He was the most hospitable man in the world, and could never let many days pass without asking us to dine with him.  But his hospitality was of quite the old world school.  One day, but that was after our journey to Italy and when he had become intimate with us, being in a hurry to get back into the drawing-room to rejoin a pretty girl next whom I had sat at dinner, I tried to escape from the dining-room.  “Come back!” he roared, before I could get to the door, “we won’t have any of your d—­d forineering habits here!  Come back and stick to your wine, or by the Lord I’ll have the door locked.”

He was, unlike most men of his sort, not very fond of riding, but was a great walker.  He used to take the men he could get to walk with him a tramp over the hill, till they were fain to cry “Hold! enough!” But there I was his match.

Most of my readers have probably heard of the “Luck of Edenhall,” for besides Longfellow’s[1] well-known poem, the legend relating to it has often been told in print.  I refer to it here merely to mention a curious trait of character in Sir George Musgrave in connection with it.  The “Luck of Edenhall” is an ancient decorated glass goblet, which has belonged to the Musgraves time out of mind, and which bears on it the legend:—­

  “When this cup shall break or fall,
  Farewell the luck of Edenhall.”

[Footnote 1:  Subsequently to the publication of his poem Musgrave asked Longfellow to dine at Edenhall, and “picked a crow” with him on the conclusion of the poem, which represents the “Luck” to have been broken, which Sir George considered a flight of imagination quite transcending all permissible poetical licence.]

After what I have written of Sir George and the holy well, which we so unfortunately moved from its proper site, it will be readily imagined that he attached no small importance to the safe keeping of the “Luck;” and truly he did so.  But instead of simply locking it up, where he might feel sure it could neither break nor fall, he would show it to all visitors, and not content with that, would insist on their taking it into their hands to examine and handle it.  He maintained that otherwise there was no fair submission to the test of luck, which was intended by the inscription.  It would have been mere cowardly prevarication to lock it away under circumstances which took the matter out of the dominion of “luck” altogether.  I wonder that under such circumstances it has not fallen, for the nervous trepidation of the folks who were made to handle it may be imagined!

I made another friend at Penrith in the person of a man as strongly contrasted with Sir George Musgrave as two north-country Englishmen could well be.  This was a Dr. Nicholson, who has died within the last few months, to my great regret, for I had promised myself the great pleasure of taking him by the hand yet once again before starting on the journey on which we may, or may not meet.  He was my senior by a