y pleasant
specialty. It is about as good sport as trout-tickling, and much the
same kind of business. I should like to send the Society an account of
one of my interviews. Don't you think they would like to hear it?"

"I have no doubt they would. Send it to me, and I will look it over; and
if the Committee approve it, we will have it at the next meeting. You
know everything has to be examined and voted on by the Committee," said
the cautious Secretary.

"Very well,--I will risk it. After it is read, if it is read, please
send it back to me, as I want to sell it to 'The Sifter,' or 'The Second
Best,' or some of the paying magazines."

This is the paper, which was read at the next meeting of the Pansophian
Society.

"I was ordered by the editor of the newspaper to which I am attached,
'The People's Perennial and Household Inquisitor,' to make a visit to a
certain well-known writer, and obtain all the particulars I could
concerning him and all that related to him. I have interviewed a good
many politicians, who I thought rather liked the process; but I had never
tried any of these literary people, and I was not quite sure how this one
would feel about it. I said as much to the chief, but he pooh-poohed my
scruples. 'It is n't our business whether they like it or not,' said he;
'the public wants it, and what the public wants it's bound to have, and
we are bound to furnish it. Don't be afraid of your man; he 's used to
it,--he's been pumped often enough to take it easy, and what you've got
to do is to pump him dry. You need n't be modest,--ask him what you
like; he is n't bound to answer, you know.'

"As he lived in a rather nice quarter of the town, I smarted myself up a
little, put on a fresh collar and cuffs, and got a five-cent shine on my
best high-lows. I said to myself, as I was walking towards the house
where he lived, that I would keep very shady for a while and pass for a
visitor from a distance; one of those 'admiring strangers' who call in to
pay their respects, to get an autograph, and go home and say that they
have met the distinguished So and So, which gives them a certain
distinction in the village circle to which they belong.

"My man, the celebrated writer, received me in what was evidently his
reception-room. I observed that he managed to get the light full on my
face, while his own was in the shade. I had meant to have his face in
the light, but he knew the localities, and had arranged things so as