Monthly', which would not have it. Then I offered it in person to a
former editor of 'Harper's Monthly', but he could not see his advantage
in it, and I carried it overseas to Venice with me. From that point I
sent it to all the English magazines as steadily as the post could carry
it away and bring it back. On my way home, four years later, I took it
to London with me, where a friend who knew Lewes, then just beginning
with the 'Fortnightly Review', sent it to him for me. It was promptly
returned, with a letter wholly reserved as to its quality, but full of a
poetic gratitude for my wish to contribute to the Fortnightly. Then I
heard that a certain Mr. Lucas was about to start a magazine, and I
offered the poem to him. The kindest letter of acceptance followed me to
America, and I counted upon fame and fortune as usual, when the news of
Mr. Lucas's death came. I will not poorly joke an effect from my poem in
the fact; but the fact remains. By this time I was a writer in the
office of the 'Nation' newspaper, and after I left this place to be Mr.
Fields's assistant on the Atlantic, I sent my poem to the Nation, where
it was printed at last. In such scant measure as my verses have pleased
it has found rather unusual favor, and I need not say that its
misfortunes endeared it to its author.

But all this is rather far away from my first meeting with Stedman in
Washington. Of course I liked him, and I thought him very handsome and
fine, with a full beard cut in the fashion he has always worn it, and
with poet's eyes lighting an aquiline profile. Afterwards, when I saw
him afoot, I found him of a worldly splendor in dress, and envied him, as
much as I could envy him anything, the New York tailor whose art had
clothed him: I had a New York tailor too, but with a difference. He had
a worldly dash along with his supermundane gifts, which took me almost as
much, and all the more because I could see that he valued himself nothing
upon it. He was all for literature, and for literary men as the