[Sidenote: A Faithful Plaster.] Mr. Dryhurst tells of Fawcett in a different predicament, the centre of a very different circle at Cambridge. Like most healthy men, he took his trifling ailments most seriously, and was much worried by any unusual symptoms. One day, having a fearful pain in his chest, he went to a chemist in Cambridge. The chemist properly made inquiry as to a possible cause for the trouble. Had there been perhaps some reckless indulgence? some forbidden fruit or similar dissipation? Fawcett could find, however, no possible explanation for his illness, though he parenthetically remarked that he had eaten forty walnuts. The chemist finally prescribed for this mysterious illness a tar adhesive plaster and applied a large one to Fawcett’s chest. The same evening the invalid went to a dinner-party. The weather was close, the room badly ventilated. A slight but rapidly increasing odour of tar was noticed by one or two of the guests. Fawcett blandly remarked that they were repairing the streets of Cambridge, which might perhaps account for the odour, and thus diverted any awkward investigation. [Sidenote: A German Visitor.] On his return to London, Fawcett was asked by the head of the German Post Office to allow him to send an official to study certain points of administration. Fawcett gladly gave the required leave, and on reaching the office one morning was informed that the German official had arrived and was already at work in one of the departments. ‘Tell him,’ said Fawcett, ‘that I should be glad to speak to him in my room.’ As a considerable time elapsed without his putting in an appearance, Fawcett asked the reason for the delay, and received the following answer: ‘Directly we told the German gentleman that you wished to speak to him, he put on his coat and hat and left the office, and we saw him drive off in a hansom cab.’ This seemed a very odd way of behaving, but the matter was satisfactorily cleared up before long by the return of the German visitor in full official costume and with all his orders on. Fawcett, concealing his amusement, expressed his regret that so much trouble should have been thrown away on a blind man who could not perceive the results. The German visitor explained that in no case could he have presented himself before a Minister of a foreign power in ordinary attire. To have done so would have rendered him liable to most serious censure from his own official superiors. [Sidenote: New Ideas.]