ings, whether they were
tremendously conservative, as some were, or tremendously progressive,
as others were. Certain of them called themselves realists, certain
romanticists; but none of them seemed to know what realism was, or what
romanticism; they apparently supposed the difference a difference of
material. March had imagined himself taking home to lunch or dinner the
aspirants for editorial favor whom he liked, whether he liked their
work or not; but this was not an easy matter. Those who were at all
interesting seemed to have engagements and preoccupations; after two or
three experiments with the bashfuller sort--those who had come up to
the metropolis with manuscripts in their hands, in the good old literary
tradition--he wondered whether he was otherwise like them when he was
young like them. He could not flatter himself that he was not; and yet
he had a hope that the world had grown worse since his time, which his
wife encouraged:

Mrs. March was not eager to pursue the hospitalities which she had at
first imagined essential to the literary prosperity of 'Every Other
Week'; her family sufficed her; she would willingly have seen no one
out of it but the strangers at the weekly table-d'hote dinner, or
the audiences at the theatres. March's devotion to his work made him
reluctant to delegate it to any one; and as the summer advanced, and
the question of where to go grew more vexed, he showed a man's base
willingness to shirk it for himself by not going anywhere. He asked his
wife why she did not go somewhere with the children, and he joined her
in a search for non-malarial regions on the map when she consented to
entertain this notion. But when it came to the point she would not go;
he offered to go with her then, and then she would not let him. She said
she knew he would be anxious about his work; he protested that he could
take it with him to any distance within a few hours, but she would not
be persuaded. She would rather he stayed; the effect would be better
with Mr. Fulkerson; they could make excursions, and they could all
get off a week or two to the seashore near Boston--the only real
seashore--in August. The excursions were practically confined to a
single day at Coney Island; and once they got as far as Boston on the
way to the seashore near Boston; that is, Mrs. March and the children
went; an editorial exigency kept March at the last moment. The Boston
streets seemed very queer and clean and empty to th