There is a strange sort of originality about McClintock; he imitates other people’s styles, but nobody can imitate his, not even an idiot.  Other people can be windy, but McClintock blows a gale; other people can blubber sentiment, but McClintock spews it; other people can mishandle metaphors, but only McClintock knows how to make a business of it.  McClintock is always McClintock, he is always consistent, his style is always his own style.  He does not make the mistake of being relevant on one page and irrelevant on another; he is irrelevant on all of them.  He does not make the mistake of being lucid in one place and obscure in another; he is obscure all the time.  He does not make the mistake of slipping in a name here and there that is out of character with his work; he always uses names that exactly and fantastically fit his lunatics.  In the matter of undeviating consistency he stands alone in authorship.  It is this that makes his style unique, and entitles it to a name of its own—­McClintockian.  It is this that protects it from being mistaken for anybody else’s.  Uncredited quotations from other writers often leave a reader in doubt as to their authorship, but McClintock is safe from that accident; an uncredited quotation from him would always be recognizable.  When a boy nineteen years old, who had just been admitted to the bar, says, “I trust, sir, like the Eagle, I shall look down from lofty rocks upon the dwellings of man,” we know who is speaking through that boy; we should recognize that note anywhere.  There be myriads of instruments in this world’s literary orchestra, and a multitudinous confusion of sounds that they make, wherein fiddles are drowned, and guitars smothered, and one sort of drum mistaken for another sort; but whensoever the brazen note of the McClintockian trombone breaks through that fog of music, that note is recognizable, and about it there can be no blur of doubt.

The novel now arrives at the point where the Major goes home to see his father.  When McClintock wrote this interview he probably believed it was pathetic.

The road which led to the town presented many attractions Elfonzo had bid farewell to the youth of deep feeling, and was now wending his way to the dreaming spot of his fondness.  The south winds whistled through the woods, as the waters dashed against the banks, as rapid fire in the pent furnace roars.  This brought him to remember while alone, that he quietly left behind the hospitality of a father’s house, and gladly entered the world, with higher hopes than are often realized.  But as he journeyed onward, he was mindful of the advice of his father, who had often looked sadly on the ground, when tears of cruelly deceived hope moistened his eyes.  Elfonzo had been somewhat a dutiful son; yet fond of the amusements of life —­had been in distant lands—­had enjoyed the pleasure of the world, and had frequently returned to the scenes of his boyhood, almost destitute