By the way, dear, Mr. Rogers came up yesterday with several other men. (The families follow in about a week.) They have been fishing since early morn, regardless of the thunder-storm, but have caught little, as the fish in these lakes have much to eat, and grow cleverer every year. Hunter, the lake-keeper, told me of their ill-luck, but when I expressed sympathy he shrugged his shoulders. “They like it,” he said; “and them as does’d set and fish all day in a wash-tub.” But Mr. Rogers arrived quite early yesterday morning, and spent nearly all of the day and evening with us. Bertie, who improves steadily in spite of all climatic vagaries, was delighted to see him, and they exchanged sporting experiences for several hours. I have not described Mr. Rogers to you, I think. He is what they call in this country a “great publisher,” by which I infer is meant a rich and successful one whose prestige is vastly added to by the fact that he inherited the “great” business, and is not self-made. A young man, an author, who sat at our table on the Oceanic, told me that Mr. Rogers’ firm, and three or four others, set the standard for American literature, and that any book with his hallmark on it would be accepted as literature whether the public bought it or not. He has encouraged, helped to create, as it were, the latter-day distinctive American literature, which Bertie and I have so rebelled against these rainy days, and was one of the first to make fashionable the story of locality and dialect. (I think he ought to be hanged for that.) If you don’t publish with one of these houses, my informant told me, your struggle will be a long one. But all that is not very interesting, not nearly so much so as the man himself He is about fifty-two, I should think, with that tall thin American figure, which when ill-carried is so ungainly and provincial, but very distinguished, if a little stiff, when a man has received the proper training. His face is the coldest I have ever seen; the eyes are grey, the hair and slight moustache nondescript, the features and general outlines finely cut, the whole effect, as I said, cold, and--well, aristocratic. I don’t think I ever used the word before I came to this country, but it is always popping off my pen here. It exactly describes Mr. Rogers. He would put a prince of the blood to the blush; refinement (another great American word), fastidiousness, correctness, the just not self-conscious superiority over ordinary mortals, fairly radiate from him in so many cold steady beams. And his voice is admirably modulated. He is a walking protest against American provincialism, from its various accents to that glorious principle that all men are free and equal, which I once read in the Declaration of Independence. (Dad thought so much of that, and used to say it was the highest expression of the Ideal, put into the purest English that ever had been contributed to the literature of Politics.)