walking with my mother. Her interest was
instantly kindled; and the following conversation ensued. "Who is that?"
"Cunninghame Graham." "Nonsense! Cunninghame Graham is one of your
Socialists: that man is a gentleman." This is the punishment of vanity,
a fault I have myself always avoided, as I find conceit less troublesome
and much less expensive. Later on somebody told him of Tarudant, a city
in Morocco in which no Christian had ever set foot. Concluding at once
that it must be an exceptionally desirable place to live in, he took
ship and horse: changed the hat for a turban; and made straight for the
sacred city, via Mogador. How he fared, and how he fell into the hands
of the Cadi of Kintafi, who rightly held that there was more danger to
Islam in one Cunninghame Graham than in a thousand Christians, may be
learnt from his account of it in Mogreb-el-Acksa, without which Captain
Brassbound's Conversion would never have been written.

I am equally guiltless of any exercise of invention concerning the story
of the West Indian estate which so very nearly serves as a peg to hang
Captain Brassbound. To Mr. Frederick Jackson of Hindhead, who, against
all his principles, encourages and abets me in my career as a dramatist,
I owe my knowledge of those main facts of the case which became public
through an attempt to make the House of Commons act on them. This being
so, I must add that the character of Captain Brassbound's mother, like
the recovery of the estate by the next heir, is an interpolation of my
own. It is not, however, an invention. One of the evils of the pretence
that our institutions represent abstract principles of justice
instead of being mere social scaffolding is that persons of a certain
temperament take the pretence seriously, and when the law is on the side
of injustice, will not accept the situation, and are driven mad by their
vain struggle against it. Dickens has drawn the type in his Man from
Shropshire in Bleak House. Most public men and all lawyers have been
appealed to by victims of this sense of injustice--the most unhelpable
of afflictions in a society like ours.

ENGLISH AND AMERICAN DIALECTS

The fact that English is spelt conventionally and not phonetically makes
the art of recording speech almost impossible. What is more, it places
the modern dramatist, who writes for America as well as England, in
a most trying position. Take for example my American captain and my
English lady. I have spelt