them that this golden stream,
whether it rushed or whether it trickled, came out of the industry, out
of the mortal body of a woman. They regarded her as a natural source
of wealth; a copper vein, a diamond mine.

Henry Gilbert is a good lawyer himself, and he employed an able man to
defend the will. We determined that in this crisis we would stand by
Poppas, believing it would be Cressida's wish. Out of the lot of them, he
was the only one who had helped her to make one penny of the money that
had brought her so much misery. He was at least more deserving than the
others. We saw to it that Poppas got his fifty thousand, and he actually
departed, at last, for his city in la sainte Asie, where it never rains
and where he will never again have to hold a hot water bottle to his
face.

The rest of the property was fought for to a finish. Poppas out of the
way, Horace and Brown and the Garnets quarrelled over her personal
effects. They went from floor to floor of the Tenth Street house. The
will provided that Cressida's jewels and furs and gowns were to go to her
sisters. Georgie and Julia wrangled over them down to the last moleskin.
They were deeply disappointed that some of the muffs and stoles which
they remembered as very large, proved, when exhumed from storage and
exhibited beside furs of a modern cut, to be ridiculously scant. A year
ago the sisters were still reasoning with each other about pearls and
opals and emeralds.

I wrote Poppas some account of these horrors, as during the court
proceedings we had become rather better friends than of old. His reply
arrived only a few days ago; a photograph of himself upon a camel, under
which is written:

Traulich und Treu
ist's nur in der Tiefe:
falsch und feig
ist was dort oben sich freut!

His reply, and the memories it awakens--memories which have followed
Poppas into the middle of Asia, seemingly,--prompted this informal
narration.

A Gold Slipper

Marshall McKann followed his wife and her friend Mrs. Post down the
aisle and up the steps to the stage of the Carnegie Music Hall with an
ill-concealed feeling of grievance. Heaven knew he never went to
concerts, and to be mounted upon the stage in this fashion, as if he were
a "highbrow" from Sewickley, or some unfortunate with a musical wife, was
ludicrous. A man went to concerts when he was courting, while he was a
junior partner. When he became a person of substance he stopped that sort