y. She would weigh a
hundred and forty-five, he said, quite twenty pounds too much. If we had
found a girl that filled all his description he would have invented
something new to bar her out of the race."

Mr. Weil remarked that he was not so sure of Roseleaf's insincerity. He
believed the right woman would yet be discovered, and that a case of the
most intense affection would then spontaneously develop.

"In fact," he added, "I have the identical creature in mind. It is clear
to us--to myself and Mr. Gouger here--that Shirley will never write a
thrilling romance till he has fallen wildly, passionately in love."

Mr. Boggs smiled slightly, and then sobered again.

"Shall you have him marry, also?" he inquired, pointedly.

"Why not?"

"Because it will finish him; that's why. The romance in a modern
marriage lasts six weeks. At the end of that time he will be useless for
literary purposes, or anything else."

Mr. Weil shook his head in opposition to this rash statement.

"My theory is," said he, "that a novelist should know everything. To
write of love he should have been in love; to tell of marriage he should
have had a wife--a real one, no mere imitation; to talk of fatherhood
intelligently he should become a father. How can he know his subjects
otherwise?"

The stout man smiled significantly.

"And if he wishes to write of murder, he must kill some one. And if he
wants to depict the sensations of a robber he must take a pistol and ask
people to stand, on the highway."

"Now you are becoming absurd," said Archie.

"No more than you," said Boggs. "You go too far, and you will find it
out. Let your novelist fall in love. That will do him good. But don't
let him marry, or you will lose him, mark my word. Let him contemplate
matrimony at a distance. Let him reflect on the glory of seeing his
children about his knees. So far, so good. But when you have shelved him
with a wife of the present era, when you have kept him up nights for a
month with a baby that screams--his literary capacity will be gone. Make
no mistake!"

Mr. Weil, half convinced, and much surprised to hear such wisdom from
this unexpected source, made an effort to maintain his ground.

"Nearly all the modern novelists _are_ married," he remarked.

"Yes, and nice stuff they write, don't they? Namby-pamby, silly-billy
stories, misleading in every line! They are the most unsafe pilots on
the shores of human life. They start, without exception, f