that constitute life a good thing. Life's
blossom is its salvation, its redemption, the justification of its
existence--and is a thing far off with most of us. For Tom, his highest
notion of life was to be recognized by the world for that which he had
chosen as his idea of himself--to have the reviews allow him a poet,
not grudgingly, nor with abatement of any sort, but recognizing him as
the genius he must contrive to believe himself, or "perish in" his
"self-contempt." Then would he live and die in the blessed assurance
that his name would be for over on the lips and in the hearts of that
idol of fools they call _posterity_-divinity as vague as the old gray
Fate, and less noble, inasmuch as it is but the supposed concave whence
is to rebound the man's own opinion of himself.

While jewelly Tom was idling away time which yet could hardly be called
precious, his little brown wife, as I have said, sat at home--such home
as a lodging can be for a wife whose husband finds his interest mainly
outside of it--inquired after by nobody, thought of by nobody, hardly
even taken up by her own poor, weary self; now trying in vain after
interest in the feeble trash she was reading; now getting into the
story for the last half of a chapter, to find herself, when the scene
changed at the next, as far out and away and lost as ever; now dropping
the book on her knee, to sit musing--if, indeed, such poor mental
vagaries as hers can be called even musing!--ignorant what was the
matter with her, hardly knowing that anything was the matter, and yet
pining morally, spiritually, and psychically; now wondering when Tom
would be home; now trying to congratulate herself on his being such a
favorite, and thinking what an honor it was to a poor country girl like
her to be the wife of a man so much courted by the best society--for
she never doubted that the people to whose houses Tom went desired his
company from admiration of his writings. She had not an idea that never
a soul of them or of their guests cared a straw about what he
wrote--except, indeed, here and there, a young lady in her first
season, who thought it a grand thing to know an author, as poor Letty
thought it a grand thing to be the wife of one. Hail to the coming time
when, those who write books outnumbering those who do not, a man will
be thought no more of because he can write than because he can sit a
horse or brew beer! In that happy time the true writer will be neither
an ato