“Did it upset you?” he asked.
“It annoyed me at the time,” I answered; “but that’s all over now.”
He seemed thoughtful. “You were quite correct,” he answered; “it was snuff, a very special snuff, sent me all the way from India.”
“I can’t say I liked it,” I replied.
“A stupid mistake of mine,” he went on—“I must have mixed up the packets!”
“Oh, accidents will happen,” I said, “and you won’t make another mistake, I feel sure; so far as I am concerned.”
We can all give advice. I had the honour once of serving an old gentleman whose profession it was to give legal advice, and excellent legal advice he always gave. In common with most men who know the law, he had little respect for it. I have heard him say to a would-be litigant—
“My dear sir, if a villain stopped me in the street and demanded of me my watch and chain, I should refuse to give it to him. If he thereupon said, ‘Then I shall take it from you by brute force,’ I should, old as I am, I feel convinced, reply to him, ‘Come on.’ But if, on the other hand, he were to say to me, ‘Very well, then I shall take proceedings against you in the Court of Queen’s Bench to compel you to give it up to me,’ I should at once take it from my pocket, press it into his hand, and beg of him to say no more about the matter. And I should consider I was getting off cheaply.”
Yet that same old gentleman went to law himself with his next-door neighbour over a dead poll parrot that wasn’t worth sixpence to anybody, and spent from first to last a hundred pounds, if he spent a penny.
“I know I’m a fool,” he confessed. “I have no positive proof that it was his cat; but I’ll make him pay for calling me an Old Bailey Attorney, hanged if I don’t!”