“No,” or “Yes,” said the great man, smiling through his spectacles and puffing a cloud of smoke towards me in a genial fashion, “I do not in the least mind telling you how it is done. I do not think,” he added drily, “that any other fellows will pull quite the same chock-a-block haul, even if I do give them the fall of the halyard. You must excuse these technical terms; I make it a point to speak as I write--I think it is more natural.” I said I should be delighted to excuse him. “I hope you will also excuse,” he continued, “my throwing myself into my favourite attitude.” I said that, on the contrary, I had long wished to see it. With a sigh of relief he thrust those creative hands of his into his trouser pockets, slightly stooped his shoulders, and appeared to my delight exactly as he does in the photograph he handed me for publication. “To show you how it is done, I cannot begin better than by a little example,” he said. He went to a neighbouring table, rummaged about in a pile of the _Outlook_ and _Vanity Fair_, and produced a scrap of paper upon which there was a type-written poem. His hands trembled with pleasure, but he controlled himself well (for he is a strong, silent kind of man), and continued:-- “I will not weary you with the whole of this Work. I am sure you must already be familiar with it. In the Volunteer camp where I was recently staying, and where I slept under canvas like anybody else, the officers knew it by heart, and used to sing it to a tune of my own composition (for you must know that I write these little things to airs of my own). I will only read you the last verse, which, as is usual in my lyrics, contains the pith of the whole matter.” Then in a deep voice he intoned the following, with a slightly nasal accent which lent it a peculiarly individual flavour:-- “I’m sorry for Mister Naboth; I’m sorry to make him squeak; But the Lawd above me made me strawng In order to pummel the weak.”