nces by without some vacant seat, be it even in the
rumble? What gilded gondola has not a place to spare? To be this
"complement" to the world's want is then his mission.

No man invents a metier without a strong element of success. The very
creative power is an earnest of victory. It is true that there had been
great men before Agamemnon. So had there been a race of "diners-out"
before Jekyl; but he first reduced the practice to system, showing
that all the triumphs of cookery, all the splendor of equipage, all the
blandishments of beauty, all the fascinations of high society, may be
enjoyed by one who actually does not hold a "share in the company," and,
without the qualification of scrip, takes his place among the directors.

Had he brought to this new profession commonplace abilities and
inferior acquirements, he would have been lost amid that vulgar herd of
indistinguishables which infest every city, and whose names are not even
"writ in water." Jekyl, however, possessed many and varied gifts.
He might have made a popular preacher in a watering-place; a very
successful doctor for nervous invalids; a clever practitioner at the
bar; an admirable member of the newspaper press. He might have been very
good as an actor; he would have been glorious as an auctioneer. With
qualities of this order, a most plastic wit, and an india-rubber
conscience, what bound need there be to his success! Nor was there.
He was, in all the society of the capital, not alone an admitted and
accepted, but a welcome guest. He might have failed to strike this man
as being clever, or that as being agreeable. Some might be disappointed
in his smartness; some might think his social claims overrated; none
were ever offended by anything that fell from him. His great secret
seemed to lie in the fact that, if generally easy to be found when
required, he was never in the way when not wanted. Had he possessed the
gift of invisibility, he could scarcely have been more successful in
this latter good quality. He never interrupted a confidence; never
marred a tete-a-tete. A kind of instinct would arrest his steps as he
approached a boudoir where his presence would be undesirable; and he
has been known to retire from a door on which he had already placed his
hand, with a sudden burst of intelligence suggesting "to come another
day."

These, however, seem mere negative qualities; his positive ones were,
however, not less remarkable. The faculties which some