Though he had not yet arrived, he had personally no doubt about the matter. It was merely a question of time. Not that for one moment he approved of “arriving” as a general principle. Indeed, there was no one whom he held in greater contempt than a man who had arrived. It was to him the high-water mark of imbecility, commercialism, and complacency. For what did it mean save that this individual had pleased a sufficient number of other imbeciles, hucksterers, and fat-heads, to have secured for himself a reputation? These pundits, these mandarins, these so-called “masters”--they were an offence to his common sense. He had passed them by, with all their musty and sham-Abraham achievements. That fine flair of his had found them out. Their mere existence was a scandal. Now and again one died; and his just anger would wane a little before the touch of the Great Remover. No longer did that pundit seem quite so objectionable now that he no longer cumbered the ground. It might even, perhaps, be admitted that there had been something coming out of that one; and, as the years rolled on, this something would roll on too, till it became quite a big thing; and he would compare those miserable pundits who still lived with the one who had so fortunately died, to their great disadvantage. There were, in truth, very few living beings that he could stand. Somehow they were not--no, they really _were not_. The great--as they were called forsooth--artists, writers, politicians--what were they? He would smile down one side of his long nose. It was enough. Forthwith those reputations ceased to breathe--for him. Their theories, too, of art, reform, what-not--how puerile! How utterly and hopelessly old-fashioned, how worthy of all the destruction that his pen and tongue could lavish on them! For, to save his country’s art, his country’s literature and politics--that was, he well knew, his mission. And he periodically founded, or joined, the staff of papers that were going to do this trick. They always lasted several months, some several years, before breathing the last impatient sigh of genius. And while they lived, with what wonderful clean brooms they swept! Perched above all that miasma known as human nature, they beat the air, sweeping it and sweeping it, till suddenly there was no air left. And that theory, that real vision of art and existence, which they were going to put in place of all this muck, how near--how unimaginably near--they brought it to reality! Just another month, another year, another good sweeping, would have done it! And on that final ride of the broomstick, he--he would have arrived! At last some one would have been there with a real philosophy, a truly creative mind; some one whose poems and paintings, music, novels, plays, and measures of reform would at last have borne inspection! And he would go out from the office of that great paper so untimely wrecked, and, conspiring with himself, would found another.