The most ambitious reckon their needs on a princely scale, as if determined to beg, when they have to, with all their might. One artist, distinguished in his youth, writes to J., from the Cafe Royal where, in his old age, he makes a habit of dining and finding himself towards midnight ridiculously without a penny in his pocket, an emergency in which a five-pound note by return of messenger will oblige. Another, whose business hours are as late, comes in person for a "fiver," his last train to his suburban home being on the point of starting and he as ridiculously penniless, except for a cheque for a hundred pounds just received from a publisher, which he cannot change at that time of night. The more humble have so much less lavish a standard that half a crown will meet their liabilities, or else a sum left to the generosity of the giver. A youth, frequent in his visits, never aspires above the fare of a hansom waiting below, while a painter of mature years appears only on occasions of public rejoicing or mourning when there is no telling to what extent emotion may loosen the purse strings. Some bring their pictures as security, or the pictures of famous ancestors who have become bewilderingly prolific since their death; some plead for their work to be taken out of pawn; some want to pose in a few days, and these J. recommends to the Keeper of the Royal Academy; and some are so subtle in their argument that we fail to follow it. We are still wondering what could have been the motive of the excited little man who burst in upon J. a few days ago with a breathless inquiry as to how much he charged for painting polo ponies for officers, and who bolted as precipitately when J. said that he knew nothing about polo, and had never painted a pony in his life. But for sheer irrelevance none has surpassed the American whom, in J.'s absence, I was called upon to interview, and who assured me that, having begun life as an artist and later turned model, he had tramped all the way from New Orleans to New York and then worked his way over on a cattleship to London with no other object in view than to sit to J. If I regret that my countrymen in England borrow the trick of begging from the native, it is some satisfaction to have them excel in it. When I represented to the model from New Orleans that J., as far as I could see, would have no use for him, he was quite ready to take a shilling in place of the sitting, and when I would not give him a shilling, he declared himself repaid by his pleasant chat with a compatriot. He must have thought better of it afterwards and decided that something more substantial was owing to him, for three weeks later his visit was followed by a letter:--