My Dear, I have to confess to a sad failure. You must know that I am always hoping for an adventure that shall be worth narrating in a letter to you, and sometimes I even strive for them. My latest deliberate flirtation with the Goddess of Chance occurred this afternoon; and being deliberate it failed. At least there is nothing in it for the immediate and sacred purpose: but one never knows how long an arm can be.
It happened this way. I had invited Anna—you know, Fred Distyn’s sister—to a matinée; and she was to meet me in the lobby five minutes before the rise of the curtain. I was there even earlier and stood waiting and watching the eager faces of the arriving audience for fully ten minutes after the play had begun. This eagerness to be inside a theatre and witness rubbish is (as you know) a terrible commentary on life and the intellectual resources of civilization; but that is beside the point.
Having waited for a quarter of an hour I then deposited with the commissionaire a minutely-painted word-portrait of Anna, together with her ticket, and took my seat.
When the first Act was over and there was still no Anna, I told the commissionaire to find some one in the street who looked as though a theatre would amuse him—or, if need be, her—and invite him or her to occupy the empty place.
Now could one set a better trap for Fortune than that?
But it was a hopeless fiasco. Instead of playing the Haroun Al Raschid and going out into the highways and byways, the commissionaire gave the ticket to his wife, who happened to be calling on him for some of his Saturday wages. My own fault, of course, for I ought to have gone myself. One should never delegate the privileges of romance.
Here is an old favourite, for a change:—
Jenny kissed me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief, who love to get