don't
suppose I shall have any to speak of till after Christmas, and then
it won't be much. If you have anything for a man to do in London it
will be more within my reach." It was thus he wrote to some brother
Member of Parliament who had summoned him to a grand meeting at the
Rotunda. He was wanted to address the people on the honesty of the
principle of paying no rent. "For the matter of that," he wrote to
another brother member, "I don't see the honesty. Why are we to
take the property from Jack and give it to Bill? Bill would sell it
and spend the money, and no good would then have been done to the
country. I should have to argue the matter out with you or someone
else before I could speak about it at the Rotunda." Then, there arose
a doubt whether Mr. O'Mahony was the proper member for Cavan. He
settled himself down in Cecil Street and began to write a book about
rent. When he began his book he hated rent from his very soul. The
difficulty he saw was this: what should you do with the property when
you took it away from the landlords? He quite saw his way to taking
it away; if only a new order would come from heaven for the creation
of a special set of farmers who should be wedded to their land by
some celestial matrimony, and should clearly be in possession of it
without the perpetration of any injustice. He did not quite see his
way to this by his own lights, and therefore he went to the British
Museum. When a man wants to write a book full of unassailable facts,
he always goes to the British Museum. In this way Mr. O'Mahony
purposed to spend his autumn instead of speaking at the Rotunda,
because it suited him to live in London rather than in Dublin.

Cecil Street in September is not the most cheerful place in the
world. While Rachel had been singing at "The Embankment," with the
occasional excitement of a quarrel with Mr. Moss, it had been all
very well; but now while her father was studying statistics at the
British Museum, she had nothing to do but to practise her singing. "I
mean to do something, you know, towards earning that L200 which you
have lent me." This she said to Lord Castlewell, who had come up to
London to have his teeth looked after. This was the excuse he gave
for being in London at this unfashionable season. "I have to sing
from breakfast to dinner without stopping one minute, so you may go
back to the dentist at once. I haven't time even to see what he has
done."

"I have to propose that yo