hered into the detested house.

As he approached the hostess she looked steadily at him through her
lorgnon, and then, turning to a companion, said with a drawl: "Isn't it
horrid, my dear! Every Dick, Tom and Harry's here to-night."

"That's what comes of being amiable," said Burton to his wife, when
they got home again--and he'd be asterisked, and might everybody else be
asterisked, if he'd enter that asterisked house again. Then the humour
of it all appealed to him; and his anger dissolved into the usual hearty
laughter.

One very marked feature of Burton's character was that, like his father,
he always endeavoured to do and say what he thought was right, quite
regardless of appearances and consequences. And we may give one anecdote
to illustrate our meaning.

On one occasion [379] he and another Englishman who was known by Burton
to have degraded himself unspeakably, were the guests at a country
house. "Allow me, Captain Burton," said the host, "to introduce you to
the other principal guest of the evening, Mr. ----" Looking Mr. ----
in the face, Burton said: "When I am in Persia I am a Persian, when in
India a Hindu, but when in England I am an English gentleman," and then
he turned his back on Mr. ----and left him. As Mr. ----'s record was not
at the time generally known, those who were present at the scene
merely shrugged their shoulders and said: "Only another of Burton's
eccentricities." A few months, later, however, Mr. ---'s record received
publicity, and Burton's conduct and words were understood.

One of Burton's lady relations being about to marry a gentleman who was
not only needy but also brainless, somebody asked him what he thought of
the bridegroom-elect.

"Not much," replied Burton, drily, "he has no furniture inside or out."

To "old maids" Burton was almost invariably cruel. He found something
in them that roused all the most devilish rancours in his nature; and he
used to tell them tales till the poor ladies did not know where to tuck
their heads. When reproved afterwards by Mrs. Burton, he would say:
"Yaas, yaas, no doubt; but they shouldn't be old maids; besides, it's no
good telling the truth, for nobody ever believes you." He did, however,
once refer complimentarily to a maiden lady--a certain Saint Apollonia
who leaped into a fire prepared for her by the heathen Alexandrians.
He called her "This admirable old maid." Her chief virtue in his eyes,
however, seems to have been not her fideli