istress would flout him and land him in failure if he gave her a
half-hearted service; but the other young lady, the Helen of the
professions, was always beckoning him and alluring him by the most subtle
arts, occupying all his hours with meditations on her grace and beauty,
till it seemed the world were well lost for her smile. And the
fascinating jade never hinted that devotion to her brought more drudgery
and harassment and pain than any other service in the world. It would
not have mattered if she had been frank, and told him that her promise of
eternal life was illusory and her rewards commonly but a flattering of
vanity. There was no resisting her enchantments, and he would rather
follow her through a world of sin and suffering, pursuing her radiant
form over bog and moor, in penury and heartache, for one sunrise smile
and one glimpse of her sunset heaven, than to walk at ease with a
commonplace maiden on any illumined and well-trod highway.

V

It is the desire of every ambitious soul to, enter Literature by the
front door, and the few who have patience and money enough to live
without the aid of the beckoning Helen may enter there. But a side
entrance is the destiny of most aspirants, even those with the golden key
of genius, and they are a long time in working their way to be seen
coming out, of the front entrance. It is true that a man can attract
considerable and immediate attention by trying to effect an entrance
through the sewer, but he seldom gains the respect of the public whom he
interests, any more than an exhibitor of fireworks gains the reputation
of an artist that is accorded to the painter of a good picture.

Philip was waiting at the front door, with his essays and his prose
symphonies and his satirical novel--the satire of a young man is apt to
be very bitter--but it was as tightly shut against him as if a publisher
and not the muse of literature kept the door.

There was a fellow-boarder with Philip, whose acquaintance he had made at
the common table in the basement, who appeared to be free of the world of
letters and art. He was an alert, compact, neatly dressed little fellow,
who had apparently improved every one of his twenty-eight years in the
study of life, in gaining assurance and confidence in himself, and also
presented himself as one who knew the nether world completely but was not
of it. He would have said of himself that he knew it profoundly, that he
frequented it for "mater