on of the Supreme Court, and would not return to
the office that day.

Instead of leaving his letter at his friend's office, he went directly
to the Adjutant-General's office at the State House. Here he found that
an acquaintance of his was employed as a clerk. He was of foreign birth,
but had served gallantly through the war and had left an arm upon the
battlefield. He made his request for a copy of the war record of Obadiah
Strout, of the --th Mass. Volunteers. Then a thought came suddenly to
him and he requested one also of the record of Hiram Maxwell of the same
regiment.

Leaving the State House on the Hancock Avenue side, he walked down that
narrow but convenient thoroughfare, and was standing at its entrance to
the sidewalk on Beacon Street, debating which publisher he would call on
first, when a cheery voice said, "Hello, Sawyer." When he looked up he
saw an old Latin School and college chum, named Leopold Ernst. Ernst was
a Jew, but he had been one of the smartest and most popular of the boys
in school and of the men at Harvard.

"What are you up to?" asked Ernst.

"Living on my small fortune and my father's bounty," said Quincy. "Not a
very creditable record, I know, but my health has not been very good,
and I have been resting for a couple of months in the country."

"Not much going on in the country at this time of the year I fancy,"
remarked Ernst.

"That's where you are wrong," said Quincy. "There has been the devil to
pay ever since I landed in the town, and I've got mixed up in so many
complications that I don't expect to get back to town before next
Christmas. But what are you doing, Ernst?"

"Oh, I am in for literature; not the kind that consists in going round
with a notebook and prying into people's business, with a hope one day
of becoming an editor, and working twenty hours out of the twenty-four
each day. Not a bit of it, I am reader for ----;" and he mentioned the
name of a large publishing house. "I have my own hours and a comfortable
salary. I sit like Solomon upon the efforts of callow authors and the
productions of ripened genius. Sometimes I discover a diamond in the
rough, and introduce a new star to the literary firmament; and at other
times I cut up some egotistical old writer, who thinks anything he turns
out will be sure to please the public."

"How fortunate that I have met you?" said Quincy. "I have in this little
carpet bag the first effusions of one of those callow authors