bees. Calling one day on my mother, he brought with him four
queen-bees of a new breed, each one encased in a little paper bag.
He prided himself on his skill in handling bees, and proudly
exhibited those treasures to my mother. He replaced them in their
paper bags, and being a very absent-minded man, he slipped the
bags into the tail pocket of his clerical frock-coat. Soon after
he began one of his long arguments (probably fixing the exact date
of the end of the world), and, totally oblivious of the presence
of the bees in his tail pocket, he leant against the mantelpiece.
The queen-bees, naturally resenting the pressure, stung him
through the cloth on that portion of his anatomy immediately
nearest to their temporary prison. Dr. Cumming yelled with pain,
and began skipping all round the room. It so tickled my fancy to
see the grim and austere minister, who towered above me in the
pulpit every Sunday, executing a sort of solo-Jazz dance up and
down the big room, punctuated with loud cries, that I rolled about
on the floor with laughter.

The London of the "sixties" was a very dark and dingy place. The
streets were sparingly lit with the dimmest of gas-jets set very
far apart: the shop-windows made no display of lights, and the
general effect was one of intense gloom.

Until I was seven years old, I had never left the United Kingdom.
We then all went to Paris for a fortnight, on our way to the
Riviera. I well remember leaving London at 7 a.m. on a January
morning, in the densest of fogs. So thick was the fog that the
footman had to lead the horses all the way to Charing Cross
Station. Ten hours later I found myself in a fairy city of clean
white stone houses, literally blazing with light. I had never