It is only within the last few years that we have begun to talk of "Week-Ends" and "week-Ending." These terrible phrases have come down to us from the North of England; but before they arrived the thing which they signify was here. "Saturday-to-Monday Parties" they were called. They were not so frequent as now, because Saturday was a favourite night for entertaining in London, and it was generally bespoken for dinners and drums. But, as the summer advanced and hot rooms became unendurable, people who lived only forty or fifty miles out of London began to ask if one would run down to them on Friday or Saturday, and stay over Sunday. Of these hospitalities I was a sparing and infrequent cultivator, for they always meant two sleepless nights; and, as someone truly observed, just as you had begun to wear off the corners of your soap, it was time to return to London. But there were people, more happily constituted, who could thoroughly enjoy and profit by the weekly dose of fresh air and quiet. It was seldom that Mrs. Gladstone failed to drag Mr. Gladstone to some country house "from Saturday to Monday." As I re-read what I have written in this chapter, I seem to have lived from 1876 to 1880 in the constant enjoyment of one kind or another of Hospitality. It is true; and for the kindness of the friends who then did so much to make my life agreeable, I am as grateful as I was when I received it. My social life in London seems to me, as I look back, "a crystal river of unreproved enjoyment"; and some of those who shared it with me are still among my closest friends. One word more, and I have done with Hospitality. I brought with me from Oxford a simple lad who had been a College servant. In those more courteous days a young man made it a rule to leave his card at every house where he had been entertained; so I made a list of addresses, gave it to my servant with a nicely-calculated batch of cards, and told him to leave them all before dinner. When I came in to dress, this dialogue ensued: "Have you left all those cards?" "Yes, sir." "You left two at each of the houses on your list?" "Oh no, sir. I left one at each house, and all the rest at the Duke of Leinster's." Surely Mrs. Humphry Ward or Mr. H. G. Wells might make something of this bewildering effect produced by exalted rank on the untutored mind. FOOTNOTE: [28] The second Lord Lytton. IX ELECTIONEERING "Candidates are creatures not very susceptible of affronts, and would rather, I suppose, climb in at a window than be absolutely excluded. Mr. Grenville, advancing towards me, shook me by the hand with a degree of cordiality that was extremely seducing.... He is very young, genteel, and handsome, and the town seems to be much at his service." _W. Cowper_, 1784.