the Stock
Exchange. What is certain is that he has come to stand for literature
and to embody New York in it as no one else does. In a community which
seems never to have had a conscious relation to letters, he has kept the
faith with dignity and fought the fight with constant courage. Scholar
and poet at once, he has spoken to his generation with authority which we
can forget only in the charm which makes us forget everything else.

But his fame was still before him when we met, and I could bring to him
an admiration for work which had not yet made itself known to so many;
but any admirer was welcome. We talked of what we had done, and each
said how much he liked certain thing of the other's; I even seized my
advantage of his helplessness to read him a poem of mine which I had in
my pocket; he advised me where to place it; and if the reader will not
think it an unfair digression, I will tell here what became of that poem,
for I think its varied fortunes were amusing, and I hope my own
sufferings and final triumph with it will not be without encouragement to
the young literary endeavorer. It was a poem called, with no prophetic
sense of fitness, "Forlorn," and I tried it first with the 'Atlantic
Monthly', which would not have it. Then I offered it in person to a
former editor of 'Harper's Monthly', but he could not see his advantage
in it, and I carried it overseas to Venice with me. From that point I
sent it to all the English magazines as steadily as the post could carry
it away and bring it back. On my way home, four years later, I took it
to London with me, where a friend who knew Lewes, then just beginning
with the 'Fortnightly Review', sent it to him for me. It was promptly
returned, with a letter wholly reserved as to its quality, but full of a
poetic gratitude for my wish to contribute to the Fortnightly. Then I
heard that a certain Mr. Lucas was about to start a magazine, and I
offered the poem to him. The kindest letter of acceptance followed me to
America, and I counted upon fame and fortune as usual, when the news of
Mr. Lucas's death came. I will not poorly joke an effect from my poem in
the fact; but the fact remains. By this time I was a writer in the
office of the 'Nation' newspaper, and after I left this place to be Mr.
Fields's assistant on the Atlantic, I sent my poem to the Nation, where
it was printed at last. In such scant measure as my verses have pleased
it has found rather unusual favor, and I n