papers and on hoardings, his name given as Herbert Barnes, Esquire, with full qualifications set out: he never saw one of the posters without stopping to enjoy the sight, and it pained him extremely to find that on one or two in the neighbourhood of home some friend had erased the affix. Louisa went boldly one evening to the offices of the new society, in College Street, Westminster, and obtained a copy of the poster; this she would have exhibited in the front window, but compromised by sticking it at its four corners on the wall of the sitting room. St. James’s Hall was not over-crowded on the evening, and a wealthy member of the committee went about telling everybody that a smaller room would have been cheaper, but it was full enough to please Erb as he took a view of it from the stairs leading to the platform. The platform was fringed with palms; on the walls were hung banners, with quotations from Shakespeare down to the newest poet; quotations, that appeared to give vague support to the movement. Lady Frances, hovering about in the manner of an anxious butterfly, introduced Erb to the Duchess, and the Duchess, without using her lorgnon, said beamingly that she had read all of Mr. Barnes’s works, and felt quite too delighted to meet the author; Erb protested nervously that he had never written a book, but the Duchess waved this aside as ineffective badinage, and went on talking the while she looked away through her glasses at arriving people. So delighted, said the Duchess absently, to mingle with men of talent; it took one into another atmosphere. The Duchess, for her part, claimed to have powers of observation, and trusted piously that she was not altogether without a sense of humour, but these exceptional qualities, she said, had never availed her when she took pen in hand. Erb, perceiving the futility of contradiction, suggested that she should one day, when a spare moment arrived, have another dash at it, and the Duchess, bringing her gaze by a process of exhaustion round to him, stared at him wonderingly for a moment, and then promised to act upon his advice. A shy little man of letters being submitted just then to her consideration, the Duchess dropped Erb, and engaged in animated monologue on the subject of labour and how to conciliate it: her own method seemed to be to treat it as an elephant and give it buns. Erb stood about the room, whilst well-dressed people flew one to the other with every sign of gratification; he felt all his usual difficulty of not knowing what to do with his hands. The people had a manner of speech that he could understand with difficulty, they talked of things that for him were a sealed book. Three clergymen who came in a bunch and seemed similarly out of the movement, gave him a feeling of companionship. When they all formed in a line and marched up on the platform to a mild, whispered cheering from the Hall, Erb’s interest quickened, and the slight feeling of nervousness came which