other. The chances are that he will
have planned a column article for the "Times" newspaper, left you for
a half hour to rummage in his books while he dictates the article,
telephoned for his carriage to await him at nine o'clock in the court
below, and asked you to accompany him to the opera--all before he has
finished his cigar. But then the cigar is a remarkably good one, and
knows not, as is the case with ambassadorial nicotine, the protective
customs of France.

Life means to M. de Blowitz a mental activity and alertness that never
sleep. Yet he is always amiable, tolerating everything except
stupidity. He is a journalist by "natural selection." But that, in the
Europe of his time, and given the accidents of his fortune, made him
the diplomatist that he has been and is. He can keep a secret as well
as tell one. I repeat, he disproves that masterly theory of Taine, who
drove facts like wild horses into a corral in order, having lassoed
them, to tame them to his own uses; for, like Taine himself, he has
made his own _milieu_, created his own series of facts, far more truly
even than he is himself the striking and delightful resultant of
others that have gone before.

ON THE TRACK OF THE REVIEWER.

A TRUE STORY OF REVENGE, CONNECTED WITH THE FIRST PUBLICATION OF
"JANE EYRE."

BY DOCTOR WILLIAM WRIGHT.

The Bronte novels were first read and admired in the Ballynaskeagh
manse. This statement I am able to make with fulness of knowledge.
"Jane Eyre" was read, cried over, laughed over, argued over,
condemned, exalted, by the Reverend David McKee, his brilliant
children and numerous pupils, before the author was known publicly in
England, or a single review of the work had appeared.

The Reverend W. J. McCracken, an old pupil of the Ballynaskeagh manse,
writes me on this point:

"You have no doubt heard Mr. McKee's[2] opinion as to the source of
Charlotte's genius. When Charlotte Bronte published one of her books,
there was always an early copy sent to the uncles and aunts in
Ballynaskeagh. As they had little taste for such literature, the book
was sent straight over to our dear old friend Mr. McKee. If it pleased
him, the Brontes would be in raptures with their niece, and
triumphantly say to their neighbors, 'Mr. McKee thinks her very
_cliver_.'

"I well remember Mr. McKee reading one of Charlotte's novels, and, in
his own inimitable way, making the remark: 'She is just her Uncle
Jamie over the world. J