REMINISCENCES OF DIPLOMATIC LIFE.* These "stray memories," as their writer
calls them, are written in a genial, readable style, and give us many amusing and interesting glimpses of men and manners in South America and in several European countries. Lady Macdonell was born at Buenos Ayres, and lived in the Argentine until
soon after her marriage, when her husband was appointed to Madrid. Housekeeping was there carried on under diffi- culties. "There was no water in the house, and so the aguatero,' or water-man, had to come daily and fill two huge earthenware receptacles like the proverbial oil-jars in Ali Baba's story. . . . The cook did not sleep in the house, but came in the morning with the marketing, . . . queer joints that looked like cat. At eleven o'clock the hairdresser came to do her hair." But in spite of these and other more serious trials, such as the illness of her children (who happily recovered), she seems to have taken a cheerful view of life. On one occasion she crossed from Santander to Bayonne in a cattle-boat. She took off her "fine black straw bat with ostrich feathers and oxidized buckle (for we had not costumes for every emergency then), and lay down." Not finding it in the morning as they were about to land, she asked the cabin boy for it, but he presented her "with a few shreds of straw," remarking, "Oh, lady mine, the tame pig Don Carlos has eaten your hat, and here is all that remains." "Never mind," she answered, with praiseworthy good temper, "we are within sight of shops." People who are not intimately acquainted with the Royal families of Europe will find these little personal touches more entertaining than the accounts of the doings at the various Courts to which her husband was accredited. For instance, one day in Brazil, though they had a French chef, they had nothing in the house for him to cook except rice and macaroni, as on account of bad weather they could get no supplies, so a dinner of monkey soup and small blue parrots was sent in to them. The book is dedicated to Queen Alexandra, and is illustrated chiefly by portraits of well-known people, such as "the Marquis de Soveral " and "the Kaiser when Prince William of Prussia." It also has an index.
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