"In your book," said he, "do not fall into that diary mistake, characteristic of most autobiographers; and some autobiographers indulge in it very badly. I mean writing: 'May 14th.--Dined at the Duke of A----'s: present, Lord and Lady B----, Count C----, Marquis of D----, &c.' Much better write down a list of all the people you _have_ met, and say: 'Dined with, or met, this lot some time or other.'" Unfortunately, I do not keep a diary, and have no list of "people I have known;" but I can truthfully say that during the last twelve or fourteen years I have had the privilege of meeting what the Society papers repeatedly call "everybody, who is anybody." What! everybody? Well, nearly everybody! I have met Royal Princes in their palaces, and Republicans in their republic houses. I am personally acquainted with Bishops and Bradlaugh. I have shaken hands with Sarah Bernhardt and Miss Bessie Bellwood. I have been visited by millionaires who are nobodies, and by beggars who are somebodies. I have exchanged courtesies with Gustave Dore, and another celebrated painter has exchanged umbrellas with me. I know Sims Reeves and "Squash." I manage to get on with peers and peasants; I talk a little about the weather to the former, and a little (very little) about the crops to the latter. I believe I am a Conservative, but I own to a great admiration for Gladstone. I am not alone in that respect, except that I "own up" to my admiration, and other Conservatives do not. I regret exceedingly that I never met Lord Beaconsfield; but when I commenced to "go out," he had almost ceased doing so. I met Mr. Gladstone at a garden party as recently as the autumn of 1887, and was asked to meet him in June, 1888. It is a pleasure to converse with him, or, rather, to hear him converse with you. At the former party, a lady said to me, "If that horrid man comes here, I shall walk through that window on to the lawn. I would not stay under the same roof with him." She evidently thought there was no chance of his coming; in point of fact, she afterwards admitted as much to me. When he _did_ arrive, she followed him about, curtsied as he passed, as if he were the Queen, repeatedly offered him her chair, and indulged in that particular kind of adoration in the _presence_ which is usually indulged in by people who are ultra-bitter during the _absence_.