Once on Christmas Day, when he was dining with us, I specially warned him that my father-in-law, who was a clergyman, would be of the party, and beseeched him to curb the ordinary exuberance of his phraseology. But despite his solemn promise of circumspection, the ladies had no sooner quitted the dining-room than I found Pellegrini in animated conversation with my father-in-law, conversation liberally enforced on his side by a volley of strange oaths in that dialect that was all his own, oaths which, had they been partially understood by his companion, would, I think, have brought the evening to a sudden termination. When his indiscretion had been pointed out to him poor Pellegrini was duly repentant, but we had not been in the drawing-room many minutes before he joined in a game of Little Horses which my children were playing upon the floor. At the close of the game he rose with an expression upon his face of deep remorse. “Joe,” he cried, “you ’ave ruin me! At the Las’ Day the Lord God will say to me, ‘Pellegrini, you ’ave every vice.’ And I could ’ave reply, ‘Lord God, pardon me, I ’ave never gamble.’ Now I cannot say.” This renewed outburst made it plain to me that I had, on that particular occasion, made a somewhat unwise selection in the guests invited to meet him, and during the remainder of the evening I kept close by his elbow in fear and trembling of some new outrage that might bring our innocent festivities to a sudden close. Pellegrini was a well-known figure at the Beefsteak Club, where his quaint idiosyncrasies were welcomed by nearly all, but even there he would occasionally bring a shock of surprise and amazement to some newly elected member who was not yet accustomed to his liberal vocabulary. There was one fellow-member of the club, himself an artist, who was wont to entertain the table with little impromptu sketches and designs which he executed with a certain degree of facility. This innocent display of artistic power gravely offended Pellegrini, who, possibly moved by a measure of jealousy that any one else should encroach upon his special province, insisted with some vehemence that a club was not the place for such exercises. “I like the boy,” he said to me one evening, “and when he talk, I listen, but ’tis pity he draw.” It was only a few evenings later that I entered the room and found the young friend who had been the subject of Pellegrini’s rebuke absorbing the entire conversation of a crowded table. Pellegrini was present, and I could see that he was growing restive under the artist’s unceasing flow of conversation. In a momentary pause he turned to me and in an audible whisper delivered this laconic judgment: “Joe, I ’ave made big mistake. ’Tis better he draw.”