g is not a question which troubles me at all. I
read the letters simply from the literary standpoint. As controversial
essays, certainly, they were often in very bad taste. An urchin
scribbling insults upon somebody's garden-wall would not go further
than Whistler often went. Whistler's mode of controversy reminds me, in
another sense, of the writing on the wall. They who were so foolish as
to oppose him really did have their souls required of them. After an
encounter with him they never again were quite the same men in the eyes
of their fellows. Whistler's insults always stuck--stuck and spread
round the insulted, who found themselves at length encased in them,
like flies in amber.

You may shed a tear over the flies, if you will. For myself, I am
content to laud the amber.

ICHABOD

It is not cast from any obvious mould of sentiment. It is not a
memorial urn, nor a ruined tower, nor any of those things which he who
runs may weep over. Though not less really deplorable than they, it
needs, I am well aware, some sort of explanation to enable my reader to
mourn with me. For it is merely a hat-box.

It is nothing but that--an ordinary affair of pig-skin, with a brass
lock. As I write, it stands on a table near me. It is of the kind that
accommodates two hats, one above the other. It has had many tenants,
and is sun-tanned, rain-soiled, scarred and dented by collision with
trucks and what not other accessories to the moving scenes through
which it has been bandied. Yes! it has known the stress of many
journeys; yet has it never (you would say, seeing it) received its
baptism of paste: it has not one label on it. And there, indeed, is the
tragedy that I shall unfold.

For many years this hat-box had been my travelling companion, and was,
but a few days since, a dear record of all the big and little journeys
I had made. It was much more to me than a mere receptacle for hats. It
was my one collection, my collection of labels. Well! last week its
lock was broken. I sent it to the trunk-makers, telling them to take
the greatest care of it. It came back yesterday. The idiots, the
accursed idots! had carefully removed every label from its surface. I
wrote to them--it matters not what I said. My fury has burnt itself
out. I have reached the stage of craving general sympathy. So I have
sat down to write, in the shadow of a tower which stands bleak, bare,
prosaic, all the ivy of its years stripped from it; in the shadow of