 CHAPTER III The Arrested Philanthropy of Mr. Tomlinson CHAPTER II Well said Dr. Boomer, after Tomlinson had left the university, what do you make of him? The President had taken Dr. Boyster over to his house beside the campus, and there in his study had given him a cigar as big as a rope and taken another himself. This was a sign that Dr. Boomer wanted Dr. Boyster's opinion in plain English, without any Latin about it. Remarkable man said the Professor of Greek, wonderful penetration, and a man of very few words. Of course his game is clear enough. Entirely so, asserted Dr. Boomer, it's clear enough that he means to give the money on two conditions. Exactly, said the President, first, that we admit his son, who was quite unqualified, to the senior studies in electrical science, and second, that we grant him the degree of Doctor of Letters. Those are his terms. Can we meet them? Oh, certainly. As to the son, there is no difficulty, of course. As to the degree, it's only a question of getting the faculty to vote it. I think we can manage it. Voted they did that very afternoon. True, if the members of the faculty had known the things that were being whispered, and more than whispered, in the city about Tomlinson and his fortune, no degree would ever have been conferred on him. But it so happened that at that moment the whole professoriate was absorbed in one of those great educational crises from which time to time shake a university to its base. The meeting of the faculty that day bid fair to lose all vestige of decorum in the excitement of the moment. For as Dean Elderberry Foybl, the head of the faculty, said, the motion that they had before them amounted practically to a revolution. The proposal was nothing less than the permission of the use of lead pencils instead of pen and ink in the sessional examinations of the university. Anyone conversant with the inner life of a college will realize that to many of the professoriate this was nothing less than a last wild onslaught of socialistic democracy against the solid bulwarks of society. They must fight it, back, or die on the walls. To others it was one more step in the splendid progress of democratic education, comparable only to such epoch-making things as the abandonment of the cap and gown and the omission of the word sir in speaking to a professor. No wonder that the fight raged. Elderberry Foybl, his fluffed white hair almost on end, beat in vain with his gavel for order. Finally, Chang of Physiology, who was a perfect dynamo of energy and was known frequently to work for three or four hours at a stretch, proposed that the faculty should adjourn the question and meet for its further discussion on the following Saturday morning. This revolutionary suggestion, involving work on Saturday, reduced the meeting to a mere turmoil, in the midst of which Elderberry Foybl proposed that the whole question of the use of lead pencils should be adjourned till that day six months, and that, meantime, a new special committee of seventeen professors, with power to add to their number, to call witnesses and, if need be, to hear them, should report on the entire matter de novo. This motion, after the striking out of the words de novo, and the insertion of ab initio, was finally carried, after which the faculty sank back completely exhausted into its chair, the need of afternoon tea and toast stamped on every face. And it was at this moment that President Boomer, who understood faculties as few men have done, quietly entered the room, laid his silk hat on a volume of dimosthenes, and proposed the vote of a degree of Doctor of Letters for Edward Tomlinson. He said that there was no need to remind the faculty of Tomlinson's services to the nation. They knew them. Of the members of the faculty, indeed, some thought that he meant the Tomlinson who wrote the famous monologue on the iota subscript, while others supposed that he referred to the celebrated philosopher Tomlinson, whose new book on the indivisibility of the inseparable was just then maddening the entire world. In any case, they voted the degree without a word, still fainting with exhaustion. But while the university was conferring on Tomlinson the degree of Doctor of Letters, all over the city in business circles they were conferring on him far other titles. Idiot, scoundrel, swindler, were the least of them. Every stock and share with which his name was known to be connected was coming down with a run, wiping out the accumulated profits of the wizard at the rate of a thousand dollars a minute. They not only questioned his honesty, but they went further and questioned his business capacity. The man, said Mr. Lucola's feich, sitting in the mausoleum club and breathing freely at last, after having disposed of all his holdings in the eerie oriferous, is an ignoramus. I asked him only the other day, quite casually, a perfect simple business question. I said to him, TC bonds have risen twenty-two-and-a-half in a week. You know and I know that they are only collateral trust and that the stock underneath never could and never would earn a part of a dam. Now I said, for I wanted to test the fellow. Tell me what that means. Would you believe me he looked me right in the face in that stupid way of his, and he said, I don't know. He said he didn't know, repeated the listener contemptuously. The man is a damn fool. The reason of all this was that the results of the researches of the Professor of Geology were being whispered among the directorate of the eerie oriferous, and the directors and chief shareholders were busily performing the interesting process called unloading, nor did ever a farmer of Cahoga County in hang time with a thunderstorm threatening unload with greater rapidity than did the major shareholders of the oriferous. Mr. Lucola's feich traded off a quarter of his stock to an unwary member of the mausoleum club at a drop of thirty percent, and, being too prudent to hold the rest on any terms, he conveyed it at once as a benefaction in trust to the plutorian orphans and foundlings' home, while the purchaser of Mr. Feich's stock, learning too late of his folly, rushed for his lawyers to have the shares conveyed as a gift to the home for incurables. Mr. Asmodeus Boulder transferred his entire holdings to the imbeciles relief society and Mr. Furlong Sr. passed his over to a Chinese mission as fast as pen and contraverse paper. Down at the office of Skinner and Beatham, the lawyers of the company, they were working overtime drying up deeds and conveyances and trusts in perpetuity, with hardly time to put them into typewriting. Within twenty-four hours the entire stock of the company bid fair to be in the hands of idiots, orphans, protestants, foundlings, imbeciles, missionaries, Chinese, and other unfinancial people, with Tomlinson the Wizard of Finance as the senior shareholder and majority control, and