banging the door of his asylum behind him with a grunt of satisfaction. How the wind howls through the dark courts! But there are ruddy lights in the windows of "The Cheese," and inside a blazing fire, the smoke from a dozen churchwardens, the scent of hot punch, and last but not least, listeners and the companionship of congenial spirits. Whatever Johnson may have done in his life, he certainly haunts the old place in death. One cannot turn one's eyes in any direction without encountering mementoes of the old lexicographer, and there is the brass tablet set in the wall over "The Favourite Seat of Dr. Samuel Johnson". You can't get away from that! "Deny it who can!" says the tablet defiantly, and it suddenly occurred to me that here is another task for Paul Pry--a task more fascinating even than the quest of the "curious sculptured figure," which disappeared so strangely from St. Ethelburga's, Bishopsgate. One could make it the work of a lifetime to find out if Dr. Johnson was in the habit of frequenting the "Cheshire Cheese". Meanwhile, perhaps the problem would have been solved by accident. Some descendant of one of the Doctor's correspondents finds an old letter amidst a bundle of dusty documents that had not seen the light of day for many a long year--a letter in which the Doctor, after giving a vivid account of the Gordon Riots, congratulates himself that Bolt Court is so near the "Cheshire Cheese," it not being safe for respectable citizens to be much abroad in the streets at nights. The letter would be put up to auction, and the "Cheshire Cheese" would run up the bidding.... The waiter placed before me a portion of The Pudding, and Mrs. D. brought me back to realities to ask what I imagined was in it. I told her there was steak in it, oysters, kidneys, and larks, and she said it wasn't fair to the birds. She also subsequently became of the opinion that it wasn't fair to the eaters, when she suffered embarrassment from the tiny bones of the larks. If it was a bloater, said she, you'd know what you were about, and where to look for the bones, but bones in a beef-steak pudding, where you didn't expect them, were a trap for the unwary. I reassured her that I had never heard of an accident, and I had lunched and dined many times at "The Cheese," but I regret to say that The Pudding, from Mrs. D.'s point of view, was not a success. When paying the bill I said something to the waiter about the Familiar Spirit of the place, and he suggested that we should visit the rooms above. He then went out into the sawdusted passage by the bar, and in exactly the same tone of voice as that with which he ordered chops and steaks, shouted up the stairs, "Charlie, a gentleman to see The Chair".