“The devil!” he cried. “I am neither the one thing nor the other. And I also am bullied by my wife--not openly but in secret. It is all done in the name of keeping up appearances. Oh, it is all done very quietly and gently. I should have been an artist but I have become, you see, a man of business. It is my business to write football stories, eh! Among my people, the Italians, there have been artists. If they have money--very well and if they have no money--very well. Let us suppose one of them living poorly, eating his crust of bread. Aha! With his hands he does what he pleases. With his hands he works in stone--he works in colors, eh! Within himself he feels certain things and then with his hands he makes what he feels. He goes about laughing, puts his hat on the side of his head. Does he worry about running an automobile? ‘Go to the devil,’ he says. Does he lie awake nights thinking of how to maintain a large house and a daughter in college? The devil! Is there talk of keeping up appearances for the sake of the woman? For an artist, you see,--well, what he has to say to his fellows is in his work. If he is an Italian his woman is a woman or out she goes. My Italians know how to be men.” “_Such a beautiful pail of fish, such a beautiful peck of apples, I cannot bring you now. It is too early and I am not footloose yet._” VII The story writer again sat down on the edge of the bed. There was something feverish in his eyes. Again he smiled softly but his fingers continued to play nervously with the pages of my book and now he tore several of the pages. Again he spoke of the three men of his New England town. The fish-seller, it seemed, was not like the Yank of the comic papers. He was fat and in the comic papers a Yank is long and thin. “He is short and fat,” my visitor said, “and he smokes a corncob pipe. What hands he has! His hands are like fish. They are covered with fish scales and the backs are white like the bellies of fish.” “And the Italian shoe-shiner is a fat man too. He has a mustache. When he is shining my shoes sometimes--well, sometimes he looks up from his job and laughs and then he calls the fat Yankee fish-seller--what do you think--a mermaid.” In the life of the Yankee there was something that exasperated my visitor as it did the Greek grocer and the Italian who shined shoes and as he told the story my treasured book, still held in his hand, suffered more and more. I kept going toward him, intending to take the book from his hand (he was quite unconscious of the damage he was doing) but each time as I reached out I lost courage. The name Balzac was stamped in gold on the back and the name seemed to be grinning at me.