girlhood such as Miss Sanders here affords us; these are the topics that
will always find a welcome in our homes, which remain bolted and barred
against the abandoned artist and the scrofulous stylist."

He turned over the pages of the little book and chuckled in high relish;
he discovered an honest enthusiasm, a determination to strike a blow for
the good and true that refreshed and exhilarated. A beaming face,
spectacled and whiskered probably, an expansive waistcoat, and a tender
heart, seemed to shine through the words which Messrs Beit had quoted;
and the alliteration of the final sentence; that was good too; there was
style for you if you wanted it. The champion of the blushing cheek and
the gushing eye showed that he too could handle the weapons of the enemy
if he cared to trouble himself with such things. Lucian leant back and
roared with indecent laughter till the tabby tom-cat who had succeeded to
the poor dead beasts looked up reproachfully from his sunny corner, with
a face like the reviewer's, innocent and round and whiskered. At last he
turned to his parcel and drew out some half-dozen sheets of manuscript,
and began to read in a rather desponding spirit; it was pretty obvious,
he thought, that the stuff was poor and beneath the standard of
publication. The book had taken a year and a half in the making; it was a
pious attempt to translate into English prose the form and mystery of the
domed hills, the magic of occult valleys, the sound of the red swollen
brook swirling through leafless woods. Day-dreams and toil at nights had
gone into the eager pages, he had labored hard to do his very best,
writing and rewriting, weighing his cadences, beginning over and over
again, grudging no patience, no trouble if only it might be pretty good;
good enough to print and sell to a reading public which had become
critical. He glanced through the manuscript in his hand, and to his
astonishment, he could not help thinking that in its measure it was
decent work. After three months his prose seemed fresh and strange as if