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150 himself a most worthy and good-hearted man and a profound Shakespearian scholar, and his wife whom my wife knew, was a most estimable lady. They had one son employed in the Bank, and another out in India in the Bombay Presidency, and they had a daughter at home, a good-hearted young lady. They had taken a fine and spacious house, not far from the Kensington Gardens. We came over from Paris to London early in October. My two elder girls rejoined their school which had opened after the summer vacation, and I also put my young boy to a Kindergarten school. And early in November I started on my continental tour from which I did not return to London till the middle of December. An account of that tour will be found in another Chapter.

On the 15th December, as I have said before, I returned after my continental tour to London. The public mind was then greatly exercised about two sensational but dirty cases. One was the case of Lord Colin Campbell, full details of which were then appearing in the daily papers. This was the second case of the kind, the first being that of Sir Charles Dilke. Why are the accounts of the divorce court published for the edification of the public? All English Courts are public courts to be sure,—but surely an exception might be made in the case of divorce courts. No sensational novel of the day is so greedily devoured by the public as were proceedings in these cases, and no reprehensible French novel can be more disgusting than some of the details which came out in these cases.