It could be foreseen that morally he was of that sort who avoid evil through good taste, lack of decision, and want of opportunity.

His temperament was that of the poet; when he told himself he had been thinking, he deceived himself.

He had, on such occasions, been only brooding.
Some eighteen months before this time, he had been threatened with consumption, and, taking advantage of a standing invitation on the part of Magnus Derrick, had come to stay in the dry, even climate of the San Joaquin for an indefinite length of time.

He was thirty years old, and had graduated and post-graduated with high honours from an Eastern college, where he had devoted himself to a passionate study of literature, and, more especially, of poetry.
It was his insatiable ambition to write verse.

But up to this time, his work had been fugitive, ephemeral, a note here and there, heard, appreciated, and forgotten.