“Lady Donoughmore, however, said that she had boundless experience of the natural poetry in the Irish peasantry. On receiving a shilling, an old woman said to her, ‘May ivery hair of yer honour’s head become a torch to guide yer sowle to heaven.’”
“June 19.—Dined with Lady Airlie, only meeting Mrs. Duncan Stewart and Lady De Clifford. Mrs. Stewart talked much of Mr. Carlyle.
“‘Mr. Hannay knew Carlyle very well, and often went to see him, but it was in his poorer days. One day when Mr. Hannay went to the house, he saw two gold sovereigns lying exposed in a little vase on the chimney-piece. He asked Carlyle what they were for. Carlyle looked—for him—embarrassed, but gave no definite answer. “Well, now, my dear fellow,” said Mr. Hannay, “neither you nor I are quite in a position to play ducks and drakes with sovereigns: what are these for?”—“Well,” said Carlyle, “the fact is, Leigh Hunt likes better to find them there than that I should give them to him.”
“‘I was sitting once by Mr. Bourton,’ said Mrs. Stewart, ‘and he was talking of Leigh Hunt. He said, “He is the only person, I believe, who, if he saw something yellow in the distance, and was told it was a buttercup, would be disappointed if he found it was only a guinea.”’
“Lady Airlie said she had known Leigh Hunt very well when she was a child. He had taken her into the garden, and talked to her, and asked her what she thought heaven would be like, and then he said, ‘I will tell you what I think it will be like: I think it will be like a most beautiful arbour all hung with creepers and flowers, and that one will be able to sit in it all day, and read a most interesting novel.’
“Of her early acquaintance with Washington Irving, Mrs. Stewart said, ‘It was at Havre. My guardian was consul there. People used to say, “Where is Harriet gone?” and he answered, “Oh, she is down at the end of the terrace, busy making Washington Irving believe he is God Almighty, and he is busy believing it.”’
“Mrs. Stewart told of Miss Ruth Paget, one of many sisters, who went down at night to the kitchen to let out her little dog for a minute, and found her brother Marco, who was a midshipman in the Mediterranean, sitting on the kitchen-table, swinging his legs, but pouring with wet. She said, ‘Good heavens, Marco, how did you come here?’ He looked at her, and only said, ‘Do not tell any one you have seen me.” She looked round for an instant to see if any one was coming, and when she turned, he was gone.
“Ghastly pale, she went upstairs. Her sisters said, ‘You look as if you had seen a ghost,’ and they tried to insist on her telling them what had happened to her. She put them off by complaining of headache and faintness; but she was terribly anxious.
“Three months afterwards she heard her brother was coming home, then that he had arrived at Portsmouth, then he came. The first time she was alone with him she said, ‘I must tell you something,’ and she told him how he had appeared to her, and then she said, ‘I wrote it down at the time, and here is the paper, with the date and the hour.’
“He looked shocked at first, and then said, that at that very moment, being absent from his ship without leave, his boat had been upset, and he had been as nearly drowned as possible—in fact, when he was taken out of the water, life was supposed to be extinct. His first fear on recovering was that his absence without leave would be detected by his accident and become his ruin, and his first words were, ‘Do not tell any one you have seen me.’”