Whenever in London my practice for years had been to put up at my friend Dixon Hubbard\'s rooms in Bruton Street. We had been schoolfellows. He was one of the most fortunate and unfortunate creatures in the world. Born with a silver spoon in his mouth, he had inherited from some cross-grained ancestor a biting tongue and a gloomy disposition. He was an incurable misanthrope and unpopular beyond words. At college he had been detested. Being a sickly lad, his tongue had earned him many a thrashing which he had had to endure without other reprisal than sarcasm. Yet he had never spared that. His spirit was unconquerable. I believe that he would have taunted his executioners while they burned him at the stake. I used to hate him myself once. But one day after giving him a fairly good hammering I fell so in love with the manly way in which he immediately thereafter gave me a sound excuse for wringing his neck that I begged his pardon for being a hulking bully in having lifted hand against a weaker body but a keener brain and more[Pg 112] untamable spirit than my own. That conquered him. From that moment we were inseparable chums, and on an average the privilege cost me at least two hard fights a week, for my code was—hit my chum and you hit me. His gratitude lay in jibing at me if I lost the fight, and if I won informing me that I was a fool for my pai............