every Wednesday morning to the mothers' meeting at the vicarage, and every Thursday afternoon to pay a call in rotation on three of the lodge-keepers' and tenants' wives. This did not bore her in the least; nothing in the cold shape of duty ever bored her. Conjointly they went to church on Sun

day morning, when Lord 'Whittlemere stood up before the service began and prayed into his hat, subsequently reading the lessons, and giving a sovereign into the plate, while Lady Whittlemere, after a choir practice on Saturday afternoon, played the organ. It was the custom for the congregation to wait in their pews till they had left the church, exactly as if it was in honor of Lord and Lady Whittlemere that they had assembled here. This impression was borne out by the fact that as the family walked down the aisle the congregation rose to their feet. Only the footman who was on duty that day preceded their exit, and he held the door of the landau open until Lady Whittlemere and three daughters had got in. Lord

artists, the society of circus-people, and failing them, of tramps and even of criminals. It also postulated a mistress, another piece of artistic baggage in which I was shamefully lacking. Many of the artists I admired resided, from choice rather than from necessity, in some sunless, rat-ridden house in a narrow, smelly street; and after I had climbed innumerable stairs, meeting with a fresh smell on every landing, I used to gaze uneasily at those I had come to visit, apprehensive lest at any moment they should tumble' down at my feet, felled by some dread malady arising from unsanitary dwelling. They, on the other hand, I felt, regarded me with some disdain as one who, dwelling amid the gilt and marble of the modern hotel, could not possibly do anything worth while. Remember, I speak of the eighteen-nineties. Nowadays it is the

other way about. But at that time this feeling was very rigid. If poets or painters had relatives-mothers or aunts or suchlike-who lived in opulent conditions, they did their best to conceal them. It almost labeled a man as an amateur at once if it came out that his uncle had a country estate or that his aunt was the wife of a wealthy lawyer.

In the same way there was only one excuse for living in luxurious quarters, and that was to be in debt. There was something daredevil and Balzacian about that which tended to enhance a man's artistic qualities. But at a hotel you cannot very well be in debt; they won't allow it. Very well then.

So I generally shunned the hotel I happened to be staying at except to swallow occasional sullen meals there and to go to bed. In a city, if any prepossessing lady happened to be stepping out of the hotel at the same time that I was, I would walk as close to her as I could, so that any of my friends who might be passing would take the impression that I had been in there reveling, and I would thus find grace in their sight. But no prepossessing lady, no lady at all, in fact, seemed to be in the hotel at Mont Dore when I arrived there. And none of my acquaintance, ar

tistic or other, was likely to be in Mont Dore at the end of October.

Nevertheless, I sought out a café in which to spend most of my waking hours. I found one up a little street, paved with cobbles, which ended in a stable for cattle. Grass grew between the cobbles, and the afternoon sun used to fall very sweetly in the quiet place. There were about four tables in the little café, and the floor was sanded. I usually had it entirely to myself; the owners were elsewhere about their business. In fine weather the door

stood wide open. Occasionally some

farm-hand from the mountains would come in, bid me good day, go to the counter, and after drinking off a glass of wine that he had poured from one of the bottles, put down the price, and go his way. As the sunlight stole across the floor, and touched the old gray cat dozing in a chair and the geraniums in pots in the windows, a tinkle of bells would be heard, and the cows coming down from the mountains would go by, driven by a barefoot girl holding a long stick. Now and then one of the cows would stop and put her moist nose round the door, and give me a halffriendly look from her wide, distrustful eyes. The chickens, too, which on and off all day were seeking treasure between the cobbles, would sometimes venture over the threshold and stroll across the floor. I had orders from the goodwife to drive them out, but it was too much trouble. Oh, place divine! Give me to live, to dream away my days, in that or a like quiet place! Grant me this, and all the fame and notoriety in the world anybody else can have for me.

The sun-shadows would turn yellow and gold, and then die on the floor. The clock in the corner, after incredible wheezing, would clamp out five o'clock. The cat would rise, stretch herself back and forth, and walk off daintily. And I too would put the finishing touches on a poem called, perhaps, "City Fever," and take myself peacefully back to the hotel, pausing now and then to watch the shadows muffling the mountain-tops. But it was another iron rule in my school of art not

to take poetical inspiration from rural scenes or vegetables, or from anything, in fact, which had not been touched to a different beauty by artifice.

One afternoon, seated thus placidly in the little café, listening to the bells softly tinkling as the cows and the goats came home, I was aroused by a most unexpected occurrence. A young lady of the foreigntourist type-quite the last kind of person I should have expected to see thererushed into the room, and stood panting and terrified in the middle of the floor.

"Vawche!" she shouted. "Ally-vonsong." She glared at me imperiously. "Comprenny-voo?"

"Perfectly," I replied as I rose. "What is it you want done?"

"Oh, you speak English?" Considerable relief was in her face. "I'm really glad. I speak English myself."

Her accent, however, was decidedly American.

"Those cows," she went on hurriedly, 'are coming up the street. They're quite wild. They're as dangerous as they can be. Can't you send for the police?"

