best
of my recollection, make further mention of Browning, either then or
afterwards. Browning himself, however, thanked me warmly, next
day, for having introduced my friend to him. "A capital fellow!" he
exclaimed, and then, for a moment, seemed as though he were about
to qualify this estimate, but ended by merely repeating "A capital
fellow!"

Ibsen remained in Venice some weeks after my return to London. He was,
it may be conjectured, bent on a specially close study of the Bride of
the Adriatic because her marriage had been not altogether a happy one.
But there appears to be no evidence whatsoever that he went again,
either of his own accord or by invitation, to the Palazzo Rezzonico.

OF CHRISTMAS

_By_

H*L**RE B*LL*C

There was a man came to an Inn by night, and after he had called three
times they should open him the door--though why three times, and not
three times three, nor thirty times thirty, which is the number of
the little stone devils that make mows at St. Aloesius of Ledera over
against the marshes Gue-la-Nuce to this day, nor three hundred times
three hundred (which is a bestial number), nor three thousand times
three-and-thirty, upon my soul I know not, and nor do you--when,
then, this jolly fellow had three times cried out, shouted, yelled,
holloa'd, loudly besought, caterwauled, brayed, sung out, and roared,
he did by the same token set himself to beat, hammer, bang, pummel,
and knock at the door. Now the door was Oak. It had been grown in the
forest of Boulevoise, hewn in Barre-le-Neuf, seasoned in South Hoxton,
hinged nowhere in particular, and panelled--and that most abominably
well--in Arque, where the peasants sell their souls for skill in such
handicraft. But our man knew nothing of all this, which, had he known
it, would have mattered little enough to him, for a reason which I
propose to tell in the next sentence. The door was opened. As to the
reasons why it was not opened sooner, these are most tediously set
forth in Professor Sir T.K. Slibby's "Half-Hours With Historic Doors,"
as also in a fragment at one time attributed to Oleaginus Silo but now
proven a forgery by Miss Evans. Enough for our purpose, merry reader
of mine, that the door was opened.

The man, as men will, went in. And there, for God's sake and by
the grace of Mary Mother, let us leave him; for the truth of it is
that his strength was all in his lungs, and himself a poor, weak,
clout-faced, wizen-bellied, p