this terrible necessity is made clear to me, every means must be adopted to settle the unhappy affair in a private manner. Never again could I hold up my head and meet the gaze of my fellow-man were I to hear my name and the shameful secrets of my home shouted out in the streets by hawkers of public news. My life would be blasted indeed were I to see my dishonour publicly proclaimed in the newspaper bills that are displayed at every railway station in the kingdom. Ah, then the son who renounced my name, driven to it by my folly, my incredulousness, my injustice, might deem himself fortunate that he had done so before it was dragged into the gutters, and covered with ignominy! I waited impatiently in my New York hotel for my son to make a second call, but to my great disappointment he did not again appear. My letters, which he must have received, were brief, but they explained my anxiety to see him and to be reconciled with him. He could not have followed me to New Orleans, for I had taken the precaution so to arrange my route as not to afford any stranger a clue to my destination. In this I was actuated by my overpowering desire to keep my family affairs from public gaze--a more difficult matter in America, where the newspaper interviewer appears to be ubiquitous, than it is in any other country in the world. On the twelfth day of my last stay in the hotel, exactly three weeks ago, I received news which determined me to return immediately to England. The news was startling and overwhelming, and added another shame to that which was already weighing me down. My wife had given birth to a child. This child is not mine. Imperative, therefore, was the necessity of bringing the shameful matter to an end without delay. I took passage to Liverpool in the "Germanic," and before I left New York I placed in the hands of the manager of the hotel a letter for my son, to be given to him privately, in case he should call. The letter contained bank notes for £200 and a sight draft for £500, payable to bearer, and was to the effect that Frederick was to follow me home by the earliest possible opportunity. I instructed him in the letter to take his passage to Liverpool, and on his arrival there to inquire at the post office for a letter, which I intended should enable him to come to me at once. It is because these proceedings have, up to the present time, not led to a successful result, and because of the suspicion that has obtained a firm hold in my mind of some cunning underhand plotting to prevent my son from meeting me, that I think it best to keep a record of what has been done and of what is likely to take place.