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Evening Post , which supports the Grant Administration regardless of scandal. The radical crusading spirit is now entirely dead at the Post .But Bryant is old.
    Glumly I chewed brown bread whilst Bryant expressed himself at length on the hopeless corruption of New York City, until, bored, I diverted him with an inquiry about his forthcoming history of the United States.
    I was favoured with a rare smile. “Unfortunately, I have done very little of the work. My collaborator is the one who toils. But I do have a book of poetry ready for publication.”
    Bryant tried out a number of titles on me. We decided that The Flood of Years was the best. Apparently this octogenarian work is “an answer to that poem of my youth Thanatopsis .It’s hard to believe that at seventeen I actually entertained certain doubts about the immortality of the Soul. But now, Schuyler, I have come to accept our immortality!”
    At that instant, Bryant looked like Moses, despite a trace of hominy grit in his beard. I nodded respectfully; felt young again, callow, tongue-tied in the presence of America’s premier poet, of the city’s most distinguished newspaper editor, of the oldest man ever to exercise with dumbbells on an icy winter morning.
    “But your own work has given us all much pleasure.” The deep-set eyes appeared to look at me for the first time. If the blood in my congealing veins were capable of a sudden rush to any part of the body, I might have blushed with pleasure at praise from the only man alive who still looks upon me as young.
    “I particularly admire Paris Under the Commune .What a time! What issues were joined!” To my surprise Bryant is not made panicky by the Communards—or communists—and he asked me intelligent questions. He also got the title of the book right; usually it is referred to as Paris Under the Communists .
    Then we spoke of our dear mutual dead friend, the editor William Leggett. I write “mutual” knowing that it is a word Bryant deplores. In fact, he has written a small book of words and phrases that are never to appear in the Post .Not “mutual” but “common.” Not “inaugurate” but “begin.” He has no liking for Latin-or Greek-derived words (yet called his most famous poem Thanatopsis ).
    It is curious that despite Bryant’s great good sense about language, his own prose is so perfectly ordinary that even the liveliest topic drops dead at a single prod of his (the last in all of New York) feather quill pen.
    Opening the Herald , Bryant found me on page three. With an amused inflection he read aloud the reporter’s account of the arrival in New York of the celebrated author Charles Schermerhorn Schuyler and his daughter, the Princess Day Regent. “A Turkish title from the sound of it.”
    “No. Bosnian.”
    Bryant’s humour still lurks behind that awesome face he sees fit to petrify the world with. As practising journalists, we enjoyed the confident incoherence of the interviewer; and deplored the low standards of today’s journalism.
    “And yet—” The maid interrupted us not with coffee or tea, as I had prayed, but with Bryant’s topcoat and beaver hat.
    “—the newspaper press can take a great deal of credit for having destroyed Mr. Tweed in ’73.”
    I noticed sourly that the maid did not even attempt to help me on with my topcoat; and due to a rheumatic shoulder, I have more difficulty than does Bryant getting in and out of clothes.
    “With some aid from Governor Tilden.”
    “Of course, a capital fellow. Do you know him?”
    “Yes. Slightly.”
    We were now in the street. School-bound children carried their books in that never-out-of-date shoulder sling whilst a ragged man pulled a sort of barrow after him on which had been placed a large tin bucket of boiling water fired from beneath by a kerosene burner.
    The man’s hoarse cry still sounds in my head: “Here’s your nice hot corn, smoking hot, smoking hot, just from the pot.” I used to collect such “songs” of