“I always find a peculiar interest in the solemn enunciation of a platitude by a dull person who does not naturally aim at effect.  You feel sure it is the condensation of life and experience.  Such an utterance often brings a platitude home to me as no amount of rhetorical writing can.”

Still, the reading public will not stand this, and Arthur never found a market.

He wrote voluminously.

I have in my bureau several pigeon-holes crammed with manuscripts in his curious sprawling hand.  He wrote, when he was in the mood, very quickly, with hardly an erasure.  Among them is: 

1.  A collection of poems (128 in all).

2.  A complete novel, called “The Unencumbered Man.”

3.  Three incomplete novels, called “Physiognomy,” “Helena,” “From Hall to Hall.”

4.  Essays on historical and literary subjects, such as “Coleridge,” “Bunyan,” “The Earl of Surrey,” “Lucian,” etc.  These, as far as I can make out, are very poor.

5.  A collection of semi-mystical writings and short stories.  There is a great fertility of imagination about these, and they are composed in a very finished style.  It is not improbable that I shall re-edit these, as they seem to me to be distinctly first-rate work.  I give a short specimen of his mystical writing—­a style of which he was very fond.  It is called: 

“The Great Assize.

“Now, it came to pass that on a certain day the Gods were weary.  Odin sat upon his throne, and rested his chin upon his hand.  And Thor came in, and threw his hammer upon the earth, and said, ’I am weary of walking up and down in the earth, of smiting and slaying; and I know not how to bind or heal up, and I am too old to learn.’  And Freya said, ’I am weary of Valhalla and the birds and trees, the perpetual sunshine and the feasts and laughter.’  So also said all the Gods.

“And Odin, when the clamour was stilled, rose from his throne, and spoke.  He told them of an ancient law of the Gods, so ancient that it seemed dim even to himself, that when the Gods should be heavy and be sad at heart, they should appoint a judgment for men, should open the everlasting records, and call the world to the assize; and Loki should be the accuser, and Night and Day the witnesses, and Odin should deliver sentence, with the Gods for assessors.

“So Thor stepped out upon the bar of heaven, and blew the steel trumpet that is chained to the door-post of the hall.

“Shrill and angry came the sound of the great horn over earth, her woods and valleys; and terrible was the sound of wailing and lamentation.  They prayed to the mountains to fall upon them, and the sea to swallow them up; for they said, ’The secrets of the heart must now be spoken.  The Lord and our brethren will hear them.  And who can bear the shame?  Oh, that we had not turned away!’

“But the winds of the earth, and the voices of the morning, and the waves of the moaning sea drove them shrieking into the judgment hall, and Loki began his accusation.