Page:The Wheel of Time, Collaboration, Owen Wingrave (New York, Harper & Brothers, 1893).djvu/112

104 upon his particular passion; for you would have been conscious that whatever this passion might be, it was acquainted with many of the others and mixed with them to its profit. Yet these discoveries had not been fully made by Alfred Bonus, whose occupation was to write letters to the American journals about the way the "boys" were coming on in Paris; for in such a case he probably would not have expected such nebulous greatness to condense at a moment's notice. Bonus is clever and critical, and a sort of self-appointed emissary or agent of the great republic. He has it at heart to prove that the Americans in Europe do get on—taking for granted on the part of the Americans at home an interest in this subject greater, as I often assure him, than any really felt. "Come, now, do I get on?" I often ask him; and I sometimes push the inquiry so far as to stammer, "And you, my dear Bonus, do you get on?" He is apt to look a little injured on such occasions, as if he would like to say, in reply: "Don't you call it success to have Sunday evenings at which I'm a regular attendant? And can