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being too big and too heavy to part with and too interesting to sell."

This chain of reasoning seemed to have a good deal to be said in its favour, until my attention was called to the disconcerting fact that there was a very fresh-looking ivory tablet on the side of the table, containing the well-known name of " Thurston & Co., London." Refusing to be convinced, I suggested that an explanation should be sought from that firm of their connection with what I still persisted in regarding as this historic piece of furniture.

A few months later my humble essay in inductive logic was justified; for I heard from the Governor that in 1898 the table had been thoroughly repaired, when Messrs. Thurston had supplied new cushions and pockets and had affixed their ivory mark. Further inquiry elicited that the table was no other than Napoleon's, an old inhabitant of the island, still living, having been told so by Mr. Stephen Pritchard, who was a young man in St. Helena during Napoleon's exile. The tradition, however, seems to have died out at a comparatively early date, as the table fell into a state of disrepair. Indeed, one Governor was proved to have used it at first as a carpenter's bench, and later as a screen across a door leading into the back-yard!

On a closer examination the bed of the table was found to be a marvellous piece of joinery, consisting of small pieces of inch-thick oak dove-tailed together like a parquet floor (I suppose that in those days slate was either difficult to procure or

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PLANTATION HOUSE, ST. HELENA (BILLIARD ROOM ON LEFT)

was unknown). The marking board (by Fernyhough of 36 Silver Street, Gordon Square, London) still hangs in the room and is certainly the original board belonging to the table, the scoring only showing up to 21, which was the old game when people played with the mace or butt.

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Such was one of the minor discoveries which my visit to St. Helena enabled me to make-perhaps may tell elsewhere about the others. But I still remain lost in wonder at the nepenthe which for three-quarters of a century had drugged the successive occupants of Plantation House and their innumerable visitors into complete oblivion of so interesting a prize.

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