ow: a towering celebrity he was, and rather
a close friend of mine at one time. In a studio in St. John's Wood, I
remember, he did it; and many people said that it was quite a great work
of art. I suppose I was standing before it quite thirty minutes that
night, holding up the bits of candle, lost in wonder, in amused contempt
at that thing there. It is I, certainly: that I must admit. There is the
high-curving brow--really a King's brow, after all, it strikes me
now--and that vacillating look about the eyes and mouth which used to
make my sister Ada say: 'Adam is weak and luxurious.' Yes, that is
wonderfully done, the eyes, that dear, vacillating look of mine; for
although it is rather a staring look, yet one can almost see the dark
pupils stir from side to side: very well done. And there is the longish
face; and the rather thin, stuck-out moustache, shewing both lips which
pout a bit; and there is the nearly black hair; and there is the rather
visible paunch; and there is, oh good Heaven, the neat pink cravat--ah,
it must have been _that--the cravat_--that made me burst out into
laughter so loud, mocking, and uncontrollable the moment my eye rested
there! 'Adam Jeffson,' I muttered reproachfully when it was over, 'could
that poor thing in the frame have been you?'

I cannot quite state why the tendency toward Orientalism--Oriental
dress--all the manner of an Oriental monarch--has taken full possession
of me: but so it is: for surely I am hardly any longer a Western,
'modern' mind, but a primitive and Eastern one. Certainly, that cravat
in the frame has receded a million, million leagues, ten thousand
forgotten aeons, from me! Whether this is a result due to my own
personality, of old acquainted with Eastern notions, or whether,
perhaps, it is the natural accident to any mind wholly freed from
trammels, I do not know. But I seem to have gone right back to the very
beginnings, and resemblance with man in his first, simple, gaudy
conditions. My hair, as I sit here writing, already hangs a black, oiled
string down my back; my scented beard sweeps in two opening whisks to my
ribs; I have on the _izar_, a pair of drawers of yomani cloth like
cotton, but with yellow stripes; over this a soft shirt, or quamis, of
white silk, reaching to my calves; over this a short vest of
gold-embroidered crimson, the _sudeyree_; over this a khaftan of
green-striped silk, reaching to the ankles, with wide, long sleeves
divided at the wrist,