tes Swiss cheese. And if you are
fortunate enough to be on the other side of the partition, you become
aware with a thrill that "virtue," in the beautiful, Biblical sense of
the word, has gone out of somebody and into you.

If ever I return to live in a city apartment (which may the gods
forfend!) I shall this time select the apartment with almost sole
reference to what comes through the walls. I shall enter one of those
typical New York piles which O. Henry described as "paved with Parian
marble in the entrance-hall, and cobblestones above the first floor,"
and my inquiry will be focused on things far other than Parian marble
and cobblestones. I shall walk about the rooms and up and down the
bowling-alleys of halls trying to make myself as sensitive to
impressions as are the arms of the divining-rod man during his solemn
parade with the wand of witch-hazel. And when I feel "virtue" from the
next apartment streaming through the partition, there will I instantly
give battle to the agent and take up my abode. And this though it be
up six flights of cobblestones, without elevator, without closet-room,
with a paranoiac for janitor, and radiators whose musical performance
all the day long would make a Cleveland boiler factory pale with envy.
For none of these things would begin to offset the privilege of living
beside a red-letter wall whose influence should be as benignly
constructive as Richard Washburn Child's "Blue Wall" was malignly
destructive.

To-day I should undoubtedly be much more of a person if I had once had
the pleasure of living a wall away from Richard Watson Gilder. He was
a true master by proxy. For he was a vastly more creative person than
his published writings will ever accredit him with being. Not only
with his pen, but also with his whole self he went about doing good.
"Virtue" fairly streamed from him all the time. Those bowed shoulders
and deep-set, kindly eyes would emerge from the inner sanctum of the
"Century" office. In three short sentences he would reject the story
which had cost you two years of labor and travail. But all the time
the fatal words were getting themselves uttered, so much "virtue" was
passing from him into you that you would turn from his presence
exhilarated, uplifted, and while treading higher levels for the next
week, would produce a check-bearing tale. The check, however, would
not bring you a tithe of the "virtue" that the great editor's personal
rebuff had brought.

Bu