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PEEPS AT PEOPLE

EVEN SO! OR, AS YOU MAY SAY,
A PREFACE

I KNEW a man who used to do some writing, more or less of it—articles and essays and little sketches and things like that—and he went to another man who was a publisher. (I know all of this because it was told to me not long ago at a club.) And he said (the first man) that he would like to have published a book of some of his pieces. He hadn't done much, if any, writing for a number of years. Matters had been going rather bad with him, and he had lost more than a little of his buoyancy. The spark had waned; in fact, it was not there. (This he did not say, but so the matter was.)

Anyhow, he did say that this collection of material had about it the rich glow of his prime, that it was living with the fullness of his life, that as a contributor to these papers and magazines he had (or had had) a personal following decent enough in size, that the book, by all reasoning, ought to go far, and so on. The volume was published. It was called—no, I have forgotten what it was called. However, I heard that it got a very fair press, and sold somewhat.

Then, in about a year or so, round came the man again to the publisher with another batch of little papers. He had aged perceptively within this time, and matters had been going with him rather worse than before. No, he hadn't been able to write anything lately. (For a moment a haunted look crossed his face, a look as though in some sad hidden secret he had been discovered.) But (brightening up again) here he had a better book than before; it was a much better book than before, as it was an earlier one. These things breathed the gusto of his young manhood. They were perhaps a bit miscellaneous in character, he had got them out of the files of various journals, but they had a verve, a fire, a flare for life, which he couldn't better now. A great deal more he said to this effect.

Times, however, change (as has frequently been observed). What is sauce for the goose is not always sauce for the gander. That is to say, other days other ways. I do not know that I gathered (that evening at the club) what was the upshot of the matter in this instance between the man of whom I am speaking and the publisher. But it is to be feared that time had blown upon