ke things--that is to be
expected--but really, I have never taken anything, certainly in England,
that amounts to any great thing. I do confess that when I was here seven
years ago I stole a hat, but that did not amount to anything. It was not
a good hat, and was only a clergyman's hat, anyway.

I was at a luncheon party, and Archdeacon Wilberforce was there also. I
dare say he is Archdeacon now--he was a canon then--and he was serving
in the Westminster battery, if that is the proper term--I do not know,
as you mix military and ecclesiastical things together so much. He left
the luncheon table before I did. He began this. I did steal his hat, but
he began by taking mine. I make that interjection because I would not
accuse Archdeacon Wilberforce of stealing my hat--I should not think
of it. I confine that phrase to myself. He merely took my hat. And with
good judgment, too--it was a better hat than his. He came out before
the luncheon was over, and sorted the hats in the hall, and selected one
which suited. It happened to be mine. He went off with it. When I came
out by-and-by there was no hat there which would go on my head except
his, which was left behind. My head was not the customary size just at
that time. I had been receiving a good many very nice and complimentary
attentions, and my head was a couple of sizes larger than usual, and his
hat just suited me. The bumps and corners were all right intellectually.
There were results pleasing to me--possibly so to him. He found out
whose hat it was, and wrote me saying it was pleasant that all the way
home, whenever he met anybody his gravities, his solemnities, his deep
thoughts, his eloquent remarks were all snatched up by the people he
met, and mistaken for brilliant humorisms.

I had another experience. It was not unpleasing. I was received with a
deference which was entirely foreign to my experience by everybody whom
I met, so that before I got home I had a much higher opinion of
myself than I have ever had before or since. And there is in that very
connection an incident which I remember at that old date which is rather
melancholy to me, because it shows how a person can deteriorate in a
mere seven years. It is seven years ago. I have not that hat now. I
was going down Pall-Mall, or some other of your big streets, and I
recognized that that hat needed ironing. I went into a big shop
and passed in my hat, and asked that it might be ironed. They were
courteous, ver