's mother, who expected him to become a social
Solomon, appears to have taken the young man's private inclinations into
consideration. Truxton preferred a life of adventure distinctly
separated from steel and velvet; nor was he slow to set his esteemed
parents straight in this respect. He had made up his mind to travel, to
see the world, to be a part of the big round globe on which we, as
ordinary individuals with no personality beyond the next block, are
content to sit and encourage the single ambition to go to Europe at
least once, so that we may not be left out of the general conversation.

Young Mr. King believed in Romance. He had believed in Santa Claus and
the fairies, and he grew up with an ever increasing bump of imagination,
contiguous to which, strange to relate, there was a properly developed
bump of industry and application. Hence, it is not surprising that he
was willing to go far afield in search of the things that seemed more or
less worth while to a young gentleman who had suffered the ill-fortune
to be born in the nineteenth century instead of the seventeenth. Romance
and adventure, politely amorous but vigorously attractive, came up to
him from the seventeenth century, perhaps through the blood of some
swash-buckling ancestor, and he was held enthralled by the possibilities
that lay hidden in some far off or even nearby corner of this hopelessly
unromantic world of the twentieth century.

To be sure there was war, but war isn't Romance. Besides, he was too
young to fight against Spain; and, later on, he happened to be more
interested in football than he was in the Japs or the Russians. The only
thing left for him to do was to set forth in quest of adventure;
adventure was not likely to apply to him in Fifth Avenue or at the
factory or--still, there was a certain kind of adventure analogous to
Broadway, after all. He thought it over and, after trying it for a year
or two, decided that Broadway and the Tenderloin did not produce the
sort of Romance he could cherish for long as a self-respecting hero, so
he put certain small temptations aside, chastened himself as well as he
could, and set out for less amiable but more productive by-ways in other
sections of the globe.

We come upon him at last--luckily for us we were not actually following
him--after two years of wonderful but rather disillusioning adventure in
mid-Asia and all Africa. He had seen the Congo and the Euphrates, the
Ganges and the Nile,