My friend’s career had been remarkable. He was very handsome, very clever, and was successful in his profession; but he threw it up and preferred following the fortunes of the King of the Plungers. There was a short period of success, on the strength of which he mounted a little house in a very expensive street, engaged a first-rate cook, and gave choice dinners. That did not last long—there came a crisis, a crash, and an escape into that dingy disreputable hostelry off the Boulevard. The King of the Plungers was Harry Hastings—the last Marquis—who was my fag at Eton. He was an attractive little boy, and I think that everybody liked him; but his ideas when he grew up were on too large a scale. He had no health, and by burning the candle at both ends, and in the middle, sealed his own fate. Old Lord Wilton told me that when Hastings was Master of Hounds once the hounds came to a check and some of them were straying; he called out to him: “Blow your horn, Harry, blow your horn!” “That’s all very well, Lord Wilton,” he replied, “but if I blow my horn I shall be sick!” That did not suit the grand old horseman, one of the finest riders I ever saw, who once at Melton, when the field was stopped by a gate, came up behind, calling out: “I’ve got the key, gentlemen!” They all made a lane for him, and “the wicked Earl” as he was affectionately called, cantered up and flew over the gate like a bird. Harry Hastings was not without a certain cleverness, and the ring knew it. Steel, the famous bookmaker of those days, was once heard to grumble as Hastings left him, after some transaction at the rails at Ascot: “Ah! my lord, Heaven’s been very gracious to you, for you look a fool and you ain’t one!” * * * * * The next day I was in London. I wonder whether other men feel the same shyness about coming home that I have always done, especially after having been a long time away in some remote country where everything is strange and topsy-turvy, as different from England as is the tinkling of a _samishen_ or _koto_ from the sonorous art of Bach or Beethoven. Then again, even an attaché is in his small way a person of some little consideration abroad, but Ambassadors, Governors, Ministers Plenipotentiary themselves, as soon as they reach London, are whirled like straws in the maelstrom, and count as little. Lord Dufferin gave the best and wittiest expression to this shrinkage of greatness when he said: “Twenty-five minutes of Pall Mall are enough to take the conceit even out of a Viceroy of India!” Then think of the poor little attaché whose sleigh at a place like St. Petersburg (Petrograd from henceforth) has taken precedence of those of all the magnates in the land, and forgive him if for a moment he thought himself Somebody—pity him when he awakes from his dream and realizes that he is Nobody!