My odd fish should have been disposed of in a single chapter, but one has lingered over the memory of them. After all, they contributed the comic element—or some of it—to many hours that lapsed in laughter. And shall one not be grateful to them or to their memories?

A considerable proportion of my Press work had to do with the theatres. I was acquainted with most of the actors and managers of my time, and some of the oddest fish that ever swam into my ken were connected with the “profession.”

There was, for instance. William Duck—manager, theatre-owner, impresario. Duck commenced life in some very humble capacity in the West of England. By a practice of punctuality, civility, a strict attention to business, and the other virtues which are supposed to furnish forth the complete British tradesman, he became a music-seller and purveyor of musical instruments. In this capacity he evolved, by easy stages, into a booker of theatre seats. And although Duck would not know a good play from a bad one, he saw in the theatre an easy way to fortune. He felt his feet by dabbling a little as “sharer” in likely ventures. But he found himself, and, incidentally, founded his fortune, when, acting alone, he purchased the country rights of “Our Boys.”

How much Duck netted out of that most diverting comedy I cannot say; but I know that it was a prodigious sum. When first the money came tumbling in, the happy man built him a lordly pleasure-house. In his new mansion there were prominent two works of art: a statue of William Shakespeare and a life-size portrait of Henry Byron. But, of the two, Duck always considered the author of “Our Boys” to be the greater genius. He thought no end of the writer of the play that brought him his first really big returns. I met him, in deep mourning, a short time after Byron’s death.

“Ah, sir,” he said, shaking his head, “we’ll never see another man like him—not in our time.”

And Byron took every advantage of his admirer’s infatuation. Anything that Byron brought him in the shape of a play Duck bought. When Duck followed his idol to the Elysian Fields, his executors came upon a whole press full of Byron manuscripts which were little more than “dummies.” Byron had parted with his birthright for a mess of pottage, and considered that he was justified in thus getting back a bit of his own.

Becoming interested in productions running at one or two of the West End houses, Duck was now frequently to be met “in front,” and became known to members of the Press. He was an exceedingly common-looking man, and one of his eyes always oozed moisture, which caused him to raise his handkerchief to his face while he conversed—a habit which acquaintances at first found a little disconcerting. He was extremely ignorant—or, to speak by the cards, extremely uneducated—and he never employed an aspirate except when it was absolutely unnecessary. Which reminds me of a story.

When “Our Boys” was being played for the first time at Plymouth, Duck recollected having heard Byron say that he had never visited that town; so he wired to his favourite author to come down as his guest. Byron wired his acceptance. He probably had a new bundle of manuscript to pass on to his patron. Duck was at the station to meet the traveller with a programme for the afternoon’s enjoyment. He was anxious, above all things, that Byron should see Plymouth’s famous Hoe. So, when they had exchanged the customary civilities, Duck explained:

“I’m agoin’ to take you round to see the sights; an’ fust of all I think we’d better take a little stroll round the ’O!”“Don’t you think,” asked Byron, fixing him through his monocle, “that first of all we’d better take a little stroll round the H?”

Duck looked amazed at his guest. He had not the remotest idea of the point of Byron’s joke. He felt, in his confused way, that “’Enery Byron was gittin’ at ’im.” He smiled feebly, shook his head in modest deprecation, and answered:

“’Ar, you will ’ave your little joke, sir; but it ain’t the haitch after all, it’s the ’O we’re agoin’ to see—the ’O.”

“O!” was Byron’s monosyllabic comment.

William Duck had in his company as “leading man” a capital actor named Edward George. Much of the success of “Our Boys” in the provinces was due to the admirable impersonation of Perkyn Middlewick by that excellent comedian. While on tour, and playing in one of the large towns in the North, an admirer of George presented him with a cameo pin, having the likeness of Lord Byron carved on it. Duck, who noticed everything, and who had twice as much curiosity as an old woman, seeing the pin in the scarf of the comedian, immediately said:

“Pretty pin, Mr. George! ’Ad it giv’ to you?”

“It’s a present,” admitted the actor.

“Anybody’s portrait? Hey, Mr. George?”

“Yes. It’s a portrait of Byron,” was the reply.

Duck started, came nearer to George, held his face close to the cameo, and then fell back laughing consumedly. When he had succeeded in controlling his merriment, he exclaimed:

“You’ve bin took in, my dear feller: ’tain’t a bit like ’im!”

