The Last Word

groomed, an excellent type of the highly evolved American. But I was fresh and green from my Texas pastures; too broncho to feel any awe of him, I treated him much as I would treat one of our cowboys. Whether or no he felt this as a bleak alteration from the atmosphere of myrrh and frankincense, the reek of the burnt offering in which an editor lives, he assumed toward me, with what I decided was flattering precipitancy, an attitude of kindly patronage. " Of course you feel very small and very lonesome here just at first," he remarked. "But I don't," I rejoined; "I haven't at all." Without seeming to hear me, he continued resolutely, " You see the importance of the individualshrinks surprisingly when he is so infinitely multiplied, when he is presented to your observation as one variation among five millions, or as an exception ? of forty thousand exceptions ? to the rule of five hundred thousand." I hastened to interrupt, " I don't care ? " But he ran right over me. " And this sort of shrinkage in relative value of the ego gives, to one accustomed, like yourself, to make quite a figure in his country neighbourhood or small town, a sense of painful littleness and insignificance ? the lost, snowed-under feeling traditionally the lot and portion of the obscure stranger in a great city." He had said it now, and leaned back at peace. " But I tell you," I reiterated, " I don't feel that way at all." My editor tipped the top of his he...