A friend of mine was being shown into a stockbroker’s room just as a shabby old man was coming out; and the old man turned back and said something which showed that he was speculating heavily. My friend remonstrated with the stockbroker for letting the man risk money that he manifestly could not afford to lose. But the answer was--“Don’t make yourself uneasy over him. He’s very fond of speculating, but he always keeps a hundred thousand in Consols, so that he may never be reduced to actual want.” I doubt if many people understand the happiness of misers. It must be like the happiness of feeling thoroughly fit. There is a joy in knowing you can jump clean over any gate you see; and I think the miser has this joy in knowing he can pay for anything he likes. But he does not go buying things, any more than you go jumping over gates. The air is often very buoyant here, especially upon the hill tops; and one morning on the top of Easton Down a friend of mine turned round to me and said--“Well, you know, I don’t think the Ascension was very much of a miracle after all.” And certainly one felt there was no saying where one wouldn’t go to, if one just gave a jump. A man here said to me, “Her went up ’xactly like an angel,” as if he often saw them go, and thought I must have seen them too. (He was speaking of the finish of a play he saw in town.) Another person here was very certain of what angels did or did not do. A stranger came to the back-door one Sunday morning, and asked for a drink of cider to help him on his way. He was denied it by the maid who was in charge there, and thereupon he said to her--“You know not what you do. You might be entertaining angels unawares.” To which she answered--“Get thee’ long. Angels don’t go drinkin’ cider church-times.” People sometimes ask me for advice on matters of which I am no judge, and a girl once asked me this:--She had been engaged to a young man for several years, but the engagement had just been broken off. She used to suffer dreadfully from toothache; and in the early days of his affection he sent her to the dentist, and paid for putting in a plate of teeth. Was that plate of teeth a present that ought to be returned? Rightly or wrongly, I said that it was not; and I see she has it still.