it is?'

He looked crestfallen. 'No,' he said slowly, 'I ought to have known--you
would not remember, of course. But _I_ do. I brought out those Pants.
Your mordant pen tore them to tatters. You convinced me that I had
mistaken my career, and, thanks to your monitions, I ceased to practise
as a Poet, and became the Photographer you now behold!'

'And I have known poets,' I said encouragingly, 'who have ended far less
creditably. For even an indifferent photographer is in closer harmony
with nature than a mediocre poet.'

'And I _was_ mediocre, wasn't I?' he inquired humbly.

'So far as I recollect,' I replied (for I did begin to remember him
now), 'to attribute mediocrity to you would have been beyond the
audacity of the grossest sycophant.'

'Thank you,' he said; 'you little know how you encourage me in my
present undertaking--for you will admit that I can _photograph_?'

'That,' I replied, 'is intelligible enough, photography being a pursuit
demanding less mental ability in its votaries than that of metrical
composition, however halting.'

'There is something very soothing about your conversation,' he remarked;
'it heals my self-love--which really was wounded by the things you
wrote.'

'Pooh, pooh!' I said indulgently, 'we must all of us go through that in
our time--at least all of _you_ must go through it.'

'Yes,' he admitted sadly, 'but it ain't pleasant, is it?'

'Of that I have never been in a position to judge,' said I; 'but you
must remember that your sufferings, though doubtless painful to
yourself, are the cause, under capable treatment, of infinite pleasure
and amusement to others. Try to look at the thing without egotism. Shall
I seat myself on that chair I see over there?'

He was eyeing me in a curious manner. 'Allow me,' he said; 'I always
pose my sitters myself.' With that he seized me by the neck and
elsewhere without the slightest warning, and, carrying me to the further
end of the studio, flung me carelessly, face downwards, over the
cane-bottomed chair to which I had referred. He was a strong athletic
young man, in spite of his long hair--or might that have been, as in
Samson's case, a contributory cause? I was like an infant in his hands,
and lay across the chair, in an exceedingly uncomfortable position,
gasping for breath.

'Try to keep as limp as you can, please,' he said, 'the mouth wide open,
as you have it now, the legs careless--in fact, trailing. Beautiful!
don't move.'

An