I remember one Sunday morning in May, when I had sat up very far into the night completing my opening article for the _Guardian_, my servant awakened me with the intelligence that a young gentleman was in the drawing-room waiting to see me. He did not give his name, as he told her that it would be unknown to me; but he had arrived only the previous evening, as he said, from New York, and was the bearer of several messages from friends there which he was anxious to deliver before his departure for the Continent later in the day. On the night before he had sailed, he said--and this was his excuse for intruding upon me,--he had supped with some of the artists best known on the other side, and amongst them he specially introduced the names of Frank Millet and Edwin Abbey, who, as he said, had drawn from him the promise that he would on no account quit London without having shaken me by the hand. He was so graceful in his apologies for this early intrusion that my first irritation was quickly allayed, and the warm reference to myself, of which he assured me he was the bearer, must, I suppose, have touched my vanity, for I at once invited him to be my guest at dinner that evening that we might talk more at leisure and at length of the fortunes of our common friends on the other side. This, alas, he explained, was impossible. Was there nothing, then, I could do for him? Nothing! And then with renewed apologies he rose to go; but at the door he turned as though a sudden thought had come into his mind. Yes, he had just remembered! There was a trifling service I could render him, and then, before he mentioned its nature, he again ran over the names of “the boys,” as he described them, with whom he had parted on the eve of sailing. Perfect artist as he had proved himself to be, he blundered at the last; for to the list, as he now recounted it, he added the name of Alfred Parsons, who had indeed been in America, but who had long ago returned, and whom it chanced I had seen at the Arts Club the day before. All unconscious, however, that this mistake had aroused my suspicions, he proceeded to describe what he termed the ludicrous position in which he found himself. He was about to start on a tour round the world, but by some absurd mistake the remittances from his home in Western America had gone one way, while he had gone the other. And this petty contretemps he aptly illustrated in pantomime by indicating the course of his remittances with his right hand and his own journey with his left, crossing them on his breast as though to suggest the passing of ships in the night. And then finally, in the lightest and airiest of tones, came the announcement of a modest request that I should cash him a cheque for £50.