why seek to explain to Pinkerton the knotted horrors of
"Americo-Parisienne"? He took an early occasion to point it out as
"rather a good phrase; gives the two sides at a glance: I wanted the
lecture written up to that." Even after we had reached San Francisco,
and at the actual physical shock of my own effigy placarded on the
streets I had broken forth in petulant words, he never comprehended in
the least the ground of my aversion.

"If I had only known you disliked red lettering!" was as high as he
could rise. "You are perfectly right: a clear-cut black is preferable,
and shows a great deal further. The only thing that pains me is the
portrait: I own I thought that a success. I'm dreadfully and truly
sorry, my dear fellow: I see now it's not what you had a right to
expect; but I did it, Loudon, for the best; and the press is all
delighted."

At the moment, sweeping through green tule swamps, I fell direct on the
essential. "But Pinkerton," I cried, "this lecture is the maddest of
your madnesses. How can I prepare a lecture in thirty hours?"

"All done, Loudon!" he exclaimed in triumph. "All ready. Trust me to
pull a piece of business through. You'll find it all type-written in my
desk at home. I put the best talent of San Francisco on the job: Harry
Miller, the brightest pressman in the city."

And so he rattled on, beyond reach of my modest protestations, blurting
out his complicated interests, crying up his new acquaintances, and ever
and again hungering to introduce me to some "whole-souled, grand fellow,
as sharp as a needle," from whom, and the very thought of whom, my
spirit shrank instinctively.

Well, I was in for it--in for Pinkerton, in for the portrait, in for the
type-written lecture. One promise I extorted--that I was never again to
be committed in ignorance. Even for that, when I saw how its extortion
puzzled and depressed the Irrepressible, my soul repented me, and in all
else I suffered myself to be led uncomplaining at his chariot-wheels.
The Irrepressible, did I say? The Irresistible were nigher truth.

But the time to have seen me was when I sat down to Harry Miller's
lecture. He was a facetious dog, this Harry Miller. He had a gallant way
of skirting the indecent, which in my case produced physical nausea, and
he could be sentimental and even melodramatic about grisettes and
starving genius. I found he had enjoyed the benefit of my correspondence
with Pinkerton; adventures of my own were her