not disturbing the association of ideas in her audience, she added the
gift of what may be called a confidential manner--so that her fluent
generalizations about Goethe and his place in literature (the lecture was,
of course, manufactured out of Lewes's book) had the flavor of personal
experience, of views sympathetically exchanged with her audience on the
best way of knitting children's socks, or of putting up preserves for the
winter. It was, I am sure, to this personal accent--the moral equivalent
of her dimple--that Mrs. Amyot owed her prodigious, her irrational
success. It was her art of transposing second-hand ideas into first-hand
emotions that so endeared her to her feminine listeners.

To any one not in search of "documents" Mrs. Amyot's success was hardly of
a kind to make her more interesting, and my curiosity flagged with the
growing conviction that the "suffering" entailed on her by public speaking
was at most a retrospective pang. I was sure that she had reached the
point of measuring and enjoying her effects, of deliberately manipulating
her public; and there must indeed have been a certain exhilaration in
attaining results so considerable by means involving so little conscious
effort. Mrs. Amyot's art was simply an extension of coquetry: she flirted
with her audience.

In this mood of enlightened skepticism I responded but languidly to my
hostess's suggestion that I should go with her that evening to see Mrs.
Amyot. The aunt who had translated Euripides was at home on Saturday
evenings, and one met "thoughtful" people there, my hostess explained: it
was one of the intellectual centres of Boston. My mood remained distinctly
resentful of any connection between Mrs. Amyot and intellectuality, and I
declined to go; but the next day I met Mrs. Amyot in the street.

She stopped me reproachfully. She had heard I was in Boston; why had I not