thirteenth day of the month, and I have for many years resided at
No. 13 in a certain street in Westminster. In spite of the popular
prejudice attached to this numeral, I am not conscious of having
derived any particular ill-fortune from my accidental association
with it.

Owing to my sequence in the family procession, I found myself on
my entry into the world already equipped with seven sisters and
four surviving brothers. I was also in the unusual position of
being born an uncle, finding myself furnished with four ready-
made nephews--the present Lord Durham, his two brothers, Mr.
Frederick Lambton and Admiral-of-the-Fleet Sir Hedworth Meux, and
the late Lord Lichfield.

Looking down the long vista of sixty years with eyes that have
already lost their keen vision, the most vivid impression that
remains of my early childhood is the nightly ordeal of the journey
down "The Passage of Many Terrors" in our Irish home. It had been
decreed that, as I had reached the mature age of six, I was quite
old enough to come downstairs in the evening by myself without the
escort of a maid, but no one seemed to realise what this entailed
on the small boy immediately concerned. The house had evidently
been built by some malevolent architect with the sole object of
terrifying little boys. Never, surely, had such a prodigious
length of twisting, winding passages and such a superfluity of
staircases been crammed into one building, and as in the early
"sixties" electric light had not been thought of, and there was no
gas in the house, these endless passages were only sparingly lit
with dim colza-oil lamps. From his nursery the little boy had to
make his way alone through a passage and up some steps. These were