RECENT CONVERSATIONS IN A STUDIO. Mallet. Have you a bit of string? Belton. Of course I have. It is my particular meanness. Everybody has a little personal ridiculous meanness, and that is mine. I cannot bear to cut a string which I can untie,—not that I want it; not that I expect it to be of any special use; not that I take care to put it aside, so as to find it when I want it; but that it goes against me to cut it. I carefully undo it, roll it up, put it away, and never find it again. What is your meanness-for of course you have one. Mal. Mine is paper. I have an Arabian feeling against tearing up letters and destroying scraps of paper, not from the fear that prompts the Arabs, lest the name of Allah may be inscribed upon it-not for any really good reason, -but from an unreasoning impulse. It goes against my grain. This habit entails a good deal of unnecessary work and loss of time afterwards-for notes and letters so accumulate that one must clear them out and destroy them at some time, but still I go on practising it. Bel. If one could bring one's mind to file away all the notes and letters one receives, and put them in order, with easy catalogues of reference, much that is very valuable would be preserved which is now destroyed, and which to after generations would be most precious. Think of Shakespeare's letters, for instance. They were of no value to his correspondents at the time, and were probably all torn up; but what would we not give for them? Mal. John Quincy Adams followed this rule. He kept, as I have understood, everything which was written to him, and this of itself, gave him a certain power in public life. If any man denied he had ever expressed certain opinions, or mentioned certain facts, or been engaged in certain transactions in public life which he had forgotten or would fain conceal, there was sure to be a record in Mr Adams's papers, in case there had ever been any correspondence between the two. After all, in the correspondences of public or of private men there is often much which is of far greater importance in elucidating questions, characters, and opinions of the day, than is to be found in their formal writings. What is called gossip often throws great light upon public events, and letters are a minor and truer history of the time than is contained in the elaborate pages of historians. I cannot bear to destroy a letter; nor do I ever see a person recklessly tear one to pieces and throw it in the waste-basket without a chill. Not that I know what I shall do with them; not that I have any intention of using them for any definite purpose; and, worst of all, after laying them away I forget all about them, and who wrote them, and what they contain-still, from some strong unreasoning impulse I keep them. It is very foolish, I know; but one does so many such foolish things. Bel. What surprises me is that editors and printers do not preserve the manuscript copy by distinguished writers from which their works are printed-not only because of its interest to them personally as autograph, but because they are throwing away what has to others often a high marke value. Besides, it is instructive as well as amusing to see an original manuscript by a great author; it lets one into the private laboratory of his thoughts; it shows how he worked-whether he was facile in his productions or laboured over them. His very changes and corrections would show the growth of the subject in his mind, and the value he put upon expressions and phrases. Fragments are often printed in facsimile to give the character of the handwriting and the alterations of words and phrases; but these only give us a slight glimpse through a crevice into a region which we all would like to have entirely open to "expatiate" in. expatiate" in. There is a reckless wastefulness in throwing away such manuscripts which I cannot understand. Mal. My feeling goes with yours in this matter. I feel as if there were in the manuscripts of an author an almost sensible part of himself-that, so to speak, it is materially possessed by his spirit. There are, indeed, those who claim to possess the power of nervously apprehending the character and quality of an author's mind by holding in their hands his handwriting-I do not mean by a study of the handwriting, but by a mesmeric sense. Whether this be so I will not undertake to say; but independent of this there is a pleasure in looking at the original manuscripts fresh from the mind and hand of the writer. But does any person of sensitive organisation take into his hand an important letter without a certain recognition of its contents before he reads it? Bel. Not to go into the mesmeric question, on which we might not agree, I suppose we should all admit the interest we have in an original manuscript of a celebrated author. Yet almost no printer or publisher preserves them, while they would scrupulously keep any little gift by him which was worthless in itself. When Dickens's things were sold the other day, everybody flocked to the sale to obtain a memorial of him, and the stuffed raven brought a great price. Mal. I know one man who showed me, as a precious possession, two American cents which had been given him by Mr George Peabody, "The great American philanthropist, you know, sir. I was his valet, sir, and I took care of him during a long illness; and when I left him, sir, he gave me these two American coins as a remembrance, sir, you know; "' and he