Sebastian determined to make himself interesting. The public has a fawning respect for fame. One or two abortive attempts convinced Mr. Early that his literary efforts would bring him not even the distinction of infamy. At last he hit upon an idea. He would be a patron of the Arts--not one of your little ordinary buyers, but a man whose purse was, so to speak, regilded by mind. He spent six months of hard work as a student of the situation and then he made his début. He selected a few gems of half-forgotten eighteenth century literature--gems that deserved to be given life-preservers on that stream of oblivion into which they were too surely being sucked. These he brought forth in tiny volumes, wide-edged and thick-papered, illuminated as to capitals and bound in ooze or in old brocade on which were scattered a few decorations, calculated, so unthinkable were they, to upset the reasoning power of the average reader, and thus prepare him for the literary matter which he should find within. These books naturally "took." They invited no man to read, but they were interesting to look at and therefore particularly adapted to those occasions when one must make a small gift to a friend. Scarce a center-table in the country but held at least one. The beauty of it was that the literary matter cost him nothing, and the books were their own advertising bill-boards; for wherever they went they lay in conspicuous places. From books Mr. Early passed on to furniture; and he begot strange shapes, wherein forgotten Gothic forms were commingled with forms that never man saw before; and these also took. So the circle widened, until glass pottery and rugs were gathered into the potpourri of Mr. Early's genius. Finally he established his magazine, _The Aspirant_, for he began to feel the need of explaining things--chiefly himself--to his expanding circle. _The Aspirant_ had covers of butcher's paper; and the necessity for self-defense at last developed in Mr. Early that literary style which he had found it impossible to cultivate while he still had nothing to say. He grew a peculiar ability for self-glorification and for slugging the other man. Particularly caustic did his pen become in respect to those, whether painters, musicians, poets, novelists or reformers, who had endeared themselves to the great mass of the public. _The Aspirant_ always called the public "the rabble," and you can't damn humanity more easily and cheaply than by calling it "the rabble." Naturally every one hastened to buy Mr. Early's furniture, his rugs and his pottery, and diligently to read _The Aspirant_, in order that he or she might escape the universal condemnation. Be _outré_ and you'll be right; be right and you'll be _outré_; be _outré_ anyway: was the simple creed.