t accuracy. Conversation was flagging; our
hostess looked relieved; very soon we were all playing a variation of
that most charming game, _suck-pencil_.

At first we decided to ignore the nineteenth century. The ten greatest
living Englishmen were to be named by our votes. Bridge and billiard
players were dragged to the polling-station in the green drawing-room.
Lord Lyonesse and myself were the tellers. I shivered with excitement.
One of the Ultimatelies of Churton Collins seemed to have arrived: it was
Gotterdammerung--the Twilight of the Idols. And here is the result of
the ballot, which I think every one will admit possesses extraordinary
interest:

Hall Caine.

Marie Corelli.

Rudyard Kipling.

Lord Northcliffe.

Sir Thomas Lipton.

Hichens.

Chamberlain.

Barrie.

George Alexander.

Beerbohm Tree.

I ought to add, of course, that the guests were unusually intellectual.
There were our host and hostess, their three sons--one is a scholar of
King's College, Cambridge, another is at Balliol, and a third is a
stockbroker; there were five M.P.'s with their wives (two Liberal
Imperialists, two Liberal Unionists, and one real Radical), a Scotch peer
with his wife and an Irish peer without one; a publisher and his wife;
three Academicians; four journalists; an Irish poet, a horse-dealer, a
picture-dealer, another stockbroker, an artist, two lady novelists, a
baronet and his wife, three musicians; and Myself. I think the only
point on which the sincerity of the voting might be doubted, is the
ominous absence of any soldier's name on the list. Lord Lyonesse,
however, is a firm upholder of the Hague Conference: like myself, he is a
pro-Boer, but he will not allow any reference to military affairs, and I
suspect that it was out of deference to his wishes that the guests all
abstained from writing down some names of our gallant generals. Lord
Kitchener, however, obtained nine votes, and I myself included Christian
De Wet; but on discovery of documents he was ruled out, in spite of my
pleading for him on imperialistic grounds. I thought it rather insular,
too, I must confess, that Mr. Henry James and Mr. Sargent were denied to
me because they are American subjects. My own final list, as pasted in
the Album at Ivanhoe, along with others, was as follows:

H. G. Wells.

C. H. Shannon.

Bernard Shaw.

Thomas Hardy.

Lord Northcliffe.

Edmund Gosse.

Andrew Lang.

Oliver Lodge.

Dom Gasquet