lf as my intellectual
superior; while to a fourth-rate spouter of blank verse he looks up in
admiration."

"Does it so very much matter," suggested Dan, "how the wooden-headed
man-at-arms or the shilling gallery boy happens to regard you?"

"Yes, it does," retorted Goggles, "because we happen to agree with them.
If I could earn five pounds a week as juvenile lead, I would never play
a comic part again."

"There I cannot follow you," returned Dan. "I can understand the artist
who would rather be the man of action, the poet who would rather be the
statesman or the warrior; though personally my sympathies are precisely
the other way--with Wolfe who thought it a more glorious work, the
writing of a great poem, than the burning of so many cities and the
killing of so many men. We all serve the community. It is difficult,
looking at the matter from the inside, to say who serves it best. Some
feed it, some clothe it. The churchman and the policeman between them
look after its morals, keep it in order. The doctor mends it when it
injures itself; the lawyer helps it to quarrel, the soldier teaches it
to fight. We Bohemians amuse it, instruct it. We can argue that we are
the most important. The others cater for its body, we for its mind. But
their work is more showy than ours and attracts more attention; and to
attract attention is the aim and object of most of us. But for Bohemians
to worry among themselves which is the greatest, is utterly without
reason. The story-teller, the musician, the artist, the clown, we are
members of a sharing troupe; one, with the ambition of the fat boy in
Pickwick, makes the people's flesh creep; another makes them hold their
sides with laughter. The tragedian, soliloquising on his crimes, shows
us how wicked we are; you, looking at a pair of lovers from under a
scratch wig, show us how ridiculous we are. Both lessons are necessary:
who shall say which is the superior teacher?"

"Ah, I am not a philosopher," replied the little man, with a sigh.

"Ah," returned Dan, with another, "and I am not a comic actor on my
way to a salary of a hundred a week. We all of us want the other boy's
cake."

The O'Kelly was another frequent visitor of ours. The attic in Belsize
Square had been closed. In vain had the O'Kelly wafted incense, burned
pastilles and sprinkled eau-de-Cologne. In vain had he talked of rats,
hinted at drains.

"A wonderful woman," groaned the O'Kelly in tones of sorrowful
admiration