s
possible that he is destined to be the delight of "the great
public." It is possible--but improbable. He has no knowledge of
life, no feeling for style, no real sense of the dramatic.
Throughout, from the first line to the last, his story moves on the
plane of tawdriness, theatricality, and ballad pathos. There are
some authors of whom it may be said that they will never better
themselves. They are born with a certain rhapsodic gift of
commonness, a gift which neither improves nor deteriorates. Richly
dowered with crass mediocrity, they proceed from the cradle to the
grave at one low dead level. We suspect that Mr. Knight is of
these. In saying that it is a pity that he ever took up a pen, we
have no desire to seem severe. He is doubtless a quite excellent
and harmless person. But he has mistaken his vocation, and that is
always a pity. We do not care so see the admirable grocery trade
robbed by the literary trade of a talent which was clearly intended
by Providence to adorn it. As for the Satin Library, we hope
superior things from the second volume.'

Henry had the fortitude to read this pronouncement aloud to his mother
and Aunt Annie at the tea-table.

'The cowards!' exclaimed Mrs. Knight.

Aunt Annie flushed. 'Let me look,' she whispered; she could scarcely
control her voice. Having looked, she cast the paper with a magnificent
gesture to the ground. It lay on the hearth-rug, open at a page to which
Henry had not previously turned. From his arm-chair he could read in the
large displayed type of one of Mr. Onions Winter's advertisements:
'Onions Winter. The Satin Library. The success of the year. _Love in
Babylon._ By Henry S. Knight. Two shillings. Eighteenth
thousand.--Onions Winter. The Satin Library. The success of the year.
_Love in Babylon._ By Henry S. Knight. Two shillings. Eighteenth
thousand.'

And so it went on, repeated and repeated, down the whole length of the
twenty inches which constitute a column of the _Whitehall Gazette_.

CHAPTER XII

HIS FAME

Henry's sleep was feverish, and shot with the iridescence of strange
dreams. And during the whole of the next day one thought burned in his
brain, the thought of the immense success of _Love in Babylon_. It
burned so fiercely and so brightly, it so completely preoccupied Henry,
that he would not have been surprised to overhear men whisper to each
othe