It was a beautiful little dinner, as befitted the hospitable distinction of the givers.  The Stewart Byrds were hosts among a thousand.  In him, as it further happens, West (himself the beau ideal of so many) had from long ago recognized his own paragon and pattern; a worthy one, indeed, this tall young man whose fine abilities and finer faiths were already writing his name so large upon the history of his city.  About the dim-lit round of his table there were gathered but six this evening, including the host and hostess; the others, besides Sharlee Weyland and West, being Beverley Byrd and Miss Avery:  the youngest of the four Byrd brothers, and heir with them to one of the largest fortunes in the State; and the only daughter of old Avery, who came to us from Mauch Chunk, Pa., his money preceding him in a special train of box cars, especially invented for the transportation of Pennsylvania millions to places where the first families congregate.

“And I had to confess that I’d never read one either.  I did begin one,” said West—­“it was called ’Elementary Principles of Incidence and Distribution,’ I remember—­but the hour was eleven-thirty and I fell asleep.”

“I know exactly how you felt about it,” said Sharlee, “for I have read them all—­moi!”

He looked at her with boundless admiration.  “His one reader!”

“There are two of us, if you please.  I think of getting up a club—­Associated Sons and Daughters of Mr. Queed’s Faithful Followers; President, Me.  I’ll make the other member Secretary, for he is experienced in that work.  He’s at present Secretary of the Tax Reform League in New York.  Did Colonel Cowles show you the wonderful letter that came from him, asking the name of the man who was writing the Post’s masterly tax articles, et cetera, et cetera?”

“No—­really!  But tell me, how have you, as President, enjoyed them?”

“I haven’t understood a single word in any of them.  Where on earth did he dig up his fearful vocabulary?  Yet it is the plain duty of both of us to read these articles:  you as one of his employers, I as the shrewd landlady’s agent who keeps a watchful eye upon the earning power of her boarders.”

West mused.  “He has a wonderful genius for crushing all the interest out of any subject he touches, hasn’t he?  Yet manifestly the first duty of an editorial is to get itself read.  How old do you think he is?”

“Oh—­anywhere from twenty-five to—­forty-seven.”

“He’ll be twenty-four this month.  I see him sometimes at the office, you know, where he still treats me like an intrusive subscription agent.  In some ways, he is undoubtedly the oldest man in the world.  In another way he hasn’t any age at all.  Spiritually he is unborn—­he simply doesn’t exist at all.  I diagnose his complaint as ingrowing egoism of a singularly virulent variety.”