"Assuredly we love him. Behind our azod and respectable backs, our ignoble but experienced backs, we may imagine lim muttering, "Frabjous old ass!" and other terms which have nothing to do with literature. But in the light of memory we Jove him. He flowers early and with pees Har luxuriance in the East—beeaure condi tions of life here do not insist that he Should personally place his studs in his thirt. This is a point for him who would write a Philosophy of Clothes.
Tt is my misfortune.that, time has not pasied me by—I am fallen in the vale of rs. Thus it is but rarely that my trend Bertie Chalquest will speak to me. seck him occasionally, not because his views op things in general have any pretorious wisdom, but rather that I may refresh a plate jaded by polite acquiescence. He is twenty-one, and the tenacity with which he will hold to a suddenly conceived opinion is as the vieegtip of a blood qRund's teeth. Also there is a freshness and strength in his method of making these opinions known. He is given, on the slightest acquaintance, to conceive violent Uitlikes. Asked if he knew %—he plied, "He's a pestiferous bounder. Fay surprised into the question Why? He looked at me under raised eyebrows. "Simply because," he said with force, "he's a poisonous outsider. That's all." Tam Bound to say that it was enough for me. T feared to provoke essays in the Unusual Adjective which might overtes his great powers. Since then I have heard the unfortunate subject of our conversation refer-yed tons *miasnic," "mephitic," and finally "muurial." terms which, when applied to 'a man's mental equipment, or manner. are expressive in a very high degree. There is nothing lovely in. this. Chalquest, 1 consider, is typical of his age and have written it down as illus certain phase of our present-day y For their ordinary conversation is informed with the spirit of exaggeration. Tt is their substitute for the wit which I hope is found in an older company. Ancedote out of the mouths of our sons bristles with orer-statement—and wins a laugh. In this wise "Tsay, you chaps, you ought to have seen old Heppy Clinton the other day. You Know what a frightful whale he is for his grub, Well, he was having dinner, putting away great wads and slabs of stuff, and last comes on jelly. Isaw old Heppy shake himself and Tet out a couple of buttons before he told the boy to get jelly. Well, somehow the ass of a boy brought Heppy a hot plate, and then the old bird took a simply huge go of the stuff. Of course, soon as the jelly touched the plate the beastly stuff began to melt. Old Heppy braced himself and tuid in, and simply shovelled it out of sight. You sce. it a race between Heppy and the hot plate, and Heppy got in by absolute miles."
All of which is unlovely, and yet typical. It is, have found, the drop-curtain which hides a bright display. I have in mind Bertie Chalquest as I write this, for I know him well, and, having progressed in is knowledge. am of no mind to forsake the study. Catching him at times in kindly mood, mellowed to a gentle pity for my age and infirmities, I have drawn aside as deftly as might be this curtain of an acquired manner. I have been richly rewarded. Roy glints of a happy world have flushed at me—the young world which is short-lived in dreams. and is yet the only Still, it is not always thus. I remember well meeting him as 1 took what I object to hear called my "constitutional."
I greeted him, and was honestly amazed that his reply did not in some sort refer to anting"—he is wont to speak of my as a vain attempt to regain that far from graceful. In five minutes of casual talk he disco ed to me such a depth of cynicism as I imagined never mortal plumbed. The world—a black world!—was a planet hailed askew in a tawdry sky, peopled by phantoms, an abode of despair, 2 Golgotha of high young hopes. He, Bertie Chal-quest, was aweary of it all—oh! the fine scorn of all littleness!—and would throw it all up for the free, open life, the only one worth living?
'T must record that here I laughed. "And what's her name, Bertie? " said I.
His checks flew the flag that_marks covery, and he mumbled confusedly.
Sy, that he might disburthen time it came in a 1 unreasonableness of woman, dered with instances. I chuckled inwardly. He was given into my hands.
"Tf you mean Dolly Fenstone," I said, I quite agree with you. Shallow, pert, vain, uninteresting—why, I should hardly even call her pretty.
spoke slowly. dropping each adjective clean and true, like a clever angler's Ho rose to the bait. looking at me with eyes narrowed to pin-points. Stifily, ieily hie pointed out that perhaps he had been somewhat hasty in condemnation of the sex, hut that he did not see what shadow of right Thad, as a confirmed bachelor of irregular habits, to rail at them in a brutal, unfeeling way. I give thus the gist of a somewhat long, and very strongly worded speech.
T affected surprise. "I am astonished," you, after avowing your sion for an open life, champion' the rouse of those who chain and clamp man down to a puling existence, with cricket as his only excitement."
home there. He launched into 1 disquisition on the beauty of companionship—life-companionship he called it—and of the high duties and responsibilities of the man who took to his heart a gentle, trusting, and guileless girl. There was much more to this effect. delivered in the manner of one who chides x naughty boy. T saw weariness and boredom descending upon me and T fled.
I was reminded of this episode during iny last severe attack of rheumatism, when Teame on a newspaper cutting:
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.