Snowdrops from a Curate’s Garden

ambition, how quickly were the swords beaten into absinthes, and the spears into tournedos ! S . . . , again, with a face like a portrait by Rembrandt, a man of no great intellect, but making no pretension thereto, how he was loved for his jolly humour, his broad smile, his inimitable sto- ries ! Yet it must not be supposed that the average man, however sincere, had much of a welcome there. Without intention to wound, he was yet hurt — the arrows of wit shot over his head, and he could never feel at home. I am perhaps the one exception. Without a ghost of talent, even in my own profession — medicine — I had no claim whatever to the hospi- tality of the Dog. But being perfectly unobtrusive, I dare say I was easy to tolerate, perhaps even of the same value as a background is to a picture, a mere patch of neutral colour, yet serving to harmonize the whole. Certainly nothing but my silence saved me. The remark a few pages back about Hall Caine and Meredith would have caused my instant execution, by the most painful, if the least pro- longed, of deaths. Aye ! no society, since men gathered together, was ever so easy to approach, to seat oneself among, to slip away from, or to be hurled in derision from their midst ! Dreaded as they were by the charlatan, no set of men could have been more closely-knit, more genial, more fraternal. United by a bond of mutual respect, even where they differed — of mutual re- spect, I say, by no means of mutual admiration, for it was the sincere artistry that they adored, not the technical skill of achievement — they formed a no- ble and harmonious group, the like of which has perhaps never yet been seen. Of this circle K . . . was an honoured mem- ber. Perfectly at home in all societies, he endeared [10]