well to water them. The boys present, including
the little Princes, gleefully emptied can after can of water on to the
floor in their attempts to revive the carpet, to the immense
improvement of the ceiling and furniture of the room underneath.

In the "sixties" Sunday was very strictly observed. In our own
Sabbatarian family, our toys and books all disappeared on Saturday
night. On Sundays we were only allowed to read Line upon Line, The Peep
of Day, and The Fairchild Family. I wonder if any one ever reads this
book now. If they haven't, they should. Mr. and Mrs. Fairchild were, I
regret to say it, self-righteous prigs of the deepest dye, whilst Lucy,
Emily, and Henry, their children, were all little prodigies of
precocious piety. It was a curious menage; Mr. Fairchild having no
apparent means of livelihood, and no recreations beyond perpetually
reading the Bible under a tree in the garden. Mrs. Fairchild had the
peculiar gift of being able to recite a different prayer off by heart
applicable to every conceivable emergency; whilst John, their
man-servant, was a real "handy-man," for he was not only gardener, but
looked after the horse and trap, cleaned out the pigsties, and waited
at table. One wonders in what sequence he performed his various duties,
but perhaps the Fairchilds had not sensitive noses. Even the possibly
odoriferous John had a marvellous collection of texts at his command.
It was refreshing after all this to learn that on one occasion all
three of the little Fairchilds got very drunk, which, as the eldest of
them was only ten, would seem to indicate that, in spite of their
aggressive piety, they had their fair dose of original sin still left
in them. I liked the book notwithstanding. There was plenty about
eating and drinking; one could always skip the prayers, and there were
three or four very brightly written accounts of funerals in it. I was
present at a "Fairchild Family" dinner given some twenty years ago in
London by Lady Buxton, wife of the present Governor-General of South
Africa, at which every one of the guests had to enact one of the
characters of the book.

My youngest brother had a great taste for drawing, and was perpetually
depicting terrific steeplechases. From a confusion of ideas natural to
a child, he always introduced a church steeple into the corner of his
drawings. One Sunday he had drawn a most spirited and hotly-contested
"finish" to a steeplechase. When remonstrated with on the