HEREFORD VAUGHAN To have eleven plays, all written out of one's own head, and all being performed simultaneously in American, in Eskimo, and even in Turkish, besides in every known European language; to have money rolling in, and the strange world of agents and managers pursuing you by every post and imploring for more contracts by every Marconigram; and these triumphs to have come quite suddenly, was really enough to have turned the head of any young man; yet Hereford Vaughan's (known by his very few intimate friends as Gillie) had remained remarkably calm. He was not even embittered by success. To know his jokes were being got over the footlights of so many lands was a curious sensation, and it often made him laugh suddenly to reflect how wicked certain quips must sound in, say, Japanese. Perhaps his friends were rather inclined to resent the way he retained his balance after what was really an almost unheard-of hit. They would have been readier to pardon it had he shown some sign of boring fatuity; or perhaps they thought he might at least have had a temporary nervous breakdown; taking the form (for choice) of losing all sense of the value of money and wildly throwing bank-notes and gold at every one he saw. But he remained quiet, reserved, and as apparently modest as ever. Modesty is a valuable merit (as I think Schopenhauer has discovered) in people who have no other, and the appearance of it is extremely useful to those who have, but I am not suggesting that Vaughan was not human, and there was, no doubt, many a moment when he smiled to himself, and felt that he was a great man.