than any other being who ever lived. If Jesus could not take part in the publishing of a daily paper, then He could not direct any other energy that we have to use in order to make a living.

Scores of ministers said in these criticisms that Jesus would never do anything but preach. They seem to forget that the greater part of His life was spent in a carpenter's shop, and that the tables and benches and common wooden things in many a home in Nazareth were no doubt made by His hands. To place the Redeemer of the world in a position which removes Him from the everyday life of mankind is a monstrous perversion of all our right ideas of Him. The vast majority of mankind are not preachers and teachers, but working men and women, toiling over some task that has to do with material things, with common earthly things, like the production of food and the preparation of it for the table. To say that it is sacrilege to think of Jesus as engaged in any form of honest work is so contrary to His own teaching and life that I cannot understand how any minister of the Gospel ever arrived at that conclusion.

I am inclined to think that the whole false definition of Jesus goes back to

the whole false conception of a Divine Being. It takes centuries to clear the human mind of the false idea of a God who sits on a throne and does nothing but meditate on the awful sins of the human beings whom He has made. But the thought of a God who walks with men on the earth, who eats with them and goes out fishing with them in the little boat, and takes His turn with them at the oar, as no doubt Jesus often did, who even goes so far as to provide a meal for a number of tired fishermen with His own hands and to do it after He is a risen and eternal spirit- that thought is so great to me that the idea of Jesus publishing a necessary daily paper is not only not 'sacrilegious' or 'irreverent,' but any other thought of Him is absolutely contrary to His purpose in coming into the world.

We have no such thing as Christianity unless we have a definition of it in terms of abundant life, as wide as man's activity, and as sacred as the everyday toil of the hands of Him who was nailed on a cross because He angered the Pharisees by letting His disciples satisfy their hunger as they walked through the wheat fields of Palestine one Sabbath morning two thousand years ago.

(BEING portions of letters from the Lady Emilia Boscawen in London to my Lady Armour in Scotland in the year 1788 and onward. The Walpole letters are authentic.)

Lord, child, you are as greedy for the news as if I had no business in life but to supply you! But let me tell you, you are very far in the wrong, for a woman of fashion in London, even if she be on the dark side of forty, has but little time for her pen. Were it the tongue now, and were you here, the little machine would vibrate at the rate of a thousand to the minute, but my hand was never so lively as my tongue. And why would you betake yourself to the savagery of Scotland if you must needs know the latest rattle of London? Or rather, if you must needs employ a newsmonger, why would you not engage the services of Mr Horry Walpole? There is the model of epistolary fidelity! When last your idle aunt spoke with him, says he, 'Mine has been a life of letter-writing." "T is his pride and recreation and my 'Tis Lady Ossory tells me credibly that when he has rummaged up a choice scandal - and God knows we can't complain of their scarcity - he will not come near her, though but in the next street, that he may have the felicity to give it some exquisite quirk with his pen and so stuff out a budget of letters. Says I to him lately, 'You will go down to posterity, Mr Walpole, as

the Polite Letter Writer of all time.'

'Lord, Madam, no,' says he. "That estate is already freehold to my Lord Chesterfield. Mine are but an idle tissue of news and laughter and - yes, let me own it since I am pilloried for ita touch of cynicism. But a touchsufficient of cayenne to give the broiled bones a zest.'

"The bones, I fear, of many of your friends and you, the ogre, crunching them! Suppose these letters published fifty years hence - Lord, what a twitter will all the world be in for their grandmothers' reputations! Fortunate indeed are you that live in a Gothic castle and not a glass house, for the fusillade from Strawberry will certainly be returned with interest.'

'My life is open to the world, Madam,' says he with his fine smile, and has been for the last century, for I am now seventy-one. What took place in my cradle must be charged on my excellent father, Sir Robert Walpole (to call him by the name I love best). Since then I have been a circumspect bachelor. But I believe I was a bachelor in my cradle itself. I have always adored your charming sex, but at so safe a distance that I need not dread the answering volley of which your Ladyship speaks.'

"T is seldom indeed a man knows himself so well as this. A born old bachelor, full of cranks and little nicket-nackets, unlike any other man I ever knew. No, there I lie. He is as

like his father as two peas from the same pod.

'Lord,' says you, 'is my venerable aunt gone mad? Horace Walpole like the coarse, swearing, drinking, debauched Sir Robert?' No, my Caroline, betwixt Horry and Sir Robert is not as much likeness as between your 'Italian greyhound and a great baboon, could such be supposed with a brain. No sensible person could credit that he sprang from such a stock unless they believed all women's virtue impregnable. But I knew his father.

