ed with snow.

That reference to so charming a personality should be in this place a
digression is Polyhistor's unhappiness. She affects his narrative only
inasmuch as he happened to meet at her house a gentleman who for a time
exerted a considerable influence over his fortunes.

* * * * *

Here Polyhistor's narrative must give place to certain editorial
marginalia by Miss Lucy ----, who "runs" the ---- Family Magazine:--

"Polyhistor, indeed!" she writes. "The conceit of some people! He seems
to take himself for a sort of _Admirable Crichton_, and all because his
chance meeting with the gentleman referred to (a very _interesting_
person, who is, I understand, reforming our prisons) brought him the
offer of an appointment quite beyond his deserts. I was very glad to hear
of it, however, and I asked the creature to contribute a paper recording
his first impressions of _this notable man_; instead of which he begins
with an opinionated rigmarole about himself, and goes on from bad to
worse by describing a long conversation he had about prison reform with
that horrid, masculine Mrs. C----, whom all the officers call 'Charlie,'
and who thinks that for men to grow humane is a sign of their
_decadence_. _Of course_ I shall 'cut' the whole of their talk together
(it is a blessed privilege to be an editor), and jump to the part where
_Polyhistor_ (!) describes the _notable person's_ visit to him, which was
due to his (the N.P.'s) having the night before overheard some of the
conversation _between those two_."

* * * * *

POLYHISTOR'S NARRATIVE (_continued_).

Now as Polyhistor sat, he humoured his recollection (in the intervals of
scribbling verses to the _beaux yeux_ of a certain Miss L----) with some
of "Charlie's" characteristic last-night utterances.

She had dated man's decadence from the moment when he began to
"poor-fellow" irreclaimable savagery on the score of heredity.

She had repudiated the old humbug of sex superiority because she had seen
it fall on its face to howl over a trodden worm, with the result that
it discovered itself hollow behind, like the elf-maiden.

She had said: "Once you taught us divinely--_argumentum baculinum_," said
she; "(for you are the sons of God, you know). But you have since so
insisted upon the Rights of Humanity that we have learned ourselves in
the phrase, and that the earthy have the best right to precedence on