- diately after glancing at the letters, a certain sense
of the incongruity of things struck us forcibly. Then we were handed another letter from the famous cricketer, Mr. W. G. Grace, complimenting Mr. Baker on his old round-arm bowling! "Maybe you would hardly think it," remarked our host, "to look at me now, a gray old man, but I was a great cricketer once. Why, I bowled out at the very first ball the late Roger Iddison, when he was captain of the All-England Eleven." We felt inclined just then to say that we could believe anything! So we accepted the statement as a matter of course that the French (which one we were not told) Ambassador had been to see Mr. Baker. After this we were allowed to gaze upon and even handle his treasure of treasures, namely, the snuff-box of "Bobbie Burns, the great Scotch poet," in the shape of a small horn with a silver lid. This, we were assured, had once belonged to Burns. It may have done; anyway, on the lid is inscribed "R. B., 1768," and it looks that age.
Mr. Baker informed us that though he kept only a very small and unpretending sweet-shop, his mother's ancestors were titled, "but really the deed makes the nobleman and I make excellent sweets. I send them everywhere," he said; "you must try them," whereupon he presented us with a tin box full of his "Noted Bull's-Eyes." Let me here state that the bull's-eyes proved to be most excellent. I make this statement on the best authority, having given them to my children, and children should be the best judges of such luxuries, and they pronounced
