ught he knew,
all about the ways of the world, though, between you and me, Sampson
always did do a large business on a plaguy small capital. So I put
Sampson to press and got out of him whatever I could, and then I
rehashed a good deal in a disguised way from the old 'Bazar Book of
Decorum' and the still older Count D'Orsay, and some others. You have to
know how to do such things if you're going to make a living as a
literary man. The title is a sixpenny publisher's lie. In the day of
judgment, authors, or at least those of us doing general literary work,
will get off easy on the ground that poor devils scratching for their
dinners can not afford to be too high-toned, but publishers won't have
that excuse."

Millard made his way home that night with some sense of disappointment.
Being a fine gentleman was not so easy as it had seemed. The heights
grew more and more frosty and inaccessible as he approached them. Yet he
had really made a great advance by his talk with Bradley. He had cleared
the ground of rubbish. And though during the next week he bought two or
three of the books of decorum then in vogue, he had learned to depend
mainly on his own observations and good sense. He had also acquired a
beginning of that large stock of personal information which made him in
after years so remarkable. Natural bent is shown in what a man
assimilates. Not an item of all the personal traits and anecdotes of
writers and publishers brought out in Bradley's unreserved talk had
escaped him, and years afterward he could use Bradley's funny stories to
give piquancy to conversation.

It was this memory of individual traits and his tactful use of it that
helped to launch him on the sea of social success. The gentleman who sat
next to him at dinner, the lady who chatted with him at a tea or a
reception, felt certain that a man who knew all about every person in
any way distinguished in society could not be quite without
conspicuousness of some sort himself. This belief served to open doors
to him. Moreover, his fund of personal gossip, judiciously and
good-naturedly used, made him a valuable element in a small company; the
interest never flagged when he talked. Then, too, Millard had a knack
of repeating in a way that seemed almost accidental, or at least purely
incidental, what this or that noted person had said to him. It was in
appearance only an embellishment of his talk, but it served to keep up a
belief in the breadth, and especia