Varied were these guests that gathered round old Deleglise's oak. Cabinet Ministers reported to be in Homburg; Russian Nihilists escaped from Siberia; Italian revolutionaries; high church dignitaries disguised in grey suitings; ex-errand boys, who had discovered that with six strokes of the pen they could set half London laughing at whom they would; raw laddies with the burr yet clinging to their tongues, but who we knew would one day have the people dancing to the music of their words. Neither wealth, nor birth, nor age, nor position counted. Was a man interesting, amusing; had he ideas and thoughts of his own? Then he was welcome. Men who had come, men who were coming, met there on equal footing. Among them, as years ago among my schoolmates, I found my place--somewhat to my dissatisfaction. I amused. Much rather would I have shocked them by the originality of my views, impressed them with the depth of my judgments. They declined to be startled, refused to be impressed; instead, they laughed. Nor from these men could I obtain sympathy in my disappointment. “What do you mean, you villain!” roared Deleglise's caretaker at me one evening on entering the kitchen. “How dare you waste your time writing this sort of stuff?” He had a copy of the paper containing my “Witch of Moel Sarbod” in his hand--then some months old. He screwed it up into a ball and flung it in my face. “I've only just read it. What did you get for it?” “Nothing,” I answered. “Nothing!” he screamed. “You got off for nothing? You ought to have been whipped at the cart's tail!” “Oh, come, it's not as bad as that,” suggested old Deleglise. “Not bad! There isn't a laugh in it from beginning to end.” “There wasn't intended to be,” I interrupted. “Why not, you swindler? What were you sent into the world to do? To make it laugh.” “I want to make it think,” I told him. “Make it think! Hasn't it got enough to think about? Aren't there ten thousand penny-a-liners, poets, tragedians, tub-thumpers, long-eared philosophers, boring it to death? Who are you to turn up your nose at your work and tell the Almighty His own business? You are here to make us laugh. Get on with your work, you confounded young idiot!”