William Duck, you see, knew of only one Byron. And that was “H. J.”

When Byron’s play had run under Duck’s management for five hundred nights in the provinces, the grateful manager thought that he would like to celebrate the event, and testify to his appreciation of the efforts put forth by the members of his company. It was, if I remember aright, in Liverpool that the play achieved its five hundredth night. Duck’s idea was to give a supper at his hotel. “Comes cheaper ’n a lunching,” one hears him say. He also determined—it must have cost him a pang, for William was mean, and that’s the truth—to give a little present to each member of the cast. He purchased some cheap bangles for the ladies, and a “charm” of more or less precious metal for the watch-guards of each of the gentlemen.

The memorable night arrived. Duck took the chair, presiding with rustic geniality over the pleased, and indeed surprised, comedians. Supper at an end, Duck hammered for silence, and rose, amid cheers, to make the speech of the evening. He told the devoted band of players what a lot he thought of them, how their efforts had helped the success of the comedy, and, in a word, how tremendously pleased he was with affairs generally. He concluded his address in the following peroration:

“But, ladies and gentlemen, them’s mere words. I wished to present everyone ’ere a solid token of my feelin’s, so I ’ave determined to give each member of my company a little momentum of the occasion. . . . Waiter!” he called out to the smiling attendant, “bring in them momentums!”

H. J. Byron, in pre-Duckian days, added to the joys of the town by inventing “malaprops,” which he used to put into the mouth of poor Mrs. Swanborough, of the Strand Theatre. But the advent of Duck put an end to that branch of industry as far as Byron was concerned. Duck found his own “malaprops,” and in their presence the pale contrivances of the wit were “As moonlight is to sunlight or as water is to wine.”

By the way, I would like to say here, in justice to an amiable lady long since dead, that Mrs. Swanborough was not at all the sort of person that the Byron anecdotes make her out to be. I was for years acquainted with her, and I never knew her to be guilty of such solecisms as the “H. J.” series put to her account.

The banquet and the presentation of “momentums” exhausted Duck’s capabilities in the direction of hospitality and largesse; for he was penurious above all things, and desperately thrifty. In the drawing-room scene in “Our Boys,” the stage directions provide for a chandelier in the centre of the ceiling. In the London production this was ablaze every night with wax candles. The first night on tour, the property-master had provided candles on the original scale. Duck nearly had a fit when he saw the illumination. He summoned the property-man to his office, and—both eyes now shedding tears—he ordered that in future the candles be reduced in number by one half, and those that were used to be cut in four pieces. The expression of the property-man was one of mingled distress and contempt. Observing which, Duck, wiping his eyes, observed with a smile:

“The shorter they har, the longer they’ll last. See? Hey?” I suspect he saw, for he spat on the carpet; and made his exit without a word.

I remember another London manager who was before Duck’s time, and who possessed some of his peculiarities. This was Giovanelli, who engaged in theatrical and other entertainments in the east and north of the town. How this extraordinary individual came by the name Giovanelli I never knew. He was a Cockney Jew, with all the engaging characteristics of that delightful hybrid. His friends called him “Jo” for short. He had seen the world, had Giovanelli. Among other places which he had visited was Australia. It was on returning from that colony, I think, he adopted the rolling Italian name which he bore in after-life. What name he went out in is one of those interesting facts lost to the annals of the stage.

Besides running a theatre in the East End, the versatile “Jo” acted as a low comedian. He did not, however, quite fancy himself in the dual role of actor-manager, and neither, indeed, did the public. Therefore he always engaged a low comedian in his company to supplement his own efforts in that line. Indeed, the low comedian was the most important member of East End companies, the “comic relief” in melodrama being greatly to the taste of the untutored patrons. “Jo” once engaged an actor who seemed to go all right at rehearsal, but who on the first night excited the sibilation of “the bird.” At the end of the performance Giovanelli sent for him. He handed him some golden coins.“That’s your week’s salary, my boy. You needn’t come again.”

“I demand your reason for this summary dismissal,” said the chagrined performer, standing greatly on his dignity.

“Well,” said Giovanelli, shrugging his shoulders, “if you will ’ave it—it’s because you’re a dam bad low comedian.”

“And what price you as a comedian?” exclaimed the other.

“I know, I know, my boy,” replied Giovanelli, in his oily, deprecating way; “but, you see, the public won’t stand two dam bad low comedians.”

