eerful compliance.
"Why do you use bias for opinion?" I demanded, in going over a proof with
him. "Oh, because I'm such an ass--such a bi-ass."

He had a philosophy which he liked to impress with a vivid touch on his
listener's shoulder: "Put your finger on the present moment and enjoy it.
It's the only one you've got, or ever will have." This light and joyous
creature could not but be a Pariah among our Brahmins, and I need not say
that I never met him in any of the great Cambridge houses. I am not sure
that he was a persona grata to every one in my own, for Keeler was framed
rather for men's liking, and Mr. Aldrich and I had our subtleties as to
whether his mind about women was not so Chinese as somewhat to infect his
manner. Keeler was too really modest to be of any rebellious mind
towards the society which ignored him, and of too sweet a cheerfulness to
be greatly vexed by it. He lived on in the house of a suave old actor,
who oddly made his home in Cambridge, and he continued of a harmless
Bohemianism in his daily walk, which included lunches at Boston
restaurants as often as he could get you to let him give them you, if you
were of his acquaintance. On a Sunday he would appear coming out of the
post-office usually at the hour when all cultivated Cambridge was coming
for its letters, and wave a glad hand in air, and shout a blithe
salutation to the friend he had marked for his companion in a morning
stroll. The stroll was commonly over the flats towards Brighton (I do
not know why, except perhaps that it was out of the beat of the better
element) and the talk was mainly of literature, in which he was doing
less than he meant to do, and which he seemed never able quite to feel
was not a branch of the Show Business, and might not be legitimately
worked by like advertising, though he truly loved and honored it.

I suppose it was not altogether a happy life, and Keeler had his moments
of amusing depression, which showed their shadows in his smiling face. He
was of a slight figure and low stature, with hands and feet of almost
womanish littleness. He was very blonde, and his restless eyes were
blue; he wore his yellow beard in whiskers only, which he pulled
nervously but perhaps did not get to droop so much as he wished.

VIII.

Keeler was a native of Ohio, and there lived at Cambridge when I first
came there an Indianian, more accepted by literary society, who was of
real quality as a poet. Forceythe Willson,