"'Gallegher,'" said Bob.

Three years elapsed after our first acquaintance before Bob Stephens began
writing stories and sketches. The "Tales from Bohemia" collected in this
volume represent his early creative work. We were in the better sense a
small band of Bohemians, the few friends and companions who will be found
figuring in the tales under one guise or another. Many a merry prank and
many a jest is recalled by these pages. Of criticism I have no word to say.
Let the reader understand how they came into being and they will explain
themselves. "Bob" Stephens took his own environment, the anecdotes he
heard, the persons whom he met and the friends whom he knew, and he treated
them as the writers of short stories in France twenty years ago treated
their own Parisian environment. He made an incident the means of
illustrating a portrayal of character. Later he was to construct elaborate
plots for dramas and historical novels.

"Bohemianism" was but a brief episode in the life of "R. N. S." It ceased
after his marriage. But his natural gaiety remained. Seldom was his joyous
disposition overcast, or his winning smile eclipsed. For six months I was
privileged to live in the house with his mother. If he had inherited his
literary predilections from his father,--a highly respected educator of
Huntington, Pa. from whose academy many eminent professional men were
graduated,--his gentleness, his cheerfulness, his winning smile and the
ingratiating qualities to which it was the key, as surely came from his
mother.

I remember a time when he was inordinately grave for several days
and pursued a tireless course of special reading through the office
encyclopaedias and some books he had borrowed. At last he drew aside the