added, "I value them very highly; nothing would induce me to part with them." He seemed a little jealous even of allowing me to see them, lest I should carry them away with me. But there are other things I care more for, and I was not tempted, as I might have been had they been a letter of Shakespeare's. Bel. We were speaking of little meannesses, and agreeing that everybody had them. They curiously lie in some minds close beside great generosities. I have known people who would bestow a thousand pounds on a public charity, and yet grudge and cheapen the wages of their washerwomen. I have known others ready to make a liberal present to a friend, who would stop to haggle over the five per cent discount for ready money; not out of miserliness either. If five per cent or twenty per cent had been added to the original cost, they would not have considered it a moment. But so trifling and miserly a meanness as that which I saw related of Turner, the landscape-painter, the other day, is rarer and more astonishing. The story is told by Charles Julian Young in his journal, and is as follows: Mr Leader, the father of the former M.P. for Westminster, had commissioned Turner to paint him a picture on a given subject, and the price was fixed at three thousand guineas. Turner himself brought the picture when it was finished to the house, and Mr Leader gave him a cheque for the three thousand guineas; on which Turner reminded him that there was still 3s. 6d. due to him for the hackney-coach in which he had brought the picture to Putney. Mal. That is scarcely credible, and yet it is probably true. Turner was a great miser, though at times he could be very generous. Artists are, as a rule, I think, generous as well as extravagant; but there are some striking exceptions. Nollekins, for instance, was a notorious miser. (Do you remember, by the way, our friend who described his cat in the same terms, as "a great miser," meaning mouser?) He was as bad almost as Ellsworth, living in the meanest and wretchedest way, and denying himself the almost absolute necessities of life. Yet he died, it is said, worth nearly £400,000. What can be the pleasure of this? Bel. Chi sa? It is quite unintelligible to me, and all the more unintelligible in these days of paper money. While one's money was all in chinking and glittering gold, there might have been a material pleasure in gloating over it, and handling it, and hearing it ring. It was something positive, and real, and tangible; but to have it only in printed paper or worse, laid away in a bank or invested in shares, with only a record of it in an account-book-this is even more inexplicable. But however it be, no man has ever enough if he is rich, and, generally speaking, the poor are the generous in this world. Some people have a pride in leaving behind them a great sum of money, and no really wealthy man gets anything like its true value out of his fortune. Mal. Some wealthy persons seem to get what is to me a quite unintelligible pleasure out of the thought that they will be able to surprise the world, on their death, by the unsuspected amount of the fortune they leave, and that on 'Change some such conversation as this will take place: "Have you heard that old B. is dead, and has left-what do you think?—now guess." "Well, £100,000." "No, no- £400,000. Think of it£400,000! Who would have thought it?" "No! impossible ! " "I assure you it's a fact." Bel. Do you remember that other old B., who was so rich, and who died the other day; and this conversation occurred about him: "So old B. is dead at last. He must have left a pot of money. Have you an idea what he left?" "Oh yes-Everything !" Mal. Precisely everything! All his life had been given to making money that never made him happy, and did no good to the world, and when he died he left behind him simply everything. Bel. Who was it - some very rich man who was buying some cigars one day. When the tradesman offered him some of an extra quality, and very expensive, "Oh no," he said, "I cannot afford to smoke such costly cigars." "But these are the same cigars that we supply to your son. "Ah, that may be," was his answer. "But he may be able to afford them. He has a rich father; I have not.” Mal. I should have a fancy, were I rich, and with overflowing pockets, to give great personal gifts to friends, or even to strangers who were in need. It would be a delight to me to say-Here are one thousand, ten thousand pounds. Take them, and be happy; and it would be ample reward to me to see them happy. Think of being able to go into Jones's house, knowing that he is torn to pieces with trying to make the two ends meet, and saying-There are ten thousand pounds; be happy, and let us all be happy together. Think of Mrs Jones's look! Would not that be pay enough? I should not like so much to dole out small sums at intervals to repair losses or pay debts. That is like mending or patching old clothes. But I should like best to set persons straight up on their feet; give them an entire new suit of fortune, and make them feel rich at once. That is my notion. Giving to public charities does not tempt me. There is no personality in them. I like persons, but not masses. Besides, public charities half the time are great mistakes. Bel. Yes; and sometimes private charities are equally so. Öne naturally expects gratitude for generous services rendered, but somehow it seems to me that in most cases gratitude for past