of the table abundantly, and as he played with his fruit, his hearing wonderfully improved, and he had a gracious "he! he!" ready for every attempt at a joke.

To me the former part of the dinner, with its tedious removals, had been dull and monotonous, notwithstanding the excellence of the dishes and the sparkling brilliancy of the champagne, but when others became willing to enjoy, my capacity for enjoyment similarly expanded, and I found myself, ere the ladies left the table, cracking jokes, and making abominable puns, and telling Joe Millers, with a freedom and an hilarity that astonished myself. Mrs. Ducklet, however, and her elegant daughter gone, the scene was completely changed.

All was grossness and sensuality on the departure of the ladies-the fruit, and the wines, and the enjoyed dishes, or worse, the only pleasing themes of conversation with the voluptuous old Anglo-Indian. I was glad, therefore, when he moved an adjournment to the drawingroom, where we found Mrs. Ducklet dozing over a volume of sermons, and the fascinating Julia performing sacred pieces on the piano. It

was now half-past ten o'clock, and we had sat down to dinner at half-past seven! such was Ducklet's usual habit, such the ordinary routine of his life-dinner occupied with him exactly one-eighth of his life-time when private and domestic, but a much greater proportion when he entertained friends or went to the entertainments of others.

Life

Such was fashionable life in the City of Palaces! I had seen enough of it. more absolutely sterile or trivial, more monotonously dull and pretentious, is not probably to be found elsewhere. Good eating and drinking, much show and little comfort, its prevailing material characteristics; a supreme contempt for those whose darker skin proclaims their relationship with the children of the East, its grand ruling dogma. An existence combining all the vulgarity and prejudice of American life, with the languor and vegetating inertness of the tropics, but without that energy and vigour which renders the rudest Americans remarkable, to whatever class they may belong. I had lived a week in this atmosphere of fashionable vulgarity, and

had had enough of it. The following day I removed to quarters of my own.

A fortnight later, I read in the Bengal Hurkaru the following mysterious announcement" We understand that yesterday, about mid-day, Mr. L., of the Bengal Horse Artillery, eloped with the daughter of a gentleman high in the Civil Service in Calcutta. The youthful pair are said to have crossed the river, to have been united in the bonds of matrimony at Howrah, and to have started express to join Mr. L.'s station up the country. This affair has caused a great excitement amongst the fashionable circles of Calcutta, the young lady's papa and mamma having been known to be decidedly opposed to the marriage."

I had little difficulty in convincing myself that Mr. Layjow and Miss Ducklet were the parties alluded to, and on calling a few days afterwards on the parents of the young lady, Mrs. Ducklet herself, with many wailings, confirmed the truth of my conjecture.

CHAPTER XII.

NEWSPAPER-EDITING IN THE FAR EAST.

A MAN who has once been editor of a newspaper can scarcely cease to write afterwards. A holiday of a week, a month, or even a year, may be acceptable. He throws down the pen, and pushes away his desk, with the air of a man that has had enough of it, and is determined, for the future, to eschew perorating, puffing, and criticizing. For a time, his release from the daily routine of the office is delightful, and he luxuriates in the bliss of being entirely his own master. He no longer finds a heap of effusions, and a pile of newspapers, before him daily, which must be looked over, however cursorily; letters from anxious correspondents about manuscripts of which he has no recollection; queries from inquirers

who expect him to be a walking encyclopædiaan epitome of all knowledge, bound in broadcloth and linen; lines, verses, sonnets, and poems from unfortunate poetasters, who will not be persuaded that he does not wish for such; diatribes against unknown offenders from unknown assailants, all anxious to see their attacks in the columns of his paper; together with cautious puffs of friends and their productions from knowing ones, who do not wish to pay for them as advertisements.

All these the editor in the far East has, with his own eyes, to glance at or wade through. In some instances the most superficial glance is sufficient; in others, he reads through two or three pages of crabbed manuscript, only to find in the end that the production is of no use or value. All these he flies from and avoids, when a holiday season gives him an opportunity of forgetting the cares and fatigues of editing, to indulge in the luxury of doing just what he likes when he likes.

But the cacoëthes scribendi, the itch of writing, has been acquired. In time, he sits down to indite some article more than usually piquant, which has been troubling his brain