at I know, and have you put
where you belong."

"I'll see you blowed first!" gasped the Object.

Van Bibber turned to the waiter. "Kindly beckon to that officer," said
he.

The waiter ran to the door and the Object ran too, but the tough
waiter grabbed him by the back of his neck and held him.

"Lemme go!" yelled the Object. "Lemme go an' I'll pay you."

Everybody in the place came up now and formed a circle around the
group and watched the Object count out eighty-five cents into the
waiter's hand, which left him just one dime to himself.

"You have forgotten the waiter who served you," said Van Bibber,
severely pointing with his stick at the dime.

"No, you don't," groaned the Object.

"Oh, yes," said Van Bibber, "do the decent thing now, or I'll--"

The Object dropped the dime in the waiter's hand, and Van Bibber,
smiling and easy, made his way through the admiring crowd and out into
the street.

"I suspect," said Mr. Van Bibber later in the day, when recounting his
adventure to a fellow-clubman, "that, after I left, fellow tried to
get tip back from waiter, for I saw him come out of place very
suddenly, you see, and without touching pavement till he lit on back
of his head in gutter. He was most remarkable waiter."

VAN BIBBER AT THE RACES

Young Van Bibber had never spent a Fourth of July in the city, as he
had always understood it was given over to armies of small boys on
that day, who sat on all the curbstones and set off fire-crackers, and
that the thermometer always showed ninety degrees in the shade, and
cannon boomed and bells rang from daybreak to midnight. He had refused
all invitations to join any Fourth-of-July parties at the seashore or
on the Sound or at Tuxedo, because he expected his people home from
Europe, and had to be in New York to meet them. He was accordingly
greatly annoyed when he received a telegram saying they would sail in
a boat a week later.

He finished his coffee at the club on the morning of the Fourth about
ten o'clock, in absolute solitude, and with no one to expect and
nothing to anticipate; so he asked for a morning paper and looked up
the amusements offered for the Fourth. There were plenty of excursions
with brass bands, and refreshments served on board, baseball matches
by the hundred, athletic meetings and picnics by the dozen, but
nothing that seemed to exactly please him.

The races sounded attractive, but then he always lost such a lot of
money, an