Honor told him this was very clever. I then tried to press it down, but could not--a curious feeling, like pressing on a cushion of air. He had by this time turned us right round, so that Honor was sitting where I had been before, and I was sitting or sometimes standing in her place. Then we were turned round again, and he seemed to want to knock the other table again; he went at it in a curious way. I had with one hand to remove a glass on it which I thought he would upset. He continued to edge against it, until he reached a book lying on it. This he knocked with such intention, that Honor asked him if he wanted it opened. YES. [This was a scrap-book in which I collect anything about him--photographs, old and new; poems made _about_ him, or sent to me in consolation; and it has his name outside, drawn on in large letters.--M. F. A. L.] So I opened it, and showed him the photograph of himself seated in the 'Nagant.' [A motor-car which Alec had practically given him not long before the war, and with which he was delighted.] Honor asked if he could see it, and he said YES, and seemed pleased. She asked if he could tell her what house it was standing in front of, and he spelt out-- ST. GERMINS. [This was pretty good, as the name of the Jacques's house is 'St. Germains.'] (Honor had forgotten the name till he began, and expected him to say Jacques's.) We told him he had got it, but that his spelling wasn't quite as good as it had been. Honor talked to him then about the 'Nagant' and the 'Gabrielle Horn,' all of which seemed to delight him. We then showed him some other photographs, and the one of his dog, and asked him to spell its name, which he did without mistake-- LARRY. He couldn't see the little photograph of the goats, as it was too small. But he saw himself in uniform--the one taken by Rosalynde and enlarged--and he seemed to like seeing that. We talked a lot to him. I asked if he remembered his journey with me out to Italy, and the Pullman car, etc. At this he knocked very affectionately against me. We then thought it was time for us all to go to bed. But he said NO. So we went on telling him family news. He listened with interest and appreciative knocks, and he then tried his balancing trick again, sometimes with success, but often failing to get the leg right. But he did it again in the end. We tried to say good night, it being then nearly one o'clock, but he didn't seem to want to go. We said au revoir, and told him we would see him again soon. III. EPISODE OF 'MR. JACKSON' A striking incident is reported in one of my 'Feda' sittings--that on 3 March 1916--shortly after the death of our peacock, which went by the comic name of 'Mr. Jackson,' his wives being Matilda Jackson and Janet. He was a pet of M. F. A. L.'s, and had recently met with a tragic end. It was decided to have him stuffed, and one of the last things I had seen before leaving Mariemont was a wooden pedestal on which it was proposed to put him.