ent as that when, amid the approving emotion of an
immense hotel dining-room, all in _decolletee_ and _frac pare_, the old,
simple-lived American, wearing a sack-coat and a colored shirt, shall be
led out between the eminent innkeeper and the head waiter and delivered
over to the police to be conducted in ignominy to the nearest Italian
table d'hote. The national character, on the broad level of equality
which fiction once delighted to paint, no longer exists, but if a
deeper, a richer, a more enduring monotony replaces it, we have no fear
but some genius will arrive and impart the effect of the society which
has arrived.

IV

THE COUNSEL OF LITERARY AGE TO LITERARY YOUTH

As Eugenio--we will call him Eugenio: a fine impersonal name--grew
older, and became, rightfully or wrongfully, more and more widely known
for his writings, he found himself increasingly the subject of appeal
from young writers who wished in their turn to become, rightfully or
wrongfully, more and more widely known. This is not, indeed, stating the
case with the precision which we like. His correspondents were young
enough already, but they were sometimes not yet writers; they had only
the ambition to be writers. Our loose formulation of the fact, however,
will cover all its meaning, and we will let it go that they were young
writers, for, whether they were or not, they all wished to know one
thing: namely, how he did it.

What, they asked in varying turns, was his secret, his recipe for making
the kind of literature which had made him famous: they did stint their
phrase, and they said famous. That always caused Eugenio to blush, at
first with shame and then with pleasure; whatever one's modesty, one
likes to be called famous, and Eugenio's pleasure in their flatteries
was so much greater than his shame that he thought only how to return
them the pleasure unmixed with the shame. His heart went out to those
generous youths, who sometimes confessed themselves still in their
teens, and often of the sex which is commonly most effective with the
fancy while still in its teens. It seemed such a very little thing to
show them the way to do what he had done, and, while disclaiming any
merit for it, to say why it was the best possible way. If they had
grouped him with other widely known writers in their admiration, he
never imagined directing his correspondents to those others' methods; he
said to himself that he did not understand them, and at bot