“It has,” said Norton Bellamy. “I won’t disguise it. I feel an all-round contempt for you, Honeybun, that is barely equalled by the contempt I feel for myself. I can’t possibly put it more strongly than that.” “Exactly my own case,” I answered; “and, therefore, in the future it will be better that we cease even to be acquaintances.” “My own idea,” said Bellamy, “only I felt a delicacy about advancing it, which you evidently didn’t. But I am quite of your opinion all the same. And, of course, this day’s awful work is buried in our own breasts. Consider if it got upon the Stock Exchange! We should be ruined men. Absolute silence must be maintained.” “So be it,” I replied. “Henceforth we only meet on the neutral ground of Brighton A’s. Indeed, even there it is not necessary, I think, that we should have any personal intercourse. And one final word; if you will take my advice----” He had now alighted, but turned upon this utterance and gave me a look of such concentrated bitterness, malice, and detestation, that I felt the entire horror of the day was reflected in his eyes. “_Your_ advice! Holy angels and Hanwell!” Those were the last words of Norton Bellamy. He felt this to be the final straw; he turned his back upon me; he tottered away into his hatter’s; and, with a characteristic financial pettiness, raised no question about paying for his share of our cab. JOHNSON’S BOSWELL Learning from a source sufficiently credible that the young Scotchman James Boswell, son and heir to the Laird of Auchinleck, designs some future biography of myself, I have favoured him with a measure of my company and conversation naturally denied to most men of his age. His attainments, without being considerable, are varied, and though the man’s garrulity can command neither respect nor admiration, yet there is about him a charm of rude health, high spirits, and good temper, which to undervalue or overlook would be at once unreasonable and unfair. His veneration for the writer, if irksome, is genuine; if at times offensive, is consistent. He has not as yet broke to me his intention, but the ambition was imparted to others of high repute. Them it is not necessary that I should here distinguish by their several appellations, but one and all inform me that Mr. Boswell, by constant practice and unceasing attention to my utterances in company, has so far schooled his memory to retrace and record with a startling accuracy much of the varied disquisition which is said to fall from me in conversation, together with those aphorisms, similes, apothegms, new lights, illuminations, corruscations, and repartees likewise reported as occurring in the substance of my discourse. Whether such a piece as must result from his assiduity is desirable, or can be fashioned with art sufficient to justify its existence, I shall not presume to determine. Fame, by which is understood the survival of human achievement, must be won by a man’s own labour; and it is surely vain