His
experience had been varied: he had acted as a tutor, a traveling
companion, a confidential clerk, a collector of information for
technical writers, and in other capacities requiring facility of
adaptation to exigencies. At present he was engaged in making a
catalogue for a collector of prints, whose treasures, in the course of
years, had increased to such an extent that it was impossible for him to
remember what his long rows of portfolios contained. The collector was
not willing that work among his engravings should be done by artificial
light, and, as the evenings of my visitor were therefore disengaged, he
said he should be glad to occupy them in a manner which would not only
be profitable to him, but, he was quite sure, would be very interesting.
The man's name was Chester Walkirk, and I engaged him to come to me
every evening, as my first listener had done.
I began my discourses with Walkirk with much less confidence and
pleasurable anticipation than I had felt with regard to the quiet,
unassuming elderly person who had been my first listener, and whom I had
supposed to be a very model of receptivity. The new man I feared would
demand more,--if not by word, at least by manner. He would be more like
an audience; I should find myself striving to please him, and I could
not feel careless whether he liked what I said or not.
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