a more lustrous if less convincing aspect
than those he had worn when I first knew him. The small round hat or
rakish cap, typical of his Western dreams, had now given way to a most
pretentious square-topped derby, beloved, I believe, of undertakers and
a certain severe type of banker as well as some clergymen, only it was a
light brown. His suit and waistcoat were of a bright English tweed,
reddish-brown or herring-bone gray by turns, his shoes box-toed
perfections of the button type. He carried a heavy cane, often a bright
leather manuscript case, and seemed intensely absorbed in the great and
dramatic business of living and writing. "One must," so I read him at
this time, "take the pleasures as well as the labors of this world with
the utmost severity." Here, with a grand manner, he patronized the
manager and the waiters, sent word to his friend the cook, who probably
did not know him at all, that his chop or steak was to be done just so.
These friends of his, or at least one of them (the poet) he met every
day at five for an all-essential game of chess, after which an evening
paper was read and the chop ordered. Ale--not beer--in a pewter mug was
_comme il faut_, the only thing for a gentleman of letters, worthy of
the name, to drink.

I am sorry to write so, for after all youth must have its fling. Still,
I had expected better of L----, and I was a little disappointed to see
that earlier dream of simplicity and privation giving way to an
absolutely worthless show. Besides, twenty or thirty such stories as
"The Right Man," "Sweet Dreams," "The Man With the Broken Fingers," "The
Second Motive," would outweigh a thousand of the things he was getting
published and the profits of which permitted him these airs.

Again, during the early days of his success with M----, he had
married--a young nurse who had previously been a clerk in a store, a
serious, earnest and from one point of view helpful person, seeing that
she could keep his domestic affairs in order and bear him children,
which she did, but she had no understanding of, or flair for, the type
of thing he was called upon to do. She had no instinct for literature or
the arts, and aside from her domestic capacities little skill or taste
for "socializing." And, naturally, he was neglecting her. His head was
probably surging with great ideas of art and hence a social supremacy
which might well carry him anywhere. He had bought a farm some distance
from New York, wher