‘Ah! if you were as well used to that sort of thing as I am,’ said Slasher, with a sigh. ‘I don’t mind cutting ’em all up in little pieces to please the public. A slashing article is the easiest writing going. You have only to seize upon a man’s weak point,--and every man has a weak point,--and go at it without fear or favour; but when Crowther comes and lays his hand on my shoulder in his confounded condescending way, “My dear fellow,” he says, “here’s a poor devil who is always pestering me. He is a cousin of my wife’s;” or, “He’s a friend of my brother-in-law’s;” or, “He was at school with my boy,” as the case may be. “I suppose his picture’s as weak as water; but, hang it! say a good word for him. It may do him good, and it can’t do us any harm.” That’s what I’ve got to do, till it makes me sick, I tell you. I’ll pitch into your aversions, my dear Laurie, and welcome; but don’t ask me to say good words for your friends.’ ‘But my friend is a man of genius,’ said Laurie. ‘I don’t want you to speak up for him because he is my friend; but because his pictures are as fine as anything you ever saw.’ Slasher shook his head mournfully. ‘I don’t know anything about his pictures,’ he said; ‘but that’s how criticism gets done now-a-days. A man speaks well of his friend, and ill of the fellows he don’t like. And, as for justice, you know, and appreciation of merit, and so forth,--except, perhaps, once in a way, in the case of a new name, that nobody knows,--you might as well look for snow in July. And it’s just the same in literature. I said to Crowther the other day: “That’s a nice book, I suppose, as you praised it so.” “No,” he says, “it’s not a very nice book; but the man that wrote it is a nice fellow, which comes to the same thing.” No, Laurie, my boy, I’m sick of praising people that don’t deserve it. That’s why I go in for cynicism and abuse, and all that. It may be hard upon a poor fellow now and then, but at all events, it isn’t d----d lies.’ ‘I don’t want you to tell lies,’ said Laurie, half-affronted, half laughing. ‘Come with me on Thursday to the Hydrographic. It’s Suffolk’s night for exhibition, and you shall see him, and see his work----’ ‘Suffolk!’ said Slasher. ‘That fellow! By Jove! I like your modesty, Laurie Renton, to come here calmly and ask me to praise a man’s pictures whom I have cut up a score of times at least.’ ‘But I don’t suppose you ever saw them’, said Laurie, standing his ground.