spirit of pure patriotism (and into a worse hole), and
after reading all they had to say, I thought I could produce something
original that would put them all out of print, with my small volume
standing alone on the shelves, as the last word on the pursuit of
happiness, containing full directions on how to keep to the trail, from
birth to the grave, with a stop-over ticket at the last-named junction.
I felt that all this was in me, just as Jim felt there was something in
him, he didn't know what, but so long as it kept him fidgeting he knew
it was there.

It was not surprising to my friends that I had given up all hope for
myself. As I have said, I was no man for style. It always seemed to me
that my clothes fitted me when I was buying them, but it never struck
anybody else that way afterward. I paid the same prices as Jim, but I
would have done just as badly at three times as much, and might just as
well have saved money buying second-hand through a want "ad." Nature
designed me to spoil tailoring. If I had lived in Eden the fig leaves on
my belt would have browned and cracked before noon the first day, and if
a few figs were then worn on the side as fringe ornaments, I would have
carelessly picked them inside out, making the suit look seedier still.
On a foggy morning the dewdrops of Paradise would have spotted me, and
on a windy day the flying burrs and feather-tailed seeds would have
taken me for good ground; the pussy willows and all such forest fuzz and
excelsior--for a good thing. If I had been a Roman no one would have
seen me down street, for I would be in the baths waiting for my wrapper
to be scoured, washed and mended.

This is a way Fate has of keeping a few scholars and investigators in
the world. Herbert Spencer would have been swamped in a family, and the
same with George Eliot. If they had married each other, as Herbert says
they might (had Georgie been better-looking), philosophical and
imaginative genius would have been lost in getting the meals and bending
posterity over the parental knee to make sin seem undesirable. I had
always felt that Jim was cut out to get married, and I stood ready to
help him through the entire catalogue of crime and conspiracy, for I
knew he could not undertake so much alone as well as I knew glue from
tallow coming two miles by air line. If Jim wanted to do it, though, I
would give him the benefit of my knowledge of the theory of courtship, a
subject I was well up in, ha