ur
hospitality," said Verne. "Perhaps you can recommend us to some quiet
hotel where we can stay the night."

Like all New Yorkers, Stockton could hardly think of the name of any
hotel when asked suddenly. At first he said the Astor House, and then
remembered that it had been demolished years before. At last he
recollected that a brother of his from Indiana had once stayed at the
Obelisk.

After the customs formalities were over--not without embarrassment, as
Mr. Verne's valise when opened displayed several pairs of bright red
union suits and a half-empty bottle of brandy--Stockton convoyed them to
a taxi. Noticing the frayed sleeve of the poet's ulster he felt quite
ashamed of the aggressive newness of his clothes. And when the visitors
whirled away, after renewed promises for a meeting a little later in the
spring, he stood for a moment in a kind of daze. Then he hurried toward
the nearest telephone booth.

As the Vernes sat at dinner that night in the Abyssinian Room of the
Obelisk Hotel, the poet said to his wife: "It would have been delightful
to spend a few days with the Stocktons."

"My dear," said she, "I wouldn't have these wealthy Americans see how
shabby we are for anything. The children are positively in rags, and
your clothes--well, I don't know what they'll think at Harvard. You know
if this lecture trip doesn't turn out well we shall be simply bankrupt."

The poet sighed. "I believe Stockton has quite a charming place in the
country near New York," he said.

"That may be so," said Mrs. Verne. "But did you ever see such clothes?
He looked like a canary."

DON MARQUIS

There is nothing more pathetic than the case of the author who is the
victim of a supposedly critical essay. You hold him in the hollow of
your hand. You may praise him for his humour when he wants to be
considered a serious and saturnine dog. You may extol his songs of war
and passion when he yearns to be esteemed a light, jovial merryandrew
with never a care in the world save the cellar plumbing. You may utterly
misrepresent him, and hang some albatross round his neck that will be
offensive to him forever. You may say that he hails from Brooklyn
Heights when the fact is that he left there two years ago and now lives
in Port Washington. You may even (for instance) call him stout....

Don Marquis was born in 1878; reckoning by tens, '88, '98, '08--well,
call it forty. He is burly, ruddy, gray-haired, and fond of corncob
pi