Late as he went to bed, sleep did not long detain him, for, in his own happy-go-lucky, troubadour sort of life, he was one of the most occupied of men even in this great, hurrying, bustling capital of the world. As soon as he had donned his dressing-gown and come into the sitting-room, he swallowed a cup of coffee that was waiting for him, and then, to make sure that unholy hours and cigarettes had not hurt his voice, he dabbed a note on the piano, and began to practise, in the open-throated Italian fashion, those _vocalises_ which sound so strangely to the uninstructed ear. He rang for breakfast. He glanced in a despairing way at the pile of letters and parcels awaiting him, the former, no doubt, mostly invitations, the latter, as he could guess, proofs of his latest sittings to the photographers, albums and birth-day books sent for his autograph, music beseeching commendation, even manuscript plays accompanied by pathetic appeals from unknown authors. Then there was a long row of potted scarlet geraniums and large white daisies which the house-porter had ranged by the window; and when he opened the note that had been forwarded with these he found that the wife of a famous statesman had observed as she drove along Piccadilly that the flowers in his balcony wanted renewal and begged his acceptance of this graceful little tribute. He took up a pair of dumb-bells, and had some exercise with them, to keep his arms and chest in good condition. He looked at himself in the mirror: no, he did not seem to have smoked inordinately; nevertheless, he made sundry solemn vows about those insidious cigarettes. Then he began to open the envelopes. Here was an imposing card, "To have the honor of meeting their royal highnesses the king and queen of ----;" here was a more modest bit of pasteboard with "_R.S.V.P._ to mess president" at the lower corner; here were invitations to breakfasts, to luncheons, to afternoon squawks, to Sunday dinners, to dances and crushes, in short, to every possible kind of diversion and frivolity that the gay world of London could devise. He went steadily on with his letters. More photographers wanted him to sit to them. Would he accept the dedication of "The Squire's Daughter Fantasia"? The composer of "The Starry Night Valses" would like a lithographic portrait of Mr. Lionel Moore to appear on the cover. A humble admirer of Mr. Lionel Moore's great impersonation of Harry Thornhill begged to forward the enclosed acrostic, and might he be allowed to print it in the _Mudborough Young Men's Mutual Improvement Magazine_? Messrs. Smith & Smith would be extremely obliged if Mr. Lionel Moore would honor them with his opinion of the accompanying pair of their patent silver-mounted automatic self-adjusting braces. "If I don't get a secretary," he muttered to himself, "I shall soon be in a mad-house."