Creative Books

'" (Here Clifton
drew from a curiously contrived case of parchment a cluster of pages.)
"It has now twenty-two hours to appear in the present century. You shall
devote the night to reading it, and tell me that I have acted well."
A sultry August evening, a smoky boarding-house lamp, much skirmishing
of mosquitoes, and--a manuscript system of philosophy! The prospect was
not inviting. The reading of other people's manuscripts is surely the
crucial test of a devoted benevolence. There are few ways in which I am
so little ready to oblige my fellow-men. I had, indeed, at times, been
induced to inspect sundry romances in blotted embryo; but, as yet,
nobody had called upon me with a system of philosophy. _Printed_
philosophy is none too easy reading. But to sit there, under the
guardianship of Clifton, and spell out the dim dogmatism of some
nebulous fanatic,--of course it was not to be thought of for a moment.
With a _suave_ periphrasis of speech I questioned the expediency of the
proposition.


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