born,' she said."

It was Mr. Bayne's opinion that such an expression was not only
exaggerated, inasmuch as the nurse was not, and never had been, a
beggar; but, coming from a child to her mother, was harsh and unfilial.
"The criticism of my heart," he wrote, "tells me that Lady Clare could
never have said that."

Tennyson was perhaps the last man in Christendom to have accepted
the testimony of Mr. Bayne's heart-throbs. He intimated with some
asperity that he knew better than anyone else what Lady Clare _did_
say, and he pointed out that she had just cause for resentment against
a mother who had placed her in such an embarrassing position. The
controversy is one of the drollest in literature; but what is hard
to understand is the mental attitude of a man--and a reasonably busy
man--who could attach so much importance to Lady Clare's remarks,
and who could feel himself justified in correcting them.

Begging letters form a class apart. They represent a great and
growing industry, and they are too purposeful to illustrate the
abstract passion for correspondence. Yet marvellous things have been
done in this field. There is an ingenuity, a freshness and fertility
of device about the begging letter which lifts it often to the realms
of genius. Experienced though we all are, it has surprises in store
for every one of us. Seasoned though we are, we cannot read without
appreciation of its more daring and fantastic flights. There was,
for instance, a very imperative person who wrote to Dickens for a
donkey, and who said he would call for it the next day, as though
Dickens kept a herd of donkeys in Tavistock Square, and could always
spare one for an emergency. There was a French gentleman who wrote
to Moore, demanding a lock of Byron's hair for a young lady, who
would--so he said--die if she did not get it. This was a very
lamentable letter, and Moore was conjured, in the name of the young
lady's distracted family, to send the lock, and save her from the
grave. And there was a misanthrope who wrote to Peel that he was weary
of the ways of men (as so, no doubt, was Peel), and who requested
a hermitage in some nobleman's park, where he might live secluded
from the world. The best begging-letter writers depend upon the
element of surprise as a valuable means to their end. I knew a
benevolent old lady who, in 1885, was asked to subscribe to a fund
for the purchase of "moderate luxuries" for the French soldiers in
Madagascar. "Wha