nk I ought to say that you had never been asked to a
Synthesis dance when you wrote that account of one in me; and though
you have often been asked since, you have never had the courage to go
for fear of finding out how little it was like your description.

"But if Charmian was created out of nothing, what should you say if I
were frank about the other characters of my story? Could you deny that
the drummer who was first engaged to Cornelia was anything more than a
materialization from seeing a painter very long ago make his two
fingers do a ballet-dance? Or that Ludlow was not at first a mere
pointed beard and a complexion glimpsed in a slim young Cuban one night
at Saratoga? Or that Cornelia's mother existed by any better right than
your once happening to see a poor lady try to hide the gap in her teeth
when she smiled?

"When I think what a thing of shreds and patches I am, I wonder that I
have any sort of individual temperament or consciousness at all. But I
know that I have, and that you wrote me with pleasure and like me
still. You think I have form, and that, if I am not very serious, I am
sincere, and that somehow I represent a phase of our droll American
civilization truly enough. I know you were vexed when some people said
I did not go far enough, and insisted that the coast of Bohemia ought
to have been the whole kingdom. As if I should have cared to be that!
There are shady places inland where I should not have liked my girls to
be, and where I think my young men would not have liked to meet them;
and I am glad you kept me within the sweet, pure breath of the sea. I
think I am all the better book for that, and, if you are fond of me,
you have your reasons. I----"

"Upon my word," I interrupted at this point, "it seems to me that you
are saying rather more for yourself than I could say for you, if you
_are_ one of my spoiled children. Don't you think we had both better
give the reader a chance, now?"

"Oh, if there are to be any readers!" cried the book, and lapsed into
the silence of print.

[Illustration: W. D. Howells.]

Transcriber's Note: The Table of Contents has been added for the
convenience of the reader.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter

I. XXI.
II. XXII.
III. XXIII.
IV. XXIV.
V. XXV.
VI. XXVI.
VII. XXVII.
VIII. XXVIII.
IX.