at this sea gull adornment, somehow not unfamiliar to us, and said, “We do.”  Mr. Hopkinson Smith, we perceived, regards this literary monument, so to say, as a household word (to put it so) in every home in the land.  Mr. Smith, a very robust man, wore yellow, sulphur-coloured gloves, a high hat, a flower in his buttonhole, white piping to his vest.  A debonair figure, Chanticleerian.  Fresh complexion.  Exhaling a breeze of vigour.  Though not short in stature, he is less tall than, from the air of his photographs, we had been led to expect.  A surprise conveying a curious effect, reminded one of that subconscious sensation experienced in the presence of a one-time tall chair which has been lowered a little by having had a section of its legs sawed off.

Mr. Smith’s conversation with book clerks we found to be confined to inquiries (iterated upon each reappearance) concerning the sale of his own books.  We appreciate that this may not be the expression of an irrestrainable vanity, or obsessing greed, realising that very probably his professional insight into human character informs him that the subject of the sales of books is the range of the book clerk’s mind.  He expressed a frank and hearty pride (engaging in aspect, we felt) in the long-sustained life of “Peter,” which remarkably selling book survived on the front fiction table all its contemporaries, and in full vigour lived on to see a new generation grow up around it there.  In a full-blooded, sporting spirit Mr. Smith asked us if his new book was “selling faster than John Fox’s.”  Heartiness and geniality is his role.  A man built to win and to relish popularity.  With a breezy salute of the sulphur-gloved hand, he is gone.  Immediately we feel much less electric.

Alas, what an awful thing!  Oliver Herford, with heavily dipped pen poised, is about to autograph a copy of his “Pen and Ink Puppet,” when, lo! a monstrous ink blot spills upon the fair page.  Hideous!  Mr. Herford is nonplused.  The book is ruined.  No!  Mr. Herford is not Mr. Herford for nothing.  The book is enriched in value.  Sesame!  With his pen Mr. Herford deftly touches the ink blot, and it is a most amusing human silhouette.  How characteristic an autograph, his delighted friend will say.

We were quite satisfied in the introduction given us in our sojourn as a book clerk with Mr. Herford.  That is to say, our early education was received largely from the pages of St. Nicholas Magazine; and when grown to man’s estate and brought to mingle with the great we might easily have suffered a sentimental disappointment in Mr. Herford.  But no, he is as mad as a March hare.  He never, we should say, has any idea where he is.  An absolutely blank face.  Mind far, far away.  Doesn’t act as though he had any mind.  A smallish, clean-shaven man, light sack suit, somewhat crumpled.  A fine shock of greyish-hair.  Cane hooked over crooked arm.  List to starboard,