meridian course.

A. second homily was worth waiting for; because that would clearly determine the line of my conduct. Alas, and well-a-day! when that second homily came, it was a knockdown argument. Sometimes the good prelate moved forward, and sometimes he moved backwards; sometimes he mounted up into the garret, and sometimes dipped down into the cellar. It was a composition of more sound than meaning, something like a superannuated schoolmaster's theme, when he attempts to give his boys more sense than he possesses of his own, or like a capuchin's sermon, which only scatters a few artificial flowers of paltry rhetoric over a barren desert of doctrine.

I was not the only person whom the alteration struck. The audience at large, when he delivered it, as if they too had been pledged to watch the advances of dotage, said to one another in a whisper all round the church, "Here is a sermon with symptoms of apoplexy in every paragraph." "Come, my good Coryphæus of the public taste in homilies," said I then to myself, "prepare to do your office. You see that my lord. archbishop is going very fast-you ought to warn him of it, not only as his bosom friend, on whose sincerity he relies, but lest some blunt fellow should anticipate you, and bolt out the truth in an offensive manner. In that case you know the consequence; you would be struck out of his will."

But as reason, like Janus, looks at things with two faces, I began to consider the other side of the question; the hint seemed difficult to wrap up so as to make it palatable. Authors in general are stark mad on the subject of their own works, and such an author might be more testy than the common herd of the irritable race: but that suspicion seemed illiberal on my part, for it was impossible that my freedom should be taken amiss, when it had been forced upon me by so positive an injunction. Add to this, that I reckoned upon handling the

subject skillfully, and cramming discretion down his throat like a high-seasoned epicurean dish. After all my pro and con, finding that I risked more by keeping silence than by breaking it, I determined to venture on the delicate duty of speaking my mind.

Now there was but one difficulty; a difficulty indeed! how to open the business. Luckily the orator himself extricated me from that embarrassment, by asking what they said of him in the world at large, and whether people were tolerably well pleased with his last discourse. I answered that there could be but one opinion about his homilies; but that it should seem as if the last had not quite struck home to the hearts of the audience, like those which had gone before. "Do you really mean what you say, my friend?" replied he, with a sort of wriggling surprise. "Then my congregation are more in the temper of Aristarchus than of Longinus!"1 "No, may it please your grace," rejoined I, "quite the contrary. Performances of that order are above the reach of vulgar criticism: there is not a soul but expects to be saved by their influence. Nevertheless, since you have made it my duty to be sincere and unreserved, I shall take the liberty of just stating that your last discourse is not written with quite the overpowering eloquence and conclusive argument of your former ones. Does not your

grace feel just as I do on the subject?"

This ignorant and stupid frankness of mine completely blanched my master's cheek; but he forced a fretful smile, and said, “Then, good Master Gil Blas, that piece does not exactly hit your fancy?" "I did not mean to say that, your grace," interrupted I, looking very foolish. "It is very far superior to what anyone else could produce, though a little below par with respect to your own works in general." "I know what you mean," replied he. "You think I am going

1 Ancient critics (see above, p. 284, footnote, and pp. 402-404). The Archbishop probably thinks of Aristarchus (or Aristarch) as captiously faultfinding, and of Longinus as enthusiastically appreciative.

It is your

"I should

downhill, do not you? Out with it at once. opinion that it is time for me to think of retiring?" never have had the presumption," said I, "to deliver myself with so little reserve, if it had not been your grace's express command. I act in entire obedience to your grace's orders; and I most obsequiously implore your grace not to take offense at my boldness." "I were unfit to live in a Christian land,” interrupted he, with stammering impatience—“I were unfit to live in a Christian land if I liked you the less for such a Christian virtue as sincerity. A man who does not love sincerity sets his face against the distinguishing mark between a friend and a flatterer. I should have given you infinite credit for speaking what you thought, if you had thought anything that deserved to be spoken. I have been finely taken in by your outside show of cleverness, without any solid foundation of sober judgment!"

Though completely unhorsed, and at the enemy's mercy, I wanted to make terms of decent capitulation, and to go unmolested into winter quarters: but let those who think to appease an exasperated author, and especially an author whose ear has been long attuned to the music of his own praises, take warning by my fate. "Let us talk no more on the subject, my very young friend," said he. "You are as yet scarcely in the rudiments of good taste, and utterly incompetent to distinguish between gold and tinsel. You are yet to learn that I never in all my life composed a finer homily than that unfortunate one which had not the honor of your approbation. The immortal part of me, by the blessing of heaven on me and my congregation, is less weighed down by human infirmity than when the flesh was stronger. We all grow wiser as we grow older, and I shall in future select the people about me with more caution; nor submit the castigation of my works but to a much abler critic than yourself. Get about your

business!" pursued he, giving me an angry shove by the shoulders out of his closet; "go and tell my treasurer to pay to you a hundred ducats, and take my priestly blessing in addition to that sum. God speed you, good Master Gil Blas!

I heart

ily pray that you may do well in the world! There is nothing to stand in your way, but the want of a little better taste."

75

JEFF DURGIN1

William Dean Howells

́RS. DURGIN, a widow, with the assistance of

Mher son Jackson and of a young woman named

Cynthia Whitwell, keeps a summer hotel. Her am-
bition centers in the career of a second son, Jeff, her
heart being firmly set on his completing a course at
Harvard, going on into law, and so rising to a station
in life above that of his birth. Jeff, on his part, re-
sponds very imperfectly to his mother's hopes. He
has spent three rather profitless years at college, and
still the only occupation that really interests him is
managing a hotel. He has made up his mind against
studying law, and had in fact meant to say as much
when he told his mother of his engagement to Cyn-
thia, but, to his surprise, she was displeased with his
humble choice of a wife, and he did not find the
necessary courage to do so. The omission was char-
acteristic and significant. The "next morning" of
the first sentence is the morning after Jeff's announce-
ment of his intention with regard to Cynthia. West-
over appears through a great part of the novel as a
confidant of the Durgin family.

Mrs. Durgin and Cynthia did not seek any formal meeting the next morning. The course of their work brought them together, but it was not till after they had transacted several

1 From The Landlord at Lion's Head. Copyright, 1897, by Harper & Brothers; copyright, 1925, by Mildred Howells and John Mead Howells (renewal). Reprinted through special arrangement.