The Days Before Yesterday

ls at Petrograd-A mock-opera-The family from Runcorn-An embarrassing predicament-Administering the oath-Secret Service-Popular errors-Legitim

myself-The Alchemists-The Elixir of Life, and the Philosopher's Stone-Lucid directions for their manufacture-Glamis Castle and its i

months' training which all Attaches had to undergo before being sent abroad. The typewriter had not then been invente

on which he started work in the Foreign Office he was given a bundle of letters to acknowledge. "You know, of course, the ordinary form of acknowledgment," said his chief. "Just acknowledge all these, and say that the matter will be attended to." When the young man from Leeds brought the letters he had writte

watch-chain in his presence. This Cabinet key unlocked all the boxes in which the most confidential papers of the Cabinet were circulated. As things were then arranged, this key was essential to our work, but a boy just turned twenty naturally felt immensely proud of s

nge land, and many of them who find a difficulty in amalgamating with the people of the country must always be thrown to a great extent on their own resou

esent generations, so it is sufficient to say that he was THE light comedian of the early nineteenth century. The Garrick Club possesses a fine collection of portraits of Charles Matthews in some of his most popular parts. Charles Matthews acted regularly with the Russell family at Woburn, my mother playing the lead. I have a large collection of Woburn Abbey play-bills, from 1831-1839, all printed on white satin, and some of the pieces they put on were quite ambitious

, uncles, generals, and family lawyers. As unmarried girls took part in these performances, the French pieces ha

lerise," there is "sandwich." As is well known, this compact form of nourishment derives its name from John, fourth Earl of Sandwich, who lived between 1718-1792. Lord Sandwich was a confirmed gambler, and such was his anxiety to lose still more money, and to impoverish further himself, his family, and his descendants, that he grudged the time necessary for meals, and had slices of bread and sl

urred to "Old Grog" that, in view of the ravages of yellow fever amongst the men of the Fleet, it would be advisable, in the burning climate of the West Indies, to dilute the blue-jackets' rations of rum with water before serving them out. This was accordingly done, to the immense dissat

ed the medical schools of Edinburgh with "subjects" for anatomical research, early in the nineteenth century. Their procedure was simple. Creeping behind unsuspe

nt in 1880. The means that were adopted to try and drive him out of the country are well known. Since that time the expression to "boycott" a person, in the

ane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, who prided himself on the dexterity with which he worded these acknowledgments of favours received. As another example, most bridge-players are but

t of similar words, and they w

t are both most amusing pieces, which can be played, with very slight "cuts," before any audience, and they both bubble over with that gaiete francaise which appeals so to me. We were coached at Petrograd by Andrieux, the jeune premier of the Theatre Michel, and we all became very pro

ch plays I was invariably cast for old men, in the English ones I was always allotted the extremely juvenile parts, being still very slim and able

es fought shy of the part of "Countess Gorganzola," the heroine's grandmother. This was partly due to the boldness of some of "Gorganzola's" lines, and also to the fact that whoever played the role would have to make-up frankly as an old woman. I was asked to take "Countess Gorganzola" instead of t

roadcloth, with a shaven upper lip, and a voluminous red "Newgate-frill" framing his face-exactly the type of face one associates with the Deacon of a Calvinistic-Methodist Chapel; there was the mother, a very grim-looking female; and the son, a nondescript hobbledehoy with goggle-eyes. It appeared that after their passports had been inspected on landing, the goggle-eyed boy had laid his down somewhere and had lo

nows how it catches in every possible thing it can do. Down I went, and the trio from Widnes (or Runcorn) seemed surprised at seeing an old lady enter the room. But when I spoke, and they recognised in the old lady the frock-coated (and I trust sympathetic) official they had interviewed earlier in the day, their astonishment knew no bounds. The father gazed at me horror-stricken, as though I were a madman; the mother kept on swallowing, as ladies of her type do when they wish to convey strong disapprobation; and the prominent-orbed boy's eyes nearly fell out of his head. I explained that some theatricals were in progress, but that did not mend matters; evidently in the serious circles in which they moved in St. Helens (or Widnes), theatricals were regarded as one of the snares of the Evil One. To make matters worse, one of my Chantilly lace sleeves caught in the handle o

