e boy entered.

"Teddy, have I had lunch to-day?" This was my favourite question on a
busy day, and Teddy always answered it seriously.

"No, sir, you have an engagement to lunch at the Standard Club," he
replied.

"Telephone to Gus at the Club that I can't come up to-day. Also send
over to the Grand Pacific for a good lunch for two. Have some beer in
it--real Munchner, and in _steins_," I directed, and then I reclined on
a long leather lounge, and motioned to the doctor to have a chair. He
declined, however, and walked slowly back and forth before me as he
talked, keeping his right hand inside his coat, and with the left he
occasionally ploughed up his heavy hair, as if to ventilate his brain.

"A year ago I gave up theoretical physics for applied physics; I
resigned my chair at Heidelberg, and came to this progressive city. I
brought with me a working model of the greatest invention of this
inventive age. Yet it was then neither perfect in design nor complete in
detail. But now I have hit on the plan that makes it practicable and
certain of success. I need only a little money to build it, and the
world will open its eyes!"

"But you must pardon me if instead of opening mine I shut them," I
interrupted, seeing the point quickly, and losing no time in dodging. "I
have no money to invest in patent rights; but still, you must stay to
lunch with me."

Just here the doctor seemed to find it necessary to diverge from the
orderly course of his lecture as he had prepared it, and interject a few
impromptu observations.

"Events are difficult to forecast, but the capabilities of a youth are
harder to divine. One educates his son in all the fine arts, and he
turns out a founder of pig iron. One's nephew is apprenticed to a
watchmaker, and in a few years, behold, he is a great barrister. Your
uncle educated you thoroughly in the old Hebrew and Chaldee of the
rabbis, and, lo! you are now the _ursa major_ of the wheat market.

"Just now you are in the centre of the kaleidoscope of success. Slater,
Bawker & Co. were there a month ago, but now they are only bits of
broken glass in the bottom of the heap! And you? you are really a
twisted bit of coloured glass like the rest, but you chance to be thrown
to the middle. The mirrors of public opinion multiply your importance
half a dozen times, and behold you are reflected into the whole picture.
But the kaleidoscope turns, and the pieces of glass are shifted. Other
broken chips