That seemed sound reasoning, and it led him to the knowledge that Matilda had plunged into the life of the professional people with its round of pleasures and functions, its absorption in tailors and mummers and the amusers of the people, its entire devotion to amusement, as a protection against himself. It was an unpleasant realization, but amid so much pleasantness it was bracing. Money poured in. "Lossie Loses" was visited by all the Royal Family. When it had been performed two hundred and fifty times the Birthday Honors list was published and Henry Butcher was acclaimed "our latest theatrical knight." He gave a supper party on the stage to celebrate the two occasions; and he invited Mr. and Mrs. Beenham. There were present the Solicitor-General, Mr. Justice Sloppy, the three celebrated daughters of two dukes, the daughters-in-law of three Cabinet Ministers, a millionaire, two novelists, five "absolutely established" dramatists, three dramatic critics, nine theatrical knights, the ten most beautiful women in London, the Keeper of the Coptic Section of the South Kensington Museum, Tipton Mudde, the aviator, and Archdeacon Froude, the Chaplain of the Actors' Union. There were others who were neither named nor catalogued in the newspaper (Court and Society) next day. As Mr. Justice Sloppy said, in the speech of the evening: "For brains and beauty he had never seen anything like it. . . ." The toasts were the King, Sir Henry Butcher, Lossie, and the Public, and there, as Panoukian remarked when the feast was described to him, you have the whole thing in a nutshell, the topnotch of English philosophy, the expression of the English ideal, lots of food, lots of drink, lots of talk, of money, of people, and then a swollen gratitude--"God bless us every one." And Panoukian then developed a theory that England, the English character, had reached its zenith and come to flower and fruit in the genius of Charles Dickens. Thereafter was nothing but the fading of leaves, the falling of leaves, the drowsing into hibernation. He was excited by the idea of falling leaves to describe the intellectual and moral activity of the country. It would seem to explain the extraordinary predominance of the Harbottles, who were so thick upon every English institution that Vallombrosa was nothing to it.