on that he was a literary man was a
rather severe and prolonged scrutiny of his oily locks, his dainty
mustache, his breast-pin, his watch-seals, and finally his straps and
his boots. For Andrew firmly believed that neglected hair, Byron
collars, and unblackened boots were the first signs of literary taste.

"You think I dress too well," said Humphreys with his ghastly smirk.
"You think that I care too much for appearances. I do. It is a weakness
of mine which comes from a residence abroad."

These words touched the Philosopher a little. To have been abroad was
the next best thing to having been a foreigner _ab origine_. But still
he felt a little suspicious. He was superior to the popular prejudice
against the mustache, but he could not endure hair-oil. "Nature," he
maintained, "made the whole beard to be worn, and Nature provides an oil
for the hair. Let Nature have her way." He was suspicious of Humphreys,
not because he wore a mustache, but because he shaved the rest of his
face and greased his hair. He had, besides, a little intuitive
perception of the fact that a smile which breaks against the rock-bound
coast of cold cheek-bones and immovable eyes is a mask. And so he
determined to test the literary man. I have heard that Masonic lodges
have been deceived by impostors. I have never heard that a literary man
was made to believe in the genuineness of the attainments of a
charlatan.

And yet Humphreys held his own well. He could talk glibly and
superficially about books; he simulated considerable enthusiasm for the
books which Andrew admired. His mistake and his consequent overthrow
came, as always in such cases, from a desire to overdo. It was after
half an hour of talking without tripping that Andrew suddenly asked: "Do
you like the ever-to-be-admired Xenophanes?"

It certainly is no disgrace to any literary man not to know anything of
so remote a philosopher as Xenophanes. The first characteristic of a
genuine literary man is the frankness with which he confesses his
ignorance. But Humphreys did not really know but that Xenophanes was
part of the daily reading of a man of letters.

"Oh! yes," said he. "I have his works in turkey morocco."

"What do you think of his opinion that God is a sphere?" asked the
Philosopher, smiling.

"Oh! yes--ahem; let me see--which God is it that he speaks of, Jupiter
or--well, you know he was a Greek."

"But he only believed in one God," said Andrew sternly.

"Oh! ah! I f