e, but his hook-and-eye had such unusual merits that it
seemed, according to the engaging pictures and verses in the
street-cars, to simplify most of the sterner problems of every-day life.
As its lineaments began to stare at passers-by from thousands of huge
bill-boards over the length and breadth of the land, dimes turned to
dollars in Mr. Early's ever-widening pockets, and for the time he felt
himself a man of distinction. Yet in these later and regenerate days,
Mr. Early sometimes had a moment's anguish as he remembered those miles
of unesthetic bill-boards, which once marred the meadows and streams of
his native land; for with a widening horizon, there had crept upon him a
rising spirit of discontent.

Perhaps it was that divine discontent, which William Morris celebrates,
that makes men yearn for higher things. Department stores still rolled
out their multitudinous cards of hooks-and-eyes, but the person of
Sebastian Early passed unnoticed in the crowd. He yearned for fame, not
for his product, but for himself, and the same ability that led him to
serve the wants of the public in hooks now drove him to study its social
demands. Like many another unfortunate, he began to perceive that
dollars alone were not enough of a key to unlock the magic door. In this
over-fed land, people with money are growing too common. Therefore to
gold one must add power and distinction, if one would keep one's head
above the herd. This must one do and not leave the other undone.

Sebastian determined to make himself interesting. The public has a
fawning respect for fame. One or two abortive attempts convinced Mr.
Early that his literary efforts would bring him not even the distinction
of infamy. At last he hit upon an idea. He would be a patron of the
Arts--not one of your little ordinary buyers, but a man whose purse was,
so to speak, regilded by mind. He spent six months of hard work as a
student of the situation and then he made his debut. He selected a few
gems of half-forgotten eighteenth century literature--gems that deserved
to be given life-preservers on that stream of oblivion into which they
were too surely being sucked. These he brought forth in tiny volumes,
wide-edged and thick-papered, illuminated as to capitals and bound in
ooze or in old brocade on which were scattered a few decorations,
calculated, so unthinkable were they, to upset the reasoning power of
the average reader, and thus prepare him for the literary matter