from a theatrical party at Dickens’, my mother found the little boy crouching on the doorstep.  His master had turned him out of doors because he was threatened with blindness, and having come now and then with messages to Queen Square, he found his way, as he explained, ’to die on the threshold of the beautiful pale lady.’  His eyes were cured, and he became my mother’s devoted slave and my playmate, to the horror of Mr. Hilliard, the American author.  I perfectly recollect how angry I was when he asked how Lady Duff Gordon could let a negro touch her child, whereupon she called us to her, and kissed me first and Hassan afterwards.  Some years ago I asked our dear friend Kinglake about my mother and Hassan, and received the following letter:  ’Can I, my dear Janet, how can I trust myself to speak of your dear mother’s beauty in the phase it had reached when first I saw her?  The classic form of her features, the noble poise of her head and neck, her stately height, her uncoloured yet pure complexion, caused some of the beholders at first to call her beauty statuesque, and others to call it majestic, some pronouncing it to be even imperious; but she was so intellectual, so keen, so autocratic, sometimes even so impassioned in speech, that nobody feeling her powers could go on feebly comparing her to a statue or a mere Queen or Empress.  All this touches only the beauteous surface; the stories (which were told me by your dear mother herself) are incidentally illustrative of her kindness to fellow-creatures in trouble or suffering.  Hassan, it is supposed, was a Nubian, and originally, as his name implies, a Mahometan, he came into the possession of English missionaries (who had probably delivered him from slavery), and it resulted that he not only spoke English well and without foreign accent, but was always ready with phrases in use amongst pious Christians, and liked, when he could, to apply them as means of giving honour and glory to his beloved master and mistress; so that if, for example, it happened that, when they were not at home, a visitor called on a Sunday, he was sure to be told by Hassan that Sir Alexander and Lady Duff Gordon were at church, or even—­for his diction was equal to this—­that they were “attending Divine service.”  Your mother had valour enough to practise true Christian kindness under conditions from which the bulk of “good people” might too often shrink; when on hearing that a “Mary” once known to the household had brought herself into trouble by omitting the precaution of marriage, my lady determined to secure the girl a good refuge by taking her as a servant.  Before taking this step, however, she assembled the household, declared her resolve to the servants, and ordered that, on pain of instant dismissal, no one of them should ever dare say a single unkind word to Mary.  Poor Hassan, small, black as jet, but possessed with an idea of the dignity of his sex, conceived it his duty to become the spokesman of the household, and