Mr. Huneker's close friends have taken occasion since his death to speak warmly of his kindness toward obscure, struggling talent. There was a side to him, akin to this, which I have not seen commented upon. Huneker's fame as a critic had been for years accepted throughout Europe. When his "New Cosmopolis" was published (a book I did not myself think so highly of) Joyce Kilmer, then newly come to journalism, reviewed it for the New York _Times_, very eulogistically. Mr. Huneker went to the trouble of looking up Kilmer to thank him very simply for his praise. Mr. Huneker was a loyal and disinterested servant of good literature wherever he found it, and his happily was the power to be an ambassador to success. So short a time as about four years ago very few people had heard of William McFee. "Aliens," his first book, had met with no appreciable success. The manuscript of "Casuals of the Sea" (or the English "sheets" of the book, I do not recall which) came into the hands of a publishing house at Garden City. A member of the editorial staff of this house at this time was Christopher Morley. And I happened at the moment to have a job as sort of handy man at editorial chores around the premises. Morley immediately became a great "fan" for the book. Undoubtedly a fine book, and it was accepted, but (there was a question) could it be "put across"? It was very long, not of obviously popular character, and the author's name commanded no attention at all. The first "advance" copy of the book sent out went (at Morley's direction) to Mr. Huneker. He was then writing regularly critical articles for something like a half dozen publications. "Casuals of the Sea" (such things did not turn up every day) was a "find" for his enthusiasm, He "pulled" two columns of brilliant Hunekerean firecrackers about it in the New York _Sun_; wrote another article of length on the book for the New York _Times_; gave the volume a couple of paragraphs of mention in his department on the Seven Arts at that time running in _Puck_, and perhaps mentioned the book elsewhere also. With the weight of such fervor and authority "Casuals" was most auspiciously launched. It could not now, by any chance, be passed by. I do not, of course, mean to imply that there was anything artificial or "manufactured" about the "vogue" of "Casuals." First, Mr. Huneker was not a reviewer but a critic, if not thoroughly a great one, certainly a very real one; and about the last man going who could be got to "push" anything he did not whole-heartedly believe was fine. And secondly, "Casuals" had "the goods."