'Before I proceed to business,' he said, in a voice that positively trembled, 'I must tell you what an exceptional claim you have to my undying gratitude. Amongst the many productions which you have visited with your salutary satire you may possibly recall a little volume of poems entitled "Pants of Passion"?'
I shook my head good-humouredly. 'My good friend,' I told him, 'if I burdened my memory with all the stuff I have to pronounce sentence upon, do you suppose my brain would be what it is?'
He looked crestfallen. 'No,' he said slowly, 'I ought to have known—you would not remember, of course. But I do. I brought out those Pants. Your mordant pen tore them to tatters. You convinced me that I had mistaken my career, and, thanks to your monitions, I ceased to practise as a Poet, and became the Photographer you now behold!'
'And I have known poets,' I said encouragingly, 'who have ended far less creditably. For even an indifferent photographer is in closer harmony with nature than a mediocre poet.'
'And I was mediocre, wasn't I?' he inquired humbly.
'So far as I recollect,' I replied (for I did begin to remember him now), 'to attribute mediocrity to you would have been beyond the audacity of the grossest sycophant.'
'Thank you,' he said; 'you little know how you encourage me in my present undertaking—for you will admit that I can photograph?'
'That,' I replied, 'is intelligible enough, photography being a pursuit demanding less mental ability in its votaries than that of metrical composition, however halting.'
'There is something very soothing about your conversation,' he remarked; 'it heals my self-love—which really was wounded by the things you wrote.'
'Pooh, pooh!' I said indulgently, 'we must all of us go through that in our time—at least all of you must go through it.'