I ought to add, of course, that the guests were unusually intellectual. There were our host and hostess, their three sons--one is a scholar of King's College, Cambridge, another is at Balliol, and a third is a stockbroker; there were five M.P.'s with their wives (two Liberal Imperialists, two Liberal Unionists, and one real Radical), a Scotch peer with his wife and an Irish peer without one; a publisher and his wife; three Academicians; four journalists; an Irish poet, a horse-dealer, a picture-dealer, another stockbroker, an artist, two lady novelists, a baronet and his wife, three musicians; and Myself. I think the only point on which the sincerity of the voting might be doubted, is the ominous absence of any soldier's name on the list. Lord Lyonesse, however, is a firm upholder of the Hague Conference: like myself, he is a pro-Boer, but he will not allow any reference to military affairs, and I suspect that it was out of deference to his wishes that the guests all abstained from writing down some names of our gallant generals. Lord Kitchener, however, obtained nine votes, and I myself included Christian De Wet; but on discovery of documents he was ruled out, in spite of my pleading for him on imperialistic grounds. I thought it rather insular, too, I must confess, that Mr. Henry James and Mr. Sargent were denied to me because they are American subjects. My own final list, as pasted in the Album at Ivanhoe, along with others, was as follows: H. G. Wells. C. H. Shannon. Bernard Shaw. Thomas Hardy. Lord Northcliffe. Edmund Gosse. Andrew Lang. Oliver Lodge. Dom Gasquet. Reginald Turner. Mine, of course, is the choice of a recluse: a scholar without scholarship, one who lives remote from politics, newspapers, society, and the merry-go-round of modern life. Its two chief interests lie in showing, first how far off I was from getting the prize (a vellum copy of poems, by our hostess), and secondly, that one name only, that of Lord Northcliffe, should have touched both the popular and the private imagination! I regret to say that none of the guests knew the names of Dom Gasquet or Sir Oliver Lodge. Every one, except the artist, thought C. H. Shannon was J. J. Shannon, and some of the voters were hardly convinced that Mr. Lang was still an ornament to contemporary literature. The prize was awarded to a lady whose list most nearly corresponded to the result of the general plebiscite. I need not say she was the wife of the publisher. After some suitable expressions from Lord Lyonesse, it was suggested that we should poll the servants' hall. Pencils and paper were provided and the butler was sent for. An hour was given for the election, and at half-past eleven the ballot papers were brought in on a massive silver tray discreetly covered with a red silk pocket-handkerchief, and here is the result: Frank Richardson. Marie Corelli. John Roberts. C. B. Fry. Eustace Miles. Robert Hichens. T. P. O'Connor. Lord Lyonesse.