le to the
public. The old saying, "Where there is so much smoke there must be
fire," holds good in the case of smoke about a novel. When a book
moves many people of varying temperaments and in all circles of
intelligence there is power in it. Behind such a book we have the
right to imagine an author endowed with admirable gifts of
imagination. The ancient saying, "The cup is glad of the wine it
holds," was but another way of expressing the rule which judges a tree
by its fruit and a man by his works; for out of character comes style,
and out of a man's nature is his taste distilled. Every soul, like the
cup, is glad of what it holds.

Mr. Major himself has said, in his straightforward way, "It is what a
man does that counts." By this rule of measurement Mr. Major has a
liberal girth. The writing of When Knighthood was in Flower was a deed
of no ordinary dimensions, especially when we take into account the
fact that the writer had not been trained to authorship or to the
literary artist's craft; but was a country lawyer, with an office to
sweep every morning, and a few clients with whom to worry over
dilatory cases and doubtful fees.

The law, as a profession, is said to be a jealous mistress, ever ready
and maliciously anxious to drop a good-sized stumbling block in the
path of her devotee whenever he appears to be straying in the
direction of another love. Indeed, many are the young men who, on
turning from Blackstone and Kent in a comfortable law office to Scott
and Byron, have lost a lawyer's living, only to grasp the empty air of
failure in the fascinating garret of the scribbler. But "nothing
succeeds like success," and genius has a way of changing rules and
forcing the gates of fortune. And when we see the proof that a fresh
genius has once more wrought the miracle of reversing all the fine
logic of facts, so as to bring success and fame out of the very
circumstances and conditions which are said to render the feat
impossible, we all wish to know how he did it.

Balzac, when he felt the inspiration of a new novel in his brain,
retired to an obscure room, and there, with a pot of villainous black
coffee at his elbow, wrote night and day, almost without food and
sleep, until the book was finished. General Lew Wallace put Ben Hur on
paper in the open air of a beech grove, with a bit of yellowish canvas
stretched above him to soften the light. Some authors use only the
morning hours for their literary work; others