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morbidly anxious to throw who was referred to as "that ungainly youth Lord Larkington.' The Speaker, Mr Denison, was then getting old and crusty, and he was furious. But Captain Gosset's unbounded popularity in the House saved the situation, and the crisis was averted.

away his natural advantages! His movements attracted the more notice because he wore creaking shoes. The point of my story is Disraeli's mot about him. After studying him for some time he remarked, "I thought an Irish Member was always either a gentleman or a blackguard, but he's neither!"

And Disraeli's inquiry about another Irish Member may be worth adding here. Joseph Biggar, the Parnellite obstructionist, had marked peculiarities both of figure and gait. When Disraeli first saw him walking up the floor of the House, he looked at him intently through his eye-glass,

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and, by the way, he always held his eye glass with his thumb and first finger wrapped round it, as if it were an unfamiliar sort of optical instrument, and then, turning to a friend behind him, he asked, "What is that?"

Before I dismiss the subject of "Gosset's room," I may mention that an indiscretion committed there one night at this time very nearly brought it to an untimely end. In Gosset's absence a number of the habitués held an impromptu concert, and owing to some one's "telling tales out of school," Grenville Murray got hold of the story, and a thinly veiled notice of it appeared in 'The Queen's Messenger,' a short lived racy paper of that period. The report gave what purported to be the programme, which, I remember, included a song by the late Duke of Devonshire,

To that popularity it was that he afterwards owed his promotion. Lord Charles Russell, the then Sergeant-atArms, had been appointed by the Prime Minister, and when he resigned in 1875 it was assumed that the office was in Mr Disraeli's gift, and that, as a matter of course, the Assistant Sergeant-at-Arms would succeed to it. It transpired, however, that in sanctioning Lord Charles's appointment, the Queen had directed that future vacancies were to be reported to the Sovereign, with whom personally the patronage rested. And it was rumoured that her Majesty intended to confer the office upon the gentleman who at present holds it. But 80 strong was the feeling of the House on the the subject that Disraeli went to Osborne to lay the matter before the Queen. On the day of his return I went down to the Lobby to seek for news. But the Lobby was empty, and I was driven to apply to the principal doorkeeper. The subordinate officials of the House have sometimes to act "chuckers-out," but never before, perhaps, did a doorkeeper act as "chucker-in." Indeed, his passing a stranger into the House, save by express orders,

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might in ordinary circumstances have cost him his place. But the moment he recognised me, he seized hold of me, and rushed me in under the gallery; and I was just in time to see the Premier rise to answer a question on the subject.

He began by stating, with great solemnity and in his grandest manner, that "the appointment of Sergeant-atArms was in the gift, and entirely in the gift, of her Majesty the Queen, and there is no person, whatever his position in the House, who has any influence whatever in that appointment." Here he paused, and his words were received in lugubrious silence, as indicating seemingly the failure of his visit to Osborne. Then he added, "But I have been commanded by the Queen to state that, being aware of the strong, not to say unanimous, feeling of the House on the subject, her Majesty, as a gracious favour to her faithful Commons, has been pleased to appoint to the office the gentleman who is at present Assistant Sergeant-at-Arms." The tumultuous cheering which followed, from every corner of a crowded House, was a striking testimony to Gosset's popularity.

My relations with him and

Lord Charles Russell made me punctilious in all my dealings with their subordinates. With them I played no tricks. But the House of Lords officials were fair game. On the last evening of the great historic debate on the Irish Church, an old friend of my father's, whom I met at dinner, spoke of his fruitless efforts to get an order for the Peers' Gallery, and declared that he would give £100 for a seat. When we rose from dinner I invited him to accompany me to Westminster. I passed with him through the lobbies, and up to the gallery door; and there, with the lordliest manner I could assume, I told the doorkeeper that I should be extremely obliged if he could find a seat for my friend. Whom he took me for I never knew, but he responded effusively, and begged me to bring him in. Later on I noticed that he and a colleague were evidently discussing me, trying no doubt to make out who I was. So I thought it better to skip," as the Yankees say; but my friend kept his seat till the House rose. In passing out, I thanked the doorkeeper in a patronising tone for his courtesy, and expressed my regret that I could not stay longer myself. I should add, perhaps, that I never got that £100!

(To be continued.)

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RIZA BEY.

FOR several years of promiscuous travel Riza Bey Bairam Zade was my companion; and it was my promise to him that if ever I wrote a book of our journeys I would speak well of his people. Now I am confronted with this difficulty, that it is impossible to describe the Gheg Albanians as they would wish, and be strictly truthful. To draw a picture of the Northern "Arnauds," as they see themselves, clad in a puritan though prismatic robe of virtue, would be easy but not honest. They reminded me constantly of children with the highest code of honour, but an even more absorbing love of sweets. Their acknowledged chivalry and courage put the critic who pays some attention to their equally undoubted frailties in a false position. Where courage and romance are so conspicuous to noble minds, why hunt for little faults? they ask-and on the whole I am inclined to agree with them, and so I shall content myself with writing of Riza and his people (and more particularly of him) as I have seen them, eating, sleeping, and marching, with only that suppression of truth that is excusable in speaking of friends. For myself the virtues of Riza always shone resplendently, and their alloy of vanity was only a perpetual amusement. The master who weighs small derelictions of duty, or even etiquette,

