my lord."

"But when I told her I must relieve only one poor person by day, she
took my hand."

"Your lordship will find all the items realized in this book, my lord."

"What a beautiful book!"

"Alba are considerably ameliorated, my lord."

"Alba?"

"Plural of album, my lord," explained the refined factotum, "more
delicate, I conceive, than the vulgar reading."

Viscount Ipsden read from

"MR. SAUNDERS'S ALBUM.

"To illustrate the inelegance of the inferior classes, two juvenile
venders of the piscatory tribe were this day ushered in, and
instantaneously, without the accustomed preliminaries, plunged into a
familiar conversation with Lord Viscount Ipsden.

"Their vulgarity, shocking and repulsive to myself, appeared to afford
his lordship a satisfaction greater than he derives from the graceful
amenities of fashionable association--"

"Saunders, I suspect you of something."

"Me, my lord!"

"Yes. Writing in an annual."

"I do, my lord," said he, with benignant _hauteur._ "It appears every
month--_The Polytechnic."_

"I thought so! you are polysyllabic, Saunders; _en route!"_

"In this hallucination I find it difficult to participate; associated
from infancy with the aristocracy, I shrink, like the sensitive plant,
from contact with anything vulgar."

"I see! I begin to understand you, Saunders. Order the dog-cart, and
Wordsworth's mare for leader; we'll give her a trial. You are an ass,
Saunders."

"Yes, my lord; I will order Robert to tell James to come for your
lordship's commands about your lordship's vehicles. (What could he
intend by a recent observation of a discourteous character?)"

His lordship soliloquized.

"I never observed it before, but Saunders is an ass! La Johnstone is one
of Nature's duchesses, and she has made me know some poor people that
will be richer than the rich one day; and she has taught me that honey
is to be got from bank-notes--by merely giving them away."

Among the objects of charity Lord Ipsden discovered was one Thomas
Harvey, a maker and player of the violin. This man was a person of
great intellect; he mastered every subject he attacked. By a careful
examination of all the points that various fine-toned instruments had
in common, he had arrived at a theory of sound; he made violins to
correspond, and was remarkably successful in insuring that which had
been too hastily ascribed to accident--a fine tone.

This man, who was in needy circumstances, demonst