innumerable cigarettes as she perused me; by a young gentleman who I am
sure had a morning "hang over" at his desk; by a tough-looking customer
who wore his hat at his desk; by a young lady of futurist aspect who
took me home to her studio; by an old, old man who seemed to "see" me
quite, and by many more--all this I may merely indicate.

One very striking phenomenon I should by no means fail to mention, and
this uncanny fact may be illustrated thus: If an object is blue or if
it is yellow it will be recognised by all men as being blue or yellow,
as the case may be. One will not say of it, "See that lurid yellow
object," to have another reply, "What! that object directly before us?
I see nothing yellow about it; it is as black as ink." But I was
apparently exactly like such an impossible object. I was, figuratively
speaking, no colour of my own and I was all colours. One, so to speak,
saw me as green, another as white, and yet another as orange, while
some saw quite red as they looked at me. That is, my character
consisted altogether, it seemed, in the amazingly diverse reactions I
inspired in my successive readers. I was intolerably dull, I was
abundantly entertaining, I was over-subtle, I was painfully obvious, I
was exceedingly humorous, and I lacked all humour.

How, at length, a group of editorial gamblers succeeded in coming
sufficiently into harmony about me to render a composite verdict that I
would be a fair publishing risk; but how the title my poor parent had
given me it was unanimously held wouldn't do at all; and how I got
another in book committee meeting; how, after I was (wonderful thing!)
"accepted," I lay in a safe until I thought I should crumble away with
age; and how I was suddenly brought forth and hastily read by the
manufacturing department for ideas for my cover to be, and then by the
advertising department for "copy dope," before being rushed to the