but I'm travelling with the fullest line of rods you ever saw.'"

"And what happened?" I asked breathlessly.

"I shut-the door. He was not Ben Koontz--exactly--not my old
school-fellow, but I had shaken him by both hands in love, and ... I had
been bearded by a lightning-rod man in my own house.

"As I was saying, I do very little work in Hartford. I come here for
three months every year, and I work four or five hours a day in a study
down the garden of that little house on the hill. Of course, I do not
object to two or three interruptions. When a man is in the full swing
of his work these little things do not affect him. Eight or ten or
twenty interruptions retard composition."

I was burning to ask him all manner of impertinent questions, as to
which of his works he himself preferred, and so forth; but, standing in
awe of his eyes, I dared not. He spoke on, and I listened, grovelling.

It was a question of mental equipment that was on the carpet, and I am
still wondering whether he meant what he said.

"Personally I never care for fiction or story-books. What I like to read
about are facts and statistics of any kind. If they are only facts about
the raising of radishes, they interest me. Just now, for instance,
before you came in"--he pointed to an encyclopaedia on the shelves--"I
was reading an article about 'Mathematics.' Perfectly pure mathematics.

"My own knowledge of mathematics stops at 'twelve times twelve,' but I
enjoyed that article immensely. I didn't understand a word of it: but
facts, or what a man believes to be facts, are always delightful. That
mathematical fellow believed in his facts. So do I. Get your facts
first, and"--the voice dies away to an almost inaudible drone--"then you
can distort 'em as much as you please."

Bearing this precious advice in my bosom, I left; the great man assuring
me with gentle kindness that I had not interrupted him in the least.
Once outside the door, I yearned to go back and ask some questions--it
was easy enough to think of them now--but his time was his own, though
his books belonged to me.

I should have ample time to look back to that meeting across the graves
of the days. But it was sad to think of the things he had not spoken
about.

In San Francisco the men of _The Call_ told me many legends of Mark's
apprenticeship in their paper five and twenty years ago; how he was a
reporter delightfully incapable of reporting according to the needs of
the day.