One night I was going North by one of the sleeping trains and, having business late in the afternoon in Holborn, did not return to the civilized parts of the town, but dined at the Inns of Court Hotel. There are little tables for two, and at mine was dining also a man with whom I got into conversation. He told me he came from Glasgow and was in town on a business which he dared say I should think a very curious one--a big lawsuit pending about such a small matter as a ball used in the playing of the game of golf. Did I play golf? I said, "A little." I also said that in all the history of coincidences this was just about the most singular, for that I, too, had been engaged as a witness in the very same case. It was the case that the manufacturers of the Haskell ball were bringing against the manufacturers of the Kite ball. The point was to prove the Haskell patent good for their protection in a monopoly of making rubber-cored balls. The Haskell people had asked me to give evidence, because I was the first man to play with these balls in England, and because I considered them, and _pace_ the law, still consider them, an absolutely new departure in golf-ball manufacture. It would be ungrateful not to think that providence designed this meeting at the Inns of Court Hotel, for my new friend was able to tell me what the right fee was for me to charge as an expert witness. He told me that that was what I was--an expert witness. I did not know it before, although I knew, without his telling me, the ancient divisions of the species "liar," into "liar," "d----d liar," and "expert witness." I was prepared to play my part, especially when I heard, with pleased surprise, the large fees paid for witnesses of this expert and unimpeachable character.