e your home? I imagine you
whiling away the hours on some soft couch of imitation down, with a
little army of sweet but irrelevant smiles ready at all times to do
your bidding. You are refined, I am sure. You cultivate sympathy as
some men cultivate orchids, until it blooms and luxuriates in the
strangest and gaudiest shapes. Your real face is known of no other
abstraction; indeed, you never see it yourself, so well-fitted and so
constant is the mask through which you waft the endearments which have
caused you to be avoided everywhere. This, I admit, is imagination;
but is it very far from the truth? Perhaps I ask in vain, for truth
is the very last thing that may be expected of you and of those who
do your bidding upon earth. I will not, therefore, press the question,
but proceed at once to business.

[Illustration]

About a month ago I met your friend, ALGERNON JESSAMY. What is there
about ALGERNON that inspires such distrust? He is very presentable;
some people have gone so far as to call him absolutely good-looking.
He is tall, his figure is good, his clothes fit him admirably, and are
always speckless; his features are regular, his complexion fresh, and
his fair hair, carefully parted in the middle, lies like a smooth and
shining lid upon his head. I pass over all his remaining advantages,
whether of dress or of nature. It is enough to say that, thus
equipped, and with the additional merits of wealth and a good
position, ALGERNON ought to have found no difficulty in being one of
the most popular men in town. Perhaps he would have been if he had
not tried with such a persistent energy to make himself "so deuced
agreeable." The phrase is not mine, but that of SAMMY MIGGS, who has
a contempt for ALGERNON and his methods, which he never attempts to
conceal.

"ALGY, my boy," I have heard him say, while the unfortunate JESSAMY
smiled uneasily, and shifted on his seat, "ALGY, my boy, I've known
you too long to give in to any of your nonsense. All that butter of
yours is wasted here, so you'd better keep it for someone who likes
it. Try it on QUISBY," he continued, indicating the celebrated actor,
who was at that moment frowning furiously over a notice of his latest
performance; "he loves it in firkins, and I'll undertake to say you'll
never get to the bottom of his swallowing capacity. You'll have to
exhaust even your stock, ALGY, my boy; and that's saying a lot."

So thoroughly uncomfortable did the suave and gentle