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this be your Excellency's manner of rewarding those who serve you, I pray that I may be for ever preserved from your patronage. So much, then, for BENJAMIN. In spite of everything I have a sort of sneaking regard for the poor man, especially since I discovered that he was not a free agent, but was inspired in word and action by your blatant influence. Were it not that I feared to weary you, I might proceed at much greater length. I might parade before you regiment upon regiment of pompous local magnates and political nobodies all drilled and disciplined by your offensive methods, and all of them as absurd and preposterous as they can be made. But the spectacle would only move you to derision. One point, however, I must insist on. Whatever you do, don't throw JOSHUA POSER across my path again. I might do him an injury. We were at College together, he being my senior by a year. Even then he always assumed a condescension towards me, an air as of one who temporarily stepped down from a pedestal to mingle with common grovellers. He became a personage in the City, a Chairman and a Director of Companies, and I lost sight of him. Yesterday I met him, and he was good enough to address me. "Yes, yes," he observed, "I remember you well. I have read some of your contributions to periodical literature, and I can honestly say I was pleased; yes, I was pleased. Of course the work is unequal, and I marked one or two passages that might have been omitted with advantage. For instance, the discussion between the vicar and the family doctor is not quite in the most refined taste, but there is distinct promise even in that. By the way, why don't you write in _The New Congeries_? Your style would suit it. I always take that paper in, and I find it very much appreciated in the pantry. The butler reads it, when we have done with it, and passes it on to the footman. It keeps them out of mischief. Now take my advice, and contribute to that." I humbly murmured my thanks to this intolerable person, and left him. As I turned away I half thought I heard the sound of your Excellency's bellows in the neighbourhood of POSER. Was I wrong? I remain (merely in an epistolary sense), Your Excellency's humble servant, DIOGENES ROBINSON. * * * * * APPROPRIATE TITLE FOR MR. ANDREW LANG.--The Folk-Loreate. * * * * * "AUDI ALTERAM PARTEM!" (_A PENDANT TO MR. WILLIAM WATSON'S
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