Steam is what makes the wheels go
round, and steam is well-digested fuel and a place to put it. With
this equipment a man can put "GO" into his business, strength into
his literature, virility into his brush; without it he may succeed in
selling spool cotton or bobbins, may write pink poems for the multitude
and cover wooden panels with cardinals and ladies of high degree; in
real satin and life-like lace, but no part of his output will take a
full man's breath away.

*****

Sunshine, flowers, open windows letting in the cool breezes from meadow
and stream; an old beamed ceiling, smoke-browned by countless pipes;
walls covered with sketches of every nook and corner about us; a table
for four, heaped with melons, grapes, cheese, and flanked by ten-pin
bottles just out of the brook; good-fellowship, harmony of ideas,
courage of convictions--with no heads swelled to an unnatural size; four
appetites--enormous, prodigious appetites; Knight for host and Marie as
high chamberlainess, make the feast of Lucullus and the afternoon teas
of Cleopatra but so many quick lunches served in the rush hour of a
downtown restaurant! Not only were the trout-baked-in cream (Marie's
specialty) all that the Sculptor had claimed for them, but the
fried chicken, souffles--everything, in fact, that the dear woman
served--would have gained a Blue Ribbon had she filled the plate of any
committeeman making the award.

With the coffee and cigars (cigarettes had been smoked with every
course--it was that kind of a feast) the four mouths had a breathing
spell.

Up to this time the talk had been a staccato performance between
mouthfuls:

"Yes--came near smashing a donkey--don't care if I do--no--no gravy"
(Sculptor). "Let me put an extra bubble in your glass" (Knight). "These
fish are as firm as the Adirondack trout" (Man from the Quarter). "More
cream--thank you. Marie!" (Knight, of course) "more butter." "Donkey
wasn't the only thing we missed--grazed a baby carriage and--" (Scribe).
"I'm going to try a red ibis after luncheon and a miller for a tail
fly--pass the melon" (Man from the Quarter): That sort of hurried talk
without logical beginning or ending.

But now each man had a comfortable chair, and filled it with shoulders
hidden deep in its capacious depths, and legs straight out, only the
arms and hands free enough to be within reach of the match-safe and
thimble glasses. And with the ease and comfort of it all the talk itself
slowed