in being a pauper. The Grossenstecks were overcome to think I
shined my own shoes, and had to calculate my shirts, and the fact
that I was no longer young (that's the modern formula for forty),
and next-door to a failure in the art I had followed for so many
years, served to whet their pity and their regard. My little
trashy love-stories seemed to them the fruits of genius, and they
were convinced, the poor simpletons, that the big magazines were
banded in a conspiracy to block my way to fame.

"My dear poy," said Grossensteck, "you know as much of peeziness
as a child unporne, and I tell you it's the same efferywhere--in
groceries, in hardware, in the alkali trade, in effery branch of
industry, the pig operators stand shoulder to shoulder to
spiflicate the little fellers like you. You must combine with the
other producers; you must line up and break through the ring; you
must scare them out of their poots, and, by Gott, I'll help you do
it!"

In their naive interest in my fortunes, the Grossenstecks rejoiced
at an acceptance, and were correspondingly depressed at my
failures. A fifteen-dollar poem would make them happy for a week;
and when some of my editors were slow to pay-on the literary
frontiers there is a great deal of this sort of procrastination--
Uncle Gingersnaps was always hot to put the matter into the hands
of his collectors, and commence legal proceedings in default.

Little by little I drifted into a curious intimacy with the
Grossenstecks. Their house by degrees became my refuge. I was
given my own suite of rooms, my own latch-key; I came and went
unremarked; and what I valued most of all was that my privacy was