If Hubbard were not my friend I should describe him as one of the most
amiable and most muddle-headed of mankind. Under the influence of his
mind things that are quite clear become confused and lose themselves
in long vistas of statement and sub-statement and sub-sub-statement,
and a plain tale is darkened until at the end nothing is left of what
it originally was. If you don't believe me listen to what follows.
We were sitting in the drawing-room one evening recently; the various
topics of the day having been more or less exhausted, somebody
proposed a round game as a diversion. Hubbard saw his chance and
dashed in. "Yes, by Jove," he said, "let's have the new game of
'Likenesses;' it's a perfectly ripping game. I played it the other
day and never laughed so much in my life."
"How do you play it?" I said.
"Oh," said Hubbard, "it's one of the easiest games in the world. All
you have to do is to keep your mind clear and remember what you are
driving at."
"Right," I said. "But what are you driving at?"
"Well," said Hubbard, "one of us goes out or stops his ears and the
rest choose somebody."
"There's nothing very new about that," I said; "I've played it a
thousand times."
"Wait a bit," said Hubbard, "and don't be so ready to plunge. I tell
you this is an entirely new and original game."
"Let him," said somebody else, "get on with it in his own way or we
shall be here till past midnight. Go ahead, Hubbard."
"Well," said Hubbard, "you choose somebody to be a likeness. When your
man comes in again he begins to ask questions."
"Vegetable, animal or mineral," said Butterfield, "I knew it was."
"No, it isn't," said Hubbard. "The man who has gone out and has come
in says to you, What food does the person you've chosen remind you of?
and you say tapioca pudding or beef-steak and kidney pie."
"But," I said, "there's nobody in the whole wide world who reminds me
of either of those things."
"Well, you can choose your own food," said Hubbard. "If you don't like
tapioca pudding you can answer scrambled eggs. Only scrambled eggs
must remind you of the person you have in your mind. Then you go on
to the next man, and you ask him what cloth he reminds you of, and he
answers tweed or Irish frieze or best Angola."
"Can anybody," said Butterfield, "tell me what 'best Angola' means?
I've seen it often in my tailor's bills; mostly, I think, as
waistcoats, but I've never known what it really is. If I had to guess
now I should say it is something composed in equal parts of fancy
waistcoats, tapioca pudding and scrambled eggs."
"Well, you'd be wrong," said Hubbard; "it's nothing of the sort. When
you have got as far as scrambled eggs your man ought to begin to have
a faint glimmering--"
"But," I said, "there's the tapioca pudding. What are you going to do
with that? You can't be allowed to play fast and loose with that."
"Don't you see," said Hubbard, "that that's a mere example and now
done with? Do please remember that we have got on to Irish frieze. You
must allow me to explain the game in my own way. Now your man tackles
the next person in turn. What building, he asks, does he remind you
of? and the answer is Cologne Cathedral or the Bank of England."
"It would be difficult to choose anyone who reminded me of either
of those celebrated structures," I said, "but I'll take the Bank of
England for choice."
"But," said Hubbard, "you don't _take_ either of them, you see it in a
flash and it's gone."
"What do you see in a flash?" I said.
"The building that the man who has gone out and is asking questions in
order to guess the person everybody is thinking of reminds you of,"
said Hubbard.
"Oh, yes. That makes it absolutely clear," said Butterfield. "Let's
get to work. Personally I haven't got beyond scrambled eggs."
"And I am lost in tapioca," I said. "Let's get to bed." That's as far
as Hubbard ever got with the explanation of his game. We left him
struggling and went to bed.
* * * * *