d.'

"'Oh, the college one. The one who's goin' to be a lawyer.'

"'Well, yes--and no,' says he. 'I WAS the college one, as you call it,
but I'm not goin' to be a lawyer. Father and I have had some talk on
that subject, and I think we've settled it. I--well, just at present,
I'm not sure what I'm goin' to be. That's what I've come to you for. I
saw your ad in the Item, and--I want a job.'

"I was set all aback, and left with my canvas flappin', as you might
say. Sol Bearse's boy huntin' a job in a hotel kitchen! Soon's I could
fetch a whole breath, I wanted partic'lars. He give 'em to me.

"Seems he'd been sent out to one of the colleges in the Middle West by
his dad, who was dead set on havin' a lawyer in the family. But the more
he studied, the less he hankered for law. What he wanted to be was a
literature--a book-agent or a poet, or some such foolishness. Old Sol,
havin' no more use for a poet than he had for a poor relation, was red
hot in a minute. Was this what he'd been droppin' good money in the
education collection box for? Was this--etcetery and so on. He'd
be--what the church folks say he will be--if Fred don't go in for law.
Fred, he comes back that he'll be the same if he does. So they disowned
each other by mutual consent, as the Irishman said, and the boy marches
out of the front door, bag and baggage. And, as the poetry market seemed
to be sort of overly supplied at the present time, he decided he must
do somethin' to earn a dollar, and, seein' our ad, he comes to Wellmouth
Port and the Old Home.

"'But look here,' says I, 'we ain't got no job for a literary. We need
fellers to pass pie and wash dishes. And THAT ain't no poem.'

"Well, he thought perhaps he could help make up advertisin'.

"'You can't,' I told him. 'One time, when Peter T. Brown was away, me
and Cap'n Jonadab cal'lated that a poetry advertisement would be a good
idee and we managed to shake out ten lines or so. It begun:

"When you're feelin' tired and pale
To the Old Home House you ought to come without fail."

"'We thought 'twas pretty slick, but we never got but one answer, and
that was a circular from one of them correspondence schools of authors,
sayin' they'd let us in on a course at cut rates. And the next thing we
knew we see that poem in the joke page of a Boston paper. I never--'

"He laughed, quiet and sorrowful. He had the quietest way of speakin',
anyhow, and his voice was a lovely tenor. To hear it purr