If to-morrow now were only the 1st of May, and that doorstep of mine opened into Paddington, cheeriest of railway stations. By the way, somebody ought to write an essay on the Personality of Railway Stations. Liverpool Street, for example, smokes cheap cigarettes, and lives at Walthamstow--does its baggage up with string, and takes dribbly children to Clacton-on-Sea. And Paddington is a sun-tanned country squire, riding a good thirteen stone, and with an eye for an apple. His luggage is of a well-ripened leather, and he is a bit lavish with his tips. * * * * * But, alas, my door merely opens to admit the timid nose of a new maid who announces the arrival of the visitors. Dressing-gowns must be shed, and tails donned. I am grasping your hairy brown hand. Can you feel it? "Lucky dog," I am saying to you, "the wind's up-stream, and the trout are hungry, and for all your scattered practice you can still nip down for one perfect hour to Marleigh Pool--still feel your rod-point bending to some heaven-sent troutling of the true fighting stock." Will I come? Won't I! And till then I can merely remain London-bound. Your envious old friend, P. H. II _To Horace Harding, Trinity College, Cambridge._ 91B HARLEY STREET, W., _March_ 11, 1910. MY DEAR HORACE, Casting a remorseful eye at the date upon your letter, I perceive that it is already almost a week since I resolved to sit down, and answer it immediately; and the postscript that follows "your aff. son H." gazes at me with a rebuking stare, as if to remind me how very far I have been from bucking up, as you so tactfully suggested, and flooring the problem with which you have presented me. And yet you mustn't suppose that I have been altogether too careless or too busy to deal with it as you wished. On the other hand, I have been dodging it round the ring of everyday happenings ever since I first beheld it eyeing me beneath the Trinity crest. For the fact of the matter is, my dear Horace, that your revered Daddy has all along been more than doubtful about his ability to stretch the fellow on the carpet. And now, at the end of a week's somewhat cowardly--footwork, shall we call it?--he has decided to crawl under the ropes, and make room for a lustier substitute. Shall you become a doctor? Well, I'm afraid, after all, that you must tackle the question for yourself. As an American patient, with a doubtful liver, observed to me this morning, the problem is right up against you; and nobody else can defeat it in your stead. The thought of this has cheered me so amazingly that from now onwards you may safely imagine, I think, an almost contented physician, sitting plumply in a front stall, smiling at the fight over contemplative finger-tips, and merely tendering, between the rounds, some well-worn pieces of ring-side advice.