s a _poetical_ phrase; but I could not
charge my memory with the quotation: and people exasperated me by
regarding it as "camp slang." I got Miss S. to look in her
_Shakespeare's Concordance_, but in vain, and she wrote severely, "My
Major lifts his eyebrows at the term." I was in despair, but I sent
the proof back, trusting to my instincts, and sent a postcard to Dr.
Littledale, and got a post-card back by return--"Scott"--"Rokeby."

"With burnished brand and musketoon,
So gallantly you come,
I rede you for a bold dragoon,
That lists the tuck of drum."--
"I list no more the tuck of drum,
No more the trumpet hear;
But when the beetle sounds his hum,
My comrades take the spear."

And I copied this on to another postcard and added, _Tell your Major!_
and despatched it to Miss S.! She said, "You _did_ Cockadoodle!"--

But isn't it _exquisite_? _What_ a creature Scott was! Could words,
could a long romance, give one a finer picture of the ex-soldier
turned "Gentleman of the Road"? The touch of regret--"I list no more
the tuck of drum," and the soldierly necessity for a "call"--and then
_such_ a call!

When the Beetle _sounds his hum_--

The Dor Beetle!--

I hope you will like the tale as a whole. It has been long in my head.

* * * * *

Oh! how funny Grossmith was! Yesterday I was at the Matinee for the
Dramatic School, and he did a "Humorous Sketch" about Music, when he
said with care-carked brows that there was only one man's music that
_thoroughly_ satisfied him (after touching on the various
schools!)--and added--"my own." It was inexpressibly funny. His
"Amateur Composer" would have made you die!

Ah, but THE treat, such a treat as I have not heard for
years--was that old Ristori RECITED the 5th Canto of the
_Inferno_. I did not remember which it was, and feared I should not be
able to follow, but it proved to be "Francesca." Never could I have
believed it possible that reciting could be like that. I could have
gone into a corner and cried my heart out afterwards, the tension was
so extreme. And oh what power and WHAT refinement!

* * * * *

July 28, 1882.

* * * * *

Last Saturday D. and I went down to Aldershot to the Flat Races!!! As
we went along, tightly packed in a carriage full of ladies in what may
be termed "dazzling toilettes," pretty girls and Dowager Ma