one overhears now often enough at clubs or in drawing-rooms, or
indeed wherever one goes. "Derrick Vaughan," say these authorities
of the world of small-talk, with that delightful air of omniscience
which invariably characterises them, "why, he simply leapt into
fame. He is one of the favourites of fortune. Like Byron, he woke
one morning and found himself famous."

Now this sounds well enough, but it is a long way from the truth,
and I--Sydney Wharncliffe, of the Inner Temple, Barrister-at-law--
desire, while the past few years are fresh in my mind, to write a
true version of my friend's career.

Everyone knows his face. Has it not appeared in 'Noted Men,' and--
gradually deteriorating according to the price of the paper and the
quality of the engraving--in many another illustrated journal? Yet
somehow these works of art don't satisfy me, and, as I write, I see
before me something very different from the latest photograph by
Messrs. Paul and Reynard.

I see a large-featured, broad-browed English face, a trifle heavy-
looking when in repose, yet a thorough, honest, manly face, with a
complexion neither dark nor fair, with brown hair and moustache, and
with light hazel eyes that look out on the world quietly enough.
You might talk to him for long in an ordinary way and never suspect
that he was a genius; but when you have him to yourself, when some
consciousness of sympathy rouses him, he all at once becomes a
different being. His quiet eyes kindle, his face becomes full of
life--you wonder that you ever thought it heavy or commonplace.
Then the world interrupts in some way, and, just as a hermit-crab
draws down its shell with a comically rapid movement, so Derrick