ym. geokgp: payne. 119 



solicit the attention of the occupants. " Wliat do you want ? " 

 said Mr. Payne, testily. " Please, sir, I liave lost my way." " Come 

 and tell us when you have found it," was all the rejoinder he 

 could elicit. 



During many years of his life Mr. Payne was in the habit of get- 

 ting up, after two or three hours in bed, to attend to his speculations 

 in the City. There was nothing in which he would not dabble, and 

 lie loved, in his own inimitable fashion, to tell a story at his own 

 expense with regard to what he called a "a ^hot at tallow" in 

 which he once indulged. During the Crimean war a friend advised 

 him that tallow was sure to go up, and recommended him to buy a 

 lot of P.Y.c, or "prime yellow candle." He was then living, as he 

 long did, at Stevens's Hotel, in Bond Street, and acting upon his 

 friend's advice, he went early into the City and betook himself to a 

 broker in Mincing J>ane, whose address had been furnished to him. 

 Having given instructions that ever so many tierces of tallow should 

 be bought for him, he added the information that his address was at 

 Stevens's Hotel, and was asked by the clerk whether it was " for 

 delivery ?" Not understanding the question, he answered thought- 

 lessly in the atfirmative, and forgot all about the matter until, a 

 fortnight later, he was astonished, being at breakfast in his hotel, 

 at having a greasy document put into his hand, with an announce- 

 ment from the waiter that " the man had come with the tallow." 

 Groing to the door, he found a cart full of tallow casks standing before 

 it, and, as far as the eye could reach, a similar string of carts behind 

 it. " Never trust me," he exclaimed to a knot of friends whom he 

 found 51 1 the Turf Club, "if Bond Street was not choked with tallow 

 carts up to Oxford Street." " That," as he often said subsequently, 

 " was my first and last transaction in tallow." 



Another story which he used to tell against himself was the 

 following, doing to Goodwood one day he was taking his ticket 

 at the railway station, when through the crowd there was thrust a 

 hand which tapped him on the shoulder. " Take me one, (xeorge," 

 said a tall man, well dressed in a costume rather horsey than ele- 

 gant. Mr. Payne took the ticket and handed it over to the free- 

 and-easy speaker, who said, "Thanks Greorge: settle at Groodwood," 

 and disappeared in the crowd for ever and aye. Never from that 

 moment did Mr. Payne set eyes upon that hardened welsher, and 

 he was never tired of telling the story and of laughing over it. 

 " You see," he used to add, exegetically, " more people know Tom 

 Fool than Tom Fool knows. I did not know him from the dead, 

 but thought I must have met him abroad somewhere. Clever 

 rascal ! he is welcome, I am sure, to his fraud and the proceeds." 



But we must draw our sketch of George Payne to a close. Gn 

 the 10th of August, 1878, he was seized with partial paralysis of 

 the lower limbs, and during the day was conveyed to London, 

 where he took to the bed he was fated never to leave until 

 carried to his grave. He died on the morning of Monday, 



