s
impossible.

"As for you two," he added, turning to us, but suddenly stopped. "Hell,
what's the use! Why should I bother with you? Do as you damned well
please, and stay sick or die!"

He turned on his heel and walked out of the dining-room, leaving us to
sit there. I was so dumbfounded by the harangue our pseudo-cleverness
had released that I could scarcely speak. My appetite was gone and I
felt wretched. To think of having been the cause of this unnecessary
tongue-lashing to the others! And I felt that we were, and justly, the
target for their rather censorious eyes.

"My God!" moaned my companion most dolefully. "That's always the way
with me. Nothing that I ever do comes out right. All my life I've been
unlucky. My mother died when I was seven, and my father's never had any
use for me. I started in three or four businesses four or five years
ago, but none of them ever came out right. My yacht burned last summer,
and I've had neurasthenia for two years." He catalogued a list of ills
that would have done honor to Job himself, and he was worth nine
millions, so I heard!

Two or three additional and amusing incidents, and I am done.

One of the most outre things in connection with our rides about the
countryside was Culhane's attitude toward life and the natives and
passing strangers as representing life. Thus one day, as I recall very
well, we were riding along a backwoods country road, very shadowy and
branch-covered, a great company of us four abreast, when suddenly and
after his very military fashion there came a "Halt! Right by fours!
Right dress! Face!" and presently we were all lined up in a row facing a
greensward which had suddenly been revealed to the left and on which,
and before a small plumber's stove standing outside some gentleman's
stable, was stretched a plumber and his helper. The former, a man of
perhaps thirty-five, the latter a lad of, say, fourteen or fifteen, were
both very grimy and dirty, but taking their ease in the morning sun, a
little pot of lead on the stove being waited for, I presume, that it
might boil.

Culhane, leaving his place at the head of the column, returned to the
center nearest the plumber and his helper and pointing at them and
addressing us in a very clear voice, said:

"There you have it. There's American labor for you, at its best--union
labor, the poor, downtrodden workingman. Look at him." We all looked.
"This poor hard-working plumber here," and at that the la