I have been told that when hospitality is offered to some of the visitors by people in Broadminster during the tournament week, it is now not invariably accepted without caution and preliminary inquiry. A bitter story was imparted to me by a man who had been kindly invited by one of the inhabitants to stay at his house for the croquet week. My friend gratefully accepted, and as the whole of the local family were players, he was brought up to their villa after the first day's play. He found the house a charming one of its class, and he thought himself lucky in his billet. Dinner was served, and then the little rift within the hospitable lute was suggested: there was no wine offered to him! The hissing of syphons round the table gave expression to his views on the subject of such hospitality; but what could he say in reply to his host when the latter turned to him, remarking quite pleasantly--“This is a teetotal household: no strong drink of any kind is allowed to enter it. Will you have soda water or Appolinaris?” Of course there was nothing to be said by a guest on the subject; but his host, like so many people professing his principles, had a good deal to say respecting the virtue of teetotalism. But so far as I was able to gather from the tone of his narrative, he did not obtain the cordial concurrence of his guest in all his views; for his guest was in the habit of taking half a bottle of claret at his dinner every day of his life and at least one glass of sound port afterwards, and for twenty years he had not gone to bed without wrapping himself round a tumbler of grog at the eleventh hour, and he did not find that an exordium on teetotalism went far to compensate him for the absent decanters. He was ready to greet the discourse with hisses; but the syphons were accommodating: they did their own hissing. He went to bed in a very bad humour. In the morning, however, after family prayers, his host said to him-- “I thought I detected an unsatisfied look on your face as you entered the room, my friend. I think I know the reason of it. I dare say you have been accustomed to something which you failed to find on the table in your room. I am sure of it. I have inquired, and I am very sorry for the omission. But make your mind easy; look on your table to-night, and I think you will be satisfied.” This was not so bad, the visitor thought; though not everything, still a whisky and soda going to bed was better than nothing. He had his customary claret at his lunch in the pavilion that day, so he did not mind the sibilant but unsatisfying syphons at dinner. But he felt tired that night, he said, and went oft early to bed. Switching on the light, he hurried to the table for the promised treat. He found that the table bore nothing except a large Bible, bound in leather! CHAPTER SIXTEEN--ART & THE ARTFUL IN THE PROVINCES I.--THE ARTISTIC OUTLOOK