still stand and wait.  To be chosen out of all the available world—­it is almost as much bliss as it is to choose.  “All that long, long stage-ride from Blim’s to Portage I thought of you every moment, and wondered what you were doing and how you were looking just that moment, and I found the occupation so charming that I was almost sorry when the journey was ended.”  Not much in that!  But I have no doubt the Young Lady read it over and over, and dwelt also upon every moment, and found in it new proof of unshaken constancy, and had in that and the like things in the letter a sense of the sweetest communion.  There is nothing in this letter that we need dwell on it, but I am convinced that the mail does not carry any other letters so valuable as this sort.

I suppose that the appearance of Herbert in this new light unconsciously gave tone a little to the evening’s talk; not that anybody mentioned him, but Mandeville was evidently generalizing from the qualities that make one person admired by another to those that win the love of mankind.

Mandeville.  There seems to be something in some persons that wins them liking, special or general, independent almost of what they do or say.

The mistress.  Why, everybody is liked by some one.

Mandeville.  I’m not sure of that.  There are those who are friendless, and would be if they had endless acquaintances.  But, to take the case away from ordinary examples, in which habit and a thousand circumstances influence liking, what is it that determines the world upon a personal regard for authors whom it has never seen?

The fire-tender.  Probably it is the spirit shown in their writings.

The mistress.  More likely it is a sort of tradition; I don’t believe that the world has a feeling of personal regard for any author who was not loved by those who knew him most intimately.

The fire-tender.  Which comes to the same thing.  The qualities, the spirit, that got him the love of his acquaintances he put into his books.

Mandeville.  That does n’t seem to me sufficient.  Shakespeare has put everything into his plays and poems, swept the whole range of human sympathies and passions, and at times is inspired by the sweetest spirit that ever man had.

The young lady.  No one has better interpreted love.

Mandeville.  Yet I apprehend that no person living has any personal regard for Shakespeare, or that his personality affects many,—­except they stand in Stratford church and feel a sort of awe at the thought that the bones of the greatest poet are so near them.

The parson.  I don’t think the world cares personally for any mere man or woman dead for centuries.

Mandeville.  But there is a difference.  I think there is still rather a warm feeling for Socrates the man, independent of what he said, which is little known.  Homer’s works are certainly better known, but no one cares personally for Homer any more than for any other shade.