s, anyhow," he said.

"What plan is that?" I asked.

I was reminded that these were also the days of a quickened interest in
education. This interest was expressing itself in large new
institutions, and these institutions were generously embodying
themselves in solid stone--in mullions, groins, gargoyles, finials, and
the whole volume of approved scholastic detail. Donors were grouping
themselves in "halls" and dormitories round a certain inchoate campus,
and were putting on the fronts of their buildings their own names, or
the names of deceased husbands or wives, fathers or mothers--so many
bids for a monumental immortality.

"I had hoped for a Prince Hall," said Raymond. And he explained that it
would have been in memory of his parents.

I must pause for a moment on this matter. I do not believe that Raymond
had ever thought, in seriousness, of any such gift. It must have been at
best an errant fancy, and if concerned with commemorating anybody
concerned with commemorating himself. But I will say this for him: he
never was disposed to try getting things out of people, for he hated
attempts at trickery almost as much as he detested the exercise of the
shrewdness involved in bargaining and dickering. Per contra, he often
showed himself not averse to giving things to other people; but the
basis for that giving must be clearly understood all round. He would not
compete; he would not struggle; he would not descend to a war of wits.
His to bestow, from some serene height; his the role, in fact, of the
kindly patron. Let but his own superiority be recognized--let him only
be regarded as _hors concours_--and he would sometimes deign to do the
most generous acts. These acts embraced, now and again, the
entertainment of writers and artists, either at his home or elsewhere:
his fellows--for he was a writer and an artist too. But it was all done
with the understanding that there was a difference: he was a writer and
an artist--but he was something more. Those who failed to feel the
difference were not always bidden a second time.

And his fancy for patronage was developing just at a time when patronage
was becoming more difficult, awkward, impracticable! But though "Prince
Hall" never saw the light, other and humbler forms of patronage came to
be accepted by him.

Toward the end of April Raymond and his wife joined one of the clubs
which he had brought to her notice. Though in a formative stage, like
others, it was good (w