ssed to a feeling of sadness, of definite loss.

Naturally, inevitably the Boston of my early twenties had vanished. My
youthful worship of the city, my faith in the literary supremacy of New
England had died out. Manifestly increasing in power as a commercial
center, roaring with new interests, new powers, new people, the Hub had
lost its scholastic distinction, its historic charm. Each year would see
it more easily negligible in American art. It hurt me to acknowledge
this, it was like losing a noble ancestor, but there was no escape from
the conclusion.

"Little that is new is coming out of Boston," I sadly remarked to
Zulime. "Her illustrious poets of the Civil War period are not being
replaced by others of National appeal. Her writers, her artists, like
those of Chicago, Cleveland, and San Francisco, are coming to New York.
New England is being drained of talent in order that Manhattan shall be
supreme."

While we were away on this trip my friends Grace and Ernest
Thompson-Seton had sent out cards for a party "in honor of Mr. and Mrs.
Hamlin Garland," but when, a few nights later, a throng of writers,
artists and musicians filled the Seton studio, I was confirmed in a
growing suspicion that I was only the lesser half of a fortunate
combination. A long list of invitations to dinner or to luncheon
testified to the fact that while they tolerated me, they liked my wife,
and in this judgment I concurred.

One day while calling on a charming friend and fellow-fictionist, Juliet
Wilbur Tompkins, we met for the first time Frank Norris, another
California novelist, who captivated us both, not merely because of his
handsome face and figure, but by reason of his keen and joyous spirit.

He had been employed for some time in the office of Doubleday and Page,
and though I had often passed him at his desk, I had never before
spoken with him. We struck up an immediate friendship and thereafter
often dined together. He told me of his plan to embody modern California
in a series of novels, and at my request read some of his manuscript to
me.

Zulime, although she greatly admired Norris, still maintained that
Edward MacDowell was the handsomest man of her circle, and in this I
supported her, for he was then in the noble prime of his glorious
manhood, gay of spirit, swift of wit and delightfully humorous of
speech. As a dinner companion he was unexcelled and my wife quite lost
her heart to him. Between Frank Norris and Edward