house steak. So when I knew you were coming, I
wired my agent in Baltimo' to go to Lexington market and to send me down
on ice the best steak he could buy fo' money. It is now befo' you.

"Jack, shall I cut you a piece of the tenderloin?"

A KNIGHT OF THE LEGION OF HONOR

It was in the smoking-room of a Cunarder two days out. The evening had
been spent in telling stories, the fresh-air passengers crowding the
doorways to listen, the habitual loungers and card-players abandoning
their books and games.

When my turn came,--mine was a story of Venice, a story of the old palace
of the Barbarozzi,--I noticed in one corner of the room a man seated alone
wrapped in a light shawl, who had listened intently as he smoked, but who
took no part in the general talk. He attracted my attention from his
likeness to my friend Vereschagin the painter; his broad, white forehead,
finely wrought features, clear, honest, penetrating eye, flowing mustache
and beard streaked with gray,--all strongly suggestive of that
distinguished Russian. I love Vereschagin, and so, unconsciously, and by
mental association, perhaps, I was drawn to this stranger. Seeing my eye
fixed constantly upon him, he threw off his shawl, and crossed the room.

"Pardon me, but your story about the Barbarozzi brought to my mind so many
delightful recollections that I cannot help thanking you. I know that old
palace,--knew it thirty years ago,--and I know that cortile, and although
I have not had the good fortune to run across either your gondolier,
Espero, or his sweetheart, Mariana, I have known a dozen others as
romantic and delightful. The air is stifling here. Shall we have our
coffee outside on the deck?"

When we were seated, he continued, "And so you are going to Venice to
paint?"

"Yes; and you?"

"Me? Oh, to the Engadine to rest. American life is so exhausting that I
must have these three months of quiet to make the other nine possible."

The talk drifted into the many curious adventures befalling a man in his
journeyings up and down the world, most of them suggested by the queer
stories of the night. When coffee had been served, he lighted another
cigar, held the match until it burned itself out,--the yellow flame
lighting up his handsome face,--looked out over the broad expanse of
tranquil sea, with its great highway of silver leading up to the full
moon dominating the night, and said as if in deep thought:--

"And so you are going to Venice?