of
his to eat a Sunday dinner at the boarding-house in Eighteenth street.
He introduced this friend to Millard with that impressiveness which
belonged to all that the melancholy Sampson did, as "Mr. Bradley, Mr.
Harrison Holmes Bradley, the author; you know his writings."

Millard was covered with concealed shame to think that he did not happen
to know the books of an author with a name so resonant, but he did not
confess his ignorance. This was his first acquaintance with a real
literary man--for the high-school teacher in Cappadocia who wrote
poetry for the country papers would hardly count. The aspiring Millard
thought himself in luck in thus early making the acquaintance of a man
of letters, for to the half-sophisticated an author seems a person who
reflects a mild and moonshiny luster on even a casual acquaintance. To
know Mr. Bradley might be a first step toward gaining access to the more
distinguished society of the metropolis.

Harrison Holmes Bradley proved to be on examination a New-Englander of
the gaunt variety, an acute man of thirty, who ate his roast turkey and
mashed potatoes with that avidity he was wont to manifest when running
down an elusive fact in an encyclopaedia. At the table Millard, for want
of other conversation, plucked up courage to ask him whether he was
connected with a newspaper.

"No; I am engaged in general literary work," said Bradley.

Neither Millard nor any one else at the table had the faintest notion of
the nature of "general literary work." It sounded large, and Bradley was
a clever talker on many themes fresh to Millard, and when he went away
the author exacted a promise from Charley to call on him soon in his
"den," and he gave him a visiting card which bore a street number in
Harlem.

Two weeks later Millard, who was quite unwilling to miss a chance of
making the acquaintance of a distinguished man through whom he might
make other eligible friends, called on Bradley. He found him at work in
his shirt-sleeves, in a hall bedroom of a boarding-house, smoking and
writing as he sat with a gas-stove for near neighbor on the left hand,
and a table, which was originally intended to serve as a wash-stand, on
the other side of him. The author welcomed his guest with unaffected
condescension and borrowed a chair from the next room for him to sit on.
Finding Millard curious about the ways of authors, he entertained his
guest with various anecdotes going to show how books are made an