Page:Tex; a chapter in the life of Alexander Teixeira de Mattos (IA texchapterinlife00mcke).pdf/19

 to any one or that, dead or living, he had prompted any one to discuss him with pomposity. "Are you not being a little solemn?" was a question that alternated with the advice: "Cultivate a pococurantist attitude to life."

"If there had been no Alice in Wonderland," said another friend, "it would have been necessary for Tex to create her."

Those who knew the translator of Fabre and Ewald, of Maeterlinck and Couperus only by his awe-inspiring name must detect in this a hint that Alexander Teixeira de Mattos had a lighter side to his nature; the suspicion can best be established or laid by the evidence of his own letters.

The present volume is an attempt to sketch the man in outline for those readers who have recognized his talent in scholarship without guessing his genius for friendship. "The apostles are not all dead," he wrote, in criticism of the legends that were growing up around the men of the nineties; "many of them are your living contemporaries; you could, if you like, receive at first hand their memories of their dead fellows." ... It is the purpose of this sketch to present one