g. "Self-deception does nothing in the
matter, say what one will. A modern diplomatist is only a 'smooth-Bore.'
What 'our own correspondent' represents, I leave to your own modesty."

"It will be a bad day for us when the world comes to that knowledge,"
said I, gloomily.

"Of course it will, but there's no help for it. Old novels go to the
trunkmakers; second-hand uniforms make the splendour of dignity-balls in
the colonies: who is to say that there may not be a limbo for us also?
At all events, I have a scheme for our transition state--a plan I have
long revolved in my mind--and there's certainly something in it.

"First of all realise it, as the Yankees say, that neither a government
nor a public will want either of us. When the wires have told that
the Grand-Duke Strong-grog-enofif was assassinated last night, or that
Prince Damisseisen has divorced his wife and married a milliner,
Downing Street and Printing-house Square will agree that all the moral
reflections the events inspire can be written just as well in Piccadilly
as from a palace on the Neva, or a den on the Danube. Gladstone will be
the better pleased, and take another farthing off 'divi-divi,' or some
other commodity in general use and of universal appreciation. Don't you
agree to that?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know," drawled he out, in mimicry of my tone: "are you so
conceited about your paltry craft that you fancy the world cares for the
manner of it, or that there is really any excellence in the cookery?
Not a bit of it, man. We are bores both of us; and what's worse--far
worse--we are bygones. Can't you see that when a man buys a canister
of prepared beef-tea, he never asks any one to pour on the boiling
water--he brews his broth for himself? This is what people do with
the telegrams. They don't want you or me to come in with the kettle:
besides, all tastes are not alike; one man may like his Bombardment of
Charleston weaker; another might prefer his Polish Massacre more highly
flavoured. This is purely a personal matter. How can you suit the
capricious likings of the million, and of the million--for that's the
worst of it--the million that don't want you? What a practical rebuke,
besides, to prosy talkers and the whole long-winded race, the sharp,
short tap of the telegraph! Who would listen to a narrative of Federal
finance when he has read 'Gold at 204--Chase rigged the market'? Who
asks for strategical reasons in presence of 'Almighty wh