as fruit, with a
slight odour of ink. He took it in.

His heart was beating as he climbed back into bed with it and arranged
pillows so that he could sit up, and unfolded the first paper. Nellie
had not stirred.

Once again he was disappointed in the prominence given by the powerful
London press to his London enterprise. In the first newspaper, a
very important one, he positively could not find any criticism of the
Regent's first night. There was nearly a page of the offensive Isabel
Joy, who was now appealing, through the newspapers, to the President
of the United States. Isabel had been christened the World-Circler,
and the special correspondents of the entire earth were gathered about
her carpeted cell. Hope still remained that she would reach London
within the hundred days. An unknown adherent of the cause for which
she suffered had promised to give ten thousand pounds to that cause
if she did so. Further, she was receiving over sixty proposals of
marriage a day. And so on and so on! Most of this he gathered in an
instant from the headlines alone. Nauseating! Another annoying item in
the paper was a column and a half given to the foundation-stone-laying
of the First New Thought Church, in Dean Street, Soho--about a couple
of hundred yards from its original site. He hated the First New
Thought Church as one always hates that to which one has done an
injury.

Then he found what he was searching for: "Regent Theatre. Production
of poetical drama at London's latest playhouse." After all, it was
well situated in the paper, on quite an important page, and there was
over a column of it. But in his nervous excitation his eyes had missed
it. His eyes now read it. Over half of it was given up to a discussion
of the Don Juan legend and the significance of the Byronic character
of Haidee--obviously written before the performance. A description
of the plot occupied most of the rest, and a reference to the acting
ended it. "Miss Rose Euclid, in the trying and occasionally beautiful
part of Haidee, was all that her admirers could have wished." ...
"Miss Cunningham distinguished herself by her diction and bearing in
the small part of the Messenger." The final words were, "The reception
was quite favourable."

"Quite favourable" indeed! Edward Henry had a chill. Good heavens, was
not the reception ecstatically, madly, foolishly enthusiastic? "Why!"
he exclaimed within, "I never saw such a reception!" It was true, but
then he