’So well do we know ourselves, that we one and all determine to know a purer,’ says the heroine of my columns.  Philosophy in fiction tells, among various other matters, of the perils of this intimate acquaintance with a flattering familiar in the ’purer’—­a person who more than ceases to be of else to us after his ideal shall have led up men from their flint and arrowhead caverns to intercommunicative daylight.  For when the fictitious creature has performed that service of helping to civilize the world, it becomes the most dangerous of delusions, causing first the individual to despise the mass, and then to join the mass in crushing the individual.  Wherewith let us to our story, the froth being out of the bottle.

CHAPTER II

AN IRISH BALL

In the Assembly Rooms of the capital city of the Sister Island there was a public Ball, to celebrate the return to Erin of a British hero of Irish blood, after his victorious Indian campaign; a mighty struggle splendidly ended; and truly could it be said that all Erin danced to meet him; but this was the pick of the dancing, past dispute the pick of the supping.  Outside those halls the supping was done in Lazarus fashion, mainly through an excessive straining of the organs of hearing and vision, which imparted the readiness for more, declared by physicians to be the state inducing to sound digestion.  Some one spied the figure of the hero at the window and was fed; some only to hear the tale chewed the cud of it; some told of having seen him mount the steps; and sure it was that at an hour of the night, no matter when, and never mind a drop or two of cloud, he would come down them again, and have an Irish cheer to freshen his pillow.  For ’tis Ireland gives England her soldiers, her generals too.  Farther away, over field and bogland, the whiskies did their excellent ancient service of watering the dry and drying the damp, to the toast of ‘Lord Larrian, God bless him! he’s an honour to the old country!’ and a bit of a sigh to follow, hints of a story, and loud laughter, a drink, a deeper sigh, settling into conversation upon the brave Lord Larrian’s deeds, and an Irish regiment he favoured—­had no taste for the enemy without the backing of his ‘boys.’  Not he.  Why, he’d never march to battle and they not handy; because when he struck he struck hard, he said.  And he has a wound on the right hip and two fingers off his left hand; has bled for England, to show her what Irishmen are when they’re well treated.

The fine old warrior standing at the upper end of the long saloon, tall, straight, grey-haired, martial in his aspect and decorations, was worthy to be the flag-pole for enthusiasm.  His large grey eyes lightened from time to time as he ranged them over the floating couples, and dropped a word of inquiry to his aide, Captain Sir Lukin Dunstane, a good model of a cavalry officer, though somewhat a giant, equally