against honesty, affection that is often outspoken, and independence, should choose & British butler and not an Albanian kavas for his servant. If upon occasions our tempers were worn thin by vexations in remote places, amongst fickle and noisy Arabs, are there any wanderers who under these circumstances have not given way to an acrimonious spirit? Our faults like our forgiveness were mutual. Riza had a cheerful creed, shared I believe by tourists and by trippers in general, though not articulately expressed, that "God does not look at error by the way,"—i.e., that travelling and piety_are an incompatible pair. This formula, "Allah yolda kussur bakmaz," was constantly his grace as he shared my breakfast of scented mastik before marching out from a hovel into the darkness that comes before the bitter desert dawn. In his dealings with Arabs he held also, and acted on, the same conviction as that which dominated an old English servant of my youth in her dealings with foreigners. "I shout and shout," she used to say, "but they will not understand." Riza believed firmly that in dealing with people whose tongue he could not speak, hullabaloo was, if not essential to, yet a great ally of, lucidity. Here is a typical scene that recurred in various forms in our march from

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Riza (rising). Hasten, Bey Effendi. Bend down, enter in, hide thyself. Behold here comes the Lord of the Eggs. Effendi (mutinously). Curse the Lord of the Eggs! I will not enter in. It is hot and it smells.

Riza (without much conviction). Brief be thy sojourn, my dear. Upon my head be this business.

[Effendi enters reluctantly. The voice of Riza rises in abominable Arabic addressing the Lord of the Eggs, an ancient and decrepit Arab.

Riza (with devotion). Be He exalted! If God is One, give me these eggs.

[Arab, convicted apparently of blasphemy if he drives a hard bargain, hands over the eggs, then makes a snatch at them. Riza, exasperated by this treachery, returns to Turkish and a full-blooded equivalent in that language of "Oh, ancient damnation, thou most wicked fiend.” Indescribable clamour, into which the Effendi bursts from the suffocation of his den, and is ushered much ceremony by Riza, with to nowhere in particular with the result that the extra farthing has to be paid. The evening meal is somewhat tinged with a sense of defeat as the expensive eggs are swallowed.

Negotiations did not always end pacifically. At one of the holy cities of Mesopotamia our supply of small coins had run short, on the journey which we had shared with a number of corpses as travelling companions. While I was dressing, Riza superintended the carrying of our luggage from the room we shared in the pilgrim - packed khan down into the great courtyard which was filled with stinging chaff, blown by a wild dawn wind. As I walked down the steps my eyes were greeted by the sight of my mountaineer rolling a Persian porter like a streak of dough upon the ground, while the friends of the victim stood Be He round lamenting and threatening. Much incensed, I told

Riza. O my soul! Behold thy eggs. For four eggs shalt thou have a farthing. A goodly price!

Arab. Nay, but two farthings.

Riza. Oh, thou wild one!

God not One?

Arab. God is One. exalted.

Is

Riza to follow me, and when we had climbed into our carriage reminded him that the place was holy and no spot for brawling. "The place," he answered, "without doubt is holy. But the people are otherwise. Having no coin, I gave the porter some stockings you no longer require. The

refused them. An honourable gift, truly, to him of naked calves!" Knowing the condition of those "stockings that I no longer required," I felt some sympathy with the Persian.

Under no circumstances is a kavas a person to be trifled with, and least of all where his master is concerned. The relationship of the foreigner to his guard is curious, and, as far as modern Europe is concerned, anomalous. The deep respect into which a feeling of affection, and, after long service, almost of familiarity enters, might have been characteristic of a dependent towards his feudal lord, but with the exception of old family servants the present day has nothing to show like it. The kavas is half a drill- sergeant, awaiting the commands of his superior, which he will see enforced, and half a secretary of state. In either capacity he is a most responsible man, and rarely falls short of his duty. From this generalisation I would, however, with a certain reluctance, exclude the Tosks, or Southern Albanians, who, it must be admitted, contribute enormously to the ranks of the kavases of the embassies and banks. These

Southerners, though many of them are very worthy, trade upon the reputation of their ancestors, and have not the moral or religious code which is still part of the Northern and Gheg character. For the blood brotherhood, the stringent vendetta, and even the bessa the word of honour that binds a man with his life to its fulfilment, have fallen into disuse among the Tosks, while in the North they are still rigidly adhered to. In the extreme North, it is true, it is not considered dishonourable to pay a poor man to exact the retribution of blood on behalf of the person interested. I remember once discussing this question with a friend of mine, a highly civilised gentleman who was used to call on me in a frock coat and discourse in beautiful Italian, which was almost his mother-tongue, on the galleries of Rome and Florence. "The exigencies of to-day," he said, "of commerce and travel, and the fact that I do not know the mountains, make these things" (ie., an effective ambush) "impossible for me. But I am still Albanian, and the blood of my family is as dear to me as it was to my ancestors, so I do my best." In the case

of which he spoke, he seemed to have done his best successfully, and with a moderate economy.

Riza's father had died in his bed, most unexpectedly, but the jak, or blood - feud, has left him the last representative of what was once a well-to-do

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