to the
loftiest eminence. James flatters me. Had I been born a peasant, I
should now be a tramp. My notion of my father's income is even vaguer
than his own was--and that is saying a good deal--but he always had an
income of at least three figures (four, if you count in dollars instead
of pounds); and what made him poor was that he conceived himself as born
to a social position which even in Ireland could have been maintained in
dignified comfort only on twice or thrice what he had. And he married on
that assumption. Fortunately for me, social opportunity is not always to
be measured by income. There is an important economic factor, first
analyzed by an American economist (General Walker), and called rent of
ability. Now this rent, when the ability is of the artistic or political
sort, is often paid in kind. For example, a London possessor of such
ability may, with barely enough money to maintain a furnished bedroom
and a single presentable suit of clothes, see everything worth seeing
that a millionaire can see, and know everybody worth knowing that he can
know. Long before I reached this point myself, a very trifling
accomplishment gave me glimpses of the sort of fashionable life a
peasant never sees. Thus I remember one evening during the novel-writing
period when nobody would pay a farthing for a stroke of my pen, walking
along Sloane Street in that blessed shield of literary shabbiness,
evening dress. A man accosted me with an eloquent appeal for help,
ending with the assurance that he had not a penny in the world. I
replied, with exact truth, "Neither have I." He thanked me civilly, and
went away, apparently not in the least surprised, leaving me to ask
myself why I did not turn beggar too, since I felt sure that a man who
did it as well as he, must be in comfortable circumstances.

Another reminiscence. A little past midnight, in the same costume, I was
turning from Piccadilly into Bond Street, when a lady of the pavement,
out of luck that evening so far, confided to me that the last bus for
Brompton had passed, and that she should be grateful to any gentleman
who would give her a lift in a hansom. My old-fashioned Irish gallantry
had not then been worn off by age and England: besides, as a novelist
who could find no publisher, I was touched by the similarity of our
trades and predicaments. I excused myself very politely on the ground
that my wife (invented for the occasion) was waiting for me at home, and
that I