a goat
perform to better advantage.

For a long time Hep has been in love with Clarissa Goober, the daughter
of Pop Goober, who made millions out of the Flower-pot Trust. Of late,
however, Hep's course of true love has been running for Sweeney, and my
old pal has been staring at the furniture and conversing with himself a
great deal.

[Illustration]

On our way home night before last Hep and I dropped into the Saint
Astormore for a cocktail, and at a table near us sat Pop Goober and
something else which afterwards turned out to be a Prussian
nobleman--the Count Cheese von Cheese.

When Hep got a flash of these two his goat kicked down the door of its
box-stall and began cavorting all over the Western Hemisphere.

"Pipe!" he whispered hoarsely, "pipe Pop Goober and the human germ with
him! It's a titled foreigner--honest it is! It can walk and say, 'Papa!'
And it is trained to pick out a millionaire father-in-law at fifty
paces!"

"Why, what's the matter, Hep?" I inquired after the waiter had vamped.

"Oh, I'm wise to these guys with the Gorgonzola titles all wrapped up in
pink tissue paper and only $8 in the jeans," Hep rumbled, with a glare
in the direction of the Count Cheese von Cheese.

"Pop Goober certainly does make both ends meet in the lemon industry,"
he continued. "That old gink is the original Onion collector and he
spends his waking hours falling for dead ones."

Hep paused to bite the froth off a Bronx. His goat was at the post.

"That driblet is over here to pick out an heiress and fall in love with
her because he needs the money," Hep growled as his goat got away in the
lead. "Every steamer brings them over, John, some _incognito_, some in
dress suits, and some in _hoc signo vinces_, but all of them able to
pick out a lady with a bank account as far as the naked eye can see.

"It's getting so now, John, that an open-face, stem-winding American has
to kick four Dukes, eight Earls, seven Counts and a couple of Princes
off the front steps every time he goes to call on his sweetheart--if she
has money.

"When I go down into Wall Street, John, I find rich men with the tears
streaming down their faces while they are calling up on the telephone to
see if their daughter, Gladys, is still safe at home, where they left
her before they came down to business.

"Walk through a peachy palace of the rich on Fifth Avenue, and what will
you find?

"Answer: You will find a proud mother bowed with a great