Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 2.djvu/379

 more than you deserve." The old gentleman did not reply a word, but ate his luncheon with perfect placidity. The visitor thought it a marvellous example of discipline. When he returned home he tried the experiment on his old gentleman. His master, after looking at him in amazement for some minutes, rang the bell. "Let this fellow," he said, "be stript of my livery, and kicked out of the house; he shall have no character from me, unless I write one on his back with a horsewhip." The dismissed valet rushed to his friend to complain that the experiment had not worked as well as he expected. "Ah!" said his friend, "perhaps I forgot to mention to you that my master is stone deaf."

A few more extracts from my letters home will fix the march of events.

, August 1st. Michie introduced me to the doctor who restored his voice, Morell Mackenzie, and I have been visiting him daily. He talks to me for twenty minutes or more of Irish or Australian politics, and not a word about my malady. He says the vocal chords are relaxed, and recommends a season at Aix-les-Bains, where he will give me a letter to the most experienced doctor. I will go there before winter, and after a month there I will probably go to Mentone.

, October, 1874. My month of Aix has done my voice little service, but there is some chance of a change coming after I have settled down here. I propose remaining on this coast during the winter.

, January 10, 1875. I fear I am growing an old fogey. There was a family stopping here recently, consisting of the grandson and granddaughter of Lord Thurlow, Chancellor under George III. The lady asked me if I knew her grandfather. I replied that I did not, but that the fault was not mine, as he had placed an impediment in the way of our acquaintance, by dying before I was born.

Having seen the worst that winter can do here, I may confidently affirm that this climate is not so good as that of Hawthorn. And what renders it worse is that the houses are built as if there was no winter. Not only are there no window-shutters to windows that close imperfectly, but there are often no curtains, except a slip of white muslin. In villas built for English people, with all the modern comforts, it is different, but in a hotel a change to the Governor Hotham, Hawthorn, would be a change for the better.

There is an English family stopping in the same hotel with me who have been travelling for some years, and who speak of all the places they have visited by their foreign names. They have come from "la Belgique" last, by way of "la Suisse," and propose to visit "l'Autriche" in the summer. I suggested that there was an interesting island lying north of "la France," which might occupy some leisure months agreeably, "l'Angleterre!" There was an election in Cannes last month, which