ed. But they also stifle his
yearnings after the ideal. They make hero-worship appear foolish. How
can a man go mooning about when he has just had a good cup of coffee
and a snatch of what purports to be the news, while an attractive and
well-dressed woman sits opposite him at breakfast-table, and by her
mere presence, to say nothing of her wit, compels him to be respectable
and to carry a level head? The father of a family and husband of a
federated club woman has no business with hero-worship. Let him leave
such folly to beardless youth.

But if a man has never outgrown the boy that was in him, or has never
married, then may he do this thing. He will be happy himself, and
others will be happy as they consider him. Indeed, there is something
altogether charming about the personality of him who proves faithful
to his early loves in literature and art; who continues a graceful
hero-worship through all the caprices of literary fortune; and who,
even though his idol may have been dethroned, sets up a private shrine
at which he pays his devotions, unmindful of the crowd which hurries
by on its way to do homage to strange gods.

Some men are born to be hero-worshipers. Theophile Gautier is an
example. If one did not love Gautier for his wit and his good-nature,
one would certainly love him because he dared to be sentimental. He
displayed an almost comic excess of emotion at his first meeting with
Victor Hugo. Gautier smiles as he tells the story; but he tells it
exactly, not being afraid of ridicule. He went to call upon Hugo with
his friends Gerard de Nerval and Petrus Borel. Twice he mounted the
staircase leading to the poet's door. His feet dragged as if they had
been shod with lead instead of leather. His heart throbbed; cold sweat
moistened his brow. As he was on the point of ringing the bell, an
idiotic terror seized him, and he fled down the stairs, four steps at
a time, Gerard and Petrus after him, shouting with laughter. But the
third attempt was successful. Gautier saw Victor Hugo--and lived. The
author of _Odes et Ballades_ was just twenty-eight years old. Youth
worshiped youth in those great days.

Gautier said little during that visit, but he stared at the poet with
all his might. He explained afterwards that one may look at gods,
kings, pretty women, and great poets rather more scrutinizingly than
at other persons, and this too without annoying them. 'We gazed at
Hugo with admiring intensity, but he did not