Page:O'Higgins--From the life.djvu/21

 trade value of that name, of the fabulous stream of income that had flowed from that fountain-pen, of the magic of his puffy hand that could transmute a word into a dollar, at his current price, and add the dollar to the disorderly roll of bills in his bulging vest pocket. . . . But of the man himself, it is safe to say, you learned nothing.

What business of thought was being carried on under that thatch of gray hair? What was the mind that sat concealed behind those eyes—slow-lidded eyes, as impenetrable in their gaze as if they were clear glass frosted on the inner side? Why did he always wear shabby gray clothes? What did he do with his money? Why did he belong to no clubs and go nowhere?—not even to the annual banquet of the Authors' League. Why, with all this unceasing advertisement of his work, was there no advertisement whatever of his personality? Why was there not even any curiosity about him? Why did his books arouse none? Why were they, for all their circulation, so without significance to their day and age, so without concern about its problems, so without influence upon its struggle? Why was he, in short, what he was?—as personally inaccessible as O. Henry, as withdrawn from the modern world in all his works as Maurice Hewlett in his early novels, as shy as Barrie, as fat as Chesterton, as impersonal as if his busy manufactory of fiction were some sort of flour-mill over which he presided in his dusty miller's gray,