'Mercy, Madam!' says you, 'sure you dote!'

Irreverent chit! don't you remember how my Lady Mary Wortley Montagu once divided the world into men, women, and Herveys? That lady knew her world and was, like Cæsar's wife, all things to all men. And she knew Carr, Lord Hervey, and so did I. Let me draw his picture.

Quick-witted, fastidious, delicate in speech and person, despite the prevailing grossness, nice in his women as in eating and drinking, a past master in court diplomacy, though affecting to despise it. Nimble in retort, with the clean thrust of a rapier, faithful to a few friends, yet holding them ever under the enlarging glass of a wit that sees their weaknesses with the half contempt and half tolerance of the true cynic. Of whom is this the portrait, Caroline? Of Horry. And of Carr. No, he is neither man nor woman. My Lady Sharp-Tongue was perfectly in the right. He is Hervey.

Do I ever see him enter a room, hat under his arm, lavender suit, waistcoat worked sparingly but elegantly with silver, partridge-silk stockings, lean, almost diaphanous, mincing along as though walking in wet grass, but I see his father. Well, what's the odds? He is much the better man for the admixture.

'But,' says you, 'Aunt Emilia, what's all this the prelude to? Is there a new Walpole scandal afoot?' No, child, but a miracle. Horry is fallen in love. At the age of seventy-one. Lord preserve us! Who is safe? As to marriage-but yourself shall judge, and you will put your money on the hazard with my Lord and Lady Ossory you may have your new birthday-suit for nothing. I have most of the story from her and from my dear Lady Charlotte Lindsay.

if

'T was at my Lady Herries's house he met the charmers. Note the plural, my Caroline. No money, passable good looks, mere nobodies from nowhere, but my Lord Herries's banking business makes him civil to all the oddcome-shorts that we don't hear of otherwise. A father and two daughters, name Berry. My Lady says the girls looked well enough on the occasion; the elder, Mary, in a plain rose-color silk fastened down the front with bows in the French taste, and paste clasps, ruffles, and good arms. A pleasing young madam enough, but no more. Agnes, the younger, in lilac satin. The rooms crowded, for our Walpole Duchess, her Royal Highness of Gloucester, was to be present, attended by her uncle, Mr Walpole. The Duke is nowhere seen with her now, all his attentions being given to her lady-in-waiting, my Lady Almeria Carpenter. My Lady says she looked uncommon well in a dress of deep damask brocade, her bosom, and even her fan, a-glitter with diamonds. If beauty could hold a man - but when did it ever? Novelty is the only wear with them and 't is her infrequent coquetries with earthly lovers and the certainty of rivals that gives Madam Venus her reputation.

Following our Duchess-niece comes Horry, with his cool glance which comprehends the whole party in a general indifference. The Berrys were in the

window, all eyes for the Duchess, and says my Lady Herries, 'Pray, Mr Walpole, may n't I have the pleasure to present you to the Miss Berrys?'

'Miss Berrys, Madam? Who are they?'

"Two young ladies, considered agreeable. The father, Lord knows who. Their uncle, Mr. Ferguson of Scotland, vastly rich but not on terms with them. The young women have attainments which have drawn some notice on them.'

'And what are their attainments?' asks he, delicately stifling a yawn.

"Travelers, I believe. I know no more. Will your Royal Highness sit?'

'Are they the two young persons in the window?' asks the Duchess, willing to be polite from royal heights. 'Pleasant faces, but surely not beauties.'

‘O Madam, your Royal Highness judges exactly. Pleasant. Easy and well-mannered. The father-nothing.'

'Why, Madam, I won't trespass on your good nature,' says Mr Walpole. 'I grow too old for new acquaintance. Madam, shall I fetch your Royal Highness a chair?'

"T is my Lady Herries's belief that Miss Berry overheard this byplay and took her measures accordingly, for the next time they met Mr Walpole 't was at my Lady Aylesbury's. The Duchess was at the end of the informally arranged chairs and settees, and Mr Walpole at hand, and the Miss Berrys placed themselves behind, modestly enough, but strategically, as Harry Conway describes it.

