ive to bless himself with.

Lewis Peckham did not complain of his lot in detail, and he never made
the least effort to better it. There was only one thing he really
wanted, and that thing he could not have. He wanted to be "something
big" in the way of a musician. Not merely to be master of this or that
instrument; certainly not to teach reluctant young people their scales
and arpeggios. What he had intended to become was a great composer--a
composer of symphonies and operas--the First Great American Composer,
spelled, be it observed, with capital letters. He was not destined to
the disillusionment of direct failure, which in all human probability
would have been his. Fate spared him that by visiting him in the
beginning of his career with an attack of pneumonia which sent him
fleeing for his life to the sunshine and high air of the Rocky Mountain
region. Peckham was always rather ashamed of having fled for his life,
which, as he repeatedly assured himself, was by no means worth the
purchase. Yet with him as with most men, even when thwarted in what they
believe to be a great ambition, the instinct of life is as imperative
as that of hunger. And Lewis Peckham found himself wooing health at the
cost of music, and earning his living as prosaically as any mere
bread-winner of them all.

The "straight tip" on the Yankee Doodle proved to be an exception among
its kind. The Y. D. which he had bought at ten cents, ran up in a week
to twenty-five cents. Peckham sold out just before it dropped back, and
then he put his profits into the "Libby Carew."

It happened that about that time he read in the local paper that the
great Leitmann Orchestra would close its season with a concert in
Chicago on May 16th. This concert Peckham was determined to hear, cost
what it would. Hence the prudence which led him to reserve his original
hundred dollars; a prudence which would otherwise have deprived the
speculation of half its savor. The Libby Carew was as yet a mere "hole
in the ground," but if he did not have the excitement of making money,
it might prove equally stirring to lose it. Besides that, Hillerton's
tone was getting more and more lofty on the subject of stock gambling,
and the idea of acting contrary to such unquestioned sagacity had more
relish than most ideas possessed.

Meanwhile the excitement grew. Lame Gulch was "panning out" with
startling results. One after another the Springtown men went up to
investigate matters for