favourite pupil—inestimable to have such a creature. Lady Carabas would give her eyes for her! A prodigy of accomplishments! Thank you, Miss Wirt'—and the young ladies gave a heave and a gasp of admiration—a deep-breathing gushing sound, such as you hear at church when the sermon comes to a full stop.

   Miss Wirt put her two great double-knuckled hands round a waist of her two pupils, and said, 'My dear children, I hope you will be able to play it soon as well as your poor little governess. When I lived with the Dunsinanes, it was the dear Duchess's favourite, and Lady Barbara and Lady Jane McBeth learned it. It was while hearing Jane play that, I remember, that dear Lord Castletoddy first fell in love with her; and though he is but an Irish Peer, with not more than fifteen thousand a year, I persuaded Jane to have him. Do you know Castletoddy, Mr. Snob?—round towers—sweet place-County Mayo. Old Lord Castletoddy (the present Lord was then Lord Inishowan) was a most eccentric old man—they say he was mad. I heard his Royal Highness the poor dear Duke of Sussex—(SUCH a man, my dears, but alas! addicted to smoking!)—I heard his Royal Highness say to the Marquis of Anglesey, "I am sure Castletoddy is mad!" but Inishowan wasn't in marrying my sweet Jane, though the dear child had but her ten thousand pounds POUR TOUT POTAGE!'

   'Most invaluable person,' whispered Mrs. Major Ponto to me. 'Has lived in the very highest society:' and I, who have been accustomed to see governesses bullied in the world, was delighted to find this one ruling the roast, and to think that even the majestic Mrs. Ponto bent before her.

   As for my pipe, so to speak, it went out at once. I hadn't a word to say against a woman who was intimate with every Duchess in the Red Book. She wasn't the rosebud, but she had been near it. She had rubbed shoulders with the great, and about these we talked all the evening incessantly, and about the fashions, and about the Court, until bed-time came.

   'And are there Snobs in this Elysium?' I exclaimed, jumping into the lavender-perfumed bed. Ponto's snoring boomed from the neighbouring bed-room in reply.

   Something like a journal of the proceedings at the Evergreens may be interesting to those foreign readers of PUNCH who want to know the customs of an English gentleman's family and household. There's plenty of time to keep the Journal. Piano-strumming begins at six o'clock in the morning; it lasts till breakfast, with but a minute's intermission, when the instrument changes hands, and Miss Emily practises in place of her sister Miss Maria.

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