When he came to London the cousins and playfellows of early Indian days met once again, and shook hands.  “Can I do anything for you?” I remember the kind fellow asking.  He was always asking that question:  of all kinsmen; of all widows and orphans; of all the poor; of young men who might need his purse or his service.  I saw a young officer yesterday to whom the first words Sir Richmond Shakespear wrote on his arrival in India were, “Can I do anything for you?” His purse was at the command of all.  His kind hand was always open.  It was a gracious fate which sent him to rescue widows and captives.  Where could they have had a champion more chivalrous, a protector more loving and tender?

I write down his name in my little book, among those of others dearly loved, who, too, have been summoned hence.  And so we meet and part; we struggle and succeed; or we fail and drop unknown on the way.  As we leave the fond mother’s knee, the rough trials of childhood and boyhood begin; and then manhood is upon us, and the battle of life, with its chances, perils, wounds, defeats, distinctions.  And Fort William guns are saluting in one man’s honor,* while the troops are firing the last volleys over the other’s grave—­over the grave of the brave, the gentle, the faithful Christian soldier.

     * W. R. obiit March 22, 1862.

NOTES OF A WEEK’S HOLIDAY.

Most of us tell old stories in our families.  The wife and children laugh for the hundredth time at the joke.  The old servants (though old servants are fewer every day) nod and smile a recognition at the well-known anecdote.  “Don’t tell that story of Grouse in the gun-room,” says Diggory to Mr. Hardcastle in the play, “or I must laugh.”  As we twaddle, and grow old and forgetful, we may tell an old story; or, out of mere benevolence, and a wish to amuse a friend when conversation is flagging, disinter a Joe Miller now and then; but the practice is not quite honest, and entails a certain necessity of hypocrisy on story hearers and tellers.  It is a sad thing, to think that a man with what you call a fund of anecdote is a humbug, more or less amiable and pleasant.  What right have I to tell my “Grouse in the gun-room” over and over in the presence of my wife, mother, mother-in-law, sons, daughters, old footman or parlor-maid, confidential clerk, curate, or what not?  I smirk and go through the history, giving my admirable imitations of the characters introduced:  I mimic Jones’s grin, Hobbs’s squint, Brown’s stammer, Grady’s brogue, Sandy’s Scotch accent, to the best of my power:  and, the family part of my audience laughs good-humoredly.  Perhaps the stranger, for whose amusement the performance is given, is amused by it and laughs too.  But this practice continued is not moral.  This self-indulgence on your part, my dear Paterfamilias, is weak, vain—­not to say culpable.  I can imagine many a worthy man, who begins unguardedly to read this page, and comes