MAFFLIN,
Duke of Derry's (Pink) Hussars.
DEAR MAFFLIN,-You will remember that I wrote this story as an
Awful Warning. None the less you have seen fit to disregard it and
have followed Gadsby's example--as I betted you would. I
acknowledge that you paid the money at once, but you have
prejudiced the mind of Mrs. Mafflin against myself, for though I
am almost the only respectable friend of your bachelor days, she
has been darwaza band to me throughout the season. Further, she
caused you to invite me to dinner at the Club, where you called me
"a wild ass of the desert," and went home at half-past ten, after
discoursing for twenty minutes on the responsibilities of
housekeeping. You now drive a mail-phaeton and sit under a
Church of England clergyman. I am not angry, Jack. It is your
kismet, as it was Gaddy's, and his kismet who can avoid? Do not
think that I am moved by a spirit of revenge as I write, thus
publicly, that you and you alone are responsible for this book. In
other and more expansive days, when you could look at a magnum
without flushing and at a cheroot without turning white, you
supplied me with most of the material. Take it back again-would
that I could have preserved your fatherless speech in the
telling-take it back, and by your slippered hearth read it to the late
Miss Deercourt.
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