The SHAH’S Romance.

“I don’t suppose it is a State secret—­but if it is there can be no harm in divulging the fact—­that there was some thought of a marriage in the ‘eighties’ between the Shah of Persia and the lovely Miss Malory, the lineal descendant of the famous author of the Arthurian epic.  Mr. Gladstone, Mme. de Novikoff and the Archbishop of Canterbury were prime movers in the negotiations.  But the SHAH’S table manners and his obstinate refusal to be converted to the doctrines of the Anglican Church, on which Miss Malory insisted, proved an insurmountable obstacle, and the arrangement, which might have been fraught with inestimable advantages to Persia, came to nought.  Miss Malory afterwards became Lady Yorick.”

Practical joking at Oxford in the “Sixties.”

“Jimmy Greene, afterwards Lord Havering, whose rooms were just below mine, suffered a good deal from practical jokers.  One day I was chatting with Reggie Wragge when we heard loud cries for help just below us.  We rushed down and found Jimmy in the bath, struggling with a large conger-eel which had been introduced by some of his friends.  I held on to the monster’s tail, while Wragge severed its head with a carving-knife.  Poor Jimmy, who was always nervous and not very ‘strong in his intellects,’ was much upset, and was shortly afterwards ploughed for the seventh time in Smalls.  He afterwards went into diplomacy, but died young.”

Mrs. MANGOLD’S complexion.

“At one of these dances at Yorick Castle Mrs. Mangold, afterwards Lady Rootham, was staying with us.  She was a very handsome woman, with a wonderful complexion, so brilliant, indeed, that some sceptics believed it to be artificial.  A plot was accordingly hatched to solve the problem, and during a set of Kitchen Lancers a syphon of soda-water was cleverly squirted full in her face, but the colour remained fast.  Mrs. Mangold, I am sorry to say, failed to see the point of the joke, and fled to her room, pursued as far as the staircase by a score or more of cheering sportsmen.”

The ordeal of lady Verbena Soper.

“Mr. GOSCHEN, as he then was, was entertaining a large party to dinner at Whitehall.  He was at the time First Lord of the Admiralty, and an awkward waiter upset an ice-pudding down the back of Lady Verbena Soper, sister of Lady ‘Loofah’ Soper and daughter of the Earl of Latherham, The poor lady cried out, ‘I’m scalded!’ but our host, with great presence of mind, dashed out, returning with a bundle of blankets and a can of hot water, which he promptly poured on to the ice-pudding.  The sufferer was then wrapped up in the blankets and carried off to bed; The waiter was of course sacked on the spot, but was saved from prosecution at the express request of his victim and assisted to emigrate to America, where I believe he did well on an orange farm in Florida.”