"You don't find many people of my name in the country?" remarked the boundary man trivially, after a pause.
"Not many," I replied, wondering whether he referred to his nickname or to the inexpensive, but lasting, gift of his godfathers and godmothers, at the time of their annoying mistake.
"I suppose you hardly know one," he persisted.
"Not that I can think of," I replied. "Have you any swapping-books?"
"Yes, you'll find 'Elsie Venne ' lying on top of the upper shelf."
"I've read it years ago, but we'll change," I replied. "When I first got my swapping-book, it was by Hannah More; now it's by Zola, and smutty enough at that; it has undergone about twenty intermediate metamorphoses, and it's still going remarkably strong—in both senses of the word. Therefore I can recommend it."
"I don't think it does a person any good to read Zola," remarked the boundary man gravely.
"Not the slightest, Alf—that is, in the works by which he is represented amongst us. But do you think it does a person any good to read Holmes? Zola has several phases; one of them, I admit, blue as heaven's own tinct; but Holmes has only one phase, namely, pharisaism. Zola, even as we know him here in Riverina, has this advantage, that he gives you no rest for the sole of your foot—or rather, for the foot of your soul; whilst Holmes serenely seduces you to his own pinchbeck standard. Zola is honest; he never calls evil, good; whilst Holmes is spurious all through. Mind you, each has a genuine literary merit of his own.
"But don't you like Holmes's poetry?" asked Alf.
"Well, his poems fill a little volume that the world would be sorry to lose; but why did n't he write one verse—just one—for the Abolitionists to quote?"