ion with
the house. The landlady protested that "no man by the name o' Thack'ry
has had rooms here since I rented the place; leastwise, if he has been
here he called hisself by sumpthink else, which was like o'nuff the case,
as most ev'rybody is crooked now'days--but surely no decent person can
blame me for that!"

I assured her that she was in no wise to blame.

From this house in Young Street the author of "Vanity Fair" moved to
Number Thirty-six Onslow Square, where he wrote "The Virginians." On the
south side of the Square there is a row of three-storied brick houses.
Thackeray lived in one of these houses for nine years. They were the
years when honors and wealth were being heaped upon him; and he was
worldling enough to let his wants keep pace with his ability to gratify
them. He was made of the same sort of clay as other men, for his standard
of life conformed to his pocketbook and he always felt poor.

From this fine house on Onslow Square he moved to a veritable palace,
which he built to suit his own taste, at Number Two Palace Green,
Kensington. But mansions on earth are seldom for long--he died here on
Christmas Eve, Eighteen Hundred Sixty-three. And Charles Dickens, Mark
Lemon, Millais, Trollope, Robert Browning, Cruikshank, Tom Taylor, Louis
Blanc, Charles Mathews and Shirley Brooks were among the friends who
carried him to his rest.

* * * * *

To take one's self too seriously is a great mistake.
Complacency is the unpardonable sin, and the man who says, "Now I'm sure
of it," has at that moment lost it.

Villagers who have lived in one little place until they think themselves
great, having lost the sense of proportion through lack of comparison,
are generally "in dead earnest."

Surely they are often intellectually dead, and I do not dispute the fact
that they are in earnest. All those excellent gentlemen in the days gone
by who could not contemplate a celestial bliss that did not involve the
damnation of those who disagreed with them were in dead earnest.

Cotton Mather once saw a black cat perched on the shoulder of an
innocent, chattering old gran'ma. The next day a neighbor had a
convulsion; and Cotton Mather went forth and exorcised Tabby with a
hymn-book, and hanged gran'ma by the neck, high on Gallows Hill, until
she was dead.

Had the Reverend Mr. Mather possessed but a mere modicum of humor he
might have exorcised the cat, but I am sure he would never have