've inquired of innumerable literary
men, and none of 'em know. I may say I have chased that problem for
years. I might give you my personal history, and see if that would throw
any light on the subject." He looked about him with chin high until his
glance had noted the two vague figures at the top of the cliff. "I might
give you my personal history----"

Mrs. Fanhall looked at him curiously, and the elder Worcester girl
cried, "Oh, do!"

After another scanning of the figures at the top of the cliff, Hollanden
established himself in an oratorical pose on a great weather-beaten
stone. "Well--you must understand--I started my career--my career, you
understand--with a determination to be a prophet, and, although I have
ended in being an acrobat, a trained bear of the magazines, and a
juggler of comic paragraphs, there was once carved upon my lips a smile
which made many people detest me, for it hung before them like a banshee
whenever they tried to be satisfied with themselves. I was informed from
time to time that I was making no great holes in the universal plan, and
I came to know that one person in every two thousand of the people I saw
had heard of me, and that four out of five of these had forgotten it.
And then one in every two of those who remembered that they had heard of
me regarded the fact that I wrote as a great impertinence. I admitted
these things, and in defence merely builded a maxim that stated that
each wise man in this world is concealed amid some twenty thousand
fools. If you have eyes for mathematics, this conclusion should interest
you. Meanwhile I created a gigantic dignity, and when men saw this
dignity and heard that I was a literary man they respected me. I
concluded that the simple campaign of existence for me was to delude
the populace, or as much of it as would look at me. I did. I do. And now
I can make myself quite happy concocting sneers about it. Others may do
as they please, but as for me," he concluded ferociously, "I shall never
disclose to anybody that an acrobat, a trained bear of the magazines, a
juggler of comic paragraphs, is not a priceless pearl of art and
philosophy."

"I don't believe a word of it is true," said Miss Worcester.

"What do you expect of autobiography?" demanded Hollanden, with
asperity.

"Well, anyhow, Hollie," exclaimed the younger sister, "you didn't
explain a thing about how literary men came to be so peculiar, and
that's what you started out to do, you