As it is the property of fame to grow with time, and the way of a great
name to begin with brains and end with lords, a great man's descendants
are not unnaturally found persons of much greater consequence than the
original great one. In like manner the dignity and importance of the
members of the Literary and Philosophical Society had grown, in direct
ratio to their distance from the original founders of it; and the
learned Doctors Sibley and Ambrose, who really did know something about
art and poetry and certainly loved them, can never have been persons of
such consequence as one or two of their descendants who are nameless,
and who certainly knew nothing about either.

One of the real objects of this sad little Society was passionately to
ignore what they contemptuously called local talent. It is true that
there was not much to ignore, and, after all, it has now to be recorded
to their credit that they did unreservedly give Theophilus Londonderry
his chance. By what quaintness of accident he could not imagine, he
suddenly found himself invited to lecture before them. The invitation
read something like a command, and there seemed to be an implication
that if all were satisfactory, he might thus earn the right of
acknowledging the patronage of the Literary and Philosophical Society of
Coalchester.

Theophilus Londonderry's subject, therefore, was "Walt Whitman,"--a name
which conveyed no offence to the Committee, for the simple reason that
it conveyed nothing. It was a strange and humorous thing for the young
man to think of, that his was to be the first human voice that had
spoken that name of the future aloud in Coalchester. As he rose to give
his paper, he pronounced its title slowly, with his full carrying voice,
and allowed the strange new name to roll away in menacing echoes through