Various opportunities, indeed were at that time offered me of entering, had I been willing to do so, the public life of politics. But various causes withheld me. One of these causes related to the St. Andrews Boroughs in particular. My own home being either in London or Devonshire, frequent journeys to and from the east of Scotland proved a very burdensome duty, and the boroughs themselves being widely separated from one another, the task of often delivering at least one speech in each was, in the days before motors, a duty no less exhausting. Further, I felt that the business of public speaking would interfere with a task which I felt to be more important--namely, that of providing facts and principles for politicians rather than playing directly the part of a politician myself. I was therefore relieved rather than disappointed when a communication subsequently reached me from the Conservative agent at St. Andrews to the effect that the head of an important Fifeshire family was willing to take my place and contest the constituency instead of me. My feelings were confirmed by a totally extraneous incident. The severe reader will perhaps think that I ought to blush when I explain what this incident was. [1] Father Grant, at my suggestion, published one of these Charters _in extenso_ in _The National Review_. [2] Another method which I adopted as a supplement to ordinary canvassing was a fortnightly or monthly issue of a printed letter addressed to each voter individually, which dealt with statistics and principles, every letter inviting questions, which would be dealt with in the letter following. CHAPTER X A FIVE MONTHS' INTERLUDE A Venture on the Riviera--Monte Carlo--Life in a Villa at Beaulieu--A Gambler's Suicide--A Gambler's Funeral