order. I do not know if it has occurred to anybody yet to shut up Mr.
Luffmann in a wooden cage. {4} I do not raise the point because I wish
him any harm. Quite the contrary. I am a humane person. Let him take
it as the highest praise--but I must say that he richly deserves that
sort of attention.

On the other hand I would not have him unduly puffed up with the pride of
the exalted association. The grave wisdom, the admirable amenity, the
serene grace of the secular patron-saint of all mortals converted to
noble visions are not his. Mr. Luffmann has no mission. He is no Knight
sublimely Errant. But he is an excellent Vagabond. He is full of merit.
That peripatetic guide, philosopher and friend of all nations, Mr.
Roosevelt, would promptly excommunicate him with a big stick. The truth
is that the ex-autocrat of all the States does not like rebels against
the sullen order of our universe. Make the best of it or perish--he
cries. A sane lineal successor of the Barber and the Priest, and a
sagacious political heir of the incomparable Sancho Panza (another great
Governor), that distinguished litterateur has no mercy for dreamers. And
our author happens to be a man of (you may trace them in his books) some
rather fine reveries.

Every convert begins by being a rebel, and I do not see myself how any
mercy can possibly be extended to Mr. Luffmann. He is a convert from the
creed of strenuous life. For this renegade the body is of little
account; to him work appears criminal when it suppresses the demands of
the inner life; while he was young he did grind virtuously at the sacred
handle, and now, he says, he has fallen into disgrace with some people
because he believes no longer in toil without end. Certain respectable
folk hate him--so he says--because he dares to think that "poetry,
beauty, and the broad face of the world are the best things to be in love
with." He confesses to loving Spain on the ground that she is "the land
of to-morrow, and holds the gospel of never-mind." The universal
striving to push ahead he considers mere vulgar folly. Didn't I tell you
he was a fit subject for the cage?

It is a relief (we are all humane, are we not?) to discover that this
desperate character is not altogether an outcast. Little girls seem to
like him. One of them, after listening to some of his tales, remarked to
her mother, "Wouldn't it be lovely if what he says were true!" Here you
have Woman! The charmi