high spirits, »that you might
like to see something I received this morning.«
    He unfolded a London evening paper, and indicated a long letter from a
casual correspondent. It was written by the authoress of »On the Boards,« and
drew attention, with much expenditure of witticism, to the conflicting notices
of that book which had appeared in The Study. Jasper read the thing with
laughing appreciation.
    »Just what one expected!«
    »And I have private letters on the subject,« added Mr Yule. »There has been
something like a personal conflict between Fadge and the man who looks after the
minor notices. Fadge, more suo, charged the other man with a design to damage
him and the paper. There's talk of legal proceedings. An immense joke!«
    He laughed in his peculiar croaking way.
    »Do you feel disposed for a turn along the lanes, Mr Milvain?«
    »By all means. - There's my mother at the window; will you come in for a
moment?«
    With a step of quite unusual sprightliness Mr Yule entered the house. He
could talk of but one subject, and Mrs Milvain had to listen to a laboured
account of the blunder just committed by The Study. It was Alfred Yule's
characteristic that he could do nothing light-handedly. He seemed always to
converse with effort; he took a seat with stiff ungainliness; he walked with a
stumbling or sprawling gait.
    When he and Jasper set out for their ramble, his loquacity was in strong
contrast with the taciturn mood he had exhibited yesterday and the day before.
He fell upon the general aspects of contemporary literature.
    » ... The evil of the time is the multiplication of ephemerides. Hence a
demand for essays, descriptive articles, fragments of criticism, out of all
proportion to the supply of even tolerable work. The men who have an aptitude
for turning out this kind of thing in vast quantities are enlisted by every new
periodical, with the result that their productions are ultimately watered down
into worthlessness. ... Well now, there's Fadge. Years ago some of Fadge's work
was not without a certain - a certain conditional promise of - of comparative
merit; but now his writing, in my opinion, is altogether beneath consideration;
how Rackett could be so benighted as to give him The Study - especially after a
man like Henry Hawkridge - passes my comprehension. Did you read a paper of his,
a few months back, in The Wayside, a preposterous rehabilitation of Elkanah
Settle? Ha! ha!