Speaking of Angels by Adeline Adams — Read

The youth's name was Apollos Rivers. We admired him, used him, and for a time, despised him, too. Why we admired and used, I can easily explain. Apollos was every inch his name-blond, athletic, superb; no model in New York posed as faithfully. Why we despised-well, the logic of that is more complicated. Our contempt was doubtless merely a habit, formed on sight unseen and strengthened by hearsay. Apollos, indeed! How absurd a name for the oldest Rivers boy, seeking work in studios! In vain he had politely explained to us that his late father, a bookish Montreal goldsmith, had so greatly admired the senior Paul Revere of colonial history (the Paul Revere whose Huguenot name had originally been Apollos Rivoire) that he himself, British subject though he was, had bestowed the name Apollos on his own firstborn. Later Rivers arrivals, less magnificent in physique, had to content themselves with names less proud-Tom, Chuck, Nipper, and plain Ellen.

Perhaps we would have accepted that explanation, if somebody (that eternally busy somebody) had not seen young Apollos at an Academy reception, his ears tinted rose-pink, with cheeks to match, and his vigorous young eyelashes weighted with whatever it is the chorus ladies use to veil and enhance their already too potent come-hither-of-the-eye. After this, do you wonder that we jumped at the conclusion that Apollos was merely a name the youth had wished on himself, a _nom de pose_, as it were? And why did he polish his nails? Unnatural in a boy of eighteen! Anyhow, we wouldn't have done it, at that age. And I fear that with some of us, even his honest Canadian accent was against him. Take the word _been_, for instance. Those whose grandfathers had always said _ben_, and whose mothers had said _bin_, were repelled when the Montreal lad called it _bean_.