paedia_. On the other hand, there was pleasant and
congenial society among my fellow-workmen, and the labour itself was
immensely instructive. If any man wishes to be well informed, let him
work on a cyclopaedia. As I could read several languages, I was
additionally useful at times. The greatest conciseness of style is
required for such work. In German cyclopaedias this is carried to a
fault.

After a while I began to find that there was much more money to be made
outside the _Cyclopaedia_ than in it. William H. Hurlbut, whom I had
once seen so nearly shot, had been the "foreign editor" of the _New York
Times_. Mr. Henry Raymond, its proprietor, had engaged a Mr. Hammond to
come after some six months to take his place, and I was asked to fill it
_ad interim_. I did so, so much to Mr. Raymond's satisfaction, that he
much regretted when I left that he had not previously engaged me. He was
always very kind to me. He said that now and then, whenever he wanted a
really superior art criticism, I should write it. He was quite right,
for there were not many reporters in New York who had received such an
education in aesthetics as mine. When Patti made her _debut_ in opera
for the first time, I was the only writer who boldly predicted that she
would achieve the highest lyrical honours or become a "star" of the first
magnitude. Apropos of Hurlbut, I heard many years after, in England,
that a certain well-known _litterateur_, who was not one of his admirers,
having seen him seated in close _tete-a-tete_ with a very notorious and
unpopular character, remarked regretfully, "Just to think that with one
pistol-bullet _both_ might have been settled!" Hurlbut was, even as a
boy, very handsome, with a pale face and black eyes, and extremely
clever, being _facile princeps_, the head of every class, and extensively
read. But there was "a screw loose" somewhere in him. He was subject,
but not very frequently, to such fits of passion or rage, that he
literally became blind while they lasted. I saw him one day in one of
these throw his arms about and stamp on the ground, as if unable to
behold any one. I once heard a young lady in New York profess unbounded
admiration for him, because "he looked so charmingly like the devil." For
many years the _New York Herald_ always described him as the Reverend
Mephistopheles Hurlbut. There was another very beautiful lady who
afterwards died a strange and violent death, as also a friend