ever saw before in my life, and salute them
with a heartiness which they fail to appreciate. Once, at an evening
party, where the Princess BERGSTOL was present, a lady, who had
treated me with hospitable kindness, I three times mistook her; once
for an eminent novelist, once for a distinguished philanthropist,
and once for an admired female performer on the Banjo. I carried
on conversations with her in each of these three imaginary
characters,--and I ask you, is this the way to shine in Society?
You may say, "Wear spectacles"--but they are unbecoming. As to an
eye-glass, somehow it irritates people even more than mere blindness
does. Besides, it is always dropping into one's soup.

People are always accosting me, people who seem vaguely familiar, and
then I have to make believe very much that I remember them, and to
wait for casual hints. The more I feel confident that I know them, the
more it turns out that I don't. It is an awful thing to stop a hansom
in the street, thinking that its occupant is your oldest College
friend, and to discover that he is a perfect stranger, and in a great
hurry. Private Views are my particular abomination. At one such show,
seven ladies, all very handsome and peculiarly attired, addressed me
in the most friendly manner, calling me by my name. They cannot have
taken me for either of my Doubles,--one is a Cabinet Minister, one is
a dentist,--for they knew my name, The MACDUFFER of Duff. Yet I had
not then, nor have I now, the faintest idea who any one of the seven
was. My belief is that it was done for a bet. The worst of it is when,
after about five minutes, I think I have a line as to who my companion
really is, then, my intelligent features lighting up, I make some
remark which ruins everything, congratulate a stockbroker on getting
his step, or an unmarried lady on the success of her son in the Indian
Civil Service examination.

The thing goes so far that I have occasionally mistaken my wife's
relations for old friends. Then, when I am hostile, it is just as bad.
I never, indeed, horsewhipped the wrong man, but that is only because
I never horsewhipped anybody at all, Heaven forefend! But _once_ I did
mean to cut a man, I forget why. So I cut the wrong man, a harmless
acquaintance whose feelings I would not have hurt for the world.
Of course I accidentally cut all the world. Some set it down to an
irritable temper, and ask, "What can we have done to The MACDUFFER?"
Others think I am p