hole world. I have seen a
restaurant waiter stop and gape and listen to your talk. I have seen a
coal-heaver delighted with your manners when you paid him. Charley,
you're the most magnificent man of the world I ever saw. Must a man of
the world be useless? I tell you I want you for God and Huckleberry
Street, and I mean to have you some day, old fellow." And the perfect
assurance with which he said this, and the settled conviction of final
success that was visible in his quiet gray eyes, fascinated Charley
Vanderhuyn, and he felt spellbound, like the wedding guest held by the
"Ancient Mariner."

"I tell you what, Henry," he said presently, "I've got no call. I'm an
Epicurean. I say to you, in the words of an American poet:

'Take the current of your nature, make it stagnant if you will:
Dam it up to drudge forever at the service of your will.
Mine the rapture and the freedom of the torrent on the hill!
I shall wander o'er the meadows where the fairest blossoms call:
Though the ledges seize and fling me headlong from the rocky wall,
I shall leave a rainbow hanging o'er the ruins of my fall.'"

"Charley, I don't want to preach," said Vail; "but you know that this
doctrine of mere selfish floating on the current of impulse which your
traveler poet teaches is devilish laziness, and devilish laziness
always tends to something worse. You may live such a life, and quote
such poetry, but you don't believe that a man should flow on like a
purposeless river. The lines you quoted bear the mark of a restless
desire to apologize to conscience for a fearful waste of power and
possibility. No," he said, rising, "I don't want that check. This one
will do; but you won't forget that God and Huckleberry Street want you,
and they will have you, too, noble-hearted fellow! Good night! God
bless you!" and he shook Charley's hand and went out into the night to
seek his home in Huckleberry Street. And the genial Charley never saw
his brave friend again. Yes, he did, too. Or did he?

II.

The month of December, four years ago, was a month of much festivity in
the metropolis. Charley was wanted nearly every night to grace some
gathering or other, and Charley was too obliging to refuse to go where
he was wanted--that is, when he was wanted in Fifth Avenue or
Thirty-fourth Street[3]. As for Huckleberry Street and Greenfield
Court, they were fast fading out of Charley's mind. He knew that Henry
Vail would introduce t