But there are certain things that you cannot express in it without sounding crass, which would be a disadvantage in telling a story like “Jurgen.”

XLV—ANTI-IBÁÑEZ

While on the subject of books which we read because we think we ought to, and while Vicente Blasco Ibáñez is on the ocean and can’t hear what is being said, let’s form a secret society.

I will be one of any three to meet behind a barn and admit that I would not give a good gosh darn if a fortune-teller were to tell me tomorrow that I should never, never have a chance to read another book by the great Spanish novelist.

Any of the American reading public who desire to join this secret society may do so without fear of publicity, as the names will not be given out. The only means of distinguishing a fellow-member will be a tiny gold emblem, to be worn in the lapel, representing the figure (couchant) of Spain’s most touted animal. The motto will be “Nimmermehr,” which is a German translation of the Spanish phrase “Not even once again.”

Simply because I myself am not impressed by a book, I have no authority to brand anyone who does not like it as a poseur and say that he is only making believe that he likes it. And there must be a great many highly literary people who really and sincerely do think that Señor Blasco’s books are the finest novels of the epoch.

It would therefore be presumptuous of me to say that Spain is now, for the first time since before 1898, in a position to kid the United States and, vicariously through watching her famous son count his royalties and gate receipts, to feel avenged for the loss of her islands. If America has found something superfine in Ibáñez that his countrymen have missed, then America is of course to be congratulated and not kidded.

But probably no one was more surprised than Blasco when he suddenly found himself a lion in our literary arena instead of in his accustomed rôle of bull in his home ring. And those who know say that you could have knocked his compatriots over with a feather when the news came that old man Ibáñez’s son had made good in the United States to the extent of something like five hundred million pesetas.

For, like the prophet whom some one was telling about, Ibáñez was not known at home as a particularly hot tamale. But, then, he never had such a persistent publisher in Spain, and book-advertising is not the art there that it is in America. When the final accounting of the great success of “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” in this country is taken, honorable mention must be made of the man at the E.P. Dutton & Co. store who had charge of the advertising.