MAROH. 85 
ment, which had a completely felicitous issue. Once a month, Mr. Evans, 
the gardener, brought in his account book, and used to sit in an armchair 
by the fire in the servant’s hall, awaiting his master’s leisure. From 
an interview of this kind, my father returned one winter’s evening to 
the bosom of his family, in a condition of extreme bewilderment. 
“Evans had behaved.in the most extraordinary manner. Evans, the 
soberest man on the estate, was ostentatiously intoxicated; could 
scarcely rise to salute his master, and when he did rise, had brought 
the armchair with him, and worn it behind him in the most ridiculous 
manner. Had never seen any one so demoralized and red in the face. 
And, to crown all, the man had put himself into a passion, and mur- 
muring something about ‘ standing it*no longer,’ had sat down with a 
crash upon his anything but easy chair. There my father had left 
him; but the first thing in the morning, he would have an explanation 
—yes, that he would.” 
I could have given him a very full explanation that evening if I had 
liked. I had smeared the dark seat of that wooden chair most liberally 
with cobbler’s wax, and had limed my bird securely on his twig. 
My father sent for me next morning, after a conversation with Mr. 
Evans on the subject of his ‘‘séance fantastique,” and commenced an 
oration of a severe and admonitory character ; but he broke down in 
his second sentence, laughing till the tears rolled down his cheeks, and 
leaving me master of the entire position, with the exception of the 
kitchen garden, into which I did not feel inclined to wander for many 
subsequent weeks. 
Then came a period w#erein we felt that weariness of quarrelling, 
which the brilliant but bilious Duc de la Rochefoucault has termed 
“une lassitude de la guerre,” in which we still maintained a pugnacious 
posture, but struck no blows —just as you have seen a couple of pullets, 
drawn up in order of battle, and confronting each other téte-a-téte, 
but wholly indisposed to peck. Alas! I disturbed this peaceful 
armistice with an onslaught of unprecedented ferocity. An under- 
graduate at Oxford, I began to fall in love, indiscriminately, with every 
pretty girl I saw; and Venus must have flowrets for her golden hair, 
and fragrant posies for her soft small hand. For her sweet sake 
(‘‘nam fuit ante Helenam,” &c.), I commenced such a series of 
sanguinary raids on the conservatory, as must have made poor Evans’s 
_heart to “‘ bleed”? almost as freely as his plants. Leaders and laterals, 
hard wood and soft—now the top of a pyramidal Azalea, to make the 
centre of a bouquet—now the first fronds of some delicate and costly 
Fern, to form its graceful fringe—fine old specimens and ‘‘ nice young 
stuff ;” flowers and foliage all went down in terrible excision, until the 
place looked as though it were one of Her Majesty Queen Flora’s jails, 
filled with plants of an abandoned character, and having their hair 
dressed a Ja convict. 
O ladies and gentlemen—O dames and damsels with your pretty 
garden baskets, and long scissors of shining steel—O gallant lovers, 
with your trenchant Wharncliffe blades—O mothers and daughters, 
knocking over the flower pots as you sweep along in your “trailing 
garments ”—O wide-sleeved dandies, breaking the young shoots as you 
