"Colonel Levison?" said Mr. Schröder; "no, not yet; we've had no board-day since his election." "Man of mark, sir," said an old gentleman, who had painted his chin and shirt-front with turtle-soup. "What Levison is it, Beresford?" asked Captain Lyster, who was seated near Mrs. Schröder. "Jack Levison; you know him. Wonderful life he's had!" "Has he?" said Mrs. Schröder, on whom the dulness had settled like a pall. "Oh, do tell us about it, Mr. Beresford; that is, if you may." "Oh, yes, I may," laughed Beresford; "though it's nothing much to tell. Jack was in the 9th, and came into five thousand pounds at his father's death; sold out; speculated in cotton, and made it twenty; speculated in hides, and lost every sixpence. Went out to Australia on the first discovery of gold; was a boot-black in Melbourne; actually had a stand and brushed boots, you know; afterwards was cad to the Ballarat omnibus; fact, give you my word! At last got up to the diggings; worked with varying luck, until at last turned up monster nugget, and hit upon a splendid vein; stuck to it quietly, and made a fortune. Realised; came back to England, and has doubled it. Curious life, isn't it?" "How very odd!" said Mrs. Schröder, trying to extract a remark from a very gorgeous lady on her right; "fancy, blacking boots!" "And what do you call 'em to a bus?" said the lady, who, though gorgeous, was Clapham-born, and still possessed her native dialect. "Must be clayver man," hazarded a tall, thin gentleman, a light of the Draft and Docket Office, who was very short-sighted, and perpetually kept in his eye a glass, with which he endeavoured to focus somebody into conversation; hitherto hopelessly. "Oh, yes," said his neighbour, a bald man, with cinnamon whiskers, whose life was passed in saying the wrong thing in the wrong place--"oh, yes; but don't you know he's Boswell Levison's brother. He's a Jew!" Every body looked involuntarily at old Heinrich Schröder, about whose origin there could be no doubt, and who had that face which you may see repeated by hundreds in the Frankfort Juden-Gasse. "Ha! ha!" said the old gentleman, catching the last word, and finding himself the centre of attraction; "was Chew! ya, zo; Chew ist goot." Mr. Schröder turned a dull lead colour, and a general awe-struck silence fell upon the company, which was broken by Beresford, who, again coming to the rescue, said: "You knew Levison, Monkhouse? We stayed together in his uncle's house two years ago." The man with the eyeglass made a vain attempt to focus Beresford, and said, "Did we?" "Yes, of course we did. You recollect, at Macarum's, near Elgin?" Mr. Monkhouse dropped his glass from his eye, and looked up to the ceiling for inspiration; then, re-fixing it, said, "Oh, ah! Elgin! I know!--where the marble comes from?"