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164 me feel such a poor pen-and-ink fellow, such a worm, such a political agent!

With this discordant note still vibrating we go in to breakfast; and then, dear Vanity, he bucks with a quiet, stubborn determination that would fill an American editor or an Under-Secretary of State with despair. He belongs to the twelve-foot-tiger school; so, perhaps, he can't help it.

If the whole truth were told, he is a warm-hearted, generous, plucky fellow, with boundless vanity and a romantic vein of maudlin sentiment that seduces him from time to time into the gin-and-water corner of an Indian newspaper. Under the heading of "The Forest Ranger's Lament," or "The Old Shikarry's Tale of Woe," he hiccoughs his column of sickly lines (with St. Vitus's dance in their feet), and then I believe he feels better. I have seen him do it; I have caught him in criminal conversation with a pen and a sheet of paper; a bottle at hand—

In appearance he is a very short man with