most of these objects were makeshift kickshaws. His present passion was for books and the crowded shelves of the oak case with its glass doors testified to his interest in this regard, but the cigarette-pictures and postage-stamps, accumulations of an earlier day, reminded him of space and distance and foreign climes. It was still pleasant, occasionally, to turn the leaves of his old—book, to examine the orange sun of Japan; the dragon of China, or the eagle of Germany, and wonder how soon he would be able to visit these places. The cigarette-pictures and the coloured cardboards given away with Newsboy plug tobacco, which he had paid for in the shop of a small local fruit and tobacco merchant at the rate of five cents a card until he possessed nearly the entire collection (he owned at least ninety-three out of a possible hundred) were now arranged in neat rows around the walls or, tied in orderly bundles, reposed in a drawer of his desk. These were the days of tights and although it is certain that some actresses of the period wore dresses, the manufacturers of the delectable plugs and of Sweet Caporal cigarettes apparently held a theory that chewers and smokers would, in the long run, find unsheathed limbs more satisfactory to contemplate than skirts. There were portraits of Della Fox, with her own peculiar curl, as Mataya, Crown Prince of Siam, in Wang, saucy Marie Tempest in The Fencing Master, Cissie Fitzgerald, with her celebrated wink, lift
