to him.

He came down to Mariposa and bought out the "inside" of what had been
the Royal Hotel.

Those who are educated understand that by the "inside" of a hotel is
meant everything except the four outer walls of it--the fittings, the
furniture, the bar, Billy the desk-clerk, the three dining-room girls,
and above all the license granted by King Edward VII., and ratified
further by King George, for the sale of intoxicating liquors.

Till then the Royal had been a mere nothing. As "Smith's Hotel" it broke
into a blaze of effulgence.

From the first, Mr. Smith, as a proprietor, was a wild, rapturous
success.

He had all the qualifications.

He weighed two hundred and eighty pounds.

He could haul two drunken men out of the bar each by the scruff of the
neck without the faintest anger or excitement.

He carried money enough in his trousers pockets to start a bank, and
spent it on anything, bet it on anything, and gave it away in handfuls.

He was never drunk, and, as a point of chivalry to his customers, never
quite sober. Anybody was free of the hotel who cared to come in. Anybody
who didn't like it could go out. Drinks of all kinds cost five cents,
or six for a quarter. Meals and beds were practically free. Any persons
foolish enough to go to the desk and pay for them, Mr. Smith charged
according to the expression of their faces.

At first the loafers and the shanty men settled down on the place in a
shower. But that was not the "trade" that Mr. Smith wanted. He knew
how to get rid of them. An army of charwomen, turned into the hotel,
scrubbed it from top to bottom. A vacuum cleaner, the first seen in
Mariposa, hissed and screamed in the corridors. Forty brass beds were
imported from the city, not, of course, for the guests to sleep in, but
to keep them out. A bar-tender with a starched coat and wicker sleeves
was put behind the bar.

The loafers were put out of business. The place had become too "high
toned" for them.

To get the high class trade, Mr. Smith set himself to dress the part.
He wore wide cut coats of filmy serge, light as gossamer; chequered
waistcoats with a pattern for every day in the week; fedora hats light
as autumn leaves; four-in-hand ties of saffron and myrtle green with a
diamond pin the size of a hazel nut. On his fingers there were as many
gems as would grace a native prince of India; across his waistcoat lay
a gold watch-chain in huge square links and in his pocket a gold watch