some time that Alice regarded the
Denslows and the Baylors as people of rare taste, and it was quite
natural (as every unprejudiced person will allow) that, associating
with Adah continually and being bound to her by ties of consanguinity,
Alice should be susceptible to Adah's hortations, incitements,
impulsations, and instigations.

At any rate, I found that our new house was to be a conspicuous
intermingling and interblending of the Denslow, Baylor, and Maria
styles of architecture. The big front room downstairs, the library,
was distinctly Denslowish, and so was the big front room up-stairs, as
well as the butler's pantry and the reception-room. The Baylor
influence manifested itself in the spare bedroom and the dining-room,
and the Maria influence (thanks to Adah) was clearly exhibited in the
front and side porches, in my bedroom, and in the several hallways.
Alice insisted that the house was to be strictly old colonial and also
requested me to speak of it as such in the presence of visitors,
particularly in the hearing of her relatives from the country when they
came into the city next September to do their winter buying.

In my fancy I can already picture the dear girl putting on airs with
those guileless rural folk who know no more about the architectural and
the decorative arts than an unclouted Patagonian knows of the four
houses of the Jesuitical order. Nor do I know much about those things,
and I am glad that I do not, for if I had devoted my early years of
study to plinths, architraves, columns, dados, friezes, pediments,
sconces, wainscots, cornices, capitals, entablatures, and such like,
how could I have originated my theory of star-drift and how would
humanity have been enlightened upon the all-important subjects of the
asteroids, the satellites of the star Gamma in Scorpio, the atmosphere
on the other side of the moon, the depth of the Martian bottle-neck
seas, the probability of the existence of natural gas wells in Jupiter,
etc., etc.? If I had been a Linnaeus or a Buffon instead of Reuben
Baker, I should have never suffered myself to fall an innocent victim
to poison ivy--yes, that is true, but at the same time my now famous
theory of double stars and my equally famous theory as to the several
elements in comets' tails would have been denied to the world. No one
man can combine within himself all human genius; in all modesty I
declare myself satisfied with being simply Reuben Baker.

While I