ver in my life so well inspired as when I
described my vigil over Harry Miller's literature or the series of my
emotions as I faced the audience. The lads vowed I was the soul of good
company and the prince of lecturers; and--so wonderful an institution
is the popular press--if you had seen the notices next day in all the
papers, you must have supposed my evening's entertainment an unqualified
success.

I was in excellent spirits when I returned home that night, but the
miserable Pinkerton sorrowed for us both.

"O, Loudon," he said, "I shall never forgive myself. When I saw you
didn't catch on to the idea of the lecture, I should have given it
myself!"

CHAPTER VII. IRONS IN THE FIRE.

Opes Strepitumque.

The food of the body differs not so greatly for the fool or the sage,
the elephant or the cock-sparrow; and similar chemical elements,
variously disguised, support all mortals. A brief study of Pinkerton
in his new setting convinced me of a kindred truth about that other and
mental digestion, by which we extract what is called "fun for our money"
out of life. In the same spirit as a schoolboy, deep in Mayne Reid,
handles a dummy gun and crawls among imaginary forests, Pinkerton sped
through Kearney Street upon his daily business, representing to himself
a highly coloured part in life's performance, and happy for hours if
he should have chanced to brush against a millionnaire. Reality was his
romance; he gloried to be thus engaged; he wallowed in his business.
Suppose a man to dig up a galleon on the Coromandel coast, his rakish
schooner keeping the while an offing under easy sail, and he, by the
blaze of a great fire of wreckwood, to measure ingots by the bucketful
on the uproarious beach: such an one might realise a greater material
spoil; he should have no more profit of romance than Pinkerton when he
cast up his weekly balance-sheet in a bald office. Every dollar gained
was like something brought ashore from a mysterious deep; every venture
made was like a diver's plunge; and as he thrust his bold hand into the
plexus of the money-market, he was delightedly aware of how he shook the
pillars of existence, turned out men (as at a battle-cry) to labour
in far countries, and set the gold twitching in the drawers of
millionnaires.

I could never fathom the full extent of his speculations; but there were
five separate businesses which he avowed and carried like a banner. The
Thirteen Star Golden State Bra