William Dean Howells 



generous as his other pleasures, but 

 depersonalized by the interest he took 

 in certain branches of the culinary 

 technique. We next met at dinner 

 in New York over a very specific 

 beef-steak, in company with a poet 

 now more venerable but not yet too 

 old to recall his sympathy with King's 

 zeal in concurrently compiling a gravy 

 of which he had the knowledge and 

 inspiration, while the talk went on of 

 things both humane and literary, till 

 the steak came up to have that won- 

 derful sauce poured over it. King 

 spoke then of that romance of his, 

 begun as ever, but somewhat more 

 advanced, he owned, though he owned 

 the fact cryptically, as if he might still 

 never suffer the cypher of its secret 

 to be interpreted in mortal print. He 

 talked also of things millennial, of 

 which the air was then momentarily 

 full, and by which his heart was 

 moved. He confessed a feeling for 



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