ant actor, or any other anomaly. To-day I met Travis; you know he
comes here and makes himself free and easy with us, and has always put
himself on a footing of equality."

"Wherein you made a mistake. He has no right, but by courtesy, to
any equality. A little taste, perhaps, and money enough to gratify
it,--that's all. He never had an idea in his life."

"That is the reason I felt the slight. He was walking with a lady whose
manner and dress were unmistakable,--a lady of undoubted position. I
bowed, and received in return one of those hardly-perceptible nods, with
a forced smile that covered only the side of his face _from_ the lady.
It was a recognition that one might throw to his boot-black. I am a
mild-mannered man, as you know; but I could have murdered him on the
spot."

Greenleaf walked the floor with flashing eyes and his teeth set.

"Now, I like the spirit," said Easelmann; "but, pray, be sensible.
'Where Macdonald sits, there is the head of the table.' Stand firm in
your own shoes, and graduate your bows by those you get."

"I suppose I am thin-skinned."

"As long as you are, you will chafe. Cultivate a hide like a
rhinoceros's, and Society will let fly its pin-pointed arrows in vain.
You have a great deal to learn, my dear boy."

"But other special classes are not so treated,--literary men, for
instance."

"Don't be too sure of that. An author who has attained position is
_feted_, because the fashionable circles must have their lions. But to
stand permanently like other men, he must have money or family, or else
obey the world's ten commandments, of which the first is, 'Thou shalt
not wear a slouched hat,'--and the rest are like unto it. No,--the
literary men have their heart-burnings, I suspect. They forget, as you
do, that their very profession, the direction of their thoughts, their
mode of life, cut them off from sympathy and fellowship. What has a
writer who dreams of rivalling Emerson or the 'Autocrat' to do with
costly and absorbing private theatricals, with dances at Papanti's, with
any of the thousand modes of killing time agreeably? And how shall you
become the new Claude, if you give your thoughts to the style of your
clothes, and to the inanities that make up the staple of conversation?"

"But because I am precluded from devoting my time to society, that is no
reason why I should bear the patronizing airs"----

"Don't be patronized,--that's all. If a man gives you such a look as
you h