a Vulgate version of the Gospels in Latin, and a Pentateuch in Hebrew, for the purpose of administering the oath, according to the religion professed by the individual. I was duly instructed how to administer the oath in German, and was told that my first question must be as to the religion the applicant professed, and that I was then to choose my Book accordingly. My great friend at Berlin was my fellow-attache Maude, a most delightful little fellow, who was universally popular. Poor Maude, who was a near relation of Mr. Cyril Maude the actor's, died four years afterwards in China. Most of the applicants for legalisation were of one particular faith. I admired the way in which little Maude, without putting the usual question as to religion, would scan the features of the applicant closely and

d information would have been carefully prepared at the General Staff for the express purpose of fooling the briber. There is a different class of information which, it seems to me, is more legitimate to acquire. The Russian Ministries of Commerce and Finance always imagined that they could overrule economic laws by decrees and stratagems. For instance, they were perpetually endeavouring to divert the flow of trade from its accustomed channels to some port they wished to stimulate artificially into prosperity, by granting rebates, and by exceptionally favourable railway rates. Large quantities of jute sacking were imported from Dundee to be made into bags for the shipment of Russian wheat. One Minister of Commerce elaborated an

in the Phoenix Park, Dublin. I knew Tom Burke very well indeed. The British Government offered a reward of ten thousand pounds for the apprehension of th

resent. Consequently, the police of the country cannot enter them except by special permission, and both the Secretaries and their servants are immune from arrest, and are not subject to the laws of the country, though they can, of course, be expelled from it. I gave the policeman leave to enter, and he came into my bedroom. "I have caught one of the Phoenix Park murderers," he told me triumphantly in Russian, visions of the possible ten thousand pounds wreathing his face in smiles. I jumped up incredulously. He went on to inform me that a man had landed from the Stockholm steamer early that morning. Though he declared that he had no arms with him, a revolver and a dagger had been found in his trunk. His passport had only been issued at the British Le

der close arrest. He himself was under the impression that all the trouble was due to the concealed arms; the Phoenix Park murders had never once been mentioned. I sent off a long telegram in cypher to the Stockholm Legation, making certain inquiries, and a longer one en clair to the British Consul at Gothenburg. By nagging at the Attache, and by keeping that dapper young gentleman's nose pretty close to the grindstone, I got the first telegram cyphered and dispatched by 10 a.m.; the answers arrived about 4 p.m. The man's story was true in every particular. He HAD fallen off a moving tram and cut his face; his wife, terrified at the idea of unknown dangers in Russia, HAD borrowed a revolver and dagger from a friend, and had packed them in her husband's trunk without his knowledge. Mr. D-- (I remember his name perfectly) was well known in Stockholm, and was a man of the highest respectability. I drove as fast as I could to the grubby hotel, where I found the poor fellow still restlessly pacing the room, and still smoking cigarette after cigarette. There was a perfect Mont Blanc of cigaret

n the merry strains of this captivating march and the terrible fate that awaited the people escorted by the band at the end of their last drive on earth. When the first band rested, the second replaced it instantly to avoid any possibilities of a speech. The second band seemed to me to have made an equally unhappy selection of music. "Kaiser Alexander," written as a complimentary tribute to the murdered Emperor by a German composer, is a spirited and tuneful march, but as "Kaiser Alexander" was dead, and had been killed by the very people who were now going to expiate their crime

