"Always. The awful many will never understand. Their conception of my skill is altogether on a level with their conceptions of music, of literature, of painting. For wall decorations they love autotypes; for literature, harmless volumes of twaddle that leave no vivid impressions on the mind; for dinners, harmless dishes that are forgotten as they are eaten. _My_ dinners stick in the memory. I cannot study these people--my genius is all too imperative. If I needed a flavour of almonds and had nothing else to hand, I would use prussic acid. Do right, I say, as your art instinct commands, and take no heed of the consequences. Our function is to make the beautiful gastronomic thing, not to pander to gluttony, not to be the Jesuits of hygiene. My friend, you should see some of my compositions. At home I have books and books in manuscript, Symphonies, Picnics, Fantasies, _Etudes_..." The train was now entering Clapham Junction. The gentleman with the gold watch-chain returned my _Punch_. "A cook," he said in a whisper; "just a common cook!" He lifted his eyebrows and shook his head at me, and proceeded to extricate himself and his umbrella from the carriage. "Out of a situation too!" he said--a little louder--as I prepared to follow him. "Mere dripping!" said the artist in cookery, with a regal wave of the hand. Had I felt sure I was included, I should of course have resented the phrase. THE MAN WITH A NOSE "I never see thy face but I think upon hell-fire, and Dives that lived in purple, for there he is in his robes, burning, burning." "My nose has been the curse of my life." The other man started. They had not spoken before. They were sitting, one at either end, on that seat on the stony summit of Primrose Hill which looks towards Regent's Park. It was night. The paths on the slope below were dotted out by yellow lamps; the Albert-road was a line of faintly luminous pale green--the tint of gaslight seen among trees; beyond, the park lay black and mysterious, and still further, a yellow mist beneath and a coppery hue in the sky above marked the blaze of the Marylebone thoroughfares. The nearer houses in the Albert-terrace loomed large and black, their blackness pierced irregularly by luminous windows. Above, starlight. Both men had been silent, lost apparently in their own thoughts, mere dim black figures to each other, until one had seen fit to become a voice also, with this confidence. "Yes," he said, after an interval, "my nose has always stood in my way, always." The second man had scarcely seemed to notice the first remark, but now he peered through the night at his interlocutor. It was a little man he saw, with face turned towards him. "I see nothing wrong with your nose." "If it were luminous you might," said the first speaker. "However, I will illuminate it."