sweet obscurity are restored to
Suffolk Street!--Eh? What? Ha! ha!"

[Illustration]

_Statistics_

[Sidenote: _Pall Mall Gazette_, July 6, 1888.]

Since our interview with Mr. Whistler curious statements have been set
afloat concerning the question of finance ... giving circumstantial
evidence of the disaster brought upon the Society by the enforcement
of the Whistlerian policy:--

This evidence, which is very interesting, is as follows:--The sales of
the Society during the year 1881 were under L5000; 1882, under L6000;
1883, under L7000; 1884, under L8000; 1885 (the first year of Mr.
Whistler's rule), they fell to under L4000; 1886, under L3000; 1887,
under L2000; and the present year, under L1000.

On the other hand, the fact of the Society having made itself
responsible to Mr. Whistler for a loan raised by him to meet a sudden
expenditure for repairs, is also true; but the unwisdom of the
president and members of any society having money transactions
between them need hardly be commented upon here....

Mr. Wyke Bayliss, the new president, strikes one as being "a strong
man"--shrewd, logical, and self-restrained. The author of several
books and pamphlets on the more imaginative realm of art, he is, one
would say, as much permeated by religion as he is by art; to both of
these qualities, curiously enough, his canvases, which usually deal
with cathedral interiors of cheery hue, bear witness.

The hero of three Bond Street "one-man exhibitions," a Board-school
chairman, a lecturer, champion chess-player of Surrey, a member of the
Rochester Diocesan Council, a Shaksperian student, a Fellow of the
Society of Cyclists, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquarians, and
public orator of Noviomagus ... he is surely one of the most versatile
men who ever occupied a presidential chair....

_A Retrospect_

_TO THE EDITOR
OF THE "PALL MALL GAZETTE:"_

Sir,--The Royal Society of British Artists is, perhaps, by this time
again unknown to your agitated readers--but I would recall a brilliant
number of the _Pall Mall Gazette_ (July 1888), in which mischievous
amusement was sought, with statistics from a newly elected
President--Mr. Bayliss (Wyke).

Believing it to be, in an official and dull way, more becoming that
the appointed Council of this same Society should deal with the
resulting chaos, I have, until now, waited