automatically any trick or
"joker" in that which his visitors presented. Most of the men across
the counter naturally were brokers or their placing clerks, armed with
binders on risks of all kinds, some good and many more bad, for the
good risks are usually snapped up in large amounts by the first
companies to whom they are taken, but the bad ones make their weary and
often fruitless tour of the entire street. All of them, the good and
bad alike, the placers commonly presented to Mr. Cuyler with a bland
innocence which deceived that astute veteran not at all. The purpose
of the average broker was to induce the Guardian to accept his chaff
with as little wheat as he could possibly bestow, while Mr. Cuyler's,
on the contrary, was to take the wheat and the wheat alone. The chaff
he declined in three thousand manners, in every case fitting his
refusal to the refused one, always bearing in mind that that worthy's
affections must not be permanently and hopelessly alienated.

"John," he would say with a smile, "I'll write thirty-five thousand on
that fireproof building for you, but I can't take that rag stock. I'd
like to help you out, you understand, but I simply can't touch the
class. Two years ago I wrote an accommodation line for Billy
Heilbrun--some old junk shop in Sullivan Street--and she smoked for a
total loss in about a month, and I can still recall the post-mortem I
had with the President."

And under cover of this painful but purely fictitious incident he would
whisk away the binder on the fireproof building, returning it signed
with one and the same movement, and smiling a smile of chastened sorrow
over his inability to assist his friend with the undesirable rag
offering. Or else the office would see him lean forward impressively,
and say, in a hushed whisper, across the counter: "Now, Mr. Charles
Webb, you're wasted in the insurance business. If you have the cold
nerve to offer me that old skate that's been turned down by every
company from the Continental down to the Kickapoo Lloyds--well, you
ought to be in the legislature, that's where you ought to be!"

"But here's something to go with it--to sweeten it up," the unabashed
Mr. Webb would probably protest, producing another risk of equally
detrimental description. Then Mr. Cuyler would turn.

"Harry," he would say, "put on your hat and take Mr. Webb back to his
office. He's not himself; the heat is too much for him."

And Mr. Webb would smile--an