“Yes, our friend is an original character,� replied Hood. “Vanity tempts me to hint that he is our friend because he has an original taste in friends. That habit of his of putting the pronoun on the first page and the noun on the next has brightened many winter evenings for me. You haven’t met our friend White, have you?� he added to Pierce. “That is a shock that still threatens you.�
“Why, what’s the matter with him?� inquired Pierce.
“Nothing,� observed Crane in his more staccato style. “Has a taste for starting a letter with ‘Yours Truly’ and ending it with ‘Dear Sir’; that’s all.�
“I should rather like to hear that letter,� observed the young man.
“So you shall,� answered Hood, “there’s nothing confidential in it; and if there were, you wouldn’t find it out merely by reading it. The Rev. Wilding White, called by some of his critics ‘Wild White,’ is one of those country parsons, to be found in corners of the English countryside, of whom their old college friends usually think in order to wonder what the devil their parishoners think of them. As a matter of fact, my dear Hilary, he was rather like you when he was your age; and what in the world you would be like as a vicar in the Church of England, aged fifty, might at first stagger the imagination; but the problem might be solved by supposing you would be like him. But I only hope you will have a more lucid style in letter-writing. The old boy is always in such a state of excitement about something that it comes out anyhow.�
It has been said elsewhere that these tales are, in some sense, of necessity told tail-foremost, and certainly the letter of the Rev. Wilding White was a document suited to such a scheme of narrative. It was written in what had once been a good handwriting of the bolder sort, but which had degenerated through excessive energy and haste into an illegible scrawl. It appeared to run as follows:
“‘My dear Owen,—My mind is quite made up; though I know the sort of legal long-winded things you will say against it; I know especially one thing a leathery old lawyer like you is bound to say; but as a matter of fact even you can’t say it in a case like this, because the timber came from the other end of the county and had nothing whatever to do with him or any of his flunkeys and sycophants. Besides, I did it all myself with a little assistance I’ll tell you about later; and even in these days I should be surprised to hear that sort of assistance could be anything but a man’s own affair. I defy you and all your parchments to maintain that it comes under the Game Laws. You won’t mind me talking like this; I know jolly well you’d think you were acting as a friend; but I think the time has come to speak plainly.’�
“Quite right,� said the Colonel.
“Yes,� said young Pierce, with a rather vague expression, “I’m glad he feels that the time has come to speak plainly.�
“Quite so,� observed the lawyer drily; “he continues as follows: