glad to say I could.
I got him the place of stud-groom to a nobleman in the south of
Ireland: he's turned over a new leaf, is perfectly steady, and doing as
well as possible."

* * * * *

NOTES.

There is an old story that Augustus, being once asked by a veteran
soldier for his aid in a lawsuit, told the petitioner to go to a certain
advocate. "Ah," replied the soldier, "it was not by proxy that I served
you at Actium!" So struck, continues the tradition, was Augustus with
this response, that he personally took charge of the soldier's cause,
and gained it for him. Possibly it may be on the theory that his
subjects "do not serve him by proxy" when he needs their services that
the Austrian kaiser even to this day holds personal audiences with his
people regarding their private desires or grievances. Evidently
traditional, this custom is so singular as to merit a more general
notice than it habitually receives: indeed, its existence might be
doubted by the foreign reader, did not a Hungarian journal, _Der Osten_,
furnish a detailed description of it. The only prerequisite to an
audience would seem to be the lodging of the subject's name and rank
with one of the emperor's secretaries, who thereupon appoints the day
and hour for his appearance at the palace. If the emperor has been long
absent from Vienna, his next audience-day is always a trying one, as the
waiting-room is then crowded with hundreds of both sexes, and all ranks
and ages. They are in ordinary dress, too, so that the imperial
ante-chamber presents a motley and picturesque scene--the gold-broidered
coat of the minister of state and the brilliant uniform of the army
mingling with the citizen's plain frock, with the Tyrolean or Styrian
hunter's jacket, with the _bunda_ of the Hungarian, with the long, fur
lined linen overcoat of the Polish peasant; while the rustling silks of
the elegant city lady are side by side with the plain woolen skirt of
the farmer's wife. Each of these in regular turn, as written on the list
from which he calls them, a staff-officer ushers into the emperor's
study. There the petitioner states his case. The emperor listens
without interruption, then receives the written statements and
documents, sometimes asks a question, but generally dismisses the
visitor with a simple formula of assurance that a decision will be duly
rendered. There is evidently much form in the matter, as if it were but
the empty per