take refuge in it.  Humanity is a pigsty, where liars, hypocrites, and the obscene in spirit congregate; it has been so since the great Jew conceived it, and it will be so till the end.  Far better the blithe modern pagan in his white tie and evening clothes, and his facile philosophy.  He says, “I don’t care how the poor live; my only regret is that they live at all;” and he gives the beggar a shilling.

We all want notoriety; our desires on this point, as upon others, are not noble, but the human is very despicable vermin and only tolerable when it tends to the brute, and away from the evangelical.  I will tell you an anecdote which is in itself an admirable illustration of my craving for notoriety; and my anecdote will serve a double purpose,—­it will bring me some of the notoriety of which I am so desirous, for you, dear, exquisitely hypocritical reader, will at once cry, “Shame!  Could a man be so wicked as to attempt to force on a duel, so that he might make himself known through the medium of a legal murder?” You will tell your friends of this horribly unprincipled young man, and they will, of course, instantly want to know more about him.

It was a gala night in Curzon Street, the lords were driving up in hansoms; shouts and oaths; some seated on the roofs with their legs swinging inside; the comics had arrived from the halls; there were ladies, many ladies; choruses were going merrily in the drawing-room; one man was attempting to kick the chandelier, another stood on his head on the sofa.  There was a beautiful young lord there, that sort of figure that no woman can resist.  There was a delightful chappie who seemed inclined to empty the mustard-pot down my neck; him I could keep in order, but the beautiful lord I saw was attempting to make a butt of me.  With his impertinences I did not for a moment intend to put up; I did not know him, he was not then, as he is now, if he will allow me to say so, a friend.  About three or half-past the ladies retired, and the festivities continued with unabated vigour.  We had passed through various stages, not of intoxication, no one was drunk, but of jubilation; we had been jocose and rowdy, we had told stories of all kinds.  The young lord and I did not “pull well together,” but nothing decidedly unpleasant occurred until someone proposed to drink to the downfall of Gladstone.  The beautiful lord got on his legs and began a speech.  Politically it was sound enough, but much of it was plainly intended to turn me into ridicule.  I answered sharply, working gradually up crescendo, until at last, to bring matters to a head, I said,

“I don’t agree with you; the Land Act of ’81 was a necessity.”

“Anyone who thinks so must be a fool.”

“Very possibly, but I don’t allow people to address such language to me, and you must be aware that to call anyone a fool, sitting with you at table in the house of a friend, is the act of a cad.”

There was a lull, then a moment after he said,