d in keeping up the price.
The publication, however, which brought the highest prices, and, but
for the sober second thought, might have wrecked the whole system, was
Baxter's Procrustes.

Baxter was, perhaps, the most scholarly member of the club. A graduate
of Harvard, he had traveled extensively, had read widely, and while not
so enthusiastic a collector as some of us, possessed as fine a private
library as any man of his age in the city. He was about thirty-five
when he joined the club, and apparently some bitter experience--some
disappointment in love or ambition--had left its mark upon his
character. With light, curly hair, fair complexion, and gray eyes,
one would have expected Baxter to be genial of temper, with a tendency
toward wordiness of speech. But though he had occasional flashes of
humor, his ordinary demeanor was characterized by a mild cynicism,
which, with his gloomy pessimistic philosophy, so foreign to the
temperament that should accompany his physical type, could only be
accounted for upon the hypothesis of some secret sorrow such as I
have suggested. What it might be no one knew. He had means and social
position, and was an uncommonly handsome man. The fact that he remained
unmarried at thirty-five furnished some support for the theory of a
disappointment in love, though this the several intimates of Baxter who
belonged to the club were not able to verify.

It had occurred to me, in a vague way, that perhaps Baxter might be
an unsuccessful author. That he was a poet we knew very well, and
typewritten copies of his verses had occasionally circulated among us.
But Baxter had always expressed such a profound contempt for modern
literature, had always spoken in terms of such unmeasured pity for
the slaves of the pen, who were dependent upon the whim of an
undiscriminating public for recognition and a livelihood, that no one of
us had ever suspected him of aspirations toward publication, until, as I
have said, it occurred to me one day that Baxter's attitude with regard
to publication might be viewed in the light of effect as well as of
cause--that his scorn of publicity might as easily arise from failure
to achieve it, as his never having published might be due to his
preconceived disdain of the vulgar popularity which one must share with
the pugilist or balloonist of the hour.

The notion of publishing Baxter's Procrustes did not emanate from
Baxter,--I must do him the justice to say this. But he