to eat and drink more freely than before. His vanity became defiant.
I noticed one day that he had signed himself, Oscar O'Flahertie Wilde,
I think under some verses which he had contributed years before to his
College magazine. I asked him jokingly what the O'Flahertie stood for.
To my astonishment he answered me gravely:
"The O'Flaherties were kings in Ireland, and I have a right to the
name; I am descended from them."
I could not help it; I burst out laughing.
"What are you laughing at, Frank?" he asked with a touch of annoyance.
"It seems humorous to me," I explained, "that Oscar Wilde should want
to be an O'Flahertie," and as I spoke a picture of the greatest of the
O'Flaherties, with bushy head and dirty rags, warming enormous hairy
legs before a smoking peat-fire, flashed before me. I think something
of the sort must have occurred to Oscar, too, for, in spite of his
attempt to be grave, he could not help laughing.
"It's unkind of you, Frank," he said. "The Irish were civilised and
Christians when the English kept themselves warm with tattooings."
He could not help telling one in familiar talk of Clumber or some
other great house where he had been visiting; he was intoxicated with
his own popularity, a little surprised, perhaps, to find that he had
won fame so easily and on the primrose path, but one could forgive him
everything, for he talked more delightfully than ever.
It is almost inexplicable, but nevertheless true that life tries all
of us, tests every weak point to breaking, and sets off and
exaggerates our powers. Burns saw this when he wrote:
"Wha does the utmost that he can
Will whyles do mair."
And the obverse is true: whoever yields to a weakness habitually, some
day goes further than he ever intended, and comes to worse grief than
he deserved. The old prayer: _Lead us not into temptation_, is perhaps
a half-conscious recognition of this fact. But we moderns are inclined
to walk heedlessly, no longer believing in pitfalls or in the danger
of gratified desires. And Oscar Wilde was not only an unbeliever; but
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