rcle. The Duke has the
housekeeper for partner and the Duchess the house-steward, while the
aristocratic guests find partners among other chiefs of departments in
the Welbeck household.

With midnight comes supper, served in two adjacent underground rooms,
that owe their excavation to the grim hobby of the old Duke. All the
festive party sit down to supper at the same time, the Duke's French
chef providing the menu. The house-steward presides and proposes the
health of the ducal family. This is welcomed in the manner it deserves
and then dancing is resumed in the picture-gallery.

On another evening the children on the Welbeck estate are invited to a
party when the head of a giant Christmas-tree is reared in the centre of
the ball-room, laden with toys for distribution to them, and the
pleasures of the entertainment are varied with the tricks of a conjurer
and ventriloquist. Thus is afforded a glimpse of the happy relations
existing between the Portland family and their retainers.

In the neighbourhood of Sutton-in-Ashfield, Cresswell, and the mining
district between Mansfield and Worksop the Duchess is regarded as a
Princess Bountiful in reality, rather than a creation of fairyland. Her
visits to some of the homes of the miners are generally unexpected; for
instance one Monday morning in the late autumn she rode up to the
unpretending dwelling of a collier to enquire about "an old friend," as
she called him, who had worked in Cresswell pits. A few years before he
had met with an accident and injured his spine. The occurrence came to
the ears of her Grace, who arranged for the patient to visit London to
undergo an operation, which he did, with favourable results. A
bath-chair was obtained for him and since then she had evinced
sympathetic interest in his condition.

As may well be imagined appeals to the Duchess's sympathies are made
from all quarters. One day she is taking the chair at the annual meeting
of the Children's Hospital at Nottingham. On another day the Nottingham
Samaritan Hospital for Women is having her support in the opening of a
bazaar in its aid.

Not only suffering humanity, but suffering brute creation has found in
her a sympathetic chord. The Bev. H. Russell, who is well known in the
county for his efforts on behalf of the Royal Society for the Prevention
of Cruelty to Animals, told two interesting stories of her Grace in her
presence at the opening of the bazaar.

A show of cab-horses and co