s real brightly
in his way--he will speak words like an actor or something--but for
brains! Say, he always reminds me of the dumb friend of the great
detective in the magazine stories, the one that goes along to the scene
of the crime to ask silly questions and make fool guesses about the
guilty one, and never even suspects who done the murder, till the
detective tells on the last page when they're all together in the
library.

"Sure, that's Wilbur. It would be an ideal position for him. Instead of
which he runs this here music store, sells these jitney pianos and
phonographs and truck like that. And serious! Honestly, if you seen him
coming down the street you'd say, 'There comes one of these here
musicians.' Wears long hair and a low collar and a flowing necktie and
talks about his technique. Yes, sir, about the technique of working a
machinery piano. Gives free recitals in the store every second Saturday
afternoon, and to see him set down and pump with his feet, and push
levers and pull handles, weaving himself back and forth, tossing his
long, silken locks back and looking dreamily off into the distance,
you'd think he was a Paderewski. As a matter of fact, I've seen
Paderewski play and he don't make a tenth of the fuss Wilbur does. And
after this recital I was at one Saturday he comes up to some of us
ladies, mopping his pale brow, and he says, 'It does take it out of one!
I'm always a nervous wreck after these little affairs of mine.' Would
that get you, or would it not?

"So we go in the store and Wilbur looks up from a table he's setting at
in the back end.

"'You find me studying some new manuscripts,' he says, pushing back the
raven locks from his brow. Say, it was a weary gesture he done it
with--sort of languid and world-weary. And what you reckon he meant by
studying manuscripts? Why, he had one of these rolls of paper with the
music punched into it in holes, and he was studying that line that tells
you when to play hard or soft and all like that. Honest, that was it!

"'I always study these manuscripts of the masters conscientiously before
I play them,' says he.

"Such is Wilbur. Such he will ever be. So I introduced him to Nettie and
asked if he had this here song on a phonograph record. He had. He had it
on two records. 'One by a barytone gentleman, and one by a
mezzo-soprano,' says Wilbur. I set myself back for both. He also had it
with variations on one of these punched rolls. He played that for