CHAPTER XXX.
SOCIAL AND RURAL.
In such a record of personals as this, it is fortunate both for the author and his readers if he has never been one of those literary lions who are merely histrionic creatures of society.

It is a privilege not to have to reproduce the common small-talk of ball-rooms and garden-parties, nor to be obliged to make the most, after a semi-libellous fashion, of after-dinner scandals, or gossip in the smoking-room.

Not having heard them he cannot well report racy anecdotes, whereof sundry memoirs have been too full.

In the happier condition of a partial anchoritism I have escaped clubs, London seasons, and country mansion gaieties; as a youth and to middle manhood a stammerer, I would not willingly court the humiliations of chattering society, and thereafter, up to to-day, a domestic country gentleman of literary pursuits, I have avoided (as far as possible) fashionable gatherings of every sort, social, theological, or political.

Not that I abjure--it is far otherwise--any kind of genial intercourse with my fellows; a few friends are my delight, but I never would belong to a club, though sometimes specially tempted by indulgence as to terms (more than once having been offered a free and immediate entry), nor to any society or charity that expected of me personal publicity or active service,--albeit, once, and once only, I had to figure as a reluctant chairman at Exeter Hall.