While on a screen, designed by H. S. Marks, and exquisitely decorated round the margin with golden plovers and their eggs (which I adore), were smaller gems in oil and water-color that Mary had fallen in love with at one time or another. The immortal "Moonlight Sonata," by Whistler; E, J. Poynter's exquisite "Our Lady of the Fields" (dated Paris, 1857); a pair of adorable "Bimbi" by V. Prinsep, who seems very fond of children; T. R. Lamont's touching "L'Apres Diner de l'Abbe Constantin," with the sweet girl playing the old spinet; and that admirable work of T. Armstrong, in his earlier and more realistic manner, "Le Zouave et la Nounou," not to mention splendid rough sketches by John Leech, Charles Keene, Tenniel, Sambourne, Furniss, Caldecott, etc.; not to mention, also, endless little sketches in silver point of a most impossibly colossal, blackavised, shaggy-coated St. Bernard--signed with the familiar French name of some gay troubadour of the pencil, some stray half-breed like myself, and who seems to have loved his dog as much as I loved mine. Then suddenly, in the midst of all this unparalleled artistic splendor, we felt that a something was wanting. There was a certain hollowness about it; and we discovered that in our case the principal motives for collecting all these beautiful things were absent. 1. We were not the sole possessors. 2. We had nobody to show them to. 3. Therefore we could take no pride in them. [Illustration: THE NURSERY SCHOOL-ROOM.] And found that when we wanted bad weather for a change, and the joys of home, we could be quite as happy in my old school-room, where the squirrels and the monkey and the hedgehog were, with each of us on a cane-bottomed arm-chair by the wood-fire, each roasting chestnuts for the other, and one book between us, for one of us to read out loud; or, better still, the morning and evening papers she had read a few hours earlier; and marvellous to relate, she had not even _read_ them when awake! she had merely glanced through them carefully, taking in the aspect of each column one after another, from top to bottom--and yet she was able to read out every word from the dream-paper she held in her hands--thus truly chewing the very cud of journalism! This always seemed to us, in a small but practical way, the most complete and signal triumph of mind over matter we had yet achieved. Not, indeed, that we could read much, we had so much to talk about. Unfortunately, the weak part of "Magna sed Apta" was its library. Naturally it could only consist of books that one or the other of us had read when awake. She had led such an active life that but little leisure had been left her for books, and I had read only as an every-day young man reads who is fond of reading.