"our" plate-glass is the most
important commodity in the world, and that when a man is in his home
town he ought to be decent and law-abiding.

During my acquaintance with him in the City of Diurnal Night I had
never known his views on life, romance, literature, and ethics. We
had browsed, during our meetings, on local topics, and then parted,
after Chateau Margaux, Irish stew, flannel-cakes, cottage-pudding,
and coffee (hey, there!--with milk separate). Now I was to get more
of his ideas. By way of facts, he told me that business had picked
up since the party conventions, and that he was going to get off at
Coketown.

II

"Say," said Pescud, stirring his discarded book with the toe of his
right shoe, "did you ever read one of these best-sellers? I mean
the kind where the hero is an American swell--sometimes even from
Chicago--who falls in love with a royal princess from Europe who is
travelling under an alias, and follows her to her father's kingdom
or principality? I guess you have. They're all alike. Sometimes
this going-away masher is a Washington newspaper correspondent,
and sometimes he is a Van Something from New York, or a Chicago
wheat-broker worthy fifty millions. But he's always ready to break
into the king row of any foreign country that sends over their queens
and princesses to try the new plush seats on the Big Four or the B.
and O. There doesn't seem to be any other reason in the book for their
being here.

"Well, this fellow chases the royal chair-warmer home, as I said, and
finds out who she is. He meets her on the _corso_ or the _strasse_ one
evening and gives us ten pages of conversation. She reminds him of
the difference in their stations, and that gives him a chance to ring
in three solid pages about America's uncrowned sovereigns. If you'd
take his remarks and set 'em to music, and then take the music away
from 'em, they'd sound exactly like one of George Cohan's songs.

"Well, you know how it runs on, if you've read any of 'em--he slaps
the king's Swiss body-guards around like everything whenever they
get in his way. He's a great fencer, too. Now, I've known of some
Chicago men who were pretty notorious fences, but I never heard of
any fencers coming from there. He stands on the first landing of the
royal staircase in Castle Schutzenfestenstein with a gleaming rapier
in his hand, and makes a Baltimore broil of six platoons of traitors
who come to massacre the said king. And then he has