Of the four joint authors, he whom I call "MacShaughnassy" has laid aside his title to all things beyond six feet of sun-scorched ground in the African veldt; while from him I have designated "Brown" I have borrowed but little, and that little I may fairly claim to have made my own by reason of the artistic merit with which I have embellished it.

Indeed, in thus taking a few of his bald ideas and shaping them into readable form, am I not doing him a kindness, and thereby returning good for evil?
For has he not, slipping from the high ambition of his youth, sunk ever downward step by step, until he has become a critic, and, therefore, my natural enemy?
Does he not, in the columns of a certain journal of large pretension but small circulation, call me "'Arry" (without an "H," the satirical rogue), and is not his contempt for the English-speaking people based chiefly upon the fact that some of them read my books?
But in the days of Bloomsbury lodgings and first-night pits we thought each other clever.
From "Jephson" I hold a letter, dated from a station deep in the heart of the Queensland bush.

"_Do what you like with it, dear boy_," the letter runs, "_so long as you keep me out of it.

Thanks for your complimentary regrets, but I cannot share them.

I was never fitted for a literary career.