e
spinal cord and into the most hidden seats of pleasure! I certainly
can never see the luxurious bloom of the silver sticks arranged in
careless groups about the vast portals without a feeling approaching
to awe and worship, and a tendency to fling small coin about with a
fine mediaeval profusion. I certainly can never drain those profound
golden cauldrons seething with champagne without a tendency to break
into loud expressions of the inward music and conviviality that simmer
in my soul. Salutes of cannon, galloping escorts, processions of
landaus, beautiful teams of English horses, trains of private saloon
carriages (cooled with water trickling over sweet jungle grasses)
streaming through the sunny land, expectant crowds of beauty with
hungry eyes making a delirious welcome at every stage, the whole
country blooming into dance and banquet and fresh girls at every step
taken--these form the fair guerdon that stirs my breast at certain
moments and makes me often resolve, after dinner, "to scorn delights
and live laborious days," and sell my beautiful soul, illuminated with
art and poetry, to the devil of Industry, with reversion to Sir John
Strachey.

How mysterious and delicious are the cool penetralia of the Viceregal
Office! It is the censorium of the Empire; it is the seat of thought;
it is the abode of moral responsibility! What battles, what famines,
what excursions of pleasure, what banquets and pageants, what concepts
of change have sprung into life here! Every pigeon-hole contains a
potential revolution; every office-box cradles the embryo of a war or
dearth. What shocks and vibrations, what deadly thrills does this
little thunder-cloud office transmit to far-away provinces lying
beyond rising and setting suns! Ah! Vanity, these are pleasant
lodgings for five years, let who may turn the kaleidoscope after us.

A little errant knight of the press who has just arrived on the
Delectable Mountains, comes rushing in, looks over my shoulder, and
says, "A deuced expensive thing a Viceroy." This little errant knight
would take the thunder at a quarter of the price, and keep the Empire
paralytic with change and fear of change as if the great
Thirty-thousand-pounder himself were on Olympus.--ALI BABA.

No. II

THE A.D.C.-IN-WAITING

AN ARRANGEMENT IN SCARLET AND GOLD

[Illustration: THE A.D.C.-IN WAITING--"An arrangement in scarlet and
gold."]

[August 9, 1879.]

The tone of the A.D.C. is