ecord who received with perfect equanimity the
verses of an aspiring young poet, wrote him the cheerfullest of
letters, and actually invited him to breakfast. The letter is still
extant; but the verses were so little the precursor of fame that the
youth's subsequent history is to this day unknown. It was with truth
that Byron said of himself: "I am really a civil and polite person,
and do hate pain when it can be avoided."

Scott was also civil and polite, and his heart beat kindly for every
species of bore. As a consequence, the world bestowed its tediousness
upon him, to the detriment of his happiness and health. Ingenious
jokers translated his verses into Latin, and then wrote to accuse
him of plagiarizing from Vida. Proprietors of patent medicines
offered him fabulous sums to link his fame with theirs. Modest ladies
proposed that he should publish their effusions as his own, and share
the profits. Poets demanded that he should find publishers for their
epics, and dramatists that he should find managers for their plays.
Critics pointed out to him his anachronisms, and well-intentioned
readers set him right on points of morality and law. When he was old,
and ill, and ruined, there was yet no respite from the curse of
correspondents. A year before his death he wrote dejectedly in his
journal:--"A fleece of letters which must be answered, I suppose;
all from persons--my zealous admirers, of course--who expect me to
make up whatever losses have been their lot, raise them to a desirable
rank, and stand their protector and patron. I must, they take it for
granted, be astonished at having an address from a stranger. On the
contrary, I should be astonished if one of these extravagant epistles
came from anybody who had the least title to enter into
correspondence."

And there are people who believe, or who pretend to believe, that
fallen human nature can be purged and amended by half-rate telegrams,
and a telephone ringing in the hall. Rather let us abandon illusions,
and echo Carlyle's weary cry, when he heard the postman knocking at
his door: "Just Heavens! Does literature lead to this!"

The Benefactor

"He is a good man who can receive a gift well."--EMERSON.

There is a sacredness of humility in such an admission which wins
pardon for all the unlovely things which Emerson has crowded into
a few pages upon "Gifts." Recognizing that his own goodness stopped
short of this exalted point, he pauses for a mome