"At least," she explained, "I _call_ it an album.
I ever longed to possess one, adorned with remarks--moral or sprightly, as the case might be--by the Choicest Spirits of our Age, and signed in their own illustrious handwriting.

But in my sphere of life these were hard--nay, impossible--to come by; so in my dilemma I had recourse to subterfuge, and having studied the career of this or that eminent man, I chose a subject and composed what (as it seemed to me) he would _most likely_ have written upon it, signing his name below--but in print, that the signatures may not pass hereafter for real ones, should the book fall into the hands of strangers.
You must not think, therefore, that the lines on Statesmanship which I am about to read you, beginning 'But why Statesmans _ship_?
Because, my lords and gentlemen, the State is indeed a ship, and demands a skilful helmsman'-- you must not think that they were actually penned by the Right Honourable William Pitt.

But I feel sure the sentiments are such as he would have approved, and perhaps might have uttered had the occasion arisen." This puzzled us, and I am not sure that we took any trouble to discriminate Miss Plinlimmon's share in these compositions from that of their signatories.

Indeed, the first time I set eyes on Lord Wellington (as he rode by us to inspect the breaches in Ciudad Rodrigo) my memory saluted him as the Honourable Arthur Wellesley, author of the passage, "Though educated at Eton, I have often caught myself envying the quaintly expressed motto of the more ancient seminary amid the Hampshire chalk-hills, i.e._Manners makyth man_"; and to this day I associate General Paoli with an apostrophe "O Corsica! O my country, bleeding and inanimate!" etc., and with Miss Plinlimmon's foot-note: "N.B .-- The author of these affecting lines, himself a blameless patriot, actually stood godfather to the babe who has since become the infamous Napoleon Bonaparte.
Oh, irony! What had been the feelings of the good Paoli, could he have foreseen this eventuality, as he promised and vowed beside the font! (if they have such things in Corsica: a point on which I am uncertain)." I dwell on these halcyon days with Miss Plinlimmon because, as they were the last I spent at the Genevan Hospital, so they soften all my recollections of it with their own gentle prismatic haze.

In fact, a bare fortnight had gone by since my adventure on the spire when I was summoned to Mr.Scougall's parlour and there found Miss Plinlimmon in conversation with a tall and very stout man: and if her eyelids were pink, I paid more attention to the stout man's, which were rimmed with black--a more unusual sight.