But the book I had bought was a success, a great success, if the newspapers and the reports of the sales were to be trusted.  I read the criticisms out of curiosity more than any other prompting, and no two of them were alike:  they veered from extreme negative to extreme positive.  I have to confess that it gratified me not a little to find the negatives for the most part of my poor way of thinking.  The positives, on the other hand, declared the gifted young author to have found a manner of treatment of social life entirely new.  Other critics still insisted it was social ridicule:  but if this were so, the satire was too delicate for ordinary detection.

However, with the dainty volume my quondam friend sprang into fame.  At the same time he cast off the chrysalis of a commonplace existence.  He at once became the hero of the young women of the country from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon, many of whom wrote him letters and asked him for his photograph.  He was asked to tell what he really meant by the vague endings of this or that story.  And then I began to hear rumors that his head was turning.  These I discredited, of course.  If true, I thought it but another proof of the undermining influence of feminine flattery, which few men, and fewer young men, can stand.  But I watched his career with interest.

He published other books, of a high moral tone and unapproachable principle, which I read carefully for some ray of human weakness, for some stroke of nature untrammelled by the calling code of polite society.  But in vain.

CHAPTER II

It was by a mere accident that I went West, some years ago, and settled in an active and thriving town near one of the Great Lakes.  The air and bustle and smack of life about the place attracted me, and I rented an office and continued to read law, from force of habit, I suppose.  My experience in the service of one of the most prominent of New York lawyers stood me in good stead, and gradually, in addition to a heterogeneous business of mines and lumber, I began to pick up a few clients.  But in all probability I should be still pegging away at mines and lumber, and drawing up occasional leases and contracts, had it not been for Mr. Farquhar Fenelon Cooke, of Philadelphia.  Although it has been specifically written that promotion to a young man comes neither from the East nor the West, nor yet from the South, Mr. Cooke arrived from the East, and in the nick of time for me.

I was indebted to Farrar for Mr. Cooke’s acquaintance, and this obligation I have since in vain endeavored to repay.  Farrar’s profession was forestry:  a graduate of an eastern college, he had gone abroad to study, and had roughed it with the skilled woodsmen of the Black Forest.  Mr. Cooke, whom he represented, had large tracts of land in these parts, and Farrar likewise received an income from the state, whose legislature had at last opened its eyes to the timber depredations