assuring him that the pictures were "certainly for sale," Lewis
secured the coveted works, and was thus the first to establish
Israels' fame in England.

The gatherings in Moray Lodge were unique in their way. It was
characteristic of the master and the house that they made everybody
feel at home, from the titled aristocrat in the dress-suit to the
free-and-easy brother-brush or pen, and the sometimes out-at-elbow
friend Bohemian.

There was the Duke of Sutherland, the Marquis of Lorne, Lord Dufferin,
Mr. Frederic Leighton, Associate of the Royal Academy, Fred Walker,
who sang tenor in the choir, of which more presently, and who on
several occasions designed the cards of invitation for Lewis.
There was Lord Houghton, Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Rossetti,
Landseer, Daubigny, Gustave Doré, Arthur Sullivan, Leech, Keene,
Tenniel, &c., &c. It is as hard to pass those names over without
comment as it must have been to run the gauntlet of Scylla and
Charybdis, for every one of them brings back some recollection, and
calls upon the pen to start a paragraph with an "I well remember."

But that would lead me away from Moray Lodge and the famous Saturday
evenings, and I never was, and am not now, in a hurry to get away from
that hospitable mansion.

The billiard-table was boxed over on the gala nights and transformed
into a buffet. It was covered with bottles and glasses, pipes and
cigars, and towards the close of the evening with mountains of
oysters. The amount we consumed on one occasion was 278 dozen, as I
happen to know. But the great attraction at these gatherings was the