So it was with the writer here.

We remember with especial entertainment, we begin, the first time we
saw F. Hopkinson Smith. (We are ashamed to say that he was known among
our confrere, the salesmen, as "Hop" Smith.) He introduced himself to
us by his moustache. Looming rapidly and breezily upon us--"Do you
know me?" he said, swelling out his "genial" chest (so it seemed) and
pointing, with a militarish gesture, to this decoration. We looked a
moment at this sea gull adornment, somehow not unfamiliar to us, and
said, "We do." Mr. Hopkinson Smith, we perceived, regards this
literary monument, so to say, as a household word (to put it so) in
every home in the land. Mr. Smith, a very robust man, wore yellow,
sulphur-coloured gloves, a high hat, a flower in his buttonhole, white
piping to his vest. A debonair figure, Chanticleerian. Fresh
complexion. Exhaling a breeze of vigour. Though not short in stature,
he is less tall than, from the air of his photographs, we had been led
to expect. A surprise conveying a curious effect, reminded one of that
subconscious sensation experienced in the presence of a one-time tall
chair which has been lowered a little by having had a section of its
legs sawed off.

Mr. Smith's conversation with book clerks we found to be confined to
inquiries (iterated upon each reappearance) concerning the sale of his
own books. We appreciate that this may not be the expression of an
irrestrainable vanity, or obsessing greed, realising that very probably
his professional insight into human character informs him that the
subject of the sales of books is the range of the book clerk's mind.
He expressed a frank and hearty pride (engaging in aspect, we felt) in
the long-sustained life of "Peter," which remarkably selling book
survived on the front fiction table all its contemporaries, and in full
vigour lived on to see a new generation grow up around it there. In a
full-blooded, sporting spirit Mr. Smith asked us if his new book was
"selling faster than John Fox's." Heartiness and geniality is his
role. A man built to win and to relish popularity. With a breezy
salute of the sulphur-gloved hand, he is gone. Immediately we feel
much less electric.

Alas, what an awful thing! Oliver Herford, with heavily dipped pen
poised, is about to autograph a copy of his "Pen and Ink Puppet," when,
lo! a monstrous ink blot spills upon the fair page. Hideous! Mr.
Herford is nonplused. The book is rui