known in exclusive old-fashioned New York society as the Gilded
Squatter; for he "struck his reef" no more than ten years ago; and
he was therefore doubly anxious, after the American style, to be
"just dizzy with culture." In his capacity of Maecenas, he had
invited amongst others the latest of English literary arrivals in
New York--Mr. Algernon Coleyard, the famous poet, and leader of the
Briar-rose school of West-country fiction.

"You know him in London, of course?" he observed to Charles, with
a smile, as we waited dinner for our guests.

"No," Charles answered stolidly. "I have not had that honour.
We move, you see, in different circles."

I observed by a curious shade which passed over Senator Wrengold's
face that he quite misapprehended my brother-in-law's meaning.
Charles wished to convey, of course, that Mr. Coleyard belonged to
a mere literary and Bohemian set in London, while he himself moved
on a more exalted plane of peers and politicians. But the Senator,
better accustomed to the new-rich point of view, understood Charles
to mean that _he_ had not the entree of that distinguished coterie in
which Mr. Coleyard posed as a shining luminary. Which naturally
made him rate even higher than before his literary acquisition.

At two minutes past the hour the poet entered. Even if we had not
been already familiar with his portrait at all ages in The Strand
Magazine, we should have recognised him at once for a genuine bard
by his impassioned eyes, his delicate mouth, the artistic twirl of
one gray lock upon his expansive brow, the grizzled moustache that
gave point and force to the genial smile, and the two white rows of
perfect teeth behind it. Most of our fellow-guests had met Coleyard
before at a reception given by the Lotus Club that afternoon, for
the bard had reached New York but the previous evening; so Charles
and I were the only visitors who remained to be introduced to him.
The lion of the hour was attired in ordinary evening dress, with
no foppery of any kind, but he wore in his buttonhole a dainty
blue flower whose name I do not know; and as he bowed distantly to
Charles, whom he surveyed through his eyeglass, the gleam of a big
diamond in the middle of his shirt-front betrayed the fact that the
Briar-rose school, as it was called (from his famous epic), had at
least succeeded in making money out of poetry. He explained to us a
little later, in fact, that he was over in New York to look after
his r