“There is another reason” (wrote Dyke ) “why I should like to-chance
upon this fellow.” (“This fellow” meant me.) “I used to fancy myself
unequalled in the imaginative department of conversation, by the vulgar
called lying. Here, I own, with some shame, he was my match. A more
fearless, determined, go-ahead liar, I never met. Now, as one who deems
himself no small proficient in the art, I would really like to meet
him once more. We could approach each other like the augurs of old, and
agree to be candid and free-spoken together, exchanging our ideas on
this great topic, and frankly communicating any secret knowledge each
might deem that he possessed. I'd go a hundred miles to pass an evening
with him alone, to hear from his own lips the sort of early training and
discipline his mind went through,--who were his first instructors,
what his original inducements. Of one thing I feel certain: a man
thus constituted has only to put the curb upon his faculty to be most
successful in life, his perils will all lie in the exuberance of
his resources; let him simply bend himself to believe in some of the
impositions he would force upon others. Let him give his delusions the
force acquired by convictions, and there is no limit to what he may
become. Be on the lookout, therefore, for him, as a great psychological
phenomenon, the man who outlied
“Your sincerely attached friend,
“Thomas Darcy Dyke.
“P. S. I have just remembered his name. It was Potts; the villain said
from the Pozzo di Borgo family. I 'm sure with this hint you can't fail
to run him to earth; and I entreat of you spare no pains to do it.”
There followed here some more impertinent personalities as clews to my
discovery, which my indulgent reader will graciously excuse me if I do
not stop to record; enough to say they were as unfounded as they were
scurrilous.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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