laid for him. I liked the man for his own sake, and even had he promised
to turn out a celebrity it would have had no weight with me. I look upon
notoriety with the same indifference as on the buttons on a man's
shirt-front, or the crest on his note-paper.

When I went West, he fell out of my life. I probably should not have
given him another thought had I not caught sight of his name, in old
capitals, on a daintily covered volume in a book-stand. I had little
time or inclination for reading fiction; my days were busy ones, and
my nights were spent with law books. But I bought the volume out of
curiosity, wondering the while whether he could have written it. I was
soon set at rest, for the dedication was to a young woman of whom I had
often heard him speak. The volume was a collection of short stories. On
these I did not feel myself competent to sit in judgment, for my personal
taste in fiction, if I could be said to have had any, took another turn.
The stories dealt mainly with the affairs of aristocratic young men and
aristocratic young women, and were differentiated to fit situations only
met with in that society which does not have to send descriptions of its
functions to the newspapers. The stories did not seem to me to touch
life. They were plainly intended to have a bracing moral effect, and
perhaps had this result for the people at whom they were aimed. They
left with me the impression of a well-delivered stereopticon lecture,
with characters about as life-like as the shadows on the screen, and
whisking on and off, at the mercy of the operator. Their charm to me lay
in the manner of the telling, the style, which I am forced to admit was
delightful.

But the book I had bought was a success, a great success, if the
newspapers and the reports of the sales were to be trusted. I read the
criticisms out of curiosity more than any other prompting, and no two of