Solomon’s mandate: “Forget these things!
Brother to Beggars and Fellow to Kings,
Companion of Princes—forget these things!
Fellow-Craftsman, forget these things!”
“IN THE INTERESTS OF THE BRETHREN”
I was buying a canary in a birdshop when he first spoke to me and suggested that I should take a less highly coloured bird. “The colour is in the feeding,” said he. “Unless you know how to feed ’em, it goes. Canaries are one of our hobbies.”
He passed out before I could thank him. He was a middle-aged man with grey hair and a short, dark beard, rather like a Sealyham terrier in silver spectacles. For some reason his face and his voice stayed in my mind so distinctly that, months later, when I jostled against him on a platform crowded with an Angling Club going to the Thames, I recognised, turned, and nodded.
“I took your advice about the canary,” I said.
“Did you? Good!” he replied heartily over the rod-case on his shoulder, and was parted from me by the crowd.