The Gentle Art of Making Enemies

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_A Retrospect_ _TO THE EDITOR OF THE "PALL MALL GAZETTE:"_ Sir,--The Royal Society of British Artists is, perhaps, by this time again unknown to your agitated readers--but I would recall a brilliant number of the _Pall Mall Gazette_ (July 1888), in which mischievous amusement was sought, with statistics from a newly elected President--Mr. Bayliss (Wyke). Believing it to be, in an official and dull way, more becoming that the appointed Council of this same Society should deal with the resulting chaos, I have, until now, waited for a slight washing of hands, as who should say, on their part as representing the gentle deprecation of, I assure you, the respectable body in Suffolk Street. Well, no!--It was doubtless adjudged wiser, or milder, to "live it down," and now it, I really believe, behoves me, in a weary way, to remind you of the document in question, and, for the sake of commonplace, uninteresting, and foolish fact, to lift up my parable and declare fallacious that which was supposed to be true, and generally to bore myself, and perhaps even you, the all-patient one, with what, I fear, we others care but little for--parish matters. In the article, then, entitled "The Royal Society of British Artists and its Future--An Interview with the New President"--a most appalling volley of figures was fired off at _brule-pour-point_ distance. Under this deafening detonation I, having no habit, sat for days incapable--dreaming vaguely that when a President should see fit to wash his people's linen in the open, there must be indeed crime at least on the part of the offender at whose instigation such official sacrifice of dignity could come about. _I_ was the offender, and for a while I sincerely believed that disaster had been brought upon this Royal Society by my own casual self. But behold, upon closer inspection, these threatening figures are meretricious and misleading,


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