most hearts; and his impassive mask never
showed a sign of emotion. To illustrate his mode of extracting the
information of which he made such terrible use, I may tell one trivial
anecdote which has never before been made public. When Greville was very
old, he went to see a spiritualistic "medium" who was attracting
fashionable London. The charlatan looked at the gray worn old man and
thought himself safe; four other visitors attended the _seance_, but the
"medium" bestowed all his attention on Greville. With much emotion he
cried, "There is an aged lady behind your chair!" Greville remarked
sweetly, "How interesting!" "She is very, very like you!" "Who can it
be?" murmured Greville. "She lifts her hands to bless you. Her hands are
now resting over your head!" shouted the medium; and the pallid
emotionless man said, with a slight tremor in his voice, "Pray tell me
who this mysterious visitant may be!" "It is your mother." "Oh," said
Greville, "I am delighted to hear that!" "She says she is perfectly
happy, and she watches you constantly." "Dear soul!" muttered the
imperturbable one. "She tells me you will join her soon, and be happy
with her." Then Greville said gravely, in dulcet tones, "That is
extremely likely, for I am going to take tea with her at five o'clock!"
He had led on the poor swindler in his usual fashion; and he never
hinted at the fact that his mother was nearly a century old. His friends
were "pumped" in the same subtle manner; and the immortally notorious
memoirs are strewn with assassinated characters.

As we study the phenomena indicated by these memoirs, we begin to wonder
whether friendship is or is not extinct. Men are gregarious, and flocks
of them meet together at all hours of the day and night. They exchange
conventional words of greeting, they wear happy smiles, they are
apparently cordial and charming' one with another; and yet a rigidly
accurate observer may look mournfully for signs of real friendship. How
can it exist? The men and women who pass through the whirl of a London
season cannot help regarding their fellow-creatures rather as lay
figures than as human beings. They go to crowded balls and seething
"receptions," not to hold any wise human converse, but only to be able
to say that they were in such and such a room on a certain night. The
glittering crowds fleet by like shadows, and no man has much chance of
knowing his neighbour's heart.

How fast the flitting figures come--