our literary talk its awful
breath was heard, and its shadow fell upon the hearth where we gathered
round the first fires of autumn, O'Connor would lift his beautiful head
with a fine effect of prophecy, and say, "Friends, I feel a sense of
victory in the air." He was not wrong; only the victory was for the
other aide.

Who beside O'Connor shared in these saddened symposiums I cannot tell
now; but probably other young journalists and office-holders, intending
litterateurs, since more or less extinct. I make certain only of the
young Boston publisher who issued a very handsome edition of 'Leaves of
Grass', and then failed promptly if not consequently. But I had already
met, in my first sojourn at the capital, a young journalist who had given
hostages to poetry, and whom I was very glad to see and proud to know.
Mr. Stedman and I were talking over that meeting the other day, and I can
be surer than I might have been without his memory, that I found him at a
friend's house, where he was nursing himself for some slight sickness,
and that I sat by his bed while our souls launched together into the
joyful realms of hope and praise. In him I found the quality of Boston,
the honor and passion of literature, and not a mere pose of the literary
life; and the world knows without my telling how true he has been to his
ideal of it. His earthly mission then was to write letters from
Washington for the New York World, which started in life as a good young
evening paper, with a decided religious tone, so that the Saturday Press
could call it the Night-blooming Serious. I think Mr. Stedman wrote for
its editorial page at times, and his relation to it as a Washington
correspondent had an authority which is wanting to the function in these
days of perfected telegraphing. He had not yet achieved that seat in the
Stock Exchange whose possession has justified his recourse to business,
and has helped him to mean something more single in literature than many
more singly devoted to it. I used sometimes to speak about that with
another eager young author in certain middle years when we were chafing
in editorial harness, and we always decided that Stedman had the best of
it in being able to earn his living in a sort so alien to literature that
he could come to it unjaded, and with a gust unspoiled by kindred savors.
But no man shapes his own life, and I dare say that Stedman may have been
all the time envying us our tripods from his high place in