favours is a good deal mixed up with the anticipation and hope of future favours; and that one act of generosity is considered as a pledge and promise of others to come. Mal. But, at all events, private charities do not seek the remuneration of public applause. I am uncharitable enough to believe that it is precisely this public applause which is but too often the spur to many a public charity. For my own part I cannot help feeling more admiration for secret, spontaneous, unexpected, and even odd private charities, which seek no reward and hide out of sight, than for those which are made with a great flourish before the world. For instance, there was B., who in crossing the English Channel fell in with a lonely old lady, whom he had never seen, and out of pure kindness of heart he helped her to a seat and paid her a number of little attentions, to make her comfortable, and finally, on arrival, called a cab, put her into it, and said good-bye; and shortly afterwards the old lady died, and to the astonishment of B., she left him all her money! Now that is what I call a dear old lady, and I have never failed since then to be polite and attentive to every old lady I meet in my travels. Then, again, there was the artist whom I knew in Florence years ago, who was struggling along through adversity, with no orders, and no hope of any, when one day a notary comes into his studio and informs him that an old gentleman opposite-an Englishman, of course —has just died and left him his entire fortune. "But I didn't know him; it must be a mistake," said A. "But he knew you, and it is no mistake," said the notary; "and though he never spoke to you, he used to watch you, and he informed himself about you, and then måde his will in your favour, and I am come to announce the fact to you." I need not say that from that day forward he had more orders than he could execute. But this is the way of the world. Still another person I know whose ancestor obtained a fortune from an utter stranger simply by opening his pew-door to him and giving him a seat. The stranger had entered the church, and was rather embarrassed where to go. The cold Christian shoulder was turned on him as he went down the aisle, until this gentleman, observing his shyness, rose, opened his pew, and motioned him to take a place in it. The stranger thanked him on leaving the church after service, informed himself of his name by the hymn-book, went home, and left him a fortune by his will. Bel. And served him right. But I know a better story than that where Fortune played a wicked trick on a beautiful woman. She was in the theatre one evening with a friend, and the two ladies sat opposite each other in the front seats of the box. It so happened that an eccentric gentleman, who was in the pit below, saw her, was greatly struck with her grace and beauty, and, after gazing at her for some time, turned to his next neighbour, and asked if he could tell him the name of the lady in box 10, or whatever the number WES. His neighbour, thinking he referred to the other lady, who owned the box, gave that lady's name instead of hers. The gentleman wrote it down in his note-book, and said no more, but went home and made a codicil to his will, leaving a fortune, as he supposed, to her, and giving his reasons for so doing; but unfortunately he inserted the name of the other lady, thinking it hers, and the fortune went to the wrong person. Mal. And I suppose the friend gave her up the fortune? Bel. Oh, you do! Well, you are ingenuous. She took quite a different view of the matter, and declined to believe that he intended to do otherwise than he did do -and that is, to leave the fortun to her. Why should he leave a fortune to one rather than to the other? Both were strangers to him. Mal. The old gentleman,-I sup pose he must have been an old gentleman-young gentlemen don't do such things,-must always have carried about with him a sort of covert amused sense of the joke he was playing, and laughed to himself over the astonishment that his will would create. I think I can quite understand the secret fun that he must have had out of it something like having a hidden jack-in-the-box in one's pocket for the children at home. Bel. It is always well to be beautiful if one can; and if one has not beauty, good manners and kindliness of acts are always in one's power. We lose nothing by being friendly, and we gain so much. Some persons seem to pride themselves on brusquerie and what they call frankness - which is often but another name for coarseness and inconsiderateness. A pleasant word may breed a happy feeling, and a cold word chill a tender sentiment. Truth is a great virtue ; but love is a greater. Those people who are always telling you what they call the truth, are generally very offensive, and they rarely do you any good. H—. Mal. You remind me of old Mrs M and our friend H After making a very rude and disagreeable speech to him, when he was first presented to her, she added, as a sort of excuse; "You see, I am a downright person; and I must speak the truth." "Oh, well," he answered, "I, on the contrary, am a very upright person; so it does not matter much." Bel. I should have liked to see her face when this was said. Mal. What a strange thing chance is what wonderful things are born of pure accident! How near we come to happiness, how close we touch to fortune, without knowing it! How nearly we graze Death, and are all the while per |