“Two days later I went to Edwardstone, a delightful old place near Sudbury, one of the many of which Bishop Hare’s wife was the heiress, and where numbers of her Alston ancestors are buried; and then I was two days at the familiar Campsea Ashe, where, as its beloved owner says, ‘If you do not know how to enjoy yourself, you must be made to.’ Mr. Astor was there, and told me that the origin of the American expression ‘a chestnut’ lay in the rivalries of the theatres in Chestnut Street and Walnut Street in New York. An expected star who came out in the Walnut Street Theatre could only do things which had already appeared in Chestnut Street, and when the young men saw them they said, ‘That’s a chestnut,’ and it passed into a proverb.
“Mr. Astor was very funny about a man who was always late for everything, and who one day, when he was expecting a party to stay with him, rushed home after all his guests had arrived. On the stairs he met a man, with whom, to make up for lost time, he shook hands most warmly, saying, ‘Oh, my dear fellow, I’m so glad to see you; do make yourself quite at home and enjoy yourself.’ It was a burglar, very much surprised at his cordial reception, for he was carrying off all the valuables. He also said—
“‘You know Dr. N. and his wonderful tales. I heard him tell of going to shoot chamois. He had sighted one a long way off and fired. He said the chamois never moved, but put up one foot and scratched its ear. He fired again, and it put up the other foot and scratched the other ear. Then he fired again and killed it. When he came up to it, he found that each of the first shots had touched an ear. The chamois had only thought, “Oh, these damned fleas!”
“‘Then Dr. N. told of how he went after bears. A grisly came and he shot him: then another grisly came and he shot him: then a third grisly came.... “If you say you shot him” said a man present, “I’ll throw this bottle at your head.” “Well, the third grisly escaped,” calmly said Dr. N.’
“The last two days of my absence I spent with the Grant Duffs at Lexden Manor, where Sir Mountstuart was most agreeable and anecdotive, and whence Lady Grant Duff drove me to see the old gateway of Layer Marney, beautiful in its great decay.”
“London, Nov. 29.—Luncheon with the C.’s, who had dined last night with the Wilberforces. Canon Wilberforce told them of a missionary establishment in Africa, a most admirable mission, which had been most effective, had converted the whole neighbourhood, built church and schools, and done no end of good.
“Then, in some crisis or other, the mission was swept away and the place was long left desolate.
“After many years the missionaries returned, expecting to find everything destroyed. But, to their astonishment, they found the church-bell going and the buildings in perfect repair, all looking as before—only there was a difference. They could not make out what it was.
“So they went to the chief and asked him about it. ‘Well, yes,’ he said, ‘there is one little difference. You used to tell us that God was love and always watching over us for good, while the devil was always seeking to destroy us; so we felt it was the devil we had better propitiate, and it is the devil we have worshipped ever since you left, and—it has most completely answered.’”
“Dec. 22, 1899.—I am just at the end of a long retreat in a sort of private hospital, where I have been for the sake of the ‘Nauheim cure’ for an affection of the heart, from which I have now suffered for more than a year, and which was greatly increased by the anxieties and sorrows of last August. I am better since my ‘cure,’ but am seldom quite well now, and, as I read in a novel, ‘my dinner is always either a satisfying fact or a poignant memory,’ and generally the latter. The South African war news is casting a shadow over the closing year, and the death of Lady Salisbury has been a real sorrow—an ever-kind friend since my early boyhood. I went to the memorial service for her in the Chapel-Royal—a beautiful service, but a very sad one to many.”