of the world?"

"Well, Ben," said I, with judicial seriousness, "I think we might
safely limit the number of motives of a man who seeks fame to three--to
ambition, which is a desire for popular applause; to avarice, which
looks to the material side of success; and to love of some woman whom
he either possesses or desires to possess."

Ben pondered over my words while a mocking-bird on the top of a
mesquite by the porch trilled a dozen bars.

"I reckon," said he, "that your diagnosis about covers the case
according to the rules laid down in the copy-books and historical
readers. But what I had in my mind was the case of Willie Robbins, a
person I used to know. I'll tell you about him before I close up the
store, if you don't mind listening.

"Willie was one of our social set up in San Augustine. I was clerking
there then for Brady & Murchison, wholesale dry-goods and ranch
supplies. Willie and I belonged to the same german club and athletic
association and military company. He played the triangle in our
serenading and quartet crowd that used to ring the welkin three nights
a week somewhere in town.

"Willie jibed with his name considerable. He weighed about as much
as a hundred pounds of veal in his summer suitings, and he had a
'Where-is-Mary?' expression on his features so plain that you could
almost see the wool growing on him.

"And yet you couldn't fence him away from the girls with barbed wire.
You know that kind of young fellows--a kind of a mixture of fools and
angels--they rush in and fear to tread at the same time; but they never
fail to tread when they get the chance. He was always on hand when 'a
joyful occasion was had,' as the morning paper would say, looking as
happy as a king full, and at the same time as uncomfortable as a raw
oyster served with sweet pickles. He danced like he had hind hobbles
on; and he had a vocabulary of about three hundred and fifty words
that he made stretch over four germans a week, and plagiarized from
to get him through two ice-cream suppers and a Sunday-night call. He
seemed to me to be a sort of a mixture of Maltese kitten, sensitive
plant, and a member of a stranded 'Two Orphans' company.

"I'll give you an estimate of his physiological and pictorial make-up,
and then I'll stick spurs into the sides of my narrative.

"Willie inclined to the Caucasian in his coloring and manner of style.
His hair was opalescent and his conversation fragmentary. His eyes
were the sam