Abner's second book, in spirit and substance, was a good deal like his
first: the man who has succeeded follows up his success, naturally, with
something of the same sort. The new book was a novel, however,--the first
of the long series that Abner was to put forth with the prodigal ease and
carelessness of Nature herself; and it was as gloomy, strenuous and
positive as its predecessor.

Abner, by this time, had enlarged his circle. Through the reformers he
had become acquainted with a few journalists, and journalists had led on
to versifiers and novelists, and these to a small clique of artists and
musicians. Abner was now beginning to find his best account in a sort of
decorous Bohemia and to feel that such, after all, was the atmosphere he
had been really destined to breathe. The morals of his new associates
were as correct as even he could have insisted upon, and their manners
were kindly and not too ornate. They indulged in a number of little
practices caught, he supposed, from "society," but after all their modes
were pleasantly trustful and informal and presently quite ceased to irk
and to intimidate him. Many members of his new circle were massed in one
large building whose owner had attempted to name it the Warren Block; but
the artists and the rest simply called it the Warren--sometimes the
Burrow or the Rabbit-Hutch--and referred to themselves collectively as
the Bunnies.

Abner found it hard to countenance such facetiousness in a world so full
of pain; yet after all these dear people did much to cushion his
discomfort, and before long hardly a Saturday afternoon came round
without his dropping into one studio or another for a chat and a cup of
tea. To tell the truth, Abner could hardly "chat" as yet, but he was
beginning to learn, and he was becoming more reconciled as well to all