ry, that Henley and I chanced to fall in talk about James Payn
himself. I am wishing you could have heard that talk! I think that would
make you smile. We had mixed you up with John Payne, for one thing, and
stood amazed at your extraordinary, even painful, versatility; and for
another, we found ourselves each students so well prepared for
examinations on the novels of the real Mackay. Perhaps, after all, this
is worth something in life--to have given so much pleasure to a pair so
different in every way as were Henley and I, and to be talked of with so
much interest by two such (beg pardon) clever lads!

The cheerful Lang has neglected to tell me what is the matter with you;
so, I'm sorry to say, I am cut off from all the customary consolations.
I can't say, "Think how much worse it would be if you had a broken leg!"
when you may have the crushing repartee up your sleeve, "But it is my
leg that is broken." This is a pity. But there are consolations. You are
an Englishman (I believe); you are a man of letters; you have never been
made C.B.; you hair was not red; you have played cribbage and whist; you
did not play either the fiddle or the banjo; you were never an aesthete;
you never contributed to ----'s Journal; your name is not Jabez Balfour;
you are totally unconnected with the Army and Navy departments; I
understand you to have lived within your income--why, cheer up! here are
many legitimate causes of congratulation. I seem to be writing an
obituary notice. _Absit omen!_ But I feel very sure that these
considerations will have done you more good than medicine.

By the by, did you ever play piquet? I have fallen a victim to this
debilitating game. It is supposed to be scientific; God save the mark,
what self-deceivers men are! It is distinctly less so than cribbage. But
how fascinating! There is such material opulence about it, such vast
ambitions may be realised--and are not; it may be called the Monte
Cristo of games. And the thrill with which you take five cards partakes
of the nature of lust--and you draw four sevens and a nine, and the
seven and nine of a suit that you discarded, and O! but the world is a
desert! You may see traces of discouragement in my letter: all due to
piquet! There has been a disastrous turn of the luck against me; a month
or two ago I was two thousand ahead; now, and for a week back, I have
been anything from four thousand eight hundred to five thousand two
hundred astern. I have a sixiem