in the same street," and why Newport people should be pitied because theirs do not, and West Braintree blessed because theirs do. Our great-grandfathers were not given to "tubbing," and many of them in the same street as oneself might be undesirable. Do not worry about the ancestry of Newport people; they have ancestors, so have tramps, so has every one. The ability to trace your ancestry back through the mire of centuries is about the emptiest glory I know anything about. I never knew a great man, who cared a damn about his great-grandfather; it was the "Great I am " he cared for.

Don't you sneer at an epigram. A good one is the wisdom of all the ages put up in a homœopathic pellet, and don't you think I write you cheery letters out of pure unselfishness. I like to write to you, and I don't believe in cheering people up, for the proc

ess brings you down to a lugubrious level.

It is like the transfusion of blood good

for the recipient, but aging to the giver. It is like the old and young sleeping together. No, sir, I write because I want to.

I have just returned from a visit to my boy's school, where he is absorbing knowledge and developing muscle. It was the occasion of a football match between rival schools. Our school won, and 125 pledges of parental love went voiceless to bed. Do you not suppose they could be satisfied with one "Rah!" instead of nine? My boy said good-bye to me in a whisper that would have done credit to a love-sick maiden. I had a very good chance to send the youngster to a first-class English school, but I think the American father who educates a son in England, whom he expects afterward to live in his native country, is " a

ass." I have seen one or two such exotic specimens, and they were for years after their return both friendless and discontented. By the bye, how is it that the Roman Catholics have no similar schools in this country? I have a friend whose boy has only a choice between a good Roman Catholic school in England, and a comparatively poor school here. I suppose Georgetown and Seton might object to this statement, but they are not similar institutions to those of which I speak.

I spent two nights in Boston, and listened to Boston men talk. Why is it they seem to think that a Boston-born, Harvard-educated man is ipso facto a gentleman, while all the rest of the male world must first prove themselves such? The law presumes you innocent until proved guilty. A Boston man subconsciously believes you a cad

until overwhelming evidence compels him reluctantly to admit you are a gentle

man.

Did you ever notice how many good things come from the Hub? I wonder can it be that Boston is a pleasant place to leave, and I wonder, oh, I wonder, why it is that, when Boston married men come to New York on business, they wear such a guilty look.

In the dining-room of the Touraine, which is one of the hotels in the sacred city, I saw something I don't want to forget. I saw a girl put her hand up to her mouth, and I have not been altogether sane since. First, the grace of the movement was Hogarth's line of beauty. Second, the hand was the hand of fate, - of many men's fate, - and the mouth was a rose-coloured sketch of her heart-perfect love, infinite tender

ness, and a marvellously proportioned door to both heart and brains. I should like to have heard that mouth sing "Come, ye disconsolate." I am sure I should not have tarried on the way. Of course I am susceptible, but I am also, so far, preternaturally virtuous.

Can you answer this question, kind sir? Is the marital morality of the Americans due to the men, or the women, or to a lack of passion on the part of both? Men who take a bird's-eye view of life get a better sense of proportion and of the "whyness of things than I can, who am too close to everything to know the reason of anything. Certain it is that in this country it seldom takes three to carry the matrimonial yoke.

I cannot write you any more to-day, old man, as I am off on a little trip South, and, as the faithful Evans has only been away