Chapter 3

Your host, chopping grimly at the furniture as he passes along--here dexterously severing the leg of a Chippendale chair, and there hacking a piece off a Louis Quatorze couch--leads the way to an annexe he has just built for the reception of his treasured books. From the outside this excrescence on the Castle has but a poverty-stricken look. It is, to tell the truth, made of corrugated iron. But that is a cloak that cunningly covers an interior of rare beauty and rich design. Arras of cloth of gold hangs loosely on the walls, whilst here and there, on the far-reaching floor, gleams the low light of a faded Turkey carpet. Open tables, covered with broad cloths of crimson velvet, embroidered and fringed with gold, carry innumerable Blue Books. On marble tables, supported on carved and gilded frames, stand priceless vases, filled with rare flowers. In crystal flagons you detect the sheen of amber light (which may be sherry wine), whilst the ear is lulled with the sound of fountains dispensing perfumes as of Araby. In an alcove, chastely draped with violent violet velvet, the grey apes swing, and the peacocks preen, on fretted pillar and jewelled screen. Horologes, to chime the hours, and even the quarters, uprise from tables of ebony-and-mother-of-pearl. Cabinets from Ind and Venice, of filligree gold and silver, enclose complete sets of _Hansard's Parliamentary Debates_; whilst lamps of silver, suspended from pendant pinnacles in the fretted ceiling, shed a soft light over the varied mass of colour.

Casting himself down lightly by a cabinet worked with Dutch beads interspersed with seed-pearls, and toying with the gnarled handle of the axe, the Right Hon. WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE tells you the story of his life. At the outset you are a little puzzled to gather where exactly he was born. At first you think it was in Scotland. Anon some town in England claims the honour. Then Wales is incidentally mentioned, and next the tearful voice of Erin claims her son. But, as the story goes forward with long majestic stride, these difficulties fade in the glamour of the Old Man's eloquence, and when you awake and find your host has not yet got beyond the second course--the fish, as it were, of the intellectual banquet--you say you will call again.

Mention of the three courses naturally suggests dinner, and as you evidently enjoy the monopoly of the mental association, you take your leave, perhaps regretting that among his wild woodsman accessories your host does not seem to include the midday chop.

* * * * *

GOLD-TIPPED cigarettes seem just now to be "the swagger thing." "Ah!" Master TOMMY sighed, as he set off for school with only five shillings in his pocket, in consequence of all his dearest--and nearest--relatives being laid up with the prevailing epidemic, "Ah, how I should like to be one of those cigarettes, and then I should be tipped with gold."

* * * * *

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