dictionary six months ago. I had it done at Tiffany's. It looks so stylish on the plates and the writing paper."

"Come in here, Susan," and I led her into her own parlour, for I did not wish to lower her in the estimation of that noble being who was preparing his mighty mind to show me out. "Listen to me; you and Joe haven't any more to do with the Duke of Bedford than the cat's foot. Besides, his name isn't Bedford but Russell. For goodness' sake don't make such an idiot of yourself."

"I guess," and Susan was deeply offended, "I guess the young man at Tiffany's knows more about it than you do. He engraves for the first families, and he said it was all right."

It was quite recently, too, that I crossed from Boston with three gentle female pilgrims in search of an ancestor. The youngest was nearly seventy, and we were barely out of sight of that famous tail of land called "Cape Cod" when they told me their simple story. They came from Cape Cod and their homestead stood on a sandhill and faced the sea. A long straggling street up a sand bank culminated in a meeting-house with a steeple as sharp as a toothpick. They were innocent and graphic old ladies and they had only two vivid interests in life; one was a Devonshire ancestor supposed to have died three hundred years before, and the other, two cats called respectively Priscilla and John Alden. The ancestor was the one romance of their placid lives, and it became a question of going to find him, now or never; so here they were. They had turned the key in the lock of their Cape Cod homestead and bidden a long farewell to Priscilla and John Alden, and as they described their grief I saw their three pairs of benevolent eyes fill with tears.

"The sweetest cats that ever breathed," said the oldest, with a face like a benediction.

"What did you do with them?" I asked after a sympathetic pause.

"We chloroformed them," said the dear old thing whose face was like a benediction.

I offered up an involuntary smile to the manes of these deceased martyrs, Priscilla and John Alden, and I am absolutely sure the ancestor wasn't worth the sacrifice.

Fortunately or unfortunately, the champagne standard, like hotel cooking, has no nationality. It is everywhere, and one studies it according to one's experience, but it is undoubtedly the curse of an age that only judges of success by material results. It is above everything a menace to character.

Modern life is the apotheosis of trivialities, and perhaps there is nothing more curious and melancholy than to observe their exaggerated importance to the world in general. One asks what is the use of such childish fretting to people confronted by tragic realities. What is the use of snubbing any one as if we were immortal? The truth is, each, in his own estimation, is immortal. Who thinks of dying? Why, if we expected to die at once, we certainly would not snub any one, and, in the face of so tragic a probability, we would not notice being snubbed. And yet there is absolutely nothing so absolutely certain as death, before which every pretence, every ignoble aspiration, every sordid ambition, stands naked and futile and, in some other world possibly, ashamed.

But one cannot help wondering what kind of a blissful place the world would be without the champagne standard. How good and honest we should be if we didn't pretend—how easy it would be to live! Are not most of the trials of life, apart from its tragedies, its results? Most of our harrowing anxieties usually have their rise in aiming at what is beyond our reach. And yet what, in the name of common sense, what is it all for? What is the use of pretending? What is the use of doing things badly when it is so much easier not to do them at all?

Yes, indeed, the greatest heroism in these days is to have the courage of one's income. It is possibly a little awkward at first, but what a relief to be able to say simply, "I can't afford it," and not lose caste! But Modern Society is ruled over by "Appearances." Appearances are a kind of Juggernaut which requires our happiness and peace and contentment as a daily sacrifice—but not the wise and honourable appearances, but the little, mean, false ones, and those are the most common.

One is inclined to think, however, that even the champagne standard may yet find its Nemesis. For if the world goes on at its present rate all its wealth will in time be swallowed up by the Trusts, and the Trusts will in turn be swallowed up by the mighty maws of the few whom God, in his righteous wrath, permits to plunder the earth, just as He once permitted a deluge for the regeneration of the world. And the blessed result will be that the whole wide world, being as poor as the traditional church mouse, will come to its senses, and the first thing that will happen will be the abolishing of the champagne standard. So herein lies the world's salvation, to be saved it must be ruined; and for the first time Trusts may be looked upon in the light of the benevolent saviours of mankind. When we are all as poor as the most plausible of them can make us, and that is saying a good deal, behold we shall then finally cease to pretend.

Of course each of us has his own ideal of the millennium, but with multi-millionaires setting the pace, and all the rest of the world racing after, it must be agreed that the millennium is not yet. But when it does come, there will be no more champagne standard, and each person will be judged after his honest value and not his purse. If he has a noble soul nobody will mind if he is a bit shabby, and if he is a man of brains he may even live at the wrong end of the town. In that happy day everybody will have the courage of his income, no matter how small, and when one is shown hospitality it will not be according to the champagne standard, but according to a standard of honest kindness; and no matter how simple it is, if it is only a crust of bread, no one will criticise, and no one will apologise. If in that blissful time Jones dines in a cut-away, why not? And yet is it not true in these days that Jones's fine character is often enough overlooked in a disapproving contemplation of his coat?

However, the millennium has not arrived, and the simpler life, though the fashion as a subject for sermons, is certainly not practised—as yet.

Recently a king of finance gave a great musical function—the gambols of the rich and great are always called functions. There were so many billionaires present that a modest millionaire was quite out of it. Everything was of the costliest, the lighting was entirely by radium, and the music provided was of an expense supremely worthy of even the consideration of billionaires. The very greatest violinist had been induced, by the offer of a small fortune, to play, and indeed, while he played, the host and another billionaire intimate amused themselves calculating the money value of each tone at the rate the great artist demanded for playing. Just as they finished, and he finished, and a languid murmur signified the approval of the glittering audience, the young daughter of the billionaire host, who had, apparently, not received the last polish in the school of unutterable wealth, put an entreating hand on her father's arm:

"Do please introduce me," and she mentioned a very famous name, "he does play so divinely."

"My child," and the magnate, who had started life peddling tripe, spoke with haughty disfavour and drew his eyebrows together in a frown, "we pay such people, but we don't know them."

O Champagne Standard!

American Wives and English Housekeeping

The clever woman who wrote American Wives and English Husbands, put her Californian heroine in a position in which the one problem she was not required to solve was English housekeeping. She might break her heart over her English husband, but the author does not add to our pangs by relating how her American bride, having first studied the peculiarities of