“Lord love me!” he exclaimed, “and you so young, too!”

“No,” said I; “I’m twenty-five.”

“And Latin, now—­don’t tell me you can read the Latin.”

“But I can’t make a kettle, or even mend one, for that matter,” said I.

“But you are a scholar, and it’s a fine thing to be a scholar!”

“And I tell you again, it is better to be a tinker,” said I.

“How so?”

“It is a healthier life, in the first place,” said I.

“That, I can believe,” nodded the Tinker.

“It is a happier life, in the second place.”

“That, I doubt,” returned the Tinker.

“And, in the third place, it pays much better.”

“That, I don’t believe,” said the Tinker.

“Nevertheless,” said I, “speaking for myself, I have, in the course of my twenty-five years, earned but ten shillings, and that—­but by the sale of my waistcoat.”

“Lord love me!” exclaimed the Tinker, staring.

“A man,” I pursued, “may be a far better scholar than I—­may be full of the wisdom of the Ancients, and the teachings of all the great thinkers and philosophers, and yet starve to death—­indeed frequently does; but who ever heard of a starving Tinker?”

“But a scholar may write great books,” said the Tinker.

“A scholar rarely writes a great book,” said I, shaking my head, “probably for the good and sufficient reason that great books never are written.”

“Young fellow,” said the Tinker, staring, “what do you mean by that?”

“I mean that truly great books only happen, and very rarely.”

“But a scholar may happen to write a great book,” said the Tinker.

“To be sure—­he may; a book that nobody will risk publishing, and if so—­a book that nobody will trouble to read, nowadays.”

“Why so?”

“Because this is an eminently unliterary age, incapable of thought, and therefore seeking to be amused.  Whereas the writing of books was once a painful art, it has of late become a trick very easy of accomplishment, requiring no regard for probability, and little thought, so long as it is packed sufficiently full of impossible incidents through which a ridiculous heroine and a more absurd hero duly sigh their appointed way to the last chapter.  Whereas books were once a power, they are, of late, degenerated into things of amusement with which to kill an idle hour, and be promptly forgotten the next.”

“Yet the great books remain,” said the Tinker.

“Yes,” said I; “but who troubles their head over Homer or Virgil these days—­who cares to open Steele’s ‘Tatler,’ or Addison’s ‘Spectator,’ while there is the latest novel to be had, or ‘Bell’s Life’ to be found on any coffee-house table?”

“And why,” said the Tinker, looking at me over a piece of bacon skewered upon the point of his jack-knife, “why don’t you write a book?”

“I probably shall some day,” I answered.