Writing more and more smartly, he found the usual difficulty in
abstaining from a smartness which was unjust because irrelevant.

So far as his employers were concerned, Walter did his duty, but forgot
that, apart from his obligation to the mere and paramount truth, it was
from the books he reviewed--good, bad, or indifferent, whichever they
were--that he drew the food he eat and the clothes that covered him.

His talent was increasingly recognized by the editors of the newspaper,
and they began to put other, and what they counted more important work
in his way, intrusting him with the discussion of certain social
questions of the day, in regard to which, like many another youth of
small experience, he found it the easier to give a confident opinion
that his experience was so small. In general he wrote logically, and,
which is rarer, was even capable of being made to see where his logic
was wrong. But his premises were much too scanty. What he took for
granted was very often by no means granted. It mattered, little to
editors or owners, however, so long as he wrote lucidly, sparklingly,
"crisply," leaving those who read, willing to read more from the same
pen.




CHAPTER IX.


FLATTERY.

Within a year Walter began to be known--to the profession, at least--as