The beginner in letters makes his way up, as a rule, amid a literary environment which is distinguished by reputations and hierarchies, all respected by him. But this was not the case with the young writers of my day. During the years 1898 to 1900, a number of young men suddenly found themselves thrown together in Madrid, whose only rule was the principle that the immediate past did not exist for them. This aggregation of authors and artists might have seemed to have been brought together under some leadership, and to have been directed to some purpose; yet one who entertained such an assumption would have been mistaken. Chance brought us together for a moment, a very brief moment, to be followed by a general dispersal. There were days when thirty or forty young men, apprentices in the art of writing, sat around the tables in the old Café de Madrid. Doubtless such gatherings of new men, eager to interfere in and to influence the operations of the social system, yet without either the warrant of tradition or any proved ability to do so, are common upon a larger scale in all revolutions. As we neither had, nor could have had, in the nature of the case, a task to perform, we soon found that we were divided into small groups, and finally broke up altogether. AZORÍN A few days after the publication of my first book, _Sombre Lives_, Miguel Poveda, who was responsible for printing it, sent a copy to Martínez Ruiz, who was at that time in Monóvar. Martínez Ruiz wrote me a long letter concerning the book by return mail; on the following day he sent another. Poveda handed me the letters to read and I was filled with surprise and joy. Some weeks later, returning from the National Library, Martínez Ruiz, whom I knew by sight, came up to me on the Recoletos. "Are you Baroja?" he asked. "Yes." "I am Martínez Ruiz." We shook hands and became friends. In those days we travelled about the country together, we contributed to the same papers, and the ideas and the men we attacked were the same. Later, Azorín became an enthusiastic partisan of Maura, which appeared to me particularly absurd, as I have never been able to see anything but an actor of the grand style in Maura, a man of small ideas. Next he became a partisan of La Cierva, which was as bad in my opinion as being a Maurista. I am unable to say at the moment whether he is contemplating any further transformations. But, whether he is or not, Azorín will always remain a master of language to me, besides an excellent friend who has a weakness for believing all men to be great who talk in a loud voice and who pull their cuffs down out of their coat sleeves with a grand gesture whenever they appear upon the platform. PAUL SCHMITZ