remaining seventy pages were not completed, in their published form, until
about three years later, an extraordinary delay, which did not escape
censure at the time, and into the causes of which I will not enter here.

The title of the story also underwent various vicissitudes. The one first
chosen was "Happy Jack"; but that was objected to as suggesting, to an
English ear at least, a species of cheap Jack or rambling peddler. The
next title fixed upon was "Luck"; but before this could be copyrighted,
somebody published a story called "Luck, and What Came of It," and thereby
invalidated my briefer version. For several weeks, I was at a loss what to
call it; but one evening, at a representation of "Romeo and Juliet," I
heard the exclamation of _Romeo_, "Oh, I am fortune's fool!" and
immediately appropriated it to my own needs. It suited the book well
enough, in more ways than one.




CHAPTER II

NOVELS AND AGNOSTICISM.


The novel of our times is susceptible of many definitions. The American
publishers of Railway libraries think that it is forty or fifty double-
column pages of pirated English fiction. Readers of the "New York Ledger"
suppose it to be a romance of angelic virtue at last triumphant over
satanic villany. The aristocracy of culture describe it as a philosophic
analysis of human character and motives, with an agnostic bias on the
analyst's part. Schoolboys are under the impression that it is a tale of