again
I have been disastrously successful in encouraging dull people to weary
me. But the clever people who have something interesting to say seem,
so far as I have observed them, to acknowledge no other stimulant than
chance. For every story, excepting one, I have been indebted, in
the first instance, to the capricious influence of the same chance.
Something my sitter has seen about me, something I have remarked in
my sitter, or in the room in which I take the likeness, or in the
neighbourhood through which I pass on my way to work, has suggested the
necessary association, or has started the right train of recollections,
and then the story appeared to begin of its own accord. Occasionally
the most casual notice, on my part, of some very unpromising object has
smoothed the way for the relation of a long and interesting narrative.
I first heard one of the most dramatic stories merely through being
carelessly inquisitive to know the history of a stuffed poodle-dog.

It is thus not without reason that I lay some stress on the
desirableness of prefacing the following narrative by a brief account of
the curious manner in which I became possessed of it. As to my capacity
for repeating the story correctly, I can answer for it that my memory
may be trusted. I may claim it as a merit, because it is, after all,
a mechanical one, that I forget nothing, and that I can call long-past
conversations and events as readily to my recollection as if they had
happened but a few weeks ago. Of two things at least I feel tolerably
certain before-hand, in meditating over its contents: first, that I can
repeat correctly all that I have heard; and, secondly, that I have never
missed anything worth hearing when my sitters were addressing me on an
interesting subject. Although I cannot take the lead in talking while
I am engaged in painting, I can listen while others speak, and work all
the better for it.

So much in the way of general preface to the pages for which I am about
to ask the reader's attention. Let me now advance to particulars, and
describe how I came to hear the story. I begin with it because it is
the story that I have oftenest "rehearsed," to borrow a phrase from the
stage. Wherever I go, I am sooner or later sure to tell it. Only last
night I was persuaded into repeating it once more by the inhabitants of
the farm-house in which I am now staying.

Not many years ago, on returning from a short holiday visit to a friend
settle