r maw goes respect for
tradition, reverence for the dead, decency, love of religion, sentiment,
and beauty. These are back numbers. In their place, we give you
something real and up-to-date from basement to flagstaff, with fifty
applicants on the waiting list. If you don't believe it read our
prospectus!'"

Peter had straightened and was standing with his hand lifted above
his head, as if he were about to pronounce a benediction. Then he said
slowly, and with a note of sadness in his voice:

"Do you wonder, now, my boy, why I touch my hat to His Excellency?"

CHAPTER II

All the way up Broadway he kept up his good-natured tirade, railing at
the extravagance of the age, at the costly dinners, equipages, dress
of the women, until we reached the foot of the dilapidated flight of
brown-stone steps leading to the front door of his home on Fifteenth
Street. Here a flood of gas light from inside a shop in the basement
brought into view the figure of a short, squat, spectacled little man
bending over a cutting-table, a pair of shears in his hand.

"Isaac is still at work," he cried. "If we were not so late we'd go in
and have a word with him. Now there's a man who has solved the problem,
my boy. Nobody will ever coax Isaac Cohen up to Fifth Avenue and into
a 'By appointment to His Majesty' kind of a tailor shop. Just pegs away
year after year--he was here long before I came--supporting his family,
storing his mind with all sorts of rare knowledge. Do you know he's one
of the most delightful men you will meet in a day's journey?"

"No--never knew anything of the kind. Thought he was just plain tailor."

"And an intimate friend of many of the English actors who come over
here?" continued Peter.

"I never heard a word about it" I answered meekly; Peter's acquaintances
being too varied and too numerous for me to keep track of. That he
should have a tailor among them as learned and wise as Solomon, and with
friends all over the globe, was quite to be expected.

"Well, he is," answered Peter. "They always hunt him up the first thing
they do. He lived in London for years and made their costumes. There's
no one, I assure you, I am more glad to see when he makes an excuse to
rap at my door. You'll come up, of course, until I read my letters."

"No, I'll keep on to my rooms and meet you later at the club."

"You'll do nothing of the kind, you restless mortal. You'll come
upstairs with me until I open my mail. It's reall