His reason for adding this selection was not very clear; but somehow a little touch of poetry seemed suitable after an entry of that sort. There was a good deal of poetry in the book, selections copied from various magazines and volumes that had helped to brighten his prosaic existence as a silk salesman in McDavitt’s department store. One would have had to be a good observer to guess that behind the plain, neat, black-and-white exterior of Mr. Francis there was the soul of a poet. Judged by the frost-touched blackness of his hair, he might have been thirty-eight years old. His face, tending to delicacy of feature in the forehead and nose, and rendered a little wistful by the worry-lines about his eyes, had the pallor that comes from years of living in artificial light. He invariably looked as though he had been smooth-shaven five minutes before, and he invariably was ready to give his most earnest attention to the desires of a customer. He fitted in the high-classed old establishment that employed him, and paid him well for a silk salesman. The consideration shown him he repaid by immaculateness in dress, scrupulousness in his reports, and the air of an English butler in dealing with customers. His inner self was revealed in only two of his daily activities--in the handling of the silks that had been his familiars from boyhood, and in the keeping of a large red-morocco diary that he carried in the breast-pocket of his black frock-coat. The silks--how he caressed their shimmering textures and colors, how he made them display all their subtle beauties and allurements! It was quite without guile on his part: the idea of urging or inveigling any one into buying would have filled him with horror. He displayed his wares to their best advantage because he loved them. Therefore he did it so wonderfully well that many a fine lady, after watching his firm, white, well-kept hands play among the folds, bought stuffs for which she had no possible use. This gained him some dislike and trouble, for McDavitt’s does not exchange dress-goods. But Mr. Francis’s real self-revelation was reserved for the diary. Every night he made an entry. During the several hours every day when the choiceness, and therefore sparseness, of McDavitt’s clientele left him with nothing to do, he often took out the book, opened it among the shining silks on the mahogany counter, and made a note or two in it. It was a rather large book for a diary, and the India-paper leaves gave its thousand pages the bulk of a far smaller number in ordinary diaries. The words “Personal Journal” were printed in gold across the front cover, and there was a bunch of gold forget-me-nots, tied with a gold true-lover’s knot, in the upper left-hand corner. Beneath the forget-me-nots, in small, precise roman capitals, Mr. Francis had printed his name, ROLAND FARWELL FRANCIS.