Boyesen. What do you attribute that to?
Howells. Possibly to the fact that the scene is laid in New York; the public throughout the country is far more interested in New York than in Boston. New York, as Lowell once said, is a huge pudding, and every town and village has been helped to a slice, or wants to be.
Boyesen. I rejoice that New York has found such a subtly appreciative and faithful chronicler as you show yourself to be in “A Hazard of New Fortunes.” To the equipment of a great city—a world-city as the Germans say—belongs a great novelist; that is to say, at least one. And even though your modesty may rebel, I shall persist in regarding you henceforth as the novelist par excellence of New York.
Howells. Ah, you don’t expect me to live up to that bit of taffy!
PARABLES OF A PROVINCE.—I.
THE NYMPH OF THE EDDY.
By Gilbert Parker.
