and those such trivial ones, stand out from the long months of newspaper work in New York. Harrowing and dreadful stories, appalling in their evidence of human degradation, or poignant beyond words in their revelation of misery, temptation, failure, were my daily experience week after week, month after month. I might now have bulky scrap-books packed with thrilling plots of every kind, all taken from life. My affair with Boyde, moreover, had taught me how much of curious psychological interest lay behind the most ordinary arrest for a commonplace crime. Yet, of all these thousands of cases, I remember hardly a single one, while of uninteresting assignments Cooper gave me several still live vividly in my memory. Social reporting, in particular, both amused and distressed me, for which reasons probably it has not faded. Sitting in the lobby at Sherry's or Delmonico's when a ball or society function was in progress and taking the names of the guests as they entered, taking the snubs and rudeness of these gay, careless folk as well, was not calculated to add much to my self-respect. The lavish evidence of money, the excess, often the atrocious taste, even stirred red socialism in me, although this lasted only till I was out in the street again. Various connexions, distant or otherwise, of my family often, too, visited New York, while more than one had married an American girl of prominent name. It was odd to see Lord Ava, Dufferin's eldest son, walk up the steps, and odder still to jot down his name upon the list of "those present." There was an American woman, too, who bore my mother's name.... To see any of these people was the last thing on earth I wished, much less to speak to them or be recognized; they were in another world to mine; none the less, I had odd sensations when I saw them.... A ball of deaf-mutes, too, remains very clear, only the shuffling sound of boots, and of the big drum whose heavy vibrations through their feet enabled them to keep time, breaking the strange hush of the dancing throng, for ever gesticulating with busy fingers.
A much-coveted annual assignment once came my
