hey seemed as if they had read in novels how mysterious gypsy chiefs
cast aside their cloaks, revealing themselves to astonished maidens, and
as I had actually spoken Gitano to a gypsy in their hearing, it must be
so. They had come for wool with all their languages, poor little souls!
and gone back shorn. The elder said something about their having just
come to Brighton for six hours' frolic, and so they departed. They had
had their spree.

I have often wondered what under the sun they could have been. Attaches
of an opera company--ladies'-maids who had made the grand tour--who
knows? A mad world, my masters!

I can recall of that first year, as of many since at Brighton, long
breezy walks on the brow of the chalk cliffs, looking out at the blue sea
white capped, or at the downs rolling inland to Newport, sometimes alone,
at times in company. On all this chalk the grass does not grow to more
than an inch or so in length, and as the shortest, tenderest food is best
for sheep, it is on this that they thrive--I believe by millions--yielding
the famous South Downs mutton. In or on this grass are incredible
numbers of minute snails, which the sheep are said to devour; in fact, I
do not see how they could eat the grass without taking them in, and these
contribute to give the mutton its delicate flavour. Snails are curious
beings. Being epicene, they conduct their wooings on the mutual give and
take principle, which would save human beings a great deal of spasmodic
flirtation, and abolish the whole _femme incomprise_ business, besides a
great many bad novels, if we could adopt it. When winter comes, half-a-
dozen of them retire into a hole in a bank, connect themselves firmly
into a loving band like a bunch of grapes by the tenderest ties, and stay
there till spring. Finally, in folk-lore the snail is an uncanny or
demoniac being, because it has horns. Its shell is an amulet, and the
presentation of one by a lady to a gentleman is a very decided
declaration of love, especially in Germany. _Sed mittamus haec_.

At this time, and for some time to come, I was engaged in collecting and
correcting a book of poems of a more serious character than the
"Breitmann Ballads." This was "The Music Lesson of Confucius and other
Poems." Of which book I can say truly that it had a _succes d'estime_,
though it had a very small sale. There were in it ten or twelve ballads
only which were adapted to singing, and _all_ of these w