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Rh upon our distinguished framed patron, gave me the odd feeling that somehow the shock to my father was thereby lessened. The stories of what Dufferin and his wife had done for Tom, Dick and Harry, for their wives and their children or their dogs, told to me beside our House of Lords' bar that opening day proved good for business. I had come to the colony somewhat overburdened with distinguished relations of heavy calibre who, to extend the simile a little, neither now nor later, ever fired a single shot on my behalf. The mere inertia of their names, indeed, weighed down my subsequent New York days with the natural suspicion that a young man so well born must have done something dreadful at home to be forced to pose to artists for a living. Why, otherwise, should he suffer exile in the underworld of a city across the seas? Lord Dufferin's photograph augustly throned above the Hub luncheon counter, certainly, however, fired a shot on my behalf, making the cash-registers clink frequently. His effect on our bar-trade, innocently uncalculated, deserves this word of gratitude.

There were three white-coated bar-tenders in the House of Lords, Jimmy Martin, their principal, in charge of it; a couple managed the House of Commons trade in the lower bar, down a step and through an arch; and here, too, were tables and chairs, rooms curtained off, and other facilities for back-street customers who wanted to sit and talk over their beer. Between the two, a door in the wall led to my own quarters upstairs by means of a private staircase. Sharp on eleven we closed our doors that first night, and proceeded, with Jimmy Martin's aid, to open the cash-registers and count up our takings. There was just under 250 dollars, or £50 in English money. Then, having said good night to our chief bar-tender, we spent a happy hour making calculations for the future. The first day, of course, could not be taken as an average, but prospects, we assured ourselves, were brilliant. Later we were to discover things that were to prove a source of endless trouble and vexation of spirit to us both--daily worries we both learned to dread. At the moment, Rh