two or three of the wits and beauties accept, that
is worse than ever, because the rest are a Q.C. (who talks about
his cases) and his wife, who talks about her children. An old
school-fellow, who has no conversation that does not begin, "I say, do
you remember old JACK WILLIAMS." This does not entertain the beauty,
who sits next him.

A Dowager Duchess, she knows none of the other people and wonders
audibly (to me) who they are. A clever young man, whose language is
the language of the future, and whose humour is of a date to which I
humbly hope my own days may not be prolonged. A Psychical Researcher,
with a note-book; he gets at the Duchess at once, and cross-examines
her about a visionary Piper who plays audible pibrochs through Castle
Blawearie, her ancestral home. Does she think the pibroch could be
taken down in a phonograph. Could the Piper be snapped in a kodak?
The Duchess does not know what a phonograph is; never heard of a
kodak. She does not like the note-book any more than _Mr. Pickwick's_
cabman liked it. She is afraid of getting into print. Then there is
the Warden of St. Jude's, a great scholar; he pricks up his ears,
not the keenest, at the word kodak, and begins to talk about a
newly-discovered _Codex_ of PODONIAN the Elder. Nobody knows what
a _Codex_ is. There is a School-board Lady, but, alas, she is next
the Warden of St. Jude's, not next the enthusiastic Clergyman, who
proses about a Club for Milliners. There is GRIGSBY, who develops an
undesirable interest in the Milliners' Club. Have they a Strangers'
Room? Do they give suppers? Are they Friendly Girls? Everyone thinks
GRIGSBY flippant and coarse; I wish I had not asked him to come. There
is a Positivist, who sneers at the Clergyman; there are a Squire and
his wife from Rutlandshire: she is next the Radical Candidate for the
Isle of Dogs. They do not seem to get on well together. GRIGSBY and
the humorist of the future are chaffing each other across the table:
nobody understands them; I don't know whether they are quarrelling
or not. Miss JONES, the authoress of _Melancholy Moods_ (in a
Greek dress, with a _pince-nez_: a woman should not combine these
attributes) is next the Squire: he has never heard of any of her
friends the Minor Poets: she takes no interest in Hay, nor in Tithes.
I see the Guardsman and the Beauty looking at each other across the
flowers and things: the language of their eyes is not difficult, nor
pleasant, to read. Why is