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THE STRAND MAGAZINE.

It echoed a "Don't-I-wish-I-was-there-now" sentiment that was unmistakable.


The drawing-room.
From a Photo. by Elliott & Fry.

Before we settled down to talk we made the customary run through his rooms. Mr. Welldon is a bachelor, and his sister presides over his house. Miss Welldon's artistic taste is apparent in the arrangement of "Nature's decorations." You cannot enter a room without finding the freshest and sweetest of flowers. The fire-places in the drawing-room are just great fern banks relieved here and there by peeping blossoms; the tiny vases look as though the roses were growing out of them. The pictures in the drawing-room are principally of the Venetian and Florentine School, though here is an engraving of a portrait of Mr. Gladstone, and another of Holman Hunt's "Shadow of the Cross." Reminiscences of his many travels are also on the walls, as indeed they are everywhere about the house—in room and on staircase—photographs of Egypt and the Nile, the Yosemite Valley and Niagara, and many others. A dual statuette of Goethe and Schiller rests on a cabinet at the far end of the room.

Yet another fern bank is found in the dining-room: a bright relief to the solemnly massive oak furniture.


The dining-room.
From a Photo. by Elliott & Fry.

The study of the Head Master of Harrow is necessarily a very interesting apartment. If it impresses the visitor, how much more does it affect the boy who timdly taps at the door and knows he is "in for it"! Yet, at the same time, the study is open to every lad in the school who would seek for advice, or who—a thing seldom needed—is desirous of lodging a complaint. There are two tables: one is the working table, on which are set out the varied papers associated with school life proper. Mr. Welldon assures me that "all the affairs of life go into six divisions"; hence the box of half-a-dozen pigeon-holes.

The other table is entirely devoted to Aristotle, of whom Mr. Welldon is a most ardent student. His "Translation of Aristotle's Politics" and "Rhetoric" are standard works, and he has just completed another treatise on the great philosopher. The