them were alike: they veered from extreme negative to extreme positive.
I have to confess that it gratified me not a little to find the negatives
for the most part of my poor way of thinking. The positives, on the
other hand, declared the gifted young author to have found a manner of
treatment of social life entirely new. Other critics still insisted it
was social ridicule: but if this were so, the satire was too delicate for
ordinary detection.

However, with the dainty volume my quondam friend sprang into fame. At
the same time he cast off the chrysalis of a commonplace existence. He
at once became the hero of the young women of the country from Portland,
Maine, to Portland, Oregon, many of whom wrote him letters and asked him
for his photograph. He was asked to tell what he really meant by the
vague endings of this or that story. And then I began to hear rumors
that his head was turning. These I discredited, of course. If true,
I thought it but another proof of the undermining influence of feminine
flattery, which few men, and fewer young men, can stand. But I watched
his career with interest.

He published other books, of a high moral tone and unapproachable
principle, which I read carefully for some ray of human weakness, for
some stroke of nature untrammelled by the calling code of polite society.
But in vain.




CHAPTER II

It was by a mere accident that I went West, some years ago, and settled