AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 



AID an old Etonian to me the other day : 

 '' In my time (and I dare say yours) 

 there was always one particular boy in the 

 school noted for the habitual possession of a worse 

 hat than any of his fellows'." In my day a youth 



named Mc was the celebrity in that way. His 



head-gear was invariably something dreadful to con- 

 template. When, therefore, he appeared one day at 

 '' absence " in the school-yard, wearing an apparently 

 bran-new *' tile," with a lustre upon it that ''The 

 Glossy Peer " himself might have been proud of, he 

 created quite a sensation amongst his friends of the 

 Remove. Finally, Doctor Hawtrey, dandiest of 

 pedagogues, noticed the circumstance, and, bowing 

 ironically, said in his mincing manner : '' I con- 

 gratulate you, Mc , on the possession at last 



of a new hat." '' Wrong again, sir," repHed that 

 unabashed youth, ''Ifs the old 'tin done up!'' 



This, gentle reader, is the case with this book. 

 Some of these papers appeared a few years ago in the 



