The Day May Dawn When This Man Will Be Read Not For What
He Says, But For How He Says It; He Being One Of The Few Of His Race Who
Can Write In Their Own Language.
Impossible, of course, not to hit upon
a good thing now and then, if you brood as much as he did.
So I remember
one passage wherein he adumbrates the theory of "Recognition Marks"
propounded later by A. R. Wallace, who, when I drew his attention to it,
wrote that he thought it a most interesting anticipation. [10]
He must have stumbled upon it by accident, during one of his excursions
into the inane.
And what of that jovial red-bearded personage who scorned honest work
and yet contrived to dress so well? Everyone liked him, despite his
borrowing propensities. He was so infernally pleasant, and always on the
spot. He had a lovely varnish of culture; it was more than varnish; it
was a veneer, a patina, an enamel: weather-proof stuff. He could talk
most plausibly - art, music, society gossip - everything you please;
everything except scandal. No bitter word was known to pass his lips. He
sympathized with all our little weaknesses; he was too blissfully
contented to think ill of others; he took it for granted that everybody,
like himself, found the world a good place to inhabit. That, I believe,
was the secret of his success. He had a divine intuition for discovering
the soft spots of his neighbours and utilizing the knowledge, in a frank
and gentlemanly fashion, for his own advantage.
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