ably also carry in one hand (the left) a leather case
filled with valuable papers, and in the other hand (the right, which
also held the cane) a cigarette, lit upon leaving the Grand Central
subway station. This cigarette the person of our tale would
frequentatively apply to his lips, and then withdraw with a quick,
swooping motion. With a rapid, somewhat sidelong gait (at first somehow
clumsy, yet upon closer observation a mode of motion seen to embrace
certain elements of harmony) this gentleman would converge upon the
southwest corner of Madison avenue and 38th street; and the intent
observer, noting the menacing contours of the face, would conclude that
he was going to work.

[Illustration]

This gentleman, beneath his sober but excellently haberdashered surtout,
was plainly a man of large frame, of a Sam Johnsonian mould, but, to the
surprise of the calculating observer, it would be noted that his volume
(or mass) was not what his bony structure implied. Spiritually, in deed,
this interesting individual conveyed to the world a sensation of
stoutness, of bulk and solidity, which (upon scrutiny) was not (or would
not be) verified by measurement. Evidently, you will conclude, a stout
man grown thin; or, at any rate, grown less stout. His molded depth,
one might assess at 20 inches between the eaves; his longitude, say,
five feet eleven; his registered tonnage, 170; his cargo, literary; and
his destination, the editorial sancta of a well-known publishing house.

This gentleman, in brief, is Mr. Robert Cortes Holliday (but not the
"stout Cortes" of the poet), the editor of _The Bookman_.

CHAPTER II

(OUR HERO BEGINS A CAREER)

"It would seem that whenever Nature had a man of letters up her sleeve,
the first gift with which she has felt necessary to dower him has been a
preacher sire."

R.C.H. of N.B. Tarkington.

Mr. Holliday was born in Indianapolis on July 18, 1880. It is evident
that ink, piety and copious speech circulated in the veins of his clan,
for at least two of his grandfathers were parsons, and one of them, Dr.
Ferdinand Cortez Holliday, was the author of a volume called "Indiana
Methodism" in which he was the biographer of the Rev. Joseph Tarkington,
the grandfather of Newton B. Tarkington, sometimes heard of as Booth
Tarkington, a novelist. Thus the hand of Robert C. Holliday was linked
by the manacle of destiny to the hand of Newton B. Tarkington, and it is
a quaint satisfaction to note