In all these cases the courtesy of the intention was manifest; but sometimes it is less easy to discover.  Not long ago Sir Henry Trying most kindly went down to one of our great Public Schools to give some Shakespearean recitations.  Talking over the arrangements with the Head Master, who was not a man of felicities and facilities, he said, “Each piece will take about an hour; and there must be fifteen minutes’ interval between the two.”  “Oh! certainly,” replied the Head Master; “you couldn’t expect the boys to stand two hours of it without a break.”  The newly appointed rector of one of the chief parishes in London was entertained at dinner by a prominent member of the congregation.  Conversation turned on the use of stimulants as an aid to intellectual and physical effort, and Mr. Gladstone’s historic egg-flip was cited.  “Well, for my own part,” said the divine, “I am quite independent of that kind of help.  The only occasion in my life when I used anything of the sort was when I was in for my tripos at Cambridge, and then, by the doctor’s order, I took a strong dose of strychnine, in order to clear the brain.”  The hostess, in a tone of the deepest interest, inquired, “How soon did the effect pass off?” and the rector, a man of academical distinction, who had done his level best in his inaugural sermons on the previous Sunday, didn’t half like the question.

Not long ago I was dining with one of the City Companies.  On my right was another guest—­a member of the Worshipful Company of Butchers.  We had a long and genial conversation on topics relevant to Smithfield, when, in the midst of it, I was suddenly called on to return thanks for the visitors.  The chairman, in proposing the toast, was good enough to speak of my belongings and myself in flattering terms, to which I hope that I suitably responded.  When I resumed my seat my butcher friend exclaimed, with the most obvious sincerity, “I declare, sir, I’m quite ashamed of myself.  To think that I have been sitting alongside of a gentleman all the evening, and never found it out!”

The doorkeepers and attendants at the House of Commons are all old servants, who generally have lived in great families, and have obtained their places through influential recommendations.  One of these fine old men encountered, on the opening day of a new Parliament, a young sprig of a great family who had just been for the first time elected to the House of Commons, and thus accosted him, with tears in his eyes:  “I am glad indeed, sir, to see you here; and when I think that I helped to put your noble grandfather and grandmother both into their coffins, it makes me feel quite at home with you.”  Never, surely, was a political career more impressively auspicated.