with weights to keep them so: and I glanced from one to another to
while away the time. Then up came his brougham, and off we went. At
dinner my "diner-out" started a topic, whereof innocently enough I
remembered instantly a suitable epigram. Not long after another subject
gave me occasion to tell a witty story, which somehow came to me at the
moment. My "friend" asked me with a keen glance where I had read it, and
at once I recollected those open books and understood the position,
resolving mischievously to outflank the manaeuverer. Accordingly, at each
opportunity, with seeming innocence, I "wiped his eye," as they say at a
_battue_, and certainly reaped the anecdotic "_kudos_" Mr. So-and-so had
cunningly contrived and hoped to achieve for himself. I confess it was
vicious of me, but who could help taking the benefit of such a chance?
Hosts should beware of wits who cram their jokes and anecdotes. Years
after I met the same gentleman at another entertainer's table, where I
found him in my presence not quite the livener-up they had expected, and
he seemed a little shy of me; probably he thought me an omniscient, for
I never told the poor man I had found him out. I fear he has departed
to a world where genuine truthfulness is more accepted as a virtue than
in this.

A Mormon Guest.

Quite recently I have had a visit from a young American, who brought me
a letter from a so-called cousin--at all events a namesake--in the Far
West, asking me to tell her about her German ancestry. My visitor was
good-looking, well-dressed, fair-spoken, and gentlemanly; also well-bred
and well-to-do. I will not indicate his name, but I may state that he is
a near relative of the eminent electrician who illuminates so
magnificently the fountains at South Kensington. Of course, as pleased
with his manners and deportment, I kept him to luncheon; and finding
that he hailed from Utah, naturally asked if he knew Salt Lake City and
the Mormons there. Certainly; he lived not a hundred miles from the
city, and those were his own people: as a Mormon himself from infancy,
he had nothing but good to say of them, and we in England had been very
much misled by Mrs. Stenhouse and other travellers. As to plurality of
wives, not two per cent. of their whole 200,000 had more than one wife.
His own father, a rich merchant and a church-hierarch, a "stake" of the
tabernacle (much as we should say a pillar), had but one--his own dear
mother--and he scarcely k