r wanted my young man to come larking about like
this. But--he's not a burglar. He's the exhibit from the Auto-extensor
Co.'s in Regent Street. You can pull out the rest of him and see if he
isn't."

"That's what I told the cabman," said the policeman. "I said to him:
'You juggins,' I said, 'do you think a burglar who wants to get into a
house waits till a cab's going past and then gives a acrobatic
exhibition to attract the driver's attention? That's some young fool
after one of the maids.' No, I don't want to see the rest of the young
man--not if he's like the sample. Get him unwound as soon as you can,
and send him about his business. If he's not out in two minutes, I
shall ring the front door, and you'll be in the cart. And don't act so
silly another time."

Hugo was out in 1 min. 35 sec. He stopped to chat with the policeman,
jumped the seven-foot railings into the square garden, and jumped back
again, just to show what he could do, and went off.

I gave a long, deep sigh. I always do that when an incident in my life
fails to reach the best autobiographical level. I neither knew nor cared
what the policeman thought. You see, I would never deserve a bad
reputation, but there's nothing else I wouldn't do to get one.

For eighty-four years--my memory for numbers is not absolutely accurate,
but we will say eighty-four--for eighty-four years I wrote him a letter
every morning and evening of every day, with the exception of Sundays,
bank holidays, and the days when I did not feel like it.

But it was not to be. He was not without success in the circus which he
subsequently joined, but he was improvident. His income increased in
arithmetical progression, and his expenditure in geometrical. This, as
Dr. Micawber and Professor Malthus have shown us, must end in disaster.
Looking at it from the noblest point of view--the autobiographical--I
saw that a marriage with Hugo would inevitably cramp my style.

And so the great sacrifice was made. Our feelings were so intense as we
said farewell that my native reserve and reticence forbid me to
describe them. But we parted one night in June, with a tear in the
throat and a catch in the eye. As he strode from the park, I looked
upward and saw in the brown crags above me some graceful animal
silhouetted against an opal sky. I always have said that those Mappin
Terraces were an improvement.

SIXTH EXTRACT

TESTIMONIALS--ROYAL APPRECIATION

Being what I am, it may rea