of cards,
and the "Here you are, Mr. Portman, right alongside Mr. Hodges. And
Crossbin, you are down there somewhere"; the spreading of napkins and
squaring of everybody's elbow as each man drops into his seat.

Neither will the reader be told of the various dishes or their
garnishings. These pages have so far been filled with little else beside
eating and drinking, and with reason, too, for have not all the great
things in life been begun over some tea-table, carried on at a luncheon,
and completed between the soup and the cordials? Kings, diplomats
and statesmen have long since agreed that for baiting a trap there is
nothing like a soup, an entree and a roast, the whole moistened by a
flagon of honest wine. The bait varies when the financier or promoter
sets out to catch a capitalist, just as it does when one sets out to
catch a mouse, and yet the two mammals are much alike--timid, one foot
at a time, nosing about to find out if any of his friends have had a
nibble; scared at the least disturbing echo--then the fat, toothsome
cheese looms up (Breen's Madeira this time), and in they go.

But if fuller description of this special bait be omitted, there is no
reason why that of the baiters and the baited should be left out of the
narrative.

Old Colonel Purviance, of the Chesapeake Club, for one--a big-paunched
man who always wore, summer and winter, a reasonably white waistcoat
and a sleazy necktie; swore in a loud voice and dropped his g's when
he talked. "Bit 'em off," his friends said, as he did the end of his
cigars. He had, in honor of the occasion so contrived that his black
coat and trousers matched this time, while his shoestring tie had been
replaced by a white cravat. But the waistcoat was of the old pattern
and the top button loose, as usual. The Colonel earned his living--and
a very comfortable one it was--by promoting various enterprises--some of
them rather shady. He had also a gift for both starting and maintaining
a boom. Most of the Mukton stock owned by the Southern contingent had
been floated by him. Another of his accomplishments was his ability
to label correctly, with his eyes shut, any bottle of Madeira from
anybody's cellar, and to his credit, be it said, he never lied about the
quality, be it good, bad or abominable.

Next to him sat Mason, from Chicago--a Westerner who had made his money
in a sudden rise in real estate, and who had moved to New York to spend
it: an out-spoken, common-sense,