into joyous salvos of welcome over some arrival from a distant city,
or greeting with marked kindness and courtesy one of the younger
men from his own office, that the old fellow's enthusiasm became
uncontrollable.

"Isn't it glorious, Holker!" he cried joyously, with uplifted hands.
"Oh, I'm so glad I came! I wouldn't have missed this for anything in the
world. Did you ever see anything like it? This is classic, my boy--it
has the tang and the spice of the ancients."

Morris's greeting to me was none the less hearty, although he had left
me but half an hour before.

"Late, as I expected, Major," he cried with out-stretched hand, "and
serves you right for not sitting in Peter's lap in the cab. Somebody
ought to sit on him once in a while. He's twenty years younger
already. Here, take this seat alongside of me where you can keep him
in order--they were at table when I entered. Waiter, bring back that
bottle--Just a light claret, Major--all we allow ourselves."

As the evening wore away the charm of the room grew upon me. Vistas hazy
with tobacco smoke opened up; the ceiling lost in the fog gave one the
impression of out-of-doors--like a roof-garden at night; a delusion made
all the more real by the happy uproar. And then the touches here and
there by men whose life had been the study of color and effects; the
appointments of the table, the massing of flowers relieving the white
cloth; the placing of shaded candles, so that only a rosy glow filtered
through the loom, softening the light on the happy faces--each scalp
crowned with chaplets of laurel tied with red ribbons: an enchantment
of color, form and light where but an hour before only the practical and
the commonplace had held sway.

No vestige of the business side of the offices remained. Peter pointed
out to me a big plaster model of the State House, which filled one end
of the room, and two great figures, original plaster casts, heroic in
size, that Harding, the sculptor, had modelled for either side of the
entrance of the building; but everything that smacked of T-square or
scale was hidden from sight. In their place, lining the walls, stood a
row of standards of red and orange silk, stretched on rods and supported
by poles; the same patterns of banners which were carried before
Imperial Caesars when they took an airing; and now emblazoned with the
titles of the several structures conceived in the brain of Holker Morris
and executed by his staff: the Imperi