ciate.

"I suppose I shall run across him at Midlands, some evening," he said,
"and get one of those presentations that are the most aggravating things
in the world. I don't want that to happen, and the best way, to use an
elegant phrase, is to take the bull by the horns, or in this case, the
sheep by the tail. Will you make an accidental call on him to-morrow
afternoon and let me be of the party?"

Mr. Boggs responded that he would be delighted. And this matter being
settled, all parties could give more direct attention to their lunch
than they had been doing for the preceding ten minutes.

"You must have heard of my friend Boggs, in the days when he was a
figure on the streets of this town," said Weil, presently, returning to
what he knew was the favorite subject of that personage. "You've lived
here for twenty years, and of course the name of Walker Boggs is
familiar to you."

Mr. Gouger looked a good counterfeit of complete mystification for some
seconds, and then a gleam as of sudden recollection shot across his
face.

"Certainly, certainly!" he said. "Mr. Boggs was what is popularly known
as a lady killer, if I am not mistaken. You got married, did you not,
Mr. Boggs, some ten or eleven years ago?"

The party addressed acknowledged the practical correctness of the date.

"Why, it comes back as plain as day," said the critic. "The _Herald_ had
a page about you, including your portrait and some verses by a well
known poet. It said your marriage had cast a gloom over Manhattan Island
and some of the up-river counties."

Mr. Boggs gloomily nodded, to show that the statement was true. Then he
touched his most rotund portion with a significant look.

"I'm a widower now," he said, "and nothing but this--_this_--stands in
my way. As Shakespeare says, ''Tis not as deep as a well, nor as wide as
a church door, but--' The ladies never look at me now, and all on
account of this d--d flesh, which hangs like a millstone around my
neck."

Cutt & Slashem's critic, ignoring the peculiar character of the metaphor
used, remarked politely that he thought no lady of sense would put great
stress on such an insignificant matter.

"Insignificant!" echoed Boggs. "I'll bet it's fifty inches around,
come! And it's not the 'ladies of sense' I'm after. Quite the contrary."

One of Archie Weil's explosive laughs followed this statement, which
caused an expression of mild injury to settle over the countenance of
Mr. Boggs.

"Yo