ain and again in
different ways, but always with a wealth of imagery and picturesque
phrasing.

4. That the Colonel invariably got his humorous effects by a
good-natured but sometimes sharp ridicule, the process of which was to
exaggerate the argument or travesty the cause he was attacking until it
became absurd.

5. That the Colonel, no matter what his theme, always wrote with vigor
and heat and color: so that even if he were dealing with something on
the other side of the world, you might suppose that he, personally, was
intensely gratified or extremely indignant about it, as the case might
be.

These principles Queed was endeavoring, with his peculiar faculty for
patient effort, to apply practically in his daily offerings. It is
enough to say that he found the task harder than Klinker's Exercises,
and that the little article on the city's method of removing garbage,
which failed to appear in this morning's _Post_, had stood him seven
hours of time.

It was a warm rainy night in early May. Careful listening disclosed the
fact that Buck Klinker, who had as usual walked up from the gymnasium
with Queed, was changing his shoes in the next room, preparatory for
supper. Otherwise the house was very still. Fifi had been steadily
reported "not so well" for a long time and, for two days, very ill.
Queed sitting before the table, his gas ablaze and his shade up, tilted
back his chair and thought of her now. All at once, with no conscious
volition on his part, he found himself saying over the startling little
credo that Fifi had suggested for his taking, on the day he sent her the
roses.

_To like men and do the things that men do. To smoke. To laugh. To joke
and tell funny stories. To take a ..._

The door of the Scriptorium-editorium opened and Buck Klinker, entering
without formalities, threw himself, according to his habit, upon the
tiny bed. This time he came by invitation, to complete the decidedly
interesting conversation upon which the two men had walked up town; but
talk did not at once begin. A book rowelled the small of Klinker's back
as he reclined upon the pillow, and plucking it from beneath him, he
glanced at the back of it.

"_Vanity Fair_. Didn't know you ever read story-books, Doc."

The Doc did not answer. He was occupied with the thought that not one of
the things that Fifi had urged upon him did he at present do. Smoking he
could of course take up at any time. Buck Klinker worked in a
tobacconis