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prominence, sent me their own photographs, with "Yours truly, Jas. Hook" written underneath. This left an impression on me that possibly James might have come to a more reputable if less striking end had he been entered for some other school, a view that is shared by his aunt, from whom I got the dainty little picture of her nephew that accompanies this article. As the cognoscenti will note it represents him in his scug period.
I found James's aunt to be a tiny delightful lady, as neat as a bird, and with the sprightliness that comes of having ceased to be a schoolmistress. She received me in her ivy-clad cottage near Gomshall and prefers to be spoken of in print very simply as Miss xxx. She was most amusing and twitted me about the well-known Scottish lack of humour, quoting the saying of Sydney Smith that a surgical operation is required to get a joke into a Scotsman's head. I inquired if he had meant an English joke and she said that no doubt this was so. I asked her if she credited the story of the Scot who had not been in London an hour when bang went sixpence, and she assured me that it might have happened, for she knew well how tempting the London shops were. I quoted to her the saying that the bagpipes sounded well if they were far enough away "and the farther away the better," but she pointed out pertinently that this was nonsense because if you were as far away as that you could not hear them at all.
Having thus established, quite without offence, the superiority of English humour, Miss xxx conducted me to the latticed, lavender-smelling chamber upstairs which had been James's bedroom
