ou to refuse to read that poor
young woman's manuscript the other day, and give her an opinion as to
its literary value; and she had come so far, too, and so hopefully. Now
wasn't it?"

I felt like a cur! And I had felt so every time the thing had recurred
to my mind, I may as well confess. I flushed hotly and said:

"Look here, have you nothing better to do than prowl around prying into
other people's business? Did that girl tell you that?"

"Never mind whether she did or not. The main thing is, you did that
contemptible thing. And you felt ashamed of it afterward. Aha! you feel
ashamed of it now!"

This was a sort of devilish glee. With fiery earnestness I responded:

"I told that girl, in the kindest, gentlest way, that I could not
consent to deliver judgment upon any one's manuscript, because an
individual's verdict was worthless. It might underrate a work of high
merit and lose it to the world, or it might overrate a trashy production
and so open the way for its infliction upon the world: I said that the
great public was the only tribunal competent to sit in judgment upon
a literary effort, and therefore it must be best to lay it before that
tribunal in the outset, since in the end it must stand or fall by that
mighty court's decision anyway."

"Yes, you said all that. So you did, you juggling, small-souled
shuffler! And yet when the happy hopefulness faded out of that poor
girl's face, when you saw her furtively slip beneath her shawl the
scroll she had so patiently and honestly scribbled at--so ashamed of her
darling now, so proud of it before--when you saw the gladness go out of
her eyes and the tears come there, when she crept away so humbly who had
come so--"

"Oh, peace! peace! peace! Blister your merciless tongue, haven't all
these thoughts tortured me enough without your coming here to fetch them
back again!"

Remorse! remorse! It seemed to me that it would eat the very heart out
of me! And yet that small fiend only sat there leering at me with joy
and contempt, and placidly chuckling. Presently he began to speak again.
Every sentence was an accusation, and every accusation a truth. Every
clause was freighted with sarcasm and derision, every slow-dropping word
burned like vitriol. The dwarf reminded me of times when I had flown at
my children in anger and punished them for faults which a little inquiry
would have taught me that others, and not they, had committed. He
reminded me of how I had dislo