"Yes, but my best work has been along lines of satire. I've consistently made war upon shams. I've stood always in my work for decency and manliness and honesty. I think that'll remain true, you'll find. I'm not much physically, but morally I'm not a coward." "No, I don't think anybody will rise up to charge you with time-serving. By the way, what a rare chance you have in the attitude of the Chicago people toward the Spanish princess!" The tall man straightened up. His whole nature roused at this point, and his face grew square. His Puritan grandfather looked from his indignant eyes and set jaw as he said: "I don't know what's coming upon us." "Aha!" Garland exulted, "even you are bitten with the same." He flung his hand out in quick deprecation. "Oh, I don't pretend to be a reformer. I leave that to others. I hate logarithms. I like speculative astronomy. I am naturally a lover of romance. My mind turns toward the far past or future. I like to illustrate the foolery of these society folks by stories which I invent. The present don't interest me--at least not taken as it is. Possibilities interest me." "That's a good way to put it," said the other man. "It's a question of the impossible, the possible, and the probable. I like the probable. I like the near-at-hand. I feel the most vital interest in the average fact." "I know you do, and I like it after you get through with it, but I don't care to deal with the raw material myself. I like the archaic." "Yet some of your finest things, I repeat, are your reminiscent verses of boy-life," pursued Garland, who called himself a veritist and enjoyed getting his friend as nearly on his ground as possible. [Illustration: FIELD'S "TREASURES:" THE GLADSTONE AXE, C. A. DANA'S SHEARS, THE HORACES.] "Yes, that's so, but that's in the far past," Field admitted. Garland took the thought up. "Time helps you then. Time is a romancer. He halves the fact, but we veritists find the _present_ fact haloed, with significance if not beauty." Field dodged the point. "Yes, I like to do those boy-life verses. I like to live over the joys and tragedies--because we had our tragedies." "Didn't we! Weeding the onion-bed on circus day, for example." "Yes, or gettin' a terrible strappin' for goin' swimming without permission. Oh, it all comes back to me, all sweet and fine somehow. I've forgotten all the unpleasant things. I remember only the best of it all. I like boy-life. I like children. I like young men. I like the buoyancy of youth and its freshness. It's a God's pity that every young child can't get a taste of country life at some time. It's a fund of inspiration to a man." Again the finer quality in the man came out in his face and voice. "Your life in New England and the South, and also in the West, has been of great help to you, I think." "Yes, and a big disadvantage. When I go East, Stedman calls me a typical Westerner, and when I come West they call me a Yankee--so there I am!"