ient church--Old houses." But the "Jetty"
was _the_ important object--I must get that. I therefore started for the
South Coast. Again I was forced to bow down before my author's
wonderful powers of imagination, for once more, in company with my wife,
with a hireling to carry my sketching stool and materials, I walked a
great distance in search of the jetty. Vain, vain! not a ghost of a
jetty was to be seen. The menial could not enlighten us. At last we
unearthed the "oldest inhabitant," who took us back to where a few
sticks in the water alone marked where it stood "a many years ago." I
tried to develop some of the powers of the late Professor Owen, when he
constructed an animal from the smallest bone, and succeeded in
"evolving" a jetty from the green remains of four wooden posts.

I forgave Payn as I forgave Besant. Both men were as genial as they were
eminent, and but for the circumstances of illustrating their stories I
might not have enjoyed their acquaintanceship. I also illustrated Payn's
most charming story, "The Talk of the Town," for _Cornhill Magazine_. I
never enjoyed any work of the kind so well as this--it has always been
my regret Payn did not write another of the same period. I recollect,
when I first saw him in Waterloo Place, I had just read an article of
his in which he gave a recipe for getting rid of callers, which was to
bring the conversation to an abrupt termination, say absolutely nothing,
but steadfastly stare at your visitor until he left. I can vouch for its
being a simple and effective plan.

[Illustration: ILLUSTRATION FOR "THE TALK OF THE TOWN" (REDUCED).
_By permission of the proprietors of "Cornhill Magazine."_]

When I entered his editorial sanctum the genial essayist received me
most cordially, and looked the picture of comfort, surrounded as he was
by a heterogeneous collection of pipes. Presently, through the clouds of
smoke through which he had chatted in that lively, vivacious manner
peculiarly his own, he knocked the ashes out of his finished pipe and
mutely stared point-blank at me till I, like the pipe, went out also.
But before making my exit I reminded him that I had read the article I
refer to, up to which he was no doubt acting, and that I was pleased and
interested that he practised the doctrine he preached. Possibly this
remark of mine was unexpected, and therefore somewhat disconcerted him
for a moment, for he quickly replied, "Not at all! not at all! Fact is