oking man--none of the others are like him. But come now,
tell me of yourself--you have some one at home, too?"

I nodded my head and mentioned my mother and the others at home.

"No sweetheart yet? No?--You needn't answer--we all have sweethearts at
your age--at mine it is all over. But why did you leave her? It is so
hard to do that. Ah, yes, I see--to make your bread. And how do you do
it?"

"I write."

He lowered his brows and looked at me under his lids.

"What sort of writing? Books? What is called a novel?"

"No--not yet. I work on special articles for the newspapers, and now
and then I get a short story or an essay into one of the magazines."

He was replacing the pictures as I talked, his back to me. He turned
suddenly and again sought my eye.

"Don't waste your time on essays or statistics. You will not succeed as
a machine. You have imagination, which is a real gift. You also dream,
which is another way of saying that you can invent. If you can add
construction to your invention, you will come quite close to what they
call genius. I saw all this in your face to-night; that is why I wanted
to talk to you. So many young men go astray for want of a word dropped
into their minds at the right time. As for me, all I know is
statistics, and so I will never be a genius." And a light laugh broke
from his lips. "Worse luck, too. I must exchange them for money. Look
at this--I have been all day correcting the proofs."

With this he walked to his table--he had not yet taken a seat, although
a chair was next to my own--and laid in my lap a roll of galley-proofs.

"It is the new encyclopaedia. I do the biographies, you
see--principally of men and the different towns and countries. I have
got down now to the R's--Richelieu--Rochambeau--" his fingers were now
tracing the lines. "Here is Romulus, and here is Russia--I gave that
half a column, and--dry work, isn't it? But I like it, for I can write
here by my fire if I please, and all my other time is my own. You see
they are signed 'Norvic Bing.' I insisted on that. These publishers are
selfish sometimes, and want to efface a writer's personality, but I
would not permit it, and so finally they gave in. But no more of
that--one must eat, and to eat one must work, so why quarrel with the
spade or the ground? See that you raise good crops--that is the best of
all."

Then he branched off into a description of a ball he had attended some
years before at the Tuileries-