silly, romantic tendency of mine was leading me to think more of future
privations than immediate pains in a diminutive stomach. I wondered
whether I should ever become a practical member of society. The doctor's
orders must and shall be obeyed, or my name is not David Cole!

CHAPTER IV

THE BOLT

"And by the way," asked Gordon, a few days later, "how's Frieda getting
along?"

"Very well," I answered. "I think she's painting nymphs and angels, as
usual."

"Angels, eh? The natural history of such fowl is interesting."

I had met him in the middle of Bryant Park as I was on the way to the
Public Library to look up information in regard to feminine garb of the
Revolutionary period. It appeared that he was returning from an
interview with a Fifth Avenue picture dealer. At once we sought a bench
and found seats between a doubtfully-clean young gentleman, reading the
sporting page of a dilapidated paper, and an old lady, with rheumy eyes,
who watched a ragged urchin.

I nodded, much interested, and he pursued the subject.

"You may have noticed that the very first angels all belonged to the
masculine persuasion and you are, perhaps, also aware that it was rather
late in the world's growth before women were accorded the possession of
a soul. Hence, at the time, there could be no female angels, either
worthy or evil. To-day, we have changed all that, as Moliere said. In
order to flatter the feminine taste people began to talk of little boy
angels, because women think more of boy babies than of girl ones. The
time arrived when men forgot about the women, the dogs and the walnut
trees and, instead of taking a club to the ladies, they began to write
sonnets to them. It is evident that no one can rhyme words without
everlastingly trying to gild the lily. To call a spade a spade, or a
woman a woman, became scant courtesy, and, hence, the poets devised
female angels. The painters and sculptors naturally pounced upon them,
for their decorative effect, and the she-angel took a firmly-established
place in art and fiction. Let me see, I think you said that your Murillo
lady describes her little sprout as an angel. This merely shows her to
be a normal creature of her sex."

"You are entirely wrong, if by normal you mean just average," I
retorted reproachfully. "Frieda declares that she is the most beautiful
thing she ever saw."

"Frieda is a waddling and inspired goose, whose goslings are all swans,"
he asserted disr