rivate life. Another was Cetewayo, the
jolliest-looking Kaffir I ever saw, and I went to see him because our
treatment of him was a shame and a national disgrace. Once on a time as
we were waiting for Royalty on a distant platform, one of the committee
offered to introduce me to H.R.H. I declined, on the plea that I must
draw the line somewhere, and that I drew it at princes, but oh! the
vanity of wasting one's time in society. Of the gay world, perhaps the
wittiest and pleasantest, as far as my personal experience is concerned,
was the late Charles Mathews. I had seen him on the stage and met him in
his brougham and talked with him, and once I was invited to a grand party
he gave to his friends and admirers. As I went into the reception-room I
wondered where the jaunty and juvenile actor could be. All at once I saw
a venerable, bald-headed old man coming down on me. Oh! I said to
myself, this must be the butler coming to account for his master's
absence. Lo, and behold! it was Charley Mathews himself!

CHAPTER XIV.
HOW I PUT UP FOR M.P.

By this time people have got sick of electioneering. It is a great
privilege to be an English elector--to feel that the eyes of the world
are on you, and that, at any rate, your country expects you to do your
duty. But to the candidate an election contest is, at any rate, fraught
with instruction. Human nature is undoubtedly a curious combination, and
a man who goes in for an election undoubtedly sees a good deal of human
nature. I was put up for a Parliamentary borough--I who shudder at the
sound of my own voice, and who have come to regard speechmakers with as
much aversion as I should the gentleman in black. A borough was for the
first time to send a member to Parliament. It had been hawked all over
London in vain, and as a _dernier ressort_ the Liberal Association of the
borough--a self-elected clique of well-meaning nobodies--had determined
to run a highly respectable and well-connected gentleman whose name and
merits were alike unknown. Under such circumstances I consented to fight
the battle for freedom and independence, as I hold that our best men
should be sent to Parliament irrespective of property--that candidates
should not be forced on electors, and that unless our Liberal
Associations are really representative they may be worked in a way
injurious to the country and destructive of its freedom. At my first
meeting, like another Caesar, I came, I s