Some time since I saw in the Death advertisements of the Times an announcement of the decease of Mr. Richard Barnard. “Dick” Barnard was one of the most impenetrable mysteries of the Strand. He was always well dressed; he posed as a racing man, as a journalist, as a flÂneur. He managed to procure first-night invitations to all the important premiers. He had scraped an acquaintance with some of the best-known men on the turf, and was hand-in-glove with theatrical managers. The major portion of his time was spent in Romano’s bar. But, for all his pose, Barnard never owned a race-horse, never was a journalist, never had the slightest interest in the stage. His success was founded on a well-groomed person, a supercilious manner, the judicious communication of any good racing information that came his way, and—indomitable cheek. For Dick was an adventurer pure and simple, having abandoned the career of billiard-marker in Birmingham for the greater possibilities of the Metropolis.

Like most of his kidney, his life was a series of financial “ups and downs.” Sometimes he was full of money; as often he was stony-broke. It was during one of these latter periods that he was sitting in “the Roman’s” lonely and disconsolate. To him entered, like a ray of sunshine, a man-about-town in his little way, a votary of the drama, and an habituÉ of Romano’s. He was one of those, also, who took Dick Barnard seriously, supposing him to be a person of great influence on the Turf, the Stage, and in Society.

Dick brightened up at the advent of his friend, but, of course, he did not evince any particular elation. His satisfaction was naturally enhanced when the young man from the country invited him to lunch.

Barnard accepted in the manner of a man who was conferring a favour. They went into the narrow dining-saloon behind the bar—that was the only salle À manger Romano boasted in his halcyon days—and ordered luncheon for two from Otto the waiter. During lunch Barnard related such items of news as he thought would interest. And in return for these bits of scandal his friend told him that he had just been down in the Boro’ selling his father’s crop of hops, and that he was carrying home the spoils in his note-case—spoils amounting to several hundred pounds. To a man who had not fingered a banknote for a month of Sundays this was news indeed.

They did themselves fairly well—as well as a bill of fifteen shillings will allow two lunchers to do themselves at “the Roman’s.” When coffee had been served, and the lofty-minded Otto had gone to take orders from another customer, the young gentleman leaned across the table, and whispered to Barnard:

“I’ll pass you a tenner under the table; please pay the bill and give me the change outside.”

“Certainly, sonny,” said Dick; “but may I ask the reason of all this mystery?”

“The fact is, I’ve no smaller change, and I owe Otto a bit,” was the answer.

“Oh!” said Dick sympathetically.

The tenner was duly passed under the table. The young man lit a cigarette and left the room, passing out into the “roaring Strand.” He waited for a quarter of an hour cooling his heels on the pavement, when he was rejoined by his friend.

“Your change, old chap,” said Dick sweetly, as he handed the youth five shillings.

“But, my dear fellow, that was a ten-pun note I gave you,” he said.

“I know,” replied Dick. “But, you see, I owed Otto a bit too.”How the ingenuous youth explained matters to his father, I have never heard.

In 1871 I first made the acquaintance of E. J. Odell, the actor. He then seemed to be a man well advanced in middle age. He is still alive—one of the features and mysteries of the Strand. He is the last of the Bohemians—the survival of days (to quote Eccles) “as is gone most like forever.” He has contrived to make a lasting reputation as an actor. His impersonations were usually in burlesque or opera-bouffe. I can personally recall two of his Metropolitan engagements. One of these was in a burlesque at the Gaiety. But he failed there to justify the high expectations of the management. Even at rehearsal there were difficulties. Bob Soutar was stage-manager, and, being a bit of a martinet, he and Odell did not quite “hit it.”

Odell played on tour as Gaspard the miser in “Les Cloches de Corneville,” and I believe acquitted himself very creditably, which is no small thing to say of any performer following Shiel Barry in the same part. For Barry’s performance was one of the finest bits of acting seen on the London stage in my time. On the first night of Shiel Barry’s appearance in the part, I first understood the meaning of the phrase (Edmund Kean’s, is it not?), “The Pit rose at me.” When the curtain fell on the second act of “Les Cloches,” moved by the intensity of Shiel Barry’s acting in the final scene of the act, the audience rose to their feet in all parts of the house. It was an outburst of genuine enthusiasm which called the performer before the curtain again and again. Lord Kilmorey—at that time Lord Newry—was sitting next to me in the stalls. He does not strike one as being a very emotional sort of nobleman; but he was carried away like the rest of us by a wave of pulsating fervour which was quite irresistible.

