ard man."

_A_. "I am about to ask you a serious question--When you have stuffed
your stomach, drunk your bottle, smoked your cigar, how are you to keep
yourself awake?"

_G_. "Either by cephalic snuff or castle-building!"

_A._ "Do you approve of castle-building as a frequent exercise?"

_G._ "Life were not life without it!

'Give me the joy that sickens not the heart,
Give me the wealth that has no wings to fly.'"

_A._ "I reckon myself one of the best aerial architects now living, and
_nil me paenitet hujus_."

_G._ "_Nec est cur te paeniteat_; most of your novels have previously
been subjects for airy castles."

_A._ "You have me--and moreover a man of imagination derives experience
from such imaginary situations. There are few situations in which I have
not in fancy figured, and there are few, of course, which I am not
previously prepared to take some part in."

_G._ "True, but I am afraid your having fancied yourself victorious in
many a fight would be of little use were you suddenly called to the
field, and your personal infirmities and nervous agitations both rushing
upon you and incapacitating you."

_A._ "My nervous agitations!--away with thee! Down, down to Limbo and
the burning lake! False fiend, avoid!"

So there ends the tale,
With a hey, with a hoy,
So there ends the tale,
With a ho.

There is a moral. If you fail
To seize it by the tail,
Its import will exhale,
You must know.

_March_ 19.--The above was written yesterday before dinner, though
appearances are to the contrary. I only meant that the studious solitude
I have sometimes dreamed of, unless practised with rare stoicism and
privation, was apt to degenerate into secret sensual indulgences of
coarser appetites, which, when the cares and restraints of social life
are removed, are apt to make us think, with Dr. Johnson, our dinner the
most important event of the day. So much in the way of explanation--a
humour which I love not. Go to.

My girls returned from Edinburgh with full news of their _bal pare_.

_March_ 20.--We spent this day on the same terms as formerly. I wrought,
walked, dined, drank, and smoked upon the same pattern.

_March_ 21.--To-day brought Mrs. Dempster and her sister-in-law. To
dinner came Robert Dundas of Arniston from the hunting-field, and with
him Mr. Dempster of Skibo, both favourites of mine. Mr. Stuart, the
grand-nephew of my dear friend La