We all called him The Man who Wrote It.  And we called It what the man wrote, or it for short—­all of us that is, except The Girl who Read It.  She never called anything “It.”  She wasn’t that sort of girl, but she read It, which was a pity from the point of view of The Man who Wrote It.

The man is dead now.

Dropped down a cud out beyond Karachi, and was brought home more like broken meat in a basket.  But that’s another story.

The girl read It, and told It, and forgot all about It, and in a week It was all over the station.  I heard it from Old Bill Buffles at the club while we were smoking between a peg and a hot weather dawn.

J. K. S.

I was delighted with this.  Another time he wrote a parody of Myers’ “St. Paul” for me.  I will only quote one verse out of the eight: 

Lo! what the deuce I’m always saying “Lo!” for
God is aware and leaves me uninformed. 
Lo! there is nothing left for me to go for,
Lo! there is naught inadequately formed.

He ended by signing his name and writing: 

Souvenez-vous si les vers que je trace
Fussent parfois (je l’avoue!) l’argot,
Si vous trouvez un peu trop d’audace
On ose tout quand on se dit
“Margot.”

My dear friend J.K.S. was responsible for the aspiration frequently quoted: 

When the Rudyards cease from Kipling
And the Haggards ride no more.

Although I can hardly claim Symonds as a Soul, he was so much interested in me and my friends that I must write a short account of him.

I was nursing my sister, Pauline Gordon Duff, when I first met John Addington Symonds, in 1885, at Davos.

I climbed up to Am Hof[Footnote:  J. A. Symonds’s country house.] one afternoon with a letter of introduction, which was taken to the family while I was shown into a wooden room full of charming things.  As no one came near me, I presumed every one was out, so I settled down peacefully among the books, prepared to wait.  In a little time I heard a shuffle of slippered feet and some one pausing at the open door.

“Has he gone?” was the querulous question that came from behind the screen.

And in a moment the thin, curious face of John Addington Symonds was peering at me round the corner.

There was nothing for it but to answer: 

“No I am afraid she is still here!”

Being the most courteous of men, he smiled and took my hand; and we went up to his library together.

Symonds and I became very great friends.

After putting my sister to bed at 9.30, I climbed every night by starlight up to Am Hof, where we talked and read out loud till one and often two in the morning.  I learnt more in those winter nights at Davos than I had ever learnt in my life.  We read The Republic and all the Plato dialogues together; Swift, Voltaire, Browning, Walt Whitman, Edgar Poe and Symonds’ own Renaissance, besides passages from every author and poet, which he would turn up feverishly to illustrate what he wanted me to understand.