_The Potiphar Papers_ is in another key. The placid observer, who, in _Lotus-Eating_, quoted from De Quincey a delectable passage on the poetry of dancing, is now a bitter satirist contemplating a corps-de-ballet of society buds gyrating in the arms of the _jeunesse dorée_. These ‘bounding belles’ and their admirers shock the observer with a style of dancing which in its whirl, its ‘rush, its fury is only equalled by that of the masked balls at the French opera.’ The book is a new treatment (new in 1853) of the old subject of Vanity Fair. The humor is severe. The touch is not light and the caustic writing is not happy. Curtis was never a master of the whip of scorpions. Nevertheless _The Potiphar Papers_ had a vogue. _Prue and I_ is a book of the sort Zola used to hate--literature which ‘consoles with the lies of the imagination.’ It is the idyl of contented obscurity, the poetic side of humble life. Delicately wrought, light in texture, shot with charming fancies and dainty conceits, having the grace that belongs to old-school manners, this little prose poem is justly accounted its author’s masterpiece. Curtis wrote one novel, _Trumps_, and was disappointed in the result. The book is readable, but not because it is a story. Many good novelists are made, not born. _Trumps_ is the work of a novelist in the making. V THE EASY CHAIR The twenty-seven essays of the volume entitled _From the Easy Chair_ show very well in brief compass the range of their author’s powers in this form. Here are reminiscences of Browning and his wife, of the Dickens readings in ’67, of Everett’s oratory and Jennie Lind’s singing, of a lecture by Emerson and a recital by Gottschalk or by Thalberg, of a night at the play-house with Jefferson, or a dinner at the old (the _very old_) Delmonico’s, when that famous eating-house stood at the corner of Broadway and Chambers Street. The flavor of by-gone days is here. ‘It was a pleasant little New York,’ says the essayist regretfully, being mindful of the charm which a lively small city possesses, and which a big city, be it never so lively, somehow lacks. Half the attractiveness of the ‘Easy Chair’ papers is due to their seemingly unpremeditated character. Curtis was not writing a book, nor was he proposing at some time, ‘in response to the earnest solicitations of friends upon whose judgment I rely,’ to collect and republish these fugitive leaves. He comes home after a little chat, perhaps, with John Gilbert and sits down to tell us about it. Two or three reflections suggested by the interview are thrown in quite happily, and while we listeners are most absorbed and in no mood to have him break off, Curtis rises, and with some pleasant little remark, nods, and smiles, and is gone. And one of the listeners says, ‘I wish we saw him oftener. He comes only once a month.’