had come in a carriage-and-four, he would have got a hearty welcome, and he would have found his claim of kindred eagerly allowed.  But he thought he was saying a bitter and cutting thing, and (strange to say) the old lady fancied she was listening to a bitter and cutting thing.  He was merely expressing a certain and innocuous truth.  But though all mortals know that in this world big people meet greater respect than small, (and quite right too,) most mortals seem to find the principle a very unpleasant one, when it comes home to themselves.  And we learn but slowly to acquiesce in seeing ourselves plainly subordinated to other people.  Poor Oliver Goldsmith was very angry, when at the club one night he was stopped in the middle of a story by a Dutchman, who had noticed that the Great Bear was rolling about in preparation for speaking, and who exclaimed to Goldsmith, “Stop, stop!  Toctor Shonson is going to speak!” Once I arrived at a certain railway station.  Two old ladies were waiting to go by the same train.  I knew them well, and they expressed their delight that we were going the same way.  “Let us go in the same carriage,” said the younger, in earnest tones; “and will you be so very kind as to see about our luggage?” After a few minutes of the lively talk of the period and district, the train came up.  I feel the tremor of the platform yet.  I handed my friends into a carriage, and then saw their baggage placed in the van.  It was a station at which trains stop for a few minutes for refreshments.  So I went to the door of the carriage into which I had put them, and waited a little before taking my seat.  I expected that my friends would proceed with the conversation which had been interrupted; but to my astonishment I found that I had become wholly invisible to them.  They did not see me and speak to me at all.  In the carriage with them was a living peer, of wide estates and great rank, whom they knew.  And so thoroughly did he engross their eyes and thoughts and words, that they had become unaware of my presence, or even my existence.  The stronger sensation rendered them unconscious of the weaker.  Do you think I felt angry?  No, I did not.  I felt very much amused.  I recognized a slight manifestation of a grand principle.  It was a straw showing how a current sets, but for which Britain would not be the country it is.  I took my seat in another carriage, and placidly read my “Times.”  There was one lady in that carriage.  I think she inferred, from the smiles which occasionally for the first few miles overspread my countenance without apparent cause, that my mind was slightly disordered.