t was his custom to sit on it daily for an hour or so. He said that as he was too old to ride, the feel of a saddle under him reminded him of his youth. When every morning I brought the old gentleman the day's dispatches, I always found him seated on his saddle, a cigar in his mouth, a skull-cap on his head, and his feet in the silver shoe-stirrups. Sir Charles had been a great friend of the first Lord Lytton, the novelist, and they had together dabbled in Black Magic. Sir Charles declared that the last chapters in Bulwer-Lytton's wonderful imaginative work, A STRANGE STORY, describing the preparation of the Elixir of Life in the heart of the Australian Bush, were all founded on actual experience, with the notable reservation that all the recorded attempts made to produce this magic fluid had failed from their very start. He had in his younger days joined a society of Rosicrucians, by which I do not mean the Masonic Order of that name, but persons who sought to penetrate into the Forbidden Domain. Some forty years ago a very interesting series of articles appeared in Vanity Fair (the weekly newspaper, not Thackeray's masterpiece), under the title of "The Black Art." In one of these there was an account of a seance which took place at the Pantheon in Oxford Street, in either the "forties" or the "fifties." A number of people had hired the hall, and the Devil was invoked

operty of transmuting everything it touched into gold. Like practical men, they seemed to have concentrated their energies more especially on the latter, for a moment's consideration will show the exceedingly awkward predicament in which any one would be placed with only the first of these conveniences at his command. Should he by the aid of the Elixir of Life have managed to attain the age of, say, 300 years, he might find it excessively h

he healing properties of antimony, actually thought that he had discovered the Elixir of Life in tartrate of antimony, more generally know

oon," they will at once know that they have found a specimen of the rare herb "Lunary." The juice of this plant, if boiled with quicksilver, has only to be thrown over one hundred ounces of copper, to change them instantly into fine gold. Paracelsus' directions for making the Philosopher's Stone are very simple: "Take the rosy-coloured blood of the lion, and gluten from the eagle. Mix them together, and the Philosopher's Stone is thine. Seek the lion in the west, a

ct and finished part-singing as that of the Lyon family, and they were always singing: on the way to a cricket-match; on the road home from shooting; in the middle of dinner, even, this irrepressible family could not help bursting into harmony, and such exquisite harmony, too! Until their sisters grew up, the younger boys sang the treble and alto parts, but finally they were able to manage a male-voice quartet, a trio of ladies' voices, and a combined family octette. The dining-room at Glamis is a very lofty hall, oak-panelled, with a great Jacobean chimney-piece rising to the roof. After dinner it was the custom for the two family pipers to make the circuit of the table three times, and then to walk slowly off, still playing, through the tortuous stone passages of the ancient building until the last faint echoes of the music had died away. Then all the lights in the dining-room were extinguished except the candles on the table, and out came a tuning-fork, and one note was sounded-"Madrigal," "Spring is Come, third beat,"

usual. The old gentleman was perfectly enchanted with it, and complimented this tuneful family enthusiastically on the perfect finish of their singing. Next evening Mr. Gladstone asked for a part-song in the middle of dinner, and as the singing was continued in the drawing-room afterwards, he went and, with a deferential courtesy charming to see in a man of his age and position, asked whether the young people would allow an old man to

tone in the most violent terms, this never strained their friendly relations with Mrs. Gladstone herself. I always conjure up visions of Mrs. Gladstone in her sapphire-blue velvet, her invariable dress of ceremony. Thou

excellent shots, and were very good at games. One brother was lawn-tennis champion o

house in Great Britain. As Sh

the air Nimbly and sweetly recomm

doubtless played a very useful part during the many sieges the castle sustained in the old days. The private chapel is a beautiful little place of worship, with eighty painted panels of Scriptural subjects by De Witt, the seventeenth-century Dutch artist, and admirable stained glass. The Castle, too, is full of interesting historical relics. It boasts the only remaining Fool's dress of motley in the kingdom; Prince Charlie's watch and clothes are still preserved there, for the Prince, surprised by the Hanoverian troops at Glamis, had only time to jump on a horse and escape, leaving all his belongings behind him. There is a wonderfu

o reflect how well-nigh impossible it is to "allow" too much for driven grouse flying down-wind. I can picture equally vividly the curling-pond in winter-time, tuneful with the merry chirrup of the curling-stones as they skim over the ice, whilst cries of "Soop her up, man, soop! Soop!" from the anxious "skip" fill the keen air. I like best, though, to think of the Glamis of my young days, when the ancient stone-built passages and halls, that have seen so many generations pass through them a