I assured her that the cows were quiet. Even as I spoke, the cow that was accustomed to say how d' ye do to me put her head in at the door. Immediately the girl shrieked.

"Quiet! It's a mad bull!"

I shooed at the cow, which regarded me with pained astonishment at this exhibition of bad manners. Thereupon the little cow-driver came along and hit her a resounding thwack on her flank with the long stick. For an instant the cow gazed at me in deep reproach, and then moved slowly on, with less faith in humankind than ever.

"It's an outrage," said the young lady. "The law would not allow it anywhere else but in France. Why, in America if a cow did that—”

Words failed her. She was now recovering her poise, and felt it was time to give an eye to her dignity.

"I am not afraid of quiet cows," she said deliberately; "but all French cows are mad, like most of the people."

Then she asked me the shortest way to the Hotel Sarciron.

"I am going there myself," I said, gathering up the leaves of a story I was trying to write about a worn sinner who lived in a tower beside a graveyard.

Before we had gone far, a voice called "Olivia!" and we saw a white-haired and extremely dry-looking lady standing in the door of a hardware shop across the street beside the amiable proprietor, who smiled widely and made reassuring signs to us.

"Why, Olivia Mist," repeated the lady, querulously, "wherever did you get to? I've been just frightened to death."

"That 's my aunt," said Olivia. "When we saw the cows coming we ran in different directions. I'm glad she 's safe."

At dinner that evening the head-waiter, imagining that with only ourselves in the hotel three compatriots would like to be friendly, had placed my table near that of Miss Mist and her aunt. We met, however, as perfect strangers. I do not know whether Olivia desired to talk to me or not; but I at least had no idea of allowing my reveries about the haggard sinner in the tower to be disturbed by the gabble of females. Except for some objection that Olivia made to the head-waiter about one of the dishes, -a rather lengthy objection which at one point seemed like. brightening into a row, -the meal proceeded in silence. They left the diningroom first, and I could hear Olivia's voice at the other side of the hotel shouting at her deaf aunt. The word "cow" came to me very clearly.

Later I was obliged to go into the reading-room. It was the inevitable readingroom of a French hotel, one of those rooms which seem to be never aired, with an atmosphere as special as a church, and furnished with fragile plush-and-gilt chairs and a huge table covered with a great number of newspapers devoid of interest. There I found them both again, looking, as it seemed to me, a little forlorn. The aunt was sewing; Olivia was reading a copy of a Paris New York paper several days old. Two Tauchnitz

volumes were on the table beside her. I felt that in common decency I must speak. I asked her if she felt any ill effects from her panic that afternoon.

Americans are popularly supposed to be sociable and easy of access. In this respect they are sometimes compared favorably with the English. My experience, however, leads me to doubt whether this characteristic is uppermost when they fall in with their own countrypeople in foreign parts. They seem to be afraid that one does not know their precise importance, or that one does. Here we were, the only foreigners in a small town, thrown together in the same hotel, yet we chose to address each other with extreme stiffness and even with an undertone of hostility. Not the aunt, poor dear,-her infirmity prevented anything like social intercourse, -but if the head-waiter, who spoke very fair English, happened to overhear Miss Mist and me, he must have come to the conclusion that there was some hidden cause of rancor between us.

They had come to Mont Dore so that her aunt could take the waters. Why they had come so late in the season she did not explain. I believe that the place she first encountered me had something to do with the frigidity of her address. She was by no means sure that I was a fit person to unbend to. Before long she inquired shamelessly what my business was. I replied with some consequence that I was an author. In those days a few rags of hierarchy still fluttered about this profession.

"And are you on a holiday?" pursued

Miss Mist.

"Holiday? Nothing of the kind." "Oh," she said detachedly, "I thought, seeing where you were this afternoon – I guess you don't do much work here."

“On the contrary,” I replied with some heat. Although I thoroughly despised her, I thought it worth while to explain my theory of places to work in. She listened with a most irritating smile of pity and contempt.

"I guess it is only bums and loafers," she said at last, "who hang about saloons.

It's pretty much the same in all countries, believe me. You won't find great writers -the really important, I mean-in such places." She took up one of the Tauchnitz volumes. "You would n't be likely to find William Black or Mrs. Henry Wood or E. P. Roe in a saloon."

Although I wanted to get away, I would at that time have started a dispute with St. Paul himself if he had put forward these names as masters of literature.

"I dare say," I said with utter disdain; "but how can anything be inferred from what such people do? They are not artists."

I mentioned Arthur Symons, Aubrey Beardsley, Ernest Dowson. I also mentioned the "Yellow Book." At this last a gleam of intelligence came into her face.

"Oh, yes, that 's the thing all the papers in England and New York laugh at. I've seen that name; I 've seen jokes about it. It must be a pretty mean little affair. I don't think," she added with a tight smile, "that any of the great authors would write for that, would they?"

I could not honestly say that they would, for this was in the good period of the "Yellow Book" - the Beardsley period. Instead, I observed that there might be different opinions about the great

authors.