S OF BEING ENGAGED

LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI

ON A TRICYCLE

AN UNSUSPECTED MASTERPIECE

THE GREAT CHANGE

THE PAINS OF MARRIAGE

A MISUNDERSTOOD ARTIST

THE MAN WITH A NOSE

OF CONVERSATION AND THE ANATOMY OF FASHION

This uncle of mine, you must understand, having attained--by the purest
accident--some trifles of distinction and a certain affluence in South
Africa, came over at the earliest opportunity to London to be
photographed and lionised. He took to fame easily, as one who had long
prepared in secret. He lurked in my chambers for a week while the new
dress suit was a-making--his old one I really had to remonstrate
against--and then we went out to be admired. During the week's
retirement he secreted quite a wealth of things to say--appropriate
remarks on edibles, on music, on popular books, on conversation,
off-hand little things, jotting them down in a note-book as they came
into his mind, for he had a high conception of social intercourse, and
the public expectation. He was ever a methodical little gentleman, and
all these accumulations that he could not get into his talk, he
proposed to put away for the big volume of "Reminiscences" that was to
round off his life. At last he was a mere conversational firework,
crammed with latent wit and jollity, and ready to blaze and sparkle in
fizzing style as soon as the light of social intercourse should touch
him.

But after we had circulated for a week or so, my uncle began to
manifest symptoms of distress. He had not had a chance. People did
not seem to talk at all in his style. "Where do the literary people
meet together, George? I am afraid you have chosen your friends ill.
Surely those long-haired serious people who sat round my joke like old
cats round a beetle--what is it?--were not the modern representatives
of a _salon_. Those abominable wig-makers' eccentricities who talked
journalistic 'shop,' and posed all over that preposterous room with the
draperies! Those hectic young men who have done nothing except run
down everybody! Don't tell me that is the literary society of London,
George. Where do they let off wit now, George? Where do they sparkle?
I want to sparkle. Badly. I shall burst, George, if I don't."

Now really, you know, there are no salons now--I suppose we turn all
our conversation into "copy"--or the higher education has eliminated
the witty woman--and my uncle became more and more distressed. He sa