es."

"So I could," he answered; "but they all involve some form of slavery.
Now, I am my own master. After all, every profession has its drudgery,
and literary drudgery is not the worst."

"Well," I conceded, "independent of what you accomplish, I suppose
your way of life furnishes as many daily satisfactions as any. I
sometimes envy you and Berkeley your freedom from business cares and
your opportunities for study. What becomes of most men's college
training, for example? By Jove! I picked up a Greek book the other
day, and I couldn't read three words running. Now, I take it, you
manage to keep up your classics, among other things."

"Oh, my way of life has its compensations," he answered. "But Sydney
Smith--wasn't it?--said that life was a middling affair, anyway. As
for the classics, etc., I find that reading and study lose much of
their stimulus unless they get an issue in action,--unless one can
apply them directly toward his own work. I often think that, if I
were fifteen or even ten years younger, I would go into some branch of
natural science. A scientific man always seems to me peculiarly happy
in the healthy character of his work. He can keep himself apart from
it. It is objective, impersonal, makes no demand on his emotions. Now
a writing man has to put himself into his work. He has to keep looking
out all the time for impressions, material; to keep trying to enlarge
and deepen his own experience, and he gets self-conscious and loses
his freshness in the process."

"I am surprised to find you in New York," said I, by way of changing
the subject. "I thought you had laid out to live in the country. Do
you remember that pretty little word-picture of a winter afternoon
that you drew us--something in the style of an _Il Penseroso_
landscape? I expected to find you domesticated in a Berkshire
farm-house."

"Yes, I remember. I tried it. But I find it necessary, for my work, to
be in New York. The newspapers--confound 'em!--won't move into the
woods. But, after all, place is indifferent. See here; this isn't
bad."

He drew aside the window curtain, and I looked out over a wilderness
of roofs to the North River and the Palisades tinged with a purple
light. The ferry boats and tugs plying over the water in every
direction, the noise of the steam whistles, and the clouds of white
vapor floating on the clear air, made an inspiriting scene.

"I'm up among the architects here," continued Clay; "nothing but the
j