imagined it would come
before the world, may effect a part of what he himself prepared to
do.

Occasionally, for he was of quick sensibilities, throughout this
period he felt the bitterness of constant rebuff. The following
letter he wrote me shows it:

"I am beginning to feel as if publishers had a code of signals or
private marks like freemasonry, which they scribble sometimes, like
the concealed marks on bank-notes, on the first page of a manuscript,
so as to spare their brother publishers the trouble of looking
through a manuscript which is below market value. I have never had a
manuscript accepted which has been once refused; and I now eagerly
scan the first page, to see if I can discover a wriggling mark in the
margin or among the lines which is to tell Smith and Co. that Brown
and Son has a very poor opinion of the book now under his
consideration."

And again, quite as forcible is a little anecdote with which he
begins an unfinished paper on "Genius." The story is, I now believe,
his own; though, at the time, I fancied it was adopted:

"There was once a king who sat to listen to the sermon of a great
preacher. From minute to minute the great words flowed on, consoling,
wounding, helping, condemning, dividing the marrow from the bones;
and the king wept and smiled.

"And at the end he sent for the preacher, and said, 'Sir, Christ is
the only king; yet let me look at the book from which you made your
discourse. The written words, though half despoiled of their grace,
may perhaps strike an echo in my soul, which rings yet.'

"And for some time the preacher was unwilling, and parleyed with the
king; but at the last he drew out a little pale book with faded
characters traced in ink; and he opened it at a well-worn page, and
held it out before the king.

"And the king looked, and saw nothing except the crabbed printed
lines.

"So he said, 'Not your text-book, sir, but the book from which your
arguments are rehearsed.'

"'Sire,' said the preacher, 'look but once more upon the book.' And
he showed him that four of the words upon the page had a thin line
drawn in ink below them. 'That was the writing of my discourse,' he
said."

Neither, it must be remembered, was Arthur a first-rate
conversationalist. He did not steer a conversation; he could keep
the ball going creditably when it was once started; but he never
communicated to the circle in which he was that indefinable interest
which is so intangible a