vourite virtues of Dumas. These he preached and
practised. They say he was generous before he was just; it is to be
feared this was true, but he gave even more freely than he received. A
regiment of seedy people sponged on him always; he could not listen to a
tale of misery but he gave what he had, and sometimes left himself short
of a dinner. He could not even turn a dog out of doors. At his
Abbotsford, "Monte Cristo," the gates were open to everybody but
bailiffs. His dog asked other dogs to come and stay: twelve came, making
thirteen in all. The old butler wanted to turn them adrift, and Dumas
consented, and repented.

"Michel," he said, "there are some expenses which a man's social position
and the character which he has had the ill-luck to receive from heaven
force upon him. I don't believe these dogs ruin me. Let them bide! But,
in the interests of their own good luck, see they are not thirteen, an
unfortunate number!"

"Monsieur, I'll drive one of them away."

"No, no, Michel; let a fourteenth come. These dogs cost me some three
pounds a month," said Dumas. "A dinner to five or six friends would cost
thrice as much, and, when they went home, they would say my wine was
good, but certainly that my books were bad." In this fashion Dumas fared
royally "to the dogs," and his Abbotsford ruined him as certainly as that
other unhappy palace ruined Sir Walter. He, too, had his miscellaneous
kennel; he, too, gave while he had anything to give, and, when he had
nothing else, gave the work of his pen. Dumas tells how his big dog,
Mouton once flew at him and bit one of his hands, while the other held
the throat of the brute. "Luckily my hand, though small, is powerful;
what it once holds it holds long--money excepted." He could not "haud a
guid grip o' the gear." Neither Scott nor Dumas could shut his ears to a
prayer or his pockets to a beggar, or his doors on whoever knocked at
them.

"I might at least have asked him to dinner," Scott was heard murmuring,
when some insufferable bore at last left Abbotsford, after wasting his
time and nearly wearing out his patience. Neither man _preached_
socialism; both practised it on the Aristotelian principle: the goods of
friends are common, and men are our friends.

* * * * *

The death of Dumas' father, while the son was a child, left Madame Dumas
in great poverty at Villers Cotterets. Dumas' education was sadly to
seek. Like most children destined to be b