red, and all
permissible school topics discussed, there used to ensue a horrid
silence, while "Dr. Blimber's young friends" sat tightly glued to their
chairs. Then the Doctor would approach with Agag-like delicacy, and,
extending his hand to the shyest and most loutish boy, would say, "Must
you go? Can't you stay?" and the party broke up with magical celerity.
Such, at least, was our Harrovian tradition.

Nothing is so refreshing to a jaded sense of humour as to be the
recipient of one of your own stories retold with appreciative fervour
but with all the point left out. This was my experience not long ago
with reference to the story of Dr. Vaughan and his boy-bores which I
have just related. A Dissenting minister was telling me, with extreme
satisfaction, that he had a son at Trinity College, Cambridge. He went
on to praise the Master, Dr. Butler, whom he extolled to the skies,
winding up his eulogy with, "He has such wonderful tact in dealing with
shy undergraduates." I began to scent my old story from afar, but held
my peace and awaited results. "You know," he continued, "that young men
are sometimes a little awkward about making a move and going away when a
party is over. Well, when Dr. Butler has undergraduates to breakfast, if
they linger inconveniently long when he wants to be busy, he has such a
happy knack of getting rid of them. It is so tactful, so like him. He
goes up to one of them and says, '_Can't you go? Must you stay?_' and
they are off immediately." So, as Macaulay says of Montgomery's literary
thefts, may such ill-got gains ever prosper.

My Dissenting minister had a congener in the late Lord P----, who was a
rollicking man about town thirty years ago, and was famous, among other
accomplishments, for this peculiar art of so telling a story as to
destroy the point. When the large house at Albert Gate, which fronts the
French Embassy and is now the abode of Mr. Arthur Sassoon, was built,
its size and cost were regarded as prohibitive, and some social wag
christened it "Gibraltar, because it can never be taken." Lord P----
thought that this must be an excellent joke, because every one laughed
at it; and so he ran round the town saying to each man he met--"I say,
do you know what they call that big house at Albert Gate? They call it
Gibraltar, because it can never be let. Isn't that awfully good?" We all
remember an innocent riddle of our childhood--"Why was the elephant the
last animal to get into the Ar