But to return to Odell. If that gentleman has not achieved a long record of successes on the stage, he has certainly made a great reputation off it. My friend Hollingshead was right when he described Odell as a monologue entertainer. His entertainments, to be successful, must, however, be of a private or semi-private nature. Certain of his ballads are conceived more or less on the lines of Sala’s “Bet Belmanor.” One of them was a weird thing commencing:

“Oh! was it in the garding,
Or was it in the ’all?”

He had an unctuous manner of rendering this gem which was quite his own—a manner unique and of humour all compact.

There can be little doubt that Odell deliberately adopted the pose of an eccentric. He enjoyed the surprise and interest occasioned by his appearance when he promenaded the Strand. He had a thin, clean-shaven face which would have been ascetic were it not for a perennial smile. He wore his hair long; rolling down on his shoulders, it fell in a brown cascade. Above was a wide black sombrero tilted rakishly on one side. His coat—worn summer and winter—was an ulster cut very wide in the skirt. He walked with a curious swaying gait which caused the ulster to undulate its skirts from side to side. If his object were to attract public attention to his person, he most undoubtedly succeeded. Country cousins encountering the strange figure were sure to spot him as a celebrity of some sort, and inquire as to his identity. Every gamin, in that thoroughfare of gamins, was ready with the answer:

“’Im? W’y, that’s Odell, the hactor!”

Odell has a very pretty wit of his own, and there is no member of the Savage Club—of which he is one of the oldest members—who can hope to get the better of him in repartee. I remember hearing him sit very severely on a pompous member of the old Lancaster Club, in the Savoy. Odell happened to invite one or two of his friends to drink with him. The rude and pompous person approached the group, and Odell, on hospitality intent, invited him to have a drink.

“Thanks,” replied the would-be wit, “I only drink with gentlemen.”

“Then, sir,” flashed out Odell, without a moment’s hesitation, “let me assure you that you will never die of delirium tremens!”Odell’s age has always been as profound a mystery as his place of residence. Much time and ingenuity have been expended by his associates in the endeavour to unravel these mysteries. As the place of his birth has never been divulged, there is an insuperable difficulty in obtaining information under the first head; while as to the second, he has never been known to leave his club until all the other members have departed. Of all London, Odell holds the record of “latest to bed.” The genial Bohemian has in his old age been very well treated by his clubs—more particularly by the Savage. But what the Savage Club would be without Odell one cannot imagine. The chief of the Bohemian clubs cannot afford to lose the chief of the Bohemians.

Your average pressman, with an observing eye and an open mind, is bound to knock up against a greater number of charlatans than the member of any other profession. For publicity is to the charlatan the breath of his nostrils, and the Press is the most potent engine in procuring publicity of which the charlatan has any knowledge. And it will be borne in mind that your properly-constituted charlatan does not at all care what description of publicity he attains so long as the quantity is all right.

“Better be damned than mentioned not at all”

is his motto. Notoriety rather than celebrity is his aim.

Taking this as the measure of his aims, I conceive that the Marquis De Leuville was the greatest charlatan that loomed through all the jocund years. To begin with, he was no more a Marquis than I am; and, to complete the absurdity of his pretensions, although he bore a high-sounding French title, he was not a Frenchman. But he had every possible claim to the title of “odd fish.” He was an Englishman. His name was Oliver, and the place of his nativity was the city of Bath. Various accounts have been circulated concerning his early life. Some of these legends declared him to have been a hairdresser’s assistant; others, that he had commenced as page-boy to a Bath doctor. About these matters he himself was persistently reticent. The literary world first heard of his existence by means of a novel in three volumes—at that time the simple and inexpensive method of publishing a couple of shilling’s worth of fiction. I forget the title of the book, I never read it; but I discovered some time after its appearance that, although the title-page described it as “by the Marquis De Leuville,” it was the work of one of those literary “ghosts” of whose labours, all through his artistic career, the “Marky,” as he was called, liberally availed himself.

