moving cool air wantonly strikes your
cheek. You look up and behold! there is your host, axe in hand,
playfully performing a number of passes over your unconscious head. His
dress is designed admirably to suit the exercise. Coat and waistcoat are
doffed; the immortal collars are turned down, displaying the columnar
throat and the brawny chest; the snow-white shirt-sleeves are turned up
to the elbow, disclosing biceps that SAMSON would envy and SANDOW covet.
His braces are looped on either side of his supple hips, and his right
hand grasps the axe which, a moment ago had been performing over your
head a series of evolutions which, remarkable for the strength and
agility displayed, were, perhaps, scarcely desirable for daily
repetition.

"Don't be frightened, TOBY M.P.," said the full rich voice so familiar
in the House of Commons; "it's our wild woodsman's way of welcoming the
coming guest. What do you think of my costume? Seen it before? Ah!
_yes_, the photographs. _Carte de visite style_, _10s. 6d._ a dozen;
Cabinet size, a guinea. I have been photographed several times as you
will observe."

And, indeed, as your host leads you along the stately passages, through
the storied rooms, you find his photograph everywhere. The tables are
covered with them, showing your host in all attitudes and costumes.
"Yes," he says, with a sigh, "I think I have marched up to the camera's
mouth as often as most men of my years."

Ascending the rustic staircase which leads from the garden, WILLIAM
EWART GLADSTONE takes you past the library into the drawing-room, in the
upper parts of the leaded windows of which are inserted panels of rare
old glass, cunningly obtained by melting superfluous Welsh ale bottles.
He leads you to a table, as round as that at which a famous Conference
was held, and points to a little ivory painting. It shows a chubby
little boy some two years of age, with rather large head and broad
shoulders, sitting at the knee of a young nymph approaching her fifth
year. On her knee is a book, and the chubby boy, with dark hair falling
low over his forehead, his great brown eyes staring frankly at you,
points with his finger to a passage. When you learn that this is a
portrait of your host and his sister taken in the year 1811, you
naturally come to the conclusion that the young lady has, for party
purposes, been misquoting some passages in her brother's speech, and
that he, having produced an authorised record of his add