ttle old lady would send in a
message, asking "neighbour Tupper to give her a dinner
to-day"--sometimes even coming unannounced. She usually appeared all in
white, even to her shoes and bonnet, which latter she would keep on the
whole evening; the only colour about her being rouged cheeks, sometimes
decorated with a piece of white paper cut into the shape of a heart, and
stuck on "to charm away the tic." Well, her ladyship was always full of
society anecdotes; and I only wish that her diary may soon be published,
as probably a more spicy record of past celebrities than even Pepys's in
old times, or Greville's in our own; but she is said to have left
instructions to her executors not to publish till every one mentioned by
her was dead: so we must wait till that tontine is over. But the
specialty of the aged countess, who died at past ninety but never owned
to more than sixty, was a propensity to annex small properties; always
it happened that next morning after a visit either her butler or her
lady's-maid would bring to us a spoon or a fork or a piece of
_bric-a-brac_ which she had carried off with her in seeming
unconsciousness; and as she never inquired for them afterwards, possibly
it was so. Let doctors decide. _Requiescat._ The forthcoming memoirs of
that once famous and lovely Miss Monckton will be interesting indeed, if
not over-edited.

CHAPTER VI.

STAMMERING AND CHESS.

One of the apparent calamities of my life (overruled, as I have long
since seen, for good) was the before-mentioned affliction of a very bad
impediment of speech, which blighted my youth and manhood from fifteen
to thirty-five, obliging me to social humiliations of many kinds, to
silence in class and on examination occasions (hence my written poetries
in lieu of spoken prose), and in early manhood preventing me from taking
orders, and thereafter from speaking in the law courts. But I was
hopelessly and practically a dumb man, except under special excitations,
when I could burst into eloquent speech which surprised third persons
more than myself; for when quite alone I could spout like Demosthenes;
it was only nervous fear that paralysed my tongue. Accordingly, my good
father placed me from time to time with well-meaning and well-paid
pretenders to make a perfect cure of my affliction, and I did many
things and suffered much from such false physicians. I am sure no one
can truly say what I can, viz., that in a purposely monotonous note