n of one of the
pleasantest evenings I have ever enjoyed.

We were dining with James Grandstone, one of my young friends. I have
some friends of whom I might be the father, and doubt not I could find
a support for my practice in Sir Thomas Browne or Jeremy Taylor if I
had time to look up the quotation. We dined in the little restaurant
Ober, near the Odeon, with a small party of medical students, to which
order Grandstone's friends mostly belonged. We were all young that
night; and truly I hold that the affectionate confusion of two or
three different generations adds a charm to friendship.

[Illustration: LE RAINCY: THE CHATEAU.]

At dessert the conversation happened to strike upon Christian names.
I attacked the cognomens in ordinary use, maintaining that their
historic significance was lost, their religious sentiment forgotten,
their euphony mostly questionable. Alfred, Henry and William no longer
carried the thoughts back to the English kings--Joseph and Reuben were
powerless to remind us of the mighty family of Israel.

"I have no complaint to make of my own name," I protested, "which
has been praised by Dannecker the sculptor. That was at Wuertemberg,
gentlemen. 'You are from America,' the old man said to me, 'but you
have a German name: Paul Flemming was one of our old poets.' The
thought has been a pleasant one to me, though I have not the faintest
idea what my ancient godparent wrote. But in the matter of originality
my Christian name of Paul certainly leaves much to desire."

[Illustration: CATHEDRAL OF MEAUX.]

I was gay enough that evening, and in the vein for a paradox. I set
up the various Pauls of our acquaintance, and maintained that in any
company of fifty persons, if a feminine voice were to call out "Paul!"
through the doorway, six husbands at least would start and say,
"Coming, dear!" I computed the Pauls belonging to one of the grand
nations, and proved that an army recruited from them would be large
enough to carry on a war against a power of the second order.

"If the Jameses were to reinforce the Pauls," I declared, looking
toward my young host, "Russia itself would tremble.--Are you to make
your start in life with no better name?" I asked him maliciously.
"Must you be for ever kept in mediocrity by an address that is not
the designation of an individual, but of a whole nation? Could you not
have been called by something rather less oecumenical?"

"You may style me by what title you plea