ng creatures will neither strain at a camel nor
swallow a gnat. Not publicly. These operations, without which the world
they have such a large share in could not go on for ten minutes, are left
to us--men. And then we are chided for being coarse. This is a refined
objection but does not seem fair. Another little girl--or perhaps the
same little girl--wrote to him in Cordova, "I hope Poste-Restante is a
nice place, and that you are very comfortable." Woman again! I have in
my time told some stories which are (I hate false modesty) both true and
lovely. Yet no little girl ever wrote to me in kindly terms. And why?
Simply because I am not enough of a Vagabond. The dear despots of the
fireside have a weakness for lawless characters. This is amiable, but
does not seem rational.

Being Quixotic, Mr. Luffmann is no Impressionist. He is far too earnest
in his heart, and not half sufficiently precise in his style to be that.
But he is an excellent narrator. More than any Vagabond I have ever met,
he knows what he is about. There is not one of his quiet days which is
dull. You will find in them a love-story not made up, the
_coup-de-foudre_, the lightning-stroke of Spanish love; and you will
marvel how a spell so sudden and vehement can be at the same time so
tragically delicate. You will find there landladies devoured with
jealousy, astute housekeepers, delightful boys, wise peasants, touchy
shopkeepers, all the _cosas de Espana_--and, in addition, the pale girl
Rosario. I recommend that pathetic and silent victim of fate to your
benevolent compassion. You will find in his pages the humours of
starving workers of the soil, the vision among the mountains of an
exulting mad spirit in a mighty body, and many other visions worthy of
attention. And they are exact visions, for this idealist is no
visionary. He is in sympathy with suffering mankind, and has a grasp on
real human affairs. I mean the great and pitiful affairs concerned with
bread, love, and the obscure, unexpressed needs which drive great crowds
to prayer in the holy places of the earth.

But I like his conception of what a "quiet" life is like! His quiet days
require no fewer than forty-two of the forty-nine provinces of Spain to
take their ease in. For his unquiet days, I presume, the seven--or is it
nine?--crystal spheres of Alexandrian cosmogony would afford, but a
wretchedly straitened space. A most unconventional thing is his notion
of quie