Fanton, Carl
Lumholz, Emery Pottle and Gertrude Lynch.

Seton and I spent part of the afternoon fixing up a teepee which we
constructed out of an old Sibley tent, while the other guests skated on
the pond. What a dinner we enjoyed that night! What youthful spirits we
brought to it! Afterward we sang and danced--we all danced, even Zulime
danced for the first time in her life--so she said.

No one had gray hair, no one doubted the future, no one acknowledged
impending cloud. We toasted the longevity of "Wyndygoul" and the
continued success of its builder. We pledged eternal allegiance to our
hostess, and so without a care of the future, watched the New Year dawn.

At two in the morning when I crept away to my bed, the tom-tom and the
piano were both sounding out with almost undiminished vigor. It was a
night to remember and I do remember it with the pleasure an old man has
in the days of his early manhood--not so very early either for I was on
the hither side of forty!

Upon our return to the city I found a letter from Bok with a check for
eight hundred dollars in it. This was in response to a note of mine
respecting an offer of seven hundred and fifty. "Better make it eight
hundred," I wrote, and so, in my triumph, I led Zulime to Vantine's and
there purchased for her a carved gold ring set with three rose diamonds,
the handsomest present I had ever dared to buy for her. "This is to make
amends for the measly little engagement ring you were forced to accept,"
I remarked by way of explanation.

She protested at my reckless waste of money (as she had done with regard
to the brown cloak), but to no avail, and thereafter if she occasionally
brought the conversation round to Oriental jewelry, I am sure she is not
to be blamed. She is still wearing that ring, though she no longer finds
the same girlish pleasure in displaying it.

The actual making of my serial into book form began soon after New
Years, for I find records of my contract with Harper and Bros., and the
arrival of bundles of proof. By the end of February the book was
substantially made and ready for distribution, and a handsome book it
was--to me. Whatever it had started out to be, it had ended as a
fictional study of the red man in his attempt to walk the white man's
road, and as a concept of his tragic outlook I still think it worth
while.

The three men in control of the reorganized firm of Harper and Bros.,
George Harvey, Frederick Duneka and Frank Le