Somerset maughan

Buy Ashantis, they are bound to go up.
" 
'I did as he told me; but my father was always unlucky in 
speculation, and they went down steadily. I sold out at considerable 
loss, and concluded that in the world beyond they are as ignorant of 
the tendency of the Stock Exchange as we are in this vale of sorrow.' 
Susie could not help laughing. But Arthur shrugged his shoulders 
impatiently. It disturbed his practical mind never to be certain if 
Haddo was serious, or if, as now, he was plainly making game of 
them. 

---

6 
Two days later, Arthur received Frank Hurrell's answer to his letter. 
It was characteristic of Frank that he should take such pains to reply 
at length to the inquiry, and it was clear that he had lost none of his 
old interest in odd personalities. He analysed Oliver Haddo's 
character with the patience of a scientific man studying a new 
species in which he is passionately concerned. 
My dear Burdon: 
It is singular that you should write just now to ask what I know of 
Oliver Haddo, since by chance I met the other night at dinner at 
Queen Anne's Gate a man who had much to tell me of him. I am 
curious to know why he excites your interest, for I am sure his 
peculiarities make him repugnant to a person of your robust 
common sense. I can with difficulty imagine two men less capable of 
getting on together. Though I have not seen Haddo now for years, I 
can tell you, in one way and another, a good deal about him. He 
erred when he described me as his intimate friend. It is true that at 
one time I saw much of him, but I never ceased cordially to dislike 
him. He came up to Oxford from Eton with a reputation for athletics 
and eccentricity. But you know that there is nothing that arouses the 
ill-will of boys more than the latter, and he achieved an 
unpopularity which was remarkable. It turned out that he played 
football admirably, and except for his rather scornful indolence he 
might easily have got his blue. He sneered at the popular 
enthusiasm for games, and was used to say that cricket was all very 
well for boys but not fit for the pastime of men. (He was then 
eighteen!) He talked grandiloquently of big-game shooting and of 
mountain climbing as sports which demanded courage and self-
reliance. He seemed, indeed, to like football, but he played it with a 
brutal savagery which the other persons concerned naturally 
resented. It became current opinion in other pursuits that he did not 
play the game. He did nothing that was manifestly unfair, but was 
capable of taking advantages which most people would have 
thought mean; and he made defeat more hard to bear because he 
exulted over the vanquished with the coarse banter that youths find 
so difficult to endure. 

---

What you would hardly believe is that, when he first came up, he 
was a person of great physical attractions. He is now grown fat, but 
in those days was extremely handsome. He reminded one of those 
colossal statues of Apollo in which the god is represented with a 
feminine roundness and delicacy. He was very tall and had a 
magnificent figure. It was so well-formed for his age that one might 
have foretold his precious corpulence. He held himself with a 
dashing erectness. Many called it an insolent swagger. His features 
were regular and fine. He had a great quantity of curling hair, which 
was worn long, with a sort of poetic grace: I am told that now he is 
very bald; and I can imagine that this must be a great blow to him, 
for he was always exceedingly vain. I remember a peculiarity of his 
eyes, which could scarcely have been natural, but how it was 
acquired I do not know. The eyes of most people converge upon the 
object at which they look, but his remained parallel. It gave them a 
singular expression, as though he were scrutinising the inmost 
thought of the person with whom he talked. He was notorious also 
for the extravagance of his costume, but, unlike the aesthetes of that 
day, who clothed themselves with artistic carelessness, he had a 
taste for outrageous colours. Sometimes, by a queer freak, he 
dressed himself at unseasonable moments with excessive formality. 
He is the only undergraduate I have ever seen walk down the High 
in a tall hat and a closely-buttoned frock-coat. 
I have told you he was very unpopular, but it was not an 
unpopularity of the sort which ignores a man and leaves him chiefly 
to his own society. Haddo knew everybody and was to be found in 
the most unlikely places. Though people disliked him, they showed 
a curious pleasure in his company, and he was probably entertained 
more than any man in Oxford. I never saw him but he was 
surrounded by a little crowd, who abused him behind his back, but 
could not resist his fascination. 
I often tried to analyse this, for I felt it as much as anyone, and 
though I honestly could not bear him, I could never resist going to 
see him whenever opportunity arose. I suppose he offered the 
charm of the unexpected to that mass of undergraduates who, for all 
their matter-of-fact breeziness, are curiously alive to the romantic. It 
was impossible to tell what he would do or say next, and you were 
kept perpetually on the alert. He was certainly not witty, but he had 

---

a coarse humour which excited the rather gross sense of the 
ludicrous possessed by the young. He had a gift for caricature which 
was really diverting, and an imperturbable assurance. He had also 
an ingenious talent for profanity, and his inventiveness in this