Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 2.djvu/273

 ; but most likely you will be gone out So it would be best to make an appointment to meet here at dinner, pay at six o'clock, when a man's days work is or ought to be one! Name any day you like, only let it be soon, if yoo case, for I am impatient to see you.—Affectionately yours, .

In all England, and in all Ireland afterwards, there was but one woman each to welcome me with the frank and cordial salute, and I rejoice always to remember that Mrs. Carlyle was one of the two who so honoured me. Men of many moods and many opinions found their way to me daily.

A few fragments picked from my diary of that day will illustrate the life in which I found myself immersed in London, better than a formal narrative:—

"Dined at the Stafford dub with Cashel Hoey, and met Blake, the new member for Waterford, a Young Irelander a little out of date. Blake complained of the dreadful monotony of fife in Parliament for men who take little or no share in debate. 'Yon want a little society,' I said. 'Woe is me; I did want it,' he replied, 'and I got it; but the remedy is worse than the disease. I was introduced lately to a family of a mother and two daughters, of distinction, who had seen better days. On my second visit the mother inquired if my horses were in town: "the poor girls who used to ride dairy when we lived in Devonshire, are pining for a little exercise." My horses not being in town (nor in the country) I had three from a livery stable twice a week for a month, at a cost of thirty pounds. We naturally grew more familiar, and the old lady asked me one evening whether I had fruit or flowers sent over from my Irish estate. No, I hadn't; but there was a garden lying between the Strand and Oxford Street where, for five guineas a week, the deficiency was made up. The young ladies were musicians, and enabled me occasionally to enjoy Mozart and Beethoven. "The dear girls play for you," observed the old lady; "but not the latest music—they have never heard the new opera which London is crazed about" They did hear it, of course, and a box, bouquets, and ices seriously swelled my weekly commissariat account By and by a dinner at Richmond;