Horry looked up from his talk with my Lady Aylesbury and caught the eye of Miss Mary. His own glittered youthfully amid his wrinkles, and my dear Lady Charlotte Lindsay, who makes herself a sponsor for these young women, made the introduction, thus putting it out of his power to refuse. "Twas at that moment I myself

entered and made my reverence. He bowed and resumed his talk with my Lady. It was of Italy, which he had honored with his youthful presence, and he spoke of Venice but could not for the life of him recall the name of some Byzantine church which he described as monstrous ugly and far inferior to the French Gothic.

'Pooh, pooh!' says he, 'my memory's going. Forgive an old relique, Madam, for I 'm as Gothic and antique as the cathedrals themselves.'

'Could it be Torcello you refer to, sir?' says Miss Mary, putting in her modest word. 'We were there when in Venice.'

'Madam, I thank you vastly. Torcello it is. And I trust your taste was never misled into admiration of its cold rigidity.'

The lady was all warmth.

'O, sir, what person could admire? We, in particular, who have had the advantage to see Chartres and Amiens, could but view it with distaste.'

He made a remark in Italian, complimenting her discernment. You know, Caroline, how he prides himself on his faded old Italian; and the seductress responded, all smiles. He turned his chair about and regarded her quizzically.

'You are a very accomplished young woman, Madam. I might have spoken thus to every lady in the room and had but a blush in answer.'

'Sir, it can be no credit to me. My father took us to that lovely country and we must have been deaf and dumb had we not acquired the language. But I own a gentleman addressed me in it the other night, and I failed to understand him his accent!'

'And mine? Sure I have forgot it all.' 'Yours, sir, time cannot change. 'Tis the purest Florentine.'

She then made as though she would have delicately withdrawn from the

conversation, but Horry was in full sail by now. He discovered that they had met his old friend, Sir Horace Mann, in Florence. He drew me into the talk, he sparkled, he quoted Metastasio-whom I never could abide! he related fusty old stories of bygone Italian celebrities, and Mary, who now introduced Agnes into the conversation, listened charmingly. Indeed, 't is no penance to listen to Mr Walpole. He has the happy turn, the light phrase, the apt quotation. I would not call his talk witty or laughable, but 't is of the highest breeding and sparkles like the foam on champagne which crisps a moment and is gone. He loves success also, and though he is forever alluding to his age, triumphs in making others forget it. 'T was as good as a play to watch the scene, which indeed resembled a duel between two skillful fencers, Miss Mary playing him off to perfection. He next adventured himself into French and there indeed he was at home, delighted with himself and his anecdotes of the delightful and wicked persons who had been his intimates in Paris. The two young women listened and, when my Lord Northam would have engaged their attention, repulsed him with a grace and decision which fanned Mr Walpole's flame to the highest.

'Mesdames, you flatter me beyond what human nature can bear unspoilt. For the moment I forget that I am six months older than Methuselah and consider myself the successful rival of an elegant like my Lord Northam,' says he, bowing to kill. Before the evening was over I heard the sisters invited to visit the beauties of Strawberry with their father, and Mr Walpole went so far as to hope the residence Mr Berry was seeking might be found in the neighborhood of Twickenham. 'Twas then I admired Miss Berry's discretion.

'I fear, sir,' says she, very seriously, 'that rumor, which is generally malicious, has forborne on this occasion to inform you what very small persons we are in the world. A large fortune which was justly my father's has gone to another branch of the family and we have nothing but gratitude to offer those who distinguish us.' Was 't not clever, Caroline? He was amazingly eager in his reply.

'My dear young lady, innocence and charm do not need to pay their way with diamonds, which indeed are no brighter than your eyes, or clearer than the music which falls from your tongue. I prefer such gems to the quarried species. You overpay by your intellect and charm those who have the happiness to meet you.'

Lord, was ever such a thing known! Horry, to a chit in her twenties! She's no ordinary woman for certain. She made a most agreeable curtsy, her dark eyes sparkling, and Mr Walpole, going up to her Royal Highness, spoke with her in a low voice, and returning, took Miss Berry by the hand and presented her, and afterward Miss Agnes, both being well received and a polite remark addressed to either.

Since the Duchess, whose royal marriage has produced more rank than riches, does not smile on any attractive acquaintances of her uncle, they had the more reason to be gratified, if it were not that she did not overhear the talk and could but judge them very ordinary young persons.

Lord, my dear! - he was caught, and in a very pretty net. But the post stays for me and I must withhold my pen. Of Horry, all I say is, il n'a pas perdu l'ancienne habitude d'être jeune. But does any of that sex where ours is concerned? The man's desire is always for the woman, but ours for the desire of the man, which means in this case what does it mean, Caroline? A