ell enough that his soul has kept
young and clear amid his world of "muckers" and "grinds" and "cads" and
"rotten sneaks," and all the men and things and conditions he is in the
habit of depicting in various stages of damnation. "Now, you're making
fun of me," says Philip. "We fellows don't know how to pick out words
that sound nice, but mean a--I beg your pardon--a good deal more than
they say. Anyhow, I suppose, if I try from now on till doomsday I shall
never be able to speak like you."

Bless his young sophomore's soul! With that last sentence Philip has
seized me hip and thigh and hurled me into an emotional whirlpool, where
chills and thrills rapidly succeed each other. Because I am fifteen
years older than Philip the boy invests me with a halo and bathes me in
adoration. I am fifteen years older than he, I am bald, obscure, and far
from prosperous, and there is unmistakably nothing about me to dazzle
the youthful imagination. Yet the facts are as I have stated them.
Philip likes to be with me, copies me without apparently trying to, and
has chosen my profession--so he has often told me--for his own. I am
pretty sure that he has made up his mind when he is as old as I am to
smoke the same brand of rather mediocre tobacco which I have adopted for
practical reasons. I am sometimes tempted to think that Philip, at my
age, intends to be as bald as I am.

Hence the alternate thrills and chills. I am by nature restless under
worship. The sense of my own inconsequence grows positively painful in
the face of Philip's outspoken veneration. There are people to whom such
tribute is as incense and honey. But I am not one of them. I have tried
to be and have failed. I have argued with myself that, after all, it is
the outsider who is the best judge; that we are most often severest upon
ourselves; that if Philip finds certain high qualities in me, perhaps
there is in me something exceptional. I even go so far as to draw up a
little catalogue of my acts and achievements. I can recall men who have
said much sillier things than I have ever said, and published much worse
stuff than I have ever written. I repeat to myself the rather striking
epigram I made at Smith's house last week, and I go back to the old
gentleman from Andover who two years ago told me that there was
something about me that reminded him of Oliver Wendell Holmes. By dint
of much trying I work myself up into something of a glow; but it is all
artificial, cerebral