el to the wittiest, bow to the
prettiest--and kiss the one you love best."

This was rather a large order--but I did as well as I could. I went
down on my knees to Mr. Gibson and craved his paternal blessing; and
made my best French bow with my heels together to old Mrs.
Bletchley; and kissed my sister, warmly thanking her in public for
having introduced me to Mrs. Gibson: and as far as mere social
success is worth anything, I was the Barty of that party!

Anyhow, Mr. Gibson conceived for me an admiration he never failed to
express when we met afterwards, and though this was fun, of course,
I had really won his heart.

It is but a humble sort of triumph to crow over--and where does
Barty Josselin come in?

Pazienza!

"Well--what do you think of Leah Gibson?" said my sister, as we
walked home together through Torrington Square.

"I think she's a regular stunner," said I--"like her mother and her
grandmother before her, and probably her _great_-grandmother too."

And being a poetical youth, and well up in my Byron, I declaimed:

"She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes."...

Old fogy as I am, and still given to poetical quotations, I never
made a more felicitous quotation than that. I little guessed then to
what splendor that bony black-eyed damsel would reach in time.

* * * * *

All through this period of high life and low dissipation Barty kept
his unalterable good-humor and high spirits--and especially the
kindly grace of manner and tact and good-breeding that kept him from
ever offending the most fastidious, in spite of his high spirits,
and made him many a poor grateful outcast's friend and darling.

I remember once dining with him at Greenwich in very distinguished
company; I don't remember how I came to be invited--through Barty,
no doubt. He got me many invitations that I often thought it better
not to accept. "Ne sutor ultra crepidam!"

It was a fish dinner, and Barty ate and drank a surprising
amount--and so did I, and liked it very much.

We were all late and hurried for the last train, some twenty of
us--and Barty, Lord Archibald, and I, and a Colonel Walker Lindsay,
who has since become a peer and a Field-Marshal (and is now dead),
were all pushed together into a carriage, already occupied by a
distinguished clergyman and a charming