Page:The Reverberator (2nd edition, American issue, London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1888).djvu/37

Rh at the hotel, he convinced them of other things besides in the course of the following month and by the aid of repeated visits. What he mainly made clear to them was that it was really most kind of a young man who had so many great public questions on his mind to find sympathy for problems which could fill the telegraph and the press so little as theirs. He came every day to set them in the right path, pointing out its charms to them in a way that made them feel how much they had been in the wrong. He made them feel indeed that they didn't know anything about anything, even about such a matter as ordering shoes—an art in which they vaguely supposed themselves rather strong. He had in fact great knowledge, and it was wonderfully various, and he knew as many people as they knew few. He had appointments—very often with celebrities—for every hour of the day, and memoranda, sometimes in shorthand, on tablets with elastic straps, with which he dazzled the simple folk at the Hôtel de l'Univers et de Cheltenham, whose social life, of narrow range, consisted mainly in reading the lists of Americans who "registered" at the bankers' and at Galignani's. Delia Dosson, in particular, had a way of poring solemnly over these records which exasperated Mr. Flack, who skimmed them and found what he wanted in the flash of an eye: she kept the others waiting while she satisfied herself that Mr. and