gdoms upside down
just because he's a Taft American and took a course at a gymnasium.
And listen how they talk, too!"

Pescud picked up the best-seller and hunted his page.

"Listen at this," said he. "Trevelyan is chinning with the Princess
Alwyna at the back end of the tulip-garden. This is how it goes:

"'Say not so, dearest and sweetest of earth's fairest flowers.
Would I aspire? You are a star set high above me in a royal
heaven; I am only--myself. Yet I am a man, and I have a heart
to do and dare. I have no title save that of an uncrowned
sovereign; but I have an arm and a sword that yet might free
Schutzenfestenstein from the plots of traitors.'

"Think of a Chicago man packing a sword, and talking about freeing
anything that sounded as much like canned pork as that! He'd be much
more likely to fight to have an import duty put on it."

"I think I understand you, John," said I. "You want fiction-writers
to be consistent with their scenes and characters. They shouldn't
mix Turkish pashas with Vermont farmers, or English dukes with Long
Island clam-diggers, or Italian countesses with Montana cowboys, or
Cincinnati brewery agents with the rajahs of India."

"Or plain business men with aristocracy high above 'em," added Pescud.
"It don't jibe. People are divided into classes, whether we admit it
or not, and it's everybody's impulse to stick to their own class.
They do it, too. I don't see why people go to work and buy hundreds
of thousands of books like that. You don't see or hear of any such
didoes and capers in real life."

III

"Well, John," said I, "I haven't read a best-seller in a long time.
Maybe I've had notions about them somewhat like yours. But tell me
more about yourself. Getting along all right with the company?"

"Bully," said Pescud, brightening at once. "I've had my salary raised
twice since I saw you, and I get a commission, too. I've bought a
neat slice of real estate out in the East End, and have run up a
house on it. Next year the firm is going to sell me some shares of
stock. Oh, I'm in on the line of General Prosperity, no matter who's
elected!"

"Met your affinity yet, John?" I asked.

"Oh, I didn't tell you about that, did I?" said Pescud with a broader
grin.

"O-ho!" I said. "So you've taken time enough off from your plate-glass
to have a romance?"

"No, no," said John. "No romance--nothing like that! But I'll tell
you about it.

"I was on the sout