The “Marky’s” novel was reviewed in the daily and weekly Press. In many quarters it was even favourably reviewed. For there are snobs in Fleet Street, as there are everywhere else, and there were certain book-reviewers who would consider it bad form to say anything that was not quite civil about the productions of a Marquis, even though the title he bore was only a French one. The appearance, and newspaper acceptance, of the book established those friendly relations with the Press concerning which our friend Oliver had been so solicitous. Having once established his footing in Fleet Street, the “Marky” was most assiduous in his attention to those individuals with whom his work had found favour. By them he was introduced to others. And so he extended his connection like a good commercial traveller. It was rather unfortunate for the adventurer that, at the moment of his advent as a writer, Mr. Henry Labouchere had just commenced, in Truth, that crusade against impostors, charlatans, and social parasites generally, which at once made his paper and protected the public—one of those rare occasions by which public benefactors have made anything out of their labours. In the most matter-of-fact way Labouchere laid bare the pretensions of the mock Marquis, and left him without a rag of reputation to his back.

Little incidents of the kind are always allowed for in the calculations of an adventurer. The Marquis De Leuville, following the example of “ole Brer Fox” in the allegory, determined to “lay low an’ say nuffin.” When the Labouchere disclosures were forgotten, the scandal blown over, and the sportsmen of Carteret Street busy on the trail of some other quarry, the Marquis-who-was-not-a-Marquis and author-who-was-not-an-author made his reappearance. Invitations to garden-parties at the Priory, Kilburn, issued by a Mrs. Peters, descended like a shower of snow on newspaper offices. And those who accepted them were received at the Priory by a very affable, not to say merry, widow, who had very sensibly discarded the trappings and the suits of woe. This was Mrs. Peters, the owner of the house and grounds. And in these pleasant surroundings we found the Marquis installed. The game was a very pretty one. Mrs. Peters was the widow of a wealthy coach-builder. And in the chaste fastnesses of Kilburn she had thought to establish a salon. Here she would play the part of Madame RÉcamier to the Chateaubriand of a Bath Oliver!

Quick to read between the lines, the journalists who had been induced to accept an invitation to the Priory were able now to piece together the whole story. The giddy relict of the deceased coach-builder was the founder of the “Marky’s” fortunes. Her cheque had paid for the French marquisate. The Marquis De Leuville was, indeed, a work of fiction conceived, constructed, and given to the public, by Mrs. Peters. And it was a work of fiction transcending in human interest anything in the same line which could be produced by Oliver or his “ghosts.” The salon at Kilburn failed to fulfil the hopes of its promoters; Society—even society with a little “s”—fought shy of it. It was felt that Mrs. Peters as Madame RÉcamier and her protÉgÉ as Chateaubriand did less than justice to their several parts.

A suite of rooms was then taken for the Marquis in Victoria Street, Westminster, somewhere opposite the Army and Navy Stores. Here the indomitable humbug gave receptions, issuing the invitations in his own name. At these receptions one met the most weird characters—the shy denizens of the fringe of Bohemia, ostracized clerics, unread authors, swashbucklers of doubtful nationality, but about whose character there could be no sort of doubt whatever.Mr. Harry De Windt, in his interesting book of reminiscence, gives an anecdote concerning the Marquis and his Victoria Street receptions, which, if worth telling at all, was worth telling correctly. I now relate the incident as it was repeated to me by Mr. Charles Collette, the well-known actor. At one of these assemblies in Victoria Street the Marquis invited two or three of the guests to remain and “have a bite” with him. When the general body of the guests had retired, these selected individuals were taken to the dining-room, where the merry widow was discovered awaiting them. Half a dozen people sat down to a meal which consisted chiefly of potatoes and mutton cutlets. Collette sat on the left of the Marquis, who took the head of the table. The Marquis was not a pretty eater, and that’s the truth. He detached a whole cutlet from the bone, and put it into his mouth as one bite. Looking up, he saw the amazed expression on Collette’s face.

“I’ve got a devil of a twist,” explained the Marquis.

“I see. An Oliver twist,” said Collette sweetly.

