ABSTRACT
He sat down beside me, dropped his hands on his knees, and stared into space. A small delicate-looking man, with an almost excessive refinement of feature, and an air of gentle detachment. What was I to talk to him about? He certainly looked as if he would give me no help. I was not awed. I seem to have been born without awe – save in the presence of mountains or great architecture – but I wanted to interest him. He was the first authentic literary celebrity I had ever met. [...]
I floundered about, broaching one subject and another, but he never even glanced at me, much less made any response to my embarrassed efforts. He appeared to have fallen into a reverie, quite oblivious to his surroundings. Then, heaven knows how – I raked my memory afterward, but could never solve the riddle – I lighted upon cable cars in San Francisco. Abstraction fled. His face lit up. He turned to me eagerly. He asked me a hundred questions. I answered them as best I could, for it may be imagined how much I knew of engineering and mechanics. But at least I could describe those handsome shining cars with their ‘dummies’, gliding up and down the steep hills of my city filled with the beauty and fashion of San Francisco, as they were at that time, for horses would have turned double back somersaults had they attempted to rival the humming cable.
