ed
for adjectives wherever possible, and whatever evidences of style may
appear in it shall be due to the linotype man. It is a story of the
literary life in a great city, and it should be of interest to every
author within a 20-mile radius of Gosport, Ind., whose desk holds a
MS. story beginning thus: "While the cheers following his nomination
were still ringing through the old court-house, Harwood broke away
from the congratulating handclasps of his henchmen and hurried to
Judge Creswell's house to find Ida."

Pettit came up out of Alabama to write fiction. The Southern
papers had printed eight of his stories under an editorial caption
identifying the author as the son of "the gallant Major Pettingill
Pettit, our former County Attorney and hero of the battle of Lookout
Mountain."

Pettit was a rugged fellow, with a kind of shame-faced culture,
and my good friend. His father kept a general store in a little
town called Hosea. Pettit had been raised in the pine-woods and
broom-sedge fields adjacent thereto. He had in his gripsack two
manuscript novels of the adventures in Picardy of one Gaston
Laboulaye, Vicompte de Montrepos, in the year 1329. That's nothing.
We all do that. And some day when we make a hit with the little
sketch about a newsy and his lame dog, the editor prints the other
one for us--or "on us," as the saying is--and then--and then we have
to get a big valise and peddle those patent air-draft gas burners.
At $1.25 everybody should have 'em.

I took Pettit to the red-brick house which was to appear in an
article entitled "Literary Landmarks of Old New York," some day when
we got through with it. He engaged a room there, drawing on the
general store for his expenses. I showed New York to him, and he did
not mention how much narrower Broadway is than Lee Avenue in Hosea.
This seemed a good sign, so I put the final test.

"Suppose you try your hand at a descriptive article," I suggested,
"giving your impressions of New York as seen from the Brooklyn
Bridge. The fresh point of view, the--"

"Don't be a fool," said Pettit. "Let's go have some beer. On the
whole I rather like the city."

We discovered and enjoyed the only true Bohemia. Every day and night
we repaired to one of those palaces of marble and glass and tilework,
where goes on a tremendous and sounding epic of life. Valhalla itself
could not be more glorious and sonorous. The classic marble on which
we ate, the great, light-flooded, vitreou