then come and make themselves agreeable in
my rooms when I invite them.

"I fancied when I came here I should get lots of time to myself--enough
perhaps to write my book on Comparative Political Economy. Vain hope!
I haven't time to turn round. If my days were twenty-six hours I should
scarcely then do all I ought to do here. Ponsford is getting old, and
leaves the executive to his lieutenants. He sits aloft like Zeus, hurls
a thunderbolt now and then, and for the rest acts as a supreme court of
appeal. Bickers, my opposite neighbour, is still a thorn in my side. I
don't know how it is, I try all I know, but I can't get on with him, and
have given him up. Moss, I believe, who is Master of the Shell and head
of a house, has come to the end of his endurance, and there is some talk
of his throwing up his place here. It would be a pity in many ways, and
it might be hard to get a good man in his place.

"By the way, if there is a vacancy, why should not you enter the lists?
I see you smile at the idea of anyone exchanging the profession of
gentleman at large for that of Master of the Shell. But it's worth a
thought, any how. Let us know where and how you are; and if you can run
down this way for a Sunday, do, and make glad the heart of your
friend,--

"W. Grover."

No. 2.--Arthur Herapath, Esquire, Lucerne, to Sir Digby Oakshott,
Baronet, Grandcourt.

"Dear Dig,--Here's a game! The gov's been and lost a lot of the
luggage, and ma won't go home without it, so we're booked here for a
week more. He's written to Ponsford to say I can't turn up till next
week, and says I'm doing some of the mug, so as not to be all behind.
Jolly good joke of the gov.'s, isn't it? Catch me mugging here!

"Stunning place, this! We went a picnic to--I say, by the way, while I
remember it, do you know it's all a howling cram about William Tell?
There never was such a chap! This is the place he used to hang out in,
and everyone says it's all my eye what the history says about him.
You'd better let Moss know. Tell him, from inquiries made by me on the
spot, I find it's all humbug, and he'd better get some chap to write a
new history who knows something about it. I was asking Railsford--by
the way, he's a stunning chap. We ran up against him on the Saint
Gothard, and he's been with us ever since. No end of a cheese! Rowed
in the Cambridge boat three years ago, Number 4, when Oxford won by two
feet. He says when you're rowing