"
After some further parley it was agreed that I should exert myself in
his behalf, and after a visit to the pawnbroker's, where Dannevig had
deposited his dignity, we parted with the promise to meet again at
dinner.
IV.
It was rather an anomalous position for a knight of Dannebrog, a
familiar friend of princes and nobles, and an _ex-habitue_ of the Cafe
Anglais, to be a common reporter on a Chicago republican journal. Yet
this was the position to which (after some daring exploits in
book-reviewing and art criticism) my friend was finally reduced. As an
art-critic, he might have been a success, if western art had been more
nearly in accord with his own fastidious and exquisitely developed
taste. As it was, he managed in less than a fortnight to bring down
the wrath of the whole artistic brotherhood upon our journal, and as
some of these men were personal friends of the principal stockholders
in the paper, his destructive ardor was checked by an imperative order
from the authorities, from whose will there is no appeal. As a
book-reviewer he labored under similar disadvantages; he stoutly
maintained that the reading of a volume would necessarily and unduly
bias the critic's judgment, and that a man endowed with a keen,
literary nose could form an intelligent opinion, after a careful
perusal of the title-page, and a glance at the preface.
Pages:
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155