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Mr. Hoopdriver was (in the days of this story) a poet, though he
had never written a line of verse. Or perhaps romancer will
describe him better. Like I know not how many of those who do the
fetching and carrying of life,--a great number of them
certainly,--his real life was absolutely uninteresting, and if he
had faced it as realistically as such people do in Mr. Gissing's
novels, he would probably have come by way of drink to suicide in
the course of a year. But that was just what he had the natural
wisdom not to do. On the contrary, he was always decorating his
existence with imaginative tags, hopes, and poses, deliberate and
yet quite effectual self-deceptions; his experiences were mere
material for a romantic superstructure. If some power had given
Hoopdriver the 'giftie' Burns invoked, 'to see oursels as ithers
see us,' he would probably have given it away to some one else at
the very earliest opportunity. His entire life, you must
understand, was not a continuous romance, but a series of short
stories linked only by the general resemblance of their hero, a
brown-haired young fellow commonly, with blue eyes and a fair
moustache, graceful rather than strong, sharp and resolute rather
than clever (cp., as the scientific books say, p. 2). Invariably
this person possessed an iron will. The stories fluctuated
indefinitely. The smoking of a cigarette converted Hoopdriver's
hero into something entirely worldly, subtly rakish, with a
humorous twinkle in the eye and some gallant sinning in the
background. You should have seen Mr. Hoopdriver promenading the
brilliant gardens at Earl's Court on an early-closing night. His
meaning glances! (I dare not give the meaning.) Such an influence
as the eloquence of a revivalist preacher would suffice to divert