Making a new friend is so exhilarating an adventure that perhaps it will
not be out of place if I tell you a little about him. There are not many
of his kind.

In the first place, he is stout, like myself. We are both agreed that
many of the defects of American letters to-day are due to the sorry
leanness of our writing men. We have no Chestertons, no Bellocs. I look
to Don Marquis, to H.L. Mencken, to Heywood Broun, to Clayton Hamilton,
and to my friend here portraited, to remedy this. If only Mr. Simeon
Strunsky were stouter! He is plump, but not yet properly corpulent.

My friend is a literary journalist. There are but few of them in these
parts. Force of circumstances may compel him to write of trivial things,
but it would be impossible for him not to write with beauty and
distinction far above his theme. His style is a perfect echo of his
person, mellow, quaint, and richly original. To plunder a phrase of his
own, it is drenched with the sounds, the scents, the colours, of great
literature.

I, too, am employed in a bypath of the publishing business, and try to
bring to my tasks some small measure of honest idealism. But what I love
(I use this great word with care) in my friend is that his zeal for
beauty and for truth is great enough to outweigh utterly the paltry
considerations of expediency and comfort which sway most of us. To him
his pen is as sacred as the scalpel to the surgeon. He would rather die
than dishonour that chosen instrument.

I hope I am not merely fanciful: but the case of my friend has taken in
my mind a large importance quite beyond the exigencies of his personal