of another and more distinctive avenue of expression.

It meant something to get into the _Century_ in those days. The praise
of its editor was equivalent to a diploma. I regarded Gilder as second
only to Howells in all that had to do with the judgment of fiction.
Flower's interests were ethical, Gilder's esthetic, and after all my
ideals were essentially literary. My reform notions were subordinate to
my desire to take honors as a novelist.

I cannot be quite sure of the precise date of this good fortune, but I
think it must have been in the winter of 1890 for I remember writing a
lofty letter to my father, in which I said, "If you want any money, let
me know."

As it happened he had need of seed wheat, and it was with deep
satisfaction that I repaid the money I had borrowed of him, together
with three hundred dollars more and so faced the new year clear of debt.

Like the miner who, having suddenly uncovered a hidden vein of gold,
bends to his pick in a confident belief in his "find" so I humped above
my desk without doubts, without hesitations. I had found my work in the
world. If I had any thought of investment at this time, which I am sure
I had not, it was concerned with the west. I had no notion of settling
permanently in the east.

My success in entering both the _Century_ and the _Arena_ emboldened me
to say to Dr. Cross, "I shall be glad to come down out of the attic and
take a full-sized chamber at regular rates."

Alas! he had no such room, and so after much perturbation, my brother
and I hired a little apartment on Moreland street in Roxbury and moved
into it joyously. With a few dollars in my pocket, I went so far as to
buy a couple of pictures and a new book rack, the first property I had
ever owned, and when, on that first night, with everything in place we
looked around upon our "suite," we glowed with such exultant pride as
only struggling youth can feel. After years of privation, I had, at
last, secured a niche in the frowning escarpment of Boston's social
palisade.

Frank was twenty-seven, I was thirty, and had it not been for a haunting
sense of our father's defeat and a growing fear of mother's decline, we
would have been entirely content. "How can we share our good fortune
with her and with sister Jessie?" was the question which troubled us
most. Jessie's fate seemed especially dreary by contrast with our busy
and colorful life.

"We can't bring them here," I argued. "They would never be