Page:A Literary Courtship (1893).pdf/14

 literature. Now literature, as has been often observed, is a first-rate thing, if you have an income to back it up with, but for a poor devil out at elbows pecuniarily, like some of us, writing books is about as practical an occupation as keeping a yacht.

John was a great fellow for a discussion, and was never satisfied till he had proved his point. It is my opinion that if he had hazarded the statement that a fairly good pedestrian could walk from Maine to Oregon in so and so many weeks, he would have been ready to perform the feat for the sake of the argument. Luckily, that particular question never came up, for we should have missed John badly at the Pow-wow. Pretty good name for a debating club, by the way. Harry Flint christened it. Flint is a capital fellow, only he insists upon making puns, and his are so much better than anything anybody else can do in that line, that we find them rather a bore.

One night, at the Pow-wow, Hanley