For, after all, you stand high in the journalistic world.  Your opinion passes current in many a select circle.  Not even your vagaries seem to have power to offend the worshippers to whom your word has long been a law, whether you spoke of golf, of salmon, of folk-lore or of books.  The censure of a BLUDYER (I wonder what has brought that formidable name to my mind) can do little to discourage you.  But Mr. BARRY PAIN is a young writer.  And yet some one remarked that In a Canadian Canoe was better even than Essays in Little, and the audacious words were actually printed in a journal to which ANDREW LANG is an occasional contributor.  I myself have never dared to go so far.  There is something sacred about an established reputation.  And I can honestly say that I like the elegant airy trifles which your little Muse has bestowed upon us, though I confess to a weariness when the talk is too much of golf-clubs and salmon rods.  And I admire your appreciation of the original work of other men.  In the present case you and I disagree upon a question of taste.  That is all. Tant pis pour moi, I hasten to add.  But I disagree in good company, for I note with some amusement, that the PAYN whom you rightly praise, has a kind and encouraging word for the PAIN whom you so vehemently disparage.  And in this case I will stake my all upon the eulogy of JAMES PAYN as against the censure of ANDREW LANG.  As you did me the honour to refer to something I had written, I thought myself bound in politeness to reply, and am

Your obedient servant,

AN A.R.  IN THE B. DE B.-W.’s OFFICE.”

* * * * *

A STRAIGHT TIP TO CANADIAN “CROSS COVES.”

  ’Tis nice “in a Canadian Canoe”
    To practise what the ribald call “canoodling;”
  But what the deuce does the Dominion do,
    “In this galley,” with this new game of “boodling?”
  “Paddle your own Canoe,” dear, if you will,
  But kick all “cross coves” out, and trust to honest skill.

* * * * *

JOURNAL OF A ROLLING STONE.

TENTH ENTRY.

DICK FIBBINS, my more or less “learned” instructor in practical law, goes out to a good many evening parties, I find.  Casually remarks that he “danced three square dances, the other night, with old DAVIS’s ugly daughter, the Solor (legal slang for Solicitor), in Caraway Street.”  It’s DAVIS himself, not the daughter, that is the Solicitor, and, it seems she introduced the gay FIBBINS to her Papa.  Hence another brief, a rather complicated one, on some dispute about a mortgage.

[Illustration]

On the morning when the case is to come into Court, DICK the Brief-hunter, who has promised to take me there, seems nervous.  Yet he is still confident that, if “old PROSER” is the judge, he will “pull the thing off.”  It will be, apparently, a case of “Pull FIBBINS, pull PROSER.”