novelist--Heaven knows what besides. His plays have run, on an
average, about six nights; his books, published mostly at his own
expense, are a drug in the market; but the little creature is as vain,
as proud, and, it must be added, as contented, as though Fame had set
him, with a blast of her golden trumpet, amongst the mighty Immortals.
What lot can be happier than his? Secure in his impregnable egotism,
ramparted about with mighty walls of conceit, he bids defiance to
attack, and lives an enviable life of self-centred pleasure.

Then, again, there was JOHNNIE TRUEBRIDGE. I do not mean to liken him
to CHARSLEY, for no more unselfish and kind-hearted being than JOHNNIE
ever breathed. But was there ever a stone that rolled more constantly
and gathered less moss? Yet no stroke could subdue his inconquerable
cheerfulness. Time after time he got his head above the waters;
time after time, some malignant emissary of fate sent him bubbling
and gasping down into the depths. He was up again in a moment,
striving, battling, buffeting. Nothing could make JOHNNIE despair, no
disappointment could warp the simple straightforward sincerity, the
loyal and almost childlike honesty of his nature. And if here and
there, for a short time, fortune seemed to shine upon him, you may be
sure that there was no single friend whom he did not call upon to bask
with him in these fleeting rays. And what a glorious laugh he had; not
a loud guffaw that splits your tympanum and crushes merriment flat,
but an irrepressible, helpless, irresistible infectious laugh, in
which his whole body became involved. I have seen a whole roomful of
strangers rolling on their chairs without in the least knowing why,
while JOHNNIE, with his head thrown back, his jolly face puckered into
a thousand wrinkles of hearty delight, and his hands pressed to his
sides, was shouting with laughter at some joke made, as most of his
jokes were, at his own expense.