"Shall you have him marry, also?" he inquired, pointedly.
"Why not?"
"Because it will finish him; that's why. The romance in a modern marriage lasts six weeks. At the end of that time he will be useless for literary purposes, or anything else."
Mr. Weil shook his head in opposition to this rash statement.
"My theory is," said he, "that a novelist should know everything. To write of love he should have been in love; to tell of marriage he should have had a wife—a real one, no mere imitation; to talk of fatherhood intelligently he should become a father. How can he know his subjects otherwise?"
The stout man smiled significantly.
"And if he wishes to write of murder, he must kill some one. And if he wants to depict the sensations of a robber he must take a pistol and ask people to stand, on the highway."
"Now you are becoming absurd," said Archie.
"No more than you," said Boggs. "You go too far, and you will find it out. Let your novelist fall in love. That will do him good. But don't let him marry, or you will lose him, mark my word. Let him contemplate matrimony at a distance. Let him reflect on the glory of seeing his children about his knees. So far, so good. But when you have shelved him with a wife of the present era, when you have kept him up nights for a month with a baby that screams—his literary capacity will be gone. Make no mistake!"