d rather have expressed differently," when, at the close
of his final interview, he left the condemned cell, observing, "Well, at
eight o'clock to-morrow morning, then."

The path of those who inhabit Courts is thickly beset with pitfalls.
There are so many things that must be left unsaid, and so many more that
must be expressed differently. Who does not know the "Copper Horse" at
Windsor--that equestrian statue at the end of the Long Walk to which
(and back again) the local flyman always offers to drive the tourist?
Queen Victoria was entertaining a great man, who, in the afternoon,
walked from the Castle to Cumberland Lodge. At dinner her Majesty, full,
as always, of gracious solicitude for the comfort of her guests, said,
"I hope you were not tired by your long walk?" "Oh, not at all, thank
you, ma'am. I got a lift back as far as the Copper Horse." "As far as
what?" inquired her Majesty, in palpable astonishment. "Oh, the Copper
Horse, at the end of the Long Walk!" "That's not a copper horse. That's
my grandfather!"

A little learning is proverbially dangerous, and often lures vague
people into unsuspected perils. One of the most charming ladies of my
acquaintance, remonstrating with her mother for letting the fire go out
on a rather chilly day, exclaimed, "O dear mamma, how could you be so
careless? If you had been a Vestal Virgin you would have been bricked
up." When the London County Council first came into existence, it used
to assemble in the Guildhall, and the following dialogue took place
between a highly cultured councillor and one of his commercial
colleagues.

_Cultured Councillor_. "The acoustics of this place seem very bad."

_Commercial Councillor (sniffing)_. "Indeed, sir? I haven't perceived
anything unpleasant."

A well-known lady had lived for some years in a house in Harley Street
which contained some fine ornamentation by Angelica Kauffmann, and, on
moving to another quarter of the town, she loudly lamented the loss of
her former drawing-room, "for it was so beautifully painted by Fra
Angelico."

Mistakes of idiom are the prolific parents of error, or, as Mrs.
Lirriper said, with an admirable confusion of metaphors, breed fruitful
hot water for all parties concerned. "The wines of this hotel leave one
nothing to hope for," was the alluring advertisement of a Swiss
innkeeper who thought that his vintages left nothing to be desired. Lady
Dufferin, in her Reminiscences of Viceregal Life, has so