est portrait of himself
in an autobiography, however sedulously he may have set to work about
it. In spite of his candid purpose he omits necessary touches and adds
superfluous ones. At times he cannot help draping his thought, and the
least shred of drapery becomes a disguise. It is only the diarist who
accomplishes the feat of self-portraiture, and he, without any such end
in view, does it unconsciously. A man cannot keep a daily record of
his comings and goings and the little items that make up the sum of his
life, and not inadvertently betray himself at every turn. He lays bare
his heart with a candor not possible to the selfconsciousness that
inevitably colors premeditated revelation. While Pepys was filling those
small octavo pages with his perplexing cipher he never once suspected
that he was adding a photographic portrait of himself to the world's
gallery of immortals. We are more intimately acquainted with Mr.
Samuel Pepys, the inner man--his little meannesses and his large
generosities--then we are with half the persons we call our dear
friends.

THE young girl in my story is to be as sensitive to praise as a prism is
to light. Whenever anybody praises her she breaks into colors.

IN the process of dusting my study, the other morning, the maid replaced
an engraving of Philip II. of Spain up-side down on the mantel-shelf,
and his majesty has remained in that undignified posture ever since. I
have no disposition to come to his aid. My abhorrence of the wretch is
as hearty as if he had not been dead and--otherwise provided for
these last three hundred years. Bloody Mary of England was nearly as
merciless, but she was sincere and uncompromising in her extirpation of
heretics.

Philip II., whose one recorded hearty laugh was occasioned by the news
of the St. Bartholomew massacre, could mask his fanaticism or drop it
for the time being, when it seemed politic to do so. Queen Mary was a
maniac; but the successor of Torquemada was the incarnation of cruelty
pure and simple, and I have a mind to let my counterfeit presentment
of him stand on its head for the rest of its natural life. I cordially
dislike several persons, but I hate nobody, living or dead, excepting
Philip II. of Spain. He appears to give me as much trouble as Charles I.
gave the amiable Mr. Dick.

AMONG the delightful men and women whom you are certain to meet at an
English country house there is generally one guest who is supposed to be
preternatu