'There were quaint, beautiful, extraordinary costumes walking about--ultra-aesthetics, artistic-aesthetics, aesthetics that made up their minds to be daring, and suddenly gave way in some important point--put a frivolous bonnet on the top of a grave and flowing garment that Albert Durer might have designed for a mantle. There were fashionable costumes that Mrs. Mason or Madame Eliot might have turned out that morning. The motley crowd mingled, forming into groups, sometimes dazzling you by the array of colours that you never thought to see in full daylight.... Canary-coloured garments flitted cheerily by garments of the saddest green. A hat in an agony of pushes and angles was seen in company with a bonnet that was a gay garland of flowers. A vast cape that might have enshrouded the form of a Mater Dolorosa hung by the side of a jauntily-striped Langtry-hood.' The 'Master.' By this title his disciples used to address James Whistler, the author-artist. Without echoing the obloquy that was lavished at first nor the praise that was lavished later upon his pictures, we must admit that he was, as least, a great master of English prose and a controversialist of no mean power. 'Masher.' One authority derives the title, rather ingeniously, from 'Ma Chère,' the mode of address used by the gilded youth to the barmaids of the period--whence the corruption, 'Masher.' Another traces it to the chorus of a song, which, at that time, had a great vogue in the music-halls: 'I'm the slashing, dashing, mashing Montmorency of the day.' This, in my opinion, is the safer suggestion, and may be adopted. London, 1894. King George The Fourth