utiful costume, which he had made
two years previously when playing the part of Orlando in a production of
"As You Like It" in Manchester, the Calvert Memorial performance; Miss
Helen Faucit (Lady Martin), Rosalind; Herman Merivale, Touchstone; Tom
Taylor, Adam; and other well-known celebrities assisting). Then he
describes me: "A muffled creature of sinister aspect. Short,
auburn-locked, extinguished by a portentous hat, tripping and stumbling
over a cloak, or robe, in whose dragging folds he conceals his identity
as well as his power of volition, a weird and gruesome phantom.
What--oh what--is this hovering ghost? He must be just defunct, for the
purgatorial garments fit him not, he stumbles at every step, and when he
trips an underdress is unveiled that's like a City waiter's. What is
he--the arch conspirator--doing himself? He starts, tries to conceal a
book, but we snatch it from him. Sketches! lots of sketches!
caricatures, low and vulgar portraits of ourselves! 'What are you?' we
scream, 'and why this orgy? Speak, caitiff, or for ever hold your
peace!'

[Illustration]

"Perceiving that we are in earnest and not to be trifled with, and glare
with forbidding mien, the caitiff speaks in trembling accents. 'If you
please,' he says, 'I'm the artist from the great illustrated journal;
I'm drawing pictures of the lunatics. My disguise is beyond my own
control, and trips me up, but I'm told it's becoming.' 'Lunatics!' we
echo.

"'Yes,' the caitiff murmurs. 'This is the annual fancy dress ball at
Brookwood Asylum. You and I and the doctors and attendants are the only
sane people in the place. By-and-by the country gentry will be admitted,
and then the tangle will be hopeless, for even in everyday life it's
impossible to know who's mad and who isn't. How much more here?'

"We left the trembling caitiff to his secret sketching, and the
despondency produced by his appearance. He was sane, was he? Then in him
were we revenged on human nature, for sure never was mortal more
oppressed by his gear and his surroundings."

The fact is that my editor, in sending his "young man," omitted to say
that the invitation was crossed with "fancy dress only," so I arrived in
ordinary war-paint. The Doctor was horrified. "This will never do. My
patients will resent it. You _must_ be in fancy dress." All my host
could find was a seedy red curtain and an old cocked hat (had it been a
nightcap I should have been complete as Caudle). I wrap