A man of twenty-seven leaves London on foot to find the ideal woman, and meets several who are not her — a barmaid, a widow, a girl in a wood — while talking to the reader about books, wine and the folly of the whole enterprise. Le Gallienne was the beautiful young poet of the 1890s, long-haired, in the Yellow Book circle and close to Wilde; this 1896 bestseller is that decade's charm distilled, and it knows exactly how silly it is.