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On each plate was folded a large damask napkin, on the top of which rested a bouquet of roses and ferns, tied with a broad white satin ribbon, on one end of which, running bias, were painted the colors of the Union. On the other end was an etching in black and white of the White House and surrounding shrubbery, while underneath, in gilt lettering, was "Jan. 14, 1886."

The Inn of the Parrot is quaint with its reversed lettering. The Road to Montreuil is warm in colour and finely handled. How many have realised the charm of the rear view of Santa Maria Salute? It is one of the most interesting of Brangwyn's Venetian etchings. His vision of Saint Sophia, Constantinople, has the mystic quality we find in the Dutchman Bauer's plates.

Ranged about the room were a dozen or more rawhide-seated chairs, each standing stiffly at "attention" against the wall scrupulously equidistant order. Glaring at me in crude lettering from a broad rafter facing the door was the grimly patriotic sentiment, "Libertad o Muerte." From the headpost of the cot dangled a sword and two pistols.

He who cared for the grave had apparently been troubled only to keep the stone free from dirt the lettering he must have known by heart. At length Bard made out this inscription: HERE SLEEPS

But to him it was as a palimpsest of surpassing value and interest, which, sorely difficult to decipher, held its treasures close from the profane and the ignorant, but tempted and rewarded the scholar, like the lettering on a Pompeian nuptial ring, the cyphers on a funeral urn of Herculaneum. "After all, my lot might be worse than it is," he thought with philosophy.

The inscription itself is in a style of lettering unlike that used in the time of James I., and the letters are believed not to belong to an earlier period than that of the Georges. This bluish-black stone has been recently gazed at by many pilgrims from this side of the ocean, with something of the feeling with which the Moslems regard the Kaaba at Mecca.

Soon, to my amazement, I uncovered a string of ten pearls, of a size and lustrous purity that bespoke a high value even to my untutored eyes. Also there was a little seal of red chalcedony, with the antlered head of a deer and some scroll of lettering engraved upon it; but there was not one scrap of writing to explain to me the reason of these gifts.

I could not follow with my eyes the geometrical figures drawn on the blackboard, and my only means of getting a clear idea of them was to make them on a cushion with straight and curved wires, which had bent and pointed ends. I had to carry in my mind, as Mr. Keith says in his report, the lettering of the figures, the hypothesis and conclusion, the construction and the process of the proof.

I did not remember it, and from the floor could not decipher the pale lettering on the back, so I went to the smoking-room and called Tessie. She came in from the studio and climbed up to reach the book. "What is it?" I asked. "The King in Yellow." I was dumfounded. Who had placed it there? How came it in my rooms?

Why the Germans should have kept their Gothic lettering and peculiar script, when all other European nations, save the Russian, have adopted the Roman, it is difficult to say, unless it be with them a matter of national pride. And they have been unnational in so many things!