Presently Mr. ---- pointed at me, and said, "You have been a Queen countless times, and an Empress seven times, and you will be again; and also your sister" (pointing to Blanche Pigott, who was exactly like me, and is now dead) "has been very often a Queen, and will be an Empress." There was a little pause after this. Father began to look rather frightened. Mr. ---- went on to say that he hated people with snub noses, and described how he fell amongst a party of that common ilk, and how they had treated him--how they had put him under a pump till he was nearly dead, and had tied him down, and several other acts with which we are all familiar from reading. After dinner he asked Richard for a map of Midian, and taking it, he marked all the spots where the best gold existed, and the different spots which contained anything valuable, and what they were, and said that was what he came for (I have it now). He then said he would like to brew a bowl of Rosicrucian punch, and requested us to order a bottle of brandy, two bottles of rum, and several other things to be brought to him, and he did brew the punch; and when he gave us each some, we all put it down and said, "I cannot drink that, for I feel it to the very tips of my fingers." He said, "That is just what you _ought_ to feel; it is how the Rosicrucians always felt." He prescribed for all of us, and I remember one gentleman, who had rather a red nose, was directed to rub the tip of it with cantharides. We could not ask him to go, but at eleven o'clock my father retired, and we stayed up with him till two o'clock; but in spite of having drunk all the punch himself, as we found it _impossible_, he was perfectly sober, agreeable, and gentlemanly, and took his leave and went away. My father was very angry with me for asking a lunatic to dinner, which of course I had done quite unconsciously, but it was worse for me when, next morning, he arrived for half-past one lunch, quite naturally "delighted to find again his new Rosicrucian family." He told us that he lived at Primrose Hill, that the last night he had been borne there on air in a few minutes, and that his feet had never touched the ground the whole way. But what _did_ touch us immensely was, that he said that "last night he had not known where to look for a dinner, and the spirits had directed him to our house, and had urged him to come back on the present occasion." We were all very nice and kind to him; but it had such effect on my father's nerves, he being very aged, that we had to tell the butler to say, when he called again, that Richard and I had gone into the country--as it was _us_ he had come ostensibly to see. I have still about twenty very clever letters that he wrote us. [Sidenote: _On Leave in London_.]