B., came to bat.

"You do mightily well to reproach me with all this. How have _you_ done
in making friends? Did you work up any connections at Columbia those
three years? Have you tried to find anyone here in town? What friends
have you except Stanford men? What have you done for yourself, anyway?"

The other weakly quoted what the Head Demonstrator had said of his
surgery.

Williamson, A. B., held him to the point: "I also was called the keenest
student of my time," said he; "but it isn't bringing you patients."

The M. D. broke sullenly away, leaving the A. B. frowning back of the
mirror. These dead selves are so crude! He ended the interview by
slamming out of the house.

For the twentieth time that week he cast up accounts with himself, as
the electric car sped toward civilization. Assets, one dollar and five
cents, just reduced by a grinding monopoly from a dollar-ten;
liabilities, a laundry bill and six weeks' rent. Truly, a squalid
failure. If he could only hold out a little longer! There was in sight a
situation as consulting physician to a lodge in his father's Order,
which would mean a living at least. He had the promise of it in a
month's time. A loan of twenty-five dollars now would save him, but no
good angel occurred to him, think as he might, and he had nothing he
could afford to pawn.

Troubled in spirit, he sauntered listlessly up Post street from Kearny.
The mid-day rain had not yet dried from the pavements, and the air was
clear and fresh. Against the last of a January sunset, the tops of the
city were growing indistinct. The personnel of the crowd on the streets
had changed; the promenaders and the cocktail-route procession had
dwindled to a few stragglers. There was less of a press now, and most of
the people were of the class that work until six, belated bookkeepers
and girls from shops and sewing rooms. He watched these toilers with a
vague feeling of envy; he dragged the feeling to the light and found
that he was coveting the day's work just passed. What would not he have
given to be tired at the end of a day of profitable toil? It was the
hour when comfortable people sit down to dinner.

In front of an art store he saw Lincoln, the _Chronicle_ man, idly
studying the pictures. Williamson had known him as well as he had known
any man at Palo Alto, but he walked by without a word, feeling in no
mood for companionship. A few steps further he turned, and went back and
stood behind his frien