A new departure--A Dublin hotel in the "sixties"--The Irish mail service--The wonderful old paddle mail-boats--The convivial waiters of the Munster--The Viceregal Lodge--Indians and pirates--The imagination of youth--A modest personal ambition--Death-warrants; imaginary and real--The Fenian outbreak of 1866-7--The Abergele railway accident--A Dublin Drawing-Room--Strictly private ceremonials--Some of the amenities of the Chapel Royal--An unbidden spectator of the State dinners--Irish wit--Judge Keogh--Father Healy--Happy Dublin knack of nomenclature--An unexpected honour and its cause--Incidents of the Fenian rising--Dr. Hatchell--A novel prescription--Visit of King Edward--Gorgeous ceremonial, but a chilly drive--An anecdote of Queen Alexandra CHAPTER IV Chittenden's--A wonderful teacher--My personal experiences as a schoolmaster--My "boys in blue"--My unfortunate garments--A "brave Belge"--The model boy, and his name--A Spartan regime--"The Three Sundays"--Novel religious observances--Harrow--"John Smith of Harrow"--"Tommy"--Steele--"Tosher"--An ingenious punishment--John Farmer--His methods--The birth of a famous song--Harrow school songs--"Ducker"--The "Curse of Versatility"--Advancing old age--The race between three brothers--A family failing--My father's race at sixty-four--My own--A most acrimonious dispute at Rome--Harrow after fifty years CHAPTER V Mme. Ducros--A Southern French country town--"Tartarin de Tarascon"--His prototypes at Nyons--M. Sisteron the roysterer--The Southern French--An octogenarian pasteur--French industry--"Bone-shakers"--A wonderful "Cordon-bleu"--"Slop-basin"--French legal procedure--The bons-vivants--The merry French judges--La gaiete francaise--Delightful excursions--Some sleepy old towns--Oronge and Avignon--M. Thiers' ingenious cousin--Possibilities--French political situation in 1874--The Comte de Chambord--Some French characteristics--High intellectual level--Three days in a Trappist Monastery--Details of life there--The Arian heresy--Silkworm culture--Tendencies of French to complicate details--Some examples--Cicadas in London. CHAPTER VI