One of my Kentucky novels, upon being republished in London some months ago, fell into the hands of a sympathetic reviewer. This critic's praise later made its way to the stately library of Edward Blackthorne. What especially induced the latter to read the book, I infer, were lines quoted by the reviewer from my description of a woodland scene with ferns in it: the mighty novelist, as it happens, is himself interested in ferns. He consequently wrote to some other English authors and critics, calling attention to my work, and he sent a letter to me, asking for some ferns for his garden. This recognition in England hilariously affected my friends over here. Tilly, whose mind suggests to me a delicately poised pair of golden balances for weighing delight against delight (always her most vital affair), when this honour for me fell into the scales, found them inclined in my favour. If it be true, as I have often thought, that she has long been holding on to me merely until she could take sure hold of someone else of more splendid worldly consequence, she suddenly at least tightened her temporary grasp. Polly, good, solid Polly, wholesome and dependable as a well-browned whole-wheat baker's loaf weighing a hundred and sixty pounds, when she heard of it, gave me a Bohemian supper in her Franklin Flat parlour, inviting only a few undersized people, inasmuch as she and Ben, the chief personages of the entertainment, took up most of the room. We were so packed in, that literally it was a night in Bohemia _aux sardines_. Since the good news from England came over, Ben, with his big, round, clean-shaven, ruddy face and short, reddish curly hair, which makes him look like a thirty-five-year-old Bacchus who had never drunk a drop--even Ben has beamed on me like a mellower orb. He is as ashamed as ever of my books, but is beginning to feel proud that so many more people are being fooled by them. Several times lately I have caught his eyes resting on me with an expression of affectionate doubt as to whether after all he might be mistaken in not having thought more of me. But he dies hard. My publisher, who is a human refrigerator containing a mental thermometer, which rises or falls toward like or dislike over a background for book-sales, got wind of the matter and promptly invited me to one of his thermometric club-lunches--always an occasion for acute gastritis.