beheaded; for if you do you will be considered a bore--and that is
something too dreadful for you at your tender age to understand." For
these last two stories I by no means vouch. They belong to the flotsam
and jetsam of ephemeral gossip. But the following, which I regard as
eminently characteristic, I had from Lord Randolph Churchill.

Towards the end of Lord Beaconsfield's second Premiership a younger
politician asked the Premier to dinner. It was a domestic event of the
first importance, and no pains were spared to make the entertainment a
success. When the ladies retired, the host came and sat where the
hostess had been, next to his distinguished guest. "Will you have some
more claret, Lord Beaconsfield?" "No, thank you, my dear fellow. It is
admirable wine--true Falernian--but I have already exceeded my
prescribed quantity, and the gout holds me in its horrid clutch." When
the party had broken up, the host and hostess were talking it over. "I
think the chief enjoyed himself," said the host, "and I know he liked
his claret." "Claret!" exclaimed the hostess; "why, he drank
brandy-and-water all dinner-time."

I said in an earlier paragraph that Lord Beaconsfield's flattery was
sometimes misplaced. An instance recurs to my recollection. He was
staying in a country house where the whole party was Conservative with
the exception of one rather plain, elderly lady, who belonged to a great
Whig family. The Tory leader was holding forth on politics to an
admiring circle when the Whig lady came into the room. Pausing in his
conversation, Lord Beaconsfield exclaimed, in his most histrionic
manner, "But hush! We must not continue these Tory heresies until those
pretty little ears have been covered up with those pretty little
hands"--a strange remark under any circumstances, and stranger still if,
as his friends believed, it was honestly intended as an acceptable
compliment.

Mr. Brett, who shows a curious sympathy with the personal character of
Lord Beaconsfield, acquits him of the charge of flattery, and quotes his
own description of his method: "I never contradict; I never deny; but I
sometimes forget." On the other hand, it has always been asserted by
those who had the best opportunities of personal observation that Lord
Beaconsfield succeeded in converting the dislike with which he had once
been regarded in the highest quarters into admiration and even
affection, by his elaborate and studied acquiescence in every claim,