Exactly what may have been his intimate conviction as to, say, what should be the proper relation of the sexes, I don't profess to know... he had a personal horror of letting his more august friends come into contact through him with anyone who might be even remotely expected of marital irregularities.... Once he had got it well fixed in his head that I was a journalist, he conceived the idea that all my friends must be illegally united with members of the opposite sex.
It happened that two extraordinarily respectable wives of two eminent editors... took it in their heads to call on James at Rye. I had hardly so much as a bowing acquaintance with them, but the next day, happening to go into Rye, I met the Old Man down by the harbor. Just at the point where we met was a coal yard whose proprietor had the same name as one of the husbands of those ladies. James stopped short and with a face working with fury, pointed his stick at the coal man's name above the gate and brought out the exasperated words: "A couple of jaded.... WANTONS!...." and nothing whatever more.
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