d got hold of
Gregorovius, with his "City of Rome in the Middle Ages"--though his
teacher did not know of this, and would have been sure to consider it an
undesirable deviation from the straight and necessary path; and
thenceforth the dozens of ordinary boys about him counted, I feel sure,
for less than ever.

Do you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to put myself into the story
as one of the characters. Then the many I's will no longer refer to the
author named on the title-page, but will represent the direct
participation--direct, even though inconspicuous--of a person whose
name, status, and general nature will be made manifest, incidentally
and gradually, as we proceed. You object that though one's status and
general nature may be revealed "gradually," such can scarcely be the
case as regards one's name? But if I tell you that my Christian name is,
let us say, Oliver, and then intimate in some succeeding section that my
surname is Ormsby, and then do not disclose my middle initial--which may
be W--until the middle of the book (in some documentary connection,
perhaps), shall I not be doing the thing "gradually"?

Oliver W. Ormsby. H'm! I'm not so sure that I like it. Well, my name may
turn out, after all, to be something quite different. And possibly I may
be found to be without any middle initial whatever.

But to return to the method itself. You will find it pursued in many
good novels and in many bad ones; with admirable discretion--to make an
instance--in "The Way of All Flesh"; and the procedure may be humbly
copied here. It will involve, of course, a rather close attendance on
both Raymond and Johnny through a long term of years; but perhaps the
difficulties involved--or, rather, the awkwardnesses--can be got round
in one way or another.

At the Academy we like Raymond well enough, on the whole--

You see at once how the method applies: I make myself an attendant
there, and I place my age midway between the ages of the other two.

As I say, we liked Raymond well enough, yet did not quite feel that he
coalesced. "Coalesced" was hardly the word we used--such verbal
grandeurs were reserved for our "compositions"; but you know what I
mean. Another point to be made clear without delay is this: that when
Johnny appeared at the Academy, he had lately left behind him the
previous condition of servitude involved in a lodgment above the landau,
the phaeton, and sometimes the cow. His father and mother, as I saw