ne of the young nurses
whose eyes he liked, and stopped to chat with her about the cases.
"That nice old gentleman over there, now," he said, "you wouldn't
think that was a case of almost starvation. Proud old family, I
guess. He told me he hadn't eaten a thing for three days."
THE ASSESSOR OF SUCCESS
Hastings Beauchamp Morley sauntered across Union Square with a
pitying look at the hundreds that lolled upon the park benches. They
were a motley lot, he thought; the men with stolid, animal, unshaven
faces; the women wriggling and self-conscious, twining and untwining
their feet that hung four inches above the gravelled walks.
Were I Mr. Carnegie or Mr. Rockefeller I would put a few millions
in my inside pocket and make an appointment with all the Park
Commissioners (around the corner, if necessary), and arrange
for benches in all the parks of the world low enough for women
to sit upon, and rest their feet upon the ground. After that I
might furnish libraries to towns that would pay for 'em, or build
sanitariums for crank professors, and call 'em colleges, if I
wanted to.
Women's rights societies have been laboring for many years after
equality with man. With what result? When they sit on a bench they
must twist their ankles together and uncomfortably swing their
highest French heels clear of earthly support. Begin at the bottom,
ladies. Get your feet on the ground, and then rise to theories of
mental equality.
Hastings Beauchamp Morley was carefully and neatly dressed. That
was the result of an instinct due to his birth and breeding. It
is denied us to look further into a man's bosom than the starch on
his shirt front; so it is left to us only to recount his walks and
conversation.
Morley had not a cent in his pockets; but he smiled pityingly at a
hundred grimy, unfortunate ones who had no more, and who would have
no more when the sun's first rays yellowed the tall paper-cutter
building on the west side of the square. But Morley would have
enough by then. Sundown had seen his pockets empty before; but
sunrise had always seen them lined.
First he went to the house of a clergyman off Madison avenue and
presented a forged letter of introduction that holily purported to
issue from a pastorate in Indiana. This netted him $5 when backed
up by a realistic romance of a delayed remittance.
On the sidewalk, twenty steps from the clergyman's door, a
pale-faced, fat man huskily enveloped him with a rais
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