onventional giant refreshed with new wine.

It is astonishing how a fixed resolution, however grotesque, helps a
man. The very fact that in his own mind the die was cast brought a new
recklessness to George Henry. He could look at things objectively again.
He slept well for the first time in many weeks.

The next morning, when George Henry awoke, he had abated not one jot of
his resolve nor of his increased courage. The sun seemed brighter than
it had been the day before, and the air had more oxygen to the cubic
foot. He looked at the heap of unopened letters on his desk--letters he
had lacked, for weeks, the moral courage to open--and laughed at his
fear of duns. Let the wolf howl! He would interest himself in the music.
He would be a hero of heroes, and unflinchingly open his letters, each
one a horror in itself to his imagination; but with all his newly found
courage, it required still an effort for George Henry to approach his
desk.

Alone, with set teeth and drooping eyes, George Henry began his task. It
was the old, old story. Bills of long standing, threats of suits,
letters from collecting agencies, red papers, blue, cream and
straw-colored--how he hated them all! Suddenly he came upon a new
letter, a square, thick, well addressed letter of unmistakable
respectability.

"Can it be an invitation?" said George Henry, his heart beating. He
opened the sturdy envelope and read the words it had enclosed. Then he
leaned back, very still, in his chair, with his eyes shut. His heart
bled over what he had suffered. "Had" suffered--yes, that was right, for
it was all a thing of the past. The letter made it clear that he was
comparatively a rich man. That was all.

It was the despised--but not altogether despised, since he had thought
of making it his home--poplar land in Michigan. The poplar supply is
limited, and paper-mills have capacious maws. Prices of raw material had
gone up, and the poplar hunters had found George Henry's land the most
valuable to them in the region. A syndicate offered him one hundred
dollars an acre for the tract.

Joy failed to kill George Henry Harrison. It stunned him somewhat, but
he showed wonderful recuperative powers. As he ate a free-lunch after a
five-cent expenditure that morning, there was something in his air which
would have prevented the most obtuse barkeeper in the world from
commenting upon the quantity consumed. He was not particularly depressed
because his hat was old and