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to tell. There was the Book Club, with its meetings at the "Falcon," where, in the words of a local diarist, "A dozen honest gentlemen dined merrily." There were the heavy dinner-parties at my grandfather's, the regulation allowance of port a bottle per man, but more ad libitum. And there was the yearly "Soham Fair," on July 12, when my grandfather kept open house for the parsons or other gentry and their womankind, who flocked in from miles around. On one such occasion my father had to squire a new-comer about the fair. The wife of a retired City alderman, she was enormously stout, and had chosen to appear in a low dress. ("Hillo, bor! what are yeou a-dewn' with the Fat Woman?"—one can imagine the delicate raillery.)

A well-known Earl- Sohamite was old Mr P——, who stuttered and was certainly eccentric. In summer-time he loved to catch small "freshers" (young frogs), and let them hop down his throat, when he would stroke his stomach, observing, "B-b-b-b-eautifully cool." He was a staunch believer in the claims of the "Princess Olive." She used to stay with him, and he always addressed her as "Your Royal Highness." Then, there was Dr Belman. He was playing whist one evening with a maiden lady for partner. She trumped his best card, and, at the end of the hand, he asked her the reason why. "Oh, Dr Belman" (smilingly), "I judged it judicious." "Judicious! Judicious!! JUDICIOUS!!! You old fool!" She never again touched a card. Was it the same maiden lady who was the strong believer in homoeopathy, and who one day took five globules of aconite in mistake for three? Frightened, she sent off for her homœopathic adviser—he was from home. So, for want of a better, she called in old Dr Belman. He came, looked grave, shook his head, said if people would meddle with dangerous drugs they must take the consequences. "But, madam," he added, "I will die with you;" and, lifting the bottle of the fatal globules, swallowed its whole contents.

To the days of my father's first curacy belongs the story of the old woman at Tannington, who fell ill one winter when the snow was on the ground. She got worse and worse, and sent for Dr Mayhew, who questioned her as to the cause of her illness. Something she said made him think that the fault must lie with either her kettle or her tea-pot, as she seemed, by her account, to get worse every time she drank any tea. So he examined the kettle, turned it upside down, and then, in old Betty's own words, "Out drop a big toad. He tarned the kittle up, and out ta fell flop." Some days before she had "deeved" her kettle into the snow instead of filling it at the pump, and had then got the toad in it, which had thus been slowly simmering into toad-broth. At Tannington also they came to my father to ask him to let them have the church Bible and the church key. The key was to be spun round on the Bible, and if it had pointed at a certain old woman who was suspected of being a witch, they would have certainly ducked her.

A score of old faded letters, close-written and crossed, are lying before me: my father wrote them in 1835 to his father, mother, and brother from Brussels, Mainz, Leipzig, Dresden, Prague, Munich, &c. At Frankfurt he dined with the Rothschilds, and sat next the baroness, "who in face and figure was very like Mrs Cook, and who spoke little English, but that little