show only the front steps, one window, the door, and perhaps the bronze tablet at the left, which the London Society has placed there. I must get into the Square and utilize the trees and fence as a foreground, if my sketch was to convey any idea of this most delightful of Thackeray's later homes.

So I rang the door bell - the same, no doubt, Mr. Thackeray had handled hundreds of times, for there have been few changes since he left it fifty years ago— nothing but a touch of paint, perhaps, and the usual repairs.

In answer a head was thrust up from the area.

"My lady 'as gone to Hascot, sir-nobody else at 'ome."

"Could I get the key of the Square?" etc., and then there followed the customary statement -one which I knew now by rote of my nationality, profession, purpose, and

blameless character.

No, she didn't know where her lady kept the key. The gardener who worked in the Square, and who could be found in the church at the end of the street — I could see it right before me - had a key - I might get it "off 'im."

I knew all about the church. Mr. Thackeray's daughter, Lady Ritchie, to whom he dictated much of "The Newcomes," had described it clearly in one of her introductions to her father's published works. The volume was then in my cab. I had brought it along to make sure of the identical house in which he had lived.

"Our old house was the fourth," she says, "counting the end house from the corner by the church in Onslow Square, the church being on the left hand, and the avenue of old

trees running in front of our drawing-room windows. I used to look up from the avenue and see my father's head bending over his work in the study window, which was over the drawing-room."

Neither the gardener nor the sexton materialized under Evins's still hunt, and I rang the bell of the door one house below.

This time Jeames Yellowplush appeared.

"Notat'ome" (all one word); "me Leddy 'as gone to Hascot."

I was feeling in my pocket among my loose shillings for half a crown, in order to continue the conversation properly when the first housemaid's head was again thrust out of the areaway of No. 36. I discovered later that Evins had been indulging in a highly coloured description of my morals and attainments.

"The cook 'as found it, sir. Bring it back, please, when you are through."

"Most estimable person, Evins," I said, diving into my open pocket-when is it ever closed abroad! "Give her this," and I inserted the key and swung back the gate.

I had now a foreground of tree-trunks, clumps of bushes, a flat pavement splashed with shadows, and behind and through the iron bars of the ugly, armed-to-the-teeth fence - especially through the wide opening made by the gate a view of all of the house frontways, and most of it down and up as far as the second story.

But even a closed and locked public park lacks privacy when you are working under a white umbrella. The "prams" began to gather, slowly and solemnly as a flock

of turkeys gather - a good simile this, if you have ever seen turkeys parade - pushed by the comely nursemaids in caps with wide strings that nigh swept the ground, little pink heads nestling inside, some asleep, some not-most of them not. Stiff-starched-frocked-children came next. Some four years old, some five- among them a boy of sixone of those bare-headed, bare-legged, rosy-cheeked, lovable, huggable, and spankable little beggars that you want to take in your arms at sight.

He squared himself as he looked on, his wee chubby hands hooked behind his plump back-and remarked gravely: "My word, but that's like it!"

Had he been seventy, standing with his back to a fire in a London Club, he could not have been more authoritative or self-possessed.

"Don't bother the gentleman," this from Maria Janeher name must have been Maria Jane.

"He isn't bothering me; come around on the other side so you can see how I do it."

"You come on Marster 'Arry, or I'll ———”

"Where does he live?" I interrupted, addressing the flowing streamers.

"Leave the little fellow with me I'll take care of him.'

Evins now joined us; he had already backed the taxi out of the line of my perspective, and upon seeing the crowd had sidled up to lend a hand.

The boy took him in with a single glance.

"I wouldn't go round in one of those motor cars," he said,

"if I were you, that does nothing but eat up the tuppences whether you ride or not - you can hear it now. First thing you know it's ten bob."

"Harry! come here this minute!" rang out a voice from a second story-window opposite.

The little fellow looked up, and a shadow fell across his face.

"I'll have to cut it. Nurse don't count, and half the time I don't mind, but that's my aunt" — his voice rising in emphasis - "Good-bye; thanks awfully," and he was gone.

He was the grandson, no doubt, of one of those little fellows whom Thackeray loved to pat on the head. Instantly my memory went back to Charles Dickens's tribute.

"He had a particular delight in boys," he says, “and an excellent way with them. I remember his once asking me, with fantastic gravity, when he had been to Eton where my eldest son then was, whether I felt as he did in regard to never seeing a boy without wanting instantly to give him a sovereign? I thought of this when I looked down into his grave after he was laid there, for I looked down into it over the shoulders of a boy to whom he had been kind."

For the differences between the two great authors had been healed a short time before Thackeray's death. They had not spoken for some years, because of a criticism on Mr. Thackeray made by Mr. Edmund Yates, which Mr. Thackeray resented, the Garrick Club sustaining him. The whole sad correspondence is before me as I write. All of his letters to Yates, to Mr. Dickens, and to the Committee

of the Garrick, are dated from this same No. 36 Onslow Square, and all of them, no doubt, penned in that same room over the porch where Hodder fifty years ago took his dictation. And, too, within fifty feet of the window from which Harry's determined and ever-to-be obeyed aunt called her small nephew to her side.