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or appreciated even by the middle classes; the aristocracy have been alienated by his American onslaught on their body, and the educated and refined are not sufficiently numerous to constitute an audience; moreover, there is want of heart in all he writes, which is to be balanced by the most brilliant sarcasm and the most perfect knowledge of the workings of the human heart.
"Town Talk," said Mr. Yates, "was a small periodical edited and illustrated by Watts Phillips, and I was engaged to write for it. The first week's instalment of 'Literary Talk' was a sketch of Dickens. You must remember I was working at the Post-office at the time. I had written my matter—enough to fill up, as I thought—when I received a message saying that Mr. Watts Phillips had gone and there was a big deficit of copy. I must make it up. I rushed over to the printers in Aldersgate Street, threw off my coat—it was a very hot Saturday afternoon—sat down, and without the slightest reflection turned out that article. I was not twenty-seven then, and had but small notion of how little causes often come home to bitterly revisit you.
"Thackeray was very wroth, and was the means of gaining my expulsion from the Garrick Club. I think it was a cruel thing to do, for no personal feeling whatever prompted me to write what I did, and it was done without the faintest thought. I never met Thackeray afterwards save once in the street, and then somehow we didn't see one another. I endeavoured to put the matter right more than once, especially when I saw the Cornhill Magazine advertised. I sent in a set of verses, thinking that Thackeray might use them as a little tender towards reconciliation, but they came back by the next post.
"Well, let's go for a drive!"
So we forgot the troubles of Thackeray and the work of him who presides over the destinies of the World in our drive along "the front."
"Excellent coachman, Spencer," said Mr. Yates, "but an awful fellow for remembering names—mixes them up in a world of substitution! I had a horse which I called 'Taffy,' owing to its having been bred in Wales by Mrs. Crawshay.
"'Now don't forget, Spencer,' I said, 'his name is "Taffy"—"Taffy,"' and he repeated it half-a-dozen times. Three days afterwards he came to me and said:—
"'I think, sir, we shall want a different kind of bit for Murphy!'"
Harry How.
Christmas card, by Frank Lockwood, Q.C.