ncountered Sir Tiglath Butt in the dining-room of the Colley
Cibber Club Hennessey had been but a dilettante fellow. He had written a
play, but airily, and without the twenty years of arduous and persistent
study declared by the dramatic critics to be absolutely necessary before
any intelligent man can learn how to get a bishop on, or a chambermaid
off, the stage. He had nearly proposed to a clergyman's daughter, but
thoughtlessly, and without any previous examination into the clericalism
of rectory females, any first-hand knowledge of mothers' meetings,
devoid of which he must be a stout-hearted gentleman who would rush in
where even curates often fear to tread. He had been to the Derby, but
without wearing a bottle-green veil or carrying a betting-book. In fact,
he had not taken life very seriously, or fully appreciated the solemn
duties it brings to all who bear its yoke. Only when the plump red hand
of Sir Tiglath--holding a bumper of thirty-four port--pointed the way
to the heavens, did Hennessey begin--through his telescope--to see the
great possibilities that foot it about the existence of even the meanest
man who eats, drinks and suffers. For through his telescope he saw that
he might be a prophet. Malkiel read the future in the stars. Why not he?

He endeavoured to do so. He sought an intimacy with the benefic
_Jupiter_, and found it--perhaps by a secret kowtowing to
_Sagittarius_. He made up openly to _Canis Major_ and was shortly on
what might almost be considered terms of affection with _Venus_. And
he was, moreover, presently quite fearless in the presence of _Saturn_,
quite unabashed beneath the glittering eye of _Mercury_. Then, as the
neophyte growing bold by familiarity with the circle of the great ones,
he ventured on his first prophecy, a discreet and even humble forecast
of the weather. He predicted a heavy fall of snow for a certain evening,
and so distrusted his own prediction that when the evening came, mild
and benign, he sallied forth to the Empire Palace of Varieties, and
stayed till near midnight, laughing at the sallies of French clowns, and
applauding the frail antics of cockatoos on motor bicycles. When, on the
stroke of twelve, he came airily forth wrapped in the lightest of dust
coats, he was obliged to endure the greatest of man's amazements--the
knowledge that there was a well of truth within him. Leicester Square
was swathed in an ivory fleece, and he was obliged to gain Berkeley
Square