De Leuville called on me once in Fleet Street while I was editing a weekly paper. One of my contributors had fallen foul of a poem bearing the nobleman’s name. The reviewer had discovered in the verses every fault which the author of a poetical composition could by any possibility commit. De Leuville’s principal object in seeking an interview was, he declared, to prove to me that “shore” was a true rhyme to “Samoa.” He did not quite succeed. He was a man with a big, round, foolish face; he wore a moustache and imperial. He had very broad shoulders, and wore his collar so low as to give him something of a dÉcolletÉ appearance. His black tie was big and flamboyant, and suggested the boulevards—as it was, no doubt, intended to do. His hair was long, and his broad-brimmed silk hat was worn slightly tilted to one side, indicating that he was rather a dog of a Marquis. He wore stays, which had the effect of adding, apparently, to the width of his shoulders. On his fingers were large rings of eccentric design. And the man literally stank—there is no other word for it—of unguents and essences. That was the first occasion on which I had the doubtful pleasure of seeing the Marquis De Leuville. The last time I encountered him was about three years since at Boulogne. He was a greatly altered marquis. His long grey hair fell over his shoulders; he wore a black soft felt hat, a black velvet dinner-jacket. He looked a rather seedy and shrivelled Marquis. Altogether he had the appearance of a stunted Buffalo Bill fallen upon evil days. He was accompanied in his visits to the Établissement by a group of octogenarian lady admirers. He lived in an hotel at one side of the estuary; they lived in a hotel on the other. Everything was entirely respectable and platonic. And it was quite pathetic, I thought, to hear the shrill voice of the merry widow—for the “Marky,” like the Pope, was still supported by “Peters’ Pence”—rebuking a friend, and announcing emphatically:

“My dear, the Marquis has a soul above gambling!”

Messengers came and went between the hotels, and a pleasant interchange of amenities was constantly taking place. The Marquis, from his retreat near the railway-station, despatched little presents of scent and trifling sonnets to his mistress’s eyebrow. These manuscripts the recipient read in her high piping voice to her satellites, describing them as “p’tee morr-sow.” And I suppose in exchange for the bottles of strange smells and the poems there was a generous supply of “Peters’ pence.”

During his stay in Boulogne the Marquis invented a new boot-varnish, the secret of applying which belonged to himself alone. He spent quite an hour a day varnishing his boots, the result being that he was evicted, one after another, from half the hotels in the town. His varnish had a nasty habit of communicating itself to table-linen, carpets, or any other hotel property that happened to touch it. But Oliver stuck to his boot-varnish, and permitted himself to be driven from hostelry to hostelry rather than abandon it. He afforded a fine example of the old nobility sacrificing itself on the altar of principle. A year after I had seen him in Boulogne I read of his death; and the devoted chatelaine of the Priory, Kilburn, soon followed him into a realm where charlatanism is, we may imagine, at a discount.Colonel Whitehead was another gentleman who thought it well to establish relations with gentlemen on the Press—on the principle, I suppose, that it is well to make friends of the mammon of unrighteousness. The Colonel was a great admirer of the stage, more particularly that department of the stage which devotes itself to the encouragement of histrionic talent in good-looking young women. He was a haunter of stage-doors, was admitted, here and there, to the coulisses, and was one of those patrons of the drama whose patronage takes a practical turn in the case of its female professors. In order to indulge his tastes in this direction, he leased the Canterbury for a season, revived the ballet with some of its ancient glory, and thoroughly enjoyed himself among the members of the corps. But the experiment was a costly one, and his operations were subsequently carried on at a less ruinous scale of expenditure.

He was one of the original members of Russell’s Club for Ladies. Here he would turn up of a night with the largest shirt-front in London, in the middle of which sparkled a diamond of prodigious size. The Colonel was sitting one night in the drawing-room of the club, waiting, no doubt, for one of those ladies for whose special convenience Russell had founded his club. A boyish officer in one of the regiments of Guards was sitting not far off staring at the Colonel, whose get-up fascinated him. The youthful Guardsman was not nearly as sober as he might have been. Having gazed, fascinated, for a length of time at the Colonel, he called out: “Waiter!”

“Yessir,” said the servant who answered the summons.

“Oh—er—waiter, who’s (hic) that man with the lighthouse in his stomach?”

From that day to the day of his death Whitehead was known as Colonel Lighthouse. The Colonel had a big house outside Margate, to which at week-ends he invited his theatrical and literary friends. And the highest sort of high-jinks were carried on there.

A certain Irish nobleman was on his death-bed. The priest came to him. The holy man was anxious to get a general confession from him. The nobleman declared he had nothing to confess. “Look back on your past life, my lord. Is there nothing you regret?”

“Nothing,” he replied; “I never denied myself a pleasure!”

He closed his eyes, fell back on his pillow, and, in that happy belief, died.

Whitehead was a gentleman of that kidney, and brings to an end my selections from an almost inexhaustible list of odd fish.