“It is experiences such as these that keep a man modest,” said Sir Ernest. The ladies had forgotten his name and the object of his expedition, which was in the Antarctic and not the Arctic region—a distinction of minor importance to the general public perhaps.
In the days of the Boer War the children of an illustrious couple who were touring the world fell, childlike, to discussing the presents their parents would bring home for them.
“I know what I want,” said the youngest of them. “I want old Kruger’s hat and whiskers, and I believe papa will bring them to me, because I want to send them to Madame Tussaud’s.”
Mr. Cyril Maude, the actor, was taken to the Exhibition when a small boy, and it is recorded of him that the visit inspired him with the determination to become an actor. If that were so, then we may congratulate ourselves.
Some years ago a lady wrote to say that when scolding her child for being naughty, and impressing upon her that bad little girls would not go to heaven, the child naïvely replied, “Well, mother, I can’t expect to go everywhere, but I’ve been to Madame Tussaud’s.”
CHAPTER XLII
The lure of horrors—Beginnings of the “Dead Room”—Sir Thomas Lawrence, P.R.A., sketches a suicide—Burke and Hare—Fieschi’s infernal machine—Greenacre—Executions in Public—“Free at last!”