nd at the far end we caught
sight of the palace framed in the vista. It was a triumph for Farrar,
and I wished that the palace had been more worthy.

The Celebrity did not stint his praises of Mohair, coming up the drive,
but so lavish were his comments on the house that they won for him a
lasting place in Mr. Cooke's affections, and encouraged my client to pull
up his horses in a favorable spot, and expand on the beauties of the
mansion.

"Taking it altogether," said he, complacently, "it is rather a neat box,
and I let myself loose on it. I had all these ideas I gathered knocking
about the world, and I gave them to Willis, of Philadelphia, to put
together for me. But he's honest enough not to claim the house. Take,
for instance, that minaret business on the west; I picked that up from a
mosque in Algiers. The oriel just this side is whole cloth from Haddon
Hall, and the galleried porch next it from a Florentine villa. The
conical capped tower I got from a French chateau, and some of the
features on the south from a Buddhist temple in Japan. Only a little
blending and grouping was necessary, and Willis calls himself an
architect, and wasn't equal to it. Now," he added, "get the effect. Did
you ever see another house like it?"

"Magnificent!" exclaimed the Celebrity.

"And then," my client continued, warming under this generous
appreciation, "there's something very smart about those colors. They're
my racing colors. Of course the granite's a little off, but it isn't
prominent. Willis kicked hard when it came to painting the oriel yellow,
but an architect always takes it for granted he knows it all, and a--"

"Fenelon," said Mrs. Cooke, "luncheon is waiting."

Mrs. Cooke dominated at luncheon and retired, and it is certain that both
Mr. Cooke and the Celebrity breathed more freely when she had gone. If
her criticisms on the exterior of the house were just, those on the
interior were more so. Not only did I find the coat-of-arms set forth on
the chairs, fire-screens, and other prominent articles, but it was even
cut into the swinging door of the butler's pantry. The motto I am afraid
my client never took the trouble to have translated, and I am inclined to
think his jewellers put up a little joke on him when they chose it.
"Be Sober and Boast not."

I observed that Mrs. Cooke, when she chose, could exert the subduing
effect on her husband of a soft pedal on a piano; and during luncheon she
kept, the soft pedal on.