it. Once when my son had an exhibition of his pictures, I
asked Mr. Burnand, as he was then, to go and see it or send some one on
Mr. Punch's staff. He answered characteristically!

"WHITEFRIARS,
"London, E.C.

"My dear Ellen Terry,--

"Delighted to see your hand--'wish your face were with it'
(Shakespeare).

"Remember me (Shakespeare again--'Hamlet') to our Sir Henry. May you
both live long and prosper!

"GORDON CRAIG'S PICTURES

He opens his show
A day I can't go.
Any Friday
Is never my day.

But I'll see his pictures
(Praise and no strictures)
'Ere this day week;
Yet I can't speak
Of them in print
(I might give a hint)
Till each on its shelf
I've seen for myself.
I've no one to send.
Now I must end.
None I can trust,
So go I must.
Yours most trul_ee_
V'la F.C.B.
All well here,
All send love.
Likewise misses
Lots of kisses.
From all in this 'ere shanty
To _you_ who don't play in Dante!

What a pity!
Whuroo-oo
Oo-oo-oo!"

BITS FROM MY DIARY

What is a diary as a rule? A document useful to the person who keeps it,
dull to the contemporary who reads it, invaluable to the student,
centuries afterwards, who treasures it!

Whatever interest the few diaries of mine that I have preserved may have
for future psychologists and historians, they are for my present purpose
almost worthless. Yet because things written at the time are considered
by some people to be more reliable than those written years afterwards
when memory calls in imagination to her help, I have hunted up a few
passages from my diaries between 1887 and 1901; and now I give them in
the raw for what they are worth--in my opinion nothing!

_July 1887._--E.B.-J. (Sir Edward Burne-Jones) sent me a picture he
has painted for me--a troop of little angels.

_August 2._--(We were in Scotland.) Visited the "Blasted Heath."
Behold a flourishing potato field! Smooth softness everywhere. We
must blast our own heath when we do Macbeth!

_November 29._---(We were in America.) Matinee "Faust"--Beecher
Memorial. The whole affair was the strangest failure. H.I. himself
took heaps of tickets, but the house was half empty.

The following Saturday.--Matinee "Faust." House crammed. Why
couldn't they have come when it was to honor Beecher?

_January 1890._--In answer to some one w