As a mid-Victorian bachelor, I was perturbed at post-Victorian spinsters coming down to stay with me unchaperoned. The custom is established now; but when it was an innovation, I wrote to one inquiring if she really meant to come alone. And she answered--“Yes, of course. Sans chaperon, sans culottes, sans everything.” Another one assured me that she could not possibly need a chaperon, as she was thirty and had three false teeth. A man who often came to Lustleigh, was careless of the clothes he wore; and one of the Lustleigh people told him that he was lowering himself in everybody’s estimation by dressing in that untidy way. He was looking down the valley towards a house a long way off, as if he did not hear the other man’s remarks: then, nodding towards the house, he said--“Did you ever hear how old *****’s grandfather made all that money of his?” The other man pricked up his ears, and said he had not heard. The answer was--“Well, I can tell you, then. He always gave his whole attention to his own affairs.” That was about sixty years ago, before the railway came here bringing fresh interests in. There were a good many people then who might have done much better in the world by giving as much attention to their own affairs as they were giving to other people’s. And in spite of all their curiosity they very often got things wrong. It was all ‘putting two and two together,’ drawing inferences and passing inferences on as facts. I hear echoes of it still. People tell me positively of things that happened in this neighbourhood at such or such a date, and I find diaries and letters and other papers contradicting them. Sometimes they tell me very unexpected things about myself, although they could have ascertained the facts at any time by merely asking me. I used often to go for a long Sunday walk, starting off along the Bovey road; and I was told I went to church at Bovey most Sunday afternoons. This ‘putting two and two together’ is a ticklish process even for a careful man. I remember my father saying that he saw the Alabama at Calais and the Kearsarge waiting for her outside. Now, the Alabama never was at Calais: she went into Cherbourg, and the Kearsarge caught her coming out from there, 19 June 1864. I thought it was merely a slip of the tongue, Calais for Cherbourg; but his diary shows that he was not at Cherbourg at the time. There is an entry on 23 April 1864, “saw a Federal war-steamer lying off Calais, watching a Confederate vessel within the harbour,” and at that date the Alabama was about latitude 17° S. and longitude 32° W. I think he would have noted the ships’ names, if he had ascertained them at the time; and I suppose that some years afterwards he fancied that they must have been the Alabama and the Kearsarge.