" Who cares whether I smiled or not?"
"Oh, there now, Loudon, you're entirely wrong," he
broke in. "That's what the public likes; that's the
merit of the thing, the literary value. It's to call
up the scene before them; it's to enable the humblest
citizen to enjoy that afternoon the same as I did.
Think what it would have been to me when I was tramping
around with my tin-types to find a column and a half of
real, cultured conversation--an artist, in his studio
abroad, talking of his art,--and to know how he looked
as he did it, and what the room was like, and what he
had for breakfast; and to tell myself, eating tinned
beans beside a creek, that if all went well, the same
sort of thing would, sooner or later, happen to myself;
why, Loudon, it would have been like a peep-hole into
heaven!"
"Well, if it gives so much pleasure," I admitted, "the
sufferers shouldn't complain. Only give the other
fellows a turn."
The end of the matter was to bring myself and the
journalist in a more close relation. If I know
anything at all of human nature--and the IF is no
mere figure of speech, but stands for honest doubt--no
series of benefits conferred, or even dangers shared,
would have so rapidly confirmed our friendship as this
quarrel avoided, this fundamental difference of taste
and training accepted and condoned.
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