Fortunately for me, he cares no more for politics than I do, and thus saves me from the necessity of studying and mastering that shifting quicksand against which beat the tides of men, ebbing as private greed obtains the mastery, and flowing in those curious revulsions of selfishly altruistic public spirit called patriotism. Except for this subject his taste is catholic, and his foible is to pose as omniscient. “I wish new subjects,—something, if possible, that intellectual people do not know about,”—is his constant command; and nothing delights him more than an editorial on a subject of which he has never heard. Speaking only his mother tongue, he has an inordinate desire for foreign words, and will observe, “A quotation in another language gives an editorial page an air of culture which I desire my paper to have.” Our composing-room, I imagine, is the only one in New York which has Greek type, and if I gave him the smallest encouragement he would buy fonts of Sanskrit and Hebrew characters. He always makes me teach him how to pronounce the sentences, catching them with a wonderful parrot-like facility. Usually he carries clippings of the last half dozen editorials with him, and his delight is to make an opportunity to read one aloud, prefaced by the announcement that he is the writer. Sometimes, indeed, he cannot contain his pleasure over the articles till their appearance in type, and I repeatedly hear him request a visitor, “If you have ten minutes to spare, let me read you this editorial I have just written for to-morrow’s issue.” At first, in spite of Mr. Blodgett’s explanation, I thought this real dishonesty, and despised not merely him, but myself as well for aiding in such trickery. As I grow to know him better, however, I find he is not cozening the public so much as imposing on himself. The man has a fervent and untrained imagination, which has never, in the practicalities of oil, had a safety-valve. As a result, it has rioted in dreams of which he is the hero, until it has brought him to the point of thinking his wildest fancies quite possible realities. His self-faith is so great that his imagination sets no limit to his powers, and thus he can believe everything of himself. I have heard him tell what he would do under given circumstances, and, with my knowledge of him, I know he is conceiving himself to be actually doing what he describes. Thus, in a smaller sense, he really imagines that he writes the editorials, and he even reads them to Mr. Blodgett, apparently unconscious that there can be the slightest question of authorship in the latter’s mind.