whether the gentle wizard, as he sat with Mother planning his vast benefaction to Plutoria University, would have felt more at home with his new group of fellow shareholders than his old, it were hard to say. But meantime, at the office of Skinner and Beatham, all was activity, for not only were they drafting the conveyances of the perpetual trusts as fast as legal brains working overtime could do it, but in another part of the office a section of the firm were busily making their preparations against the expected actions for fraud and warrants of restraint and injunctions against disposal of assets, and the whole battery of artillery which might open on them at any moment, and they worked like a corps of military engineers fortifying an escarpment with the joy of battle in their faces. The storm might break at any moment. Already at the office of the financial undertone, the type was set for a special extra with a heading three inches high. Collapse of the eerie consolidated arrest of the man Tomlinson expected this afternoon. Skinner and Beatham had paid the editor, who was crooked, two thousand dollars cash to hold back that extra for twenty-four hours, and the editor had paid the reporting staff, who were crooked, twenty-five dollars each to keep the news quiet, and the compositors, who were also crooked, ten dollars per man to hold their mouths shut till the morning, with the result that from editors and sub-editors and reporters and compositors the news went seething forth in a flood that the eerie oriferous consolidated was going to shatter into fragments like the bursting of a dynamite bomb. It rushed with a thousand whispering tongues from street to street till it filled the corridors of the law courts and the lobbies of the offices, until every honest man that held a share of the stock shivered in his tracks and reached out to give, sell, or destroy it. Only the unwinking idiots and the mild orphans and the calm deaf mutes and the impassive Chinese held tight to what they had. So gathered the storm till all the town, like the great rotenda of the grand paliver, was filled with a silent call for Mr. Tomlinson, voiceless and ominous. And while all this was happening, and while at Skinner and Beetams, they worked with frantic pens and clattering type, there came a knock at the door, hesitant and uncertain, and before the eyes of the astounded office there stood in his wide-awake hat and long black coat the figure of the man Tomlinson himself. In Skinner, the senior partner, no sooner heard what Tomlinson wanted than he dashed across the outer office to his partner's room, with his hyena face all excitement as he said, "'Beetham, Beetham, come over to my room. This man is absolutely the biggest thing in America. For sheer calmness and nerve I never heard of anything to approach him. What do you think he wants to do?' "'What?' said Beetham. "'Why, he's giving his entire fortune to the university.' "'By God!' ejaculated Beetham, and the two lawyers looked at one another, lost in admiration of the marvelous genius and assurance of Tomlinson. Yet what had happened was very simple. Tomlinson had come back from the university filled with mingled hope and hesitation. The university, he saw, needed the money and he hoped to give it his entire fortune, to put Dr. Boomer in a position to practically destroy the whole place. But like many a modest man he lacked the assurance to speak out. He felt that up to the present the benefactors of the university had been men of an entirely different class from himself. It was mother who solved the situation for him. "'Well, Father,' she said, "'there's one thing I've learned already since we've had money. If you want to get a thing done, you can always find people to do it for you if you pay them. Why not go to those lawyers that manage things for the company and get them to arrange it all for you with the college?' As a result, Tomlinson had turned up at the door of the skinnier and beat him office. "'Quite so, Mr. Tomlinson,' said Skinnier, with his pen already dipped in the ink. "'A perfectly simple matter. I can draw up a draft of conveyance with a few strokes of the pen. In fact, we can do it on the spot. What he meant was, in fact, we can do it so fast that I can pocket a fee of five hundred dollars right here and now while you have the money to pay me.' "'Now,' he continued, "'let us see how it is to run.' "'Well,' said Tomlinson, "'I want you to put it that I give all my stock and the company to the university. All of it,' said Skinnier, with a quiet smile to beat him. "'Every cent of it, sir,' said Tomlinson, "'just write down that I give all of it to the college.' "'Very good,' said Skinnier, and he began to write. "'I so-and-so and so-and-so of the county of So-and-so, Cahoga,' I think you said, Mr. Tomlinson. "'Yes, sir,' said the wizard, I was raised there. "'Do hereby give a signed, devised transfer, and the transfer is hereby given, devised, and assigned. All those stocks, shares, hereditments, etc., which I hold in the etc., etc., all several and whatever, you will observe, Mr. Tomlinson. I am expressing myself with as great brevity as possible. To that institution, academy, college, school, university, now known and reputed to be Plutoria University of the city of etc., etc., he paused a moment. "'Now what special objects or purposes shall I indicate?' he asked. Whereupon Tomlinson explained as best he could, and Skinnier working with great rapidity indicated that the benefaction was to include a demolition fund for the removal of buildings, a retirement fund for the removal of professors, an apparatus fund for the destruction of apparatus, and a general sinking fund for the obliteration of anything not otherwise mentioned. "'And I'd like to do something, if I could, for Mr. Boomer himself, just as man to man,' said Tomlinson. "'All right,' said Beatum, and he could hardly keep his face straight. "'Give him a chunk of the stock. Give him half a million. "'I will,' said Tomlinson. He deserves it.' "'Undoubtedly,' said Mr. Skinnier. "'And within a few minutes the whole transaction was done, and Tomlinson, filled with joy, was wringing the hands of Skinnier and Beatum, and telling them to name their own fee. They had meant to, anyway.' "'Is that legal, do you suppose?' said Beatum to Skinnier after the wizard had gone. "'Will it hold water?' "'Oh, I don't think so,' said Skinnier, not for a minute. "'In fact, rather the other way. If they make an arrest for fraudulent flotation, this conveyance, I should think, would help to send him to the penitentiary. But I very much doubt if they can arrest him. Mind you, the fellow is devilish shrewd. You know, and I know, that he planned this whole flotation with a full knowledge of the fraud. You and I know it very good, but we know it more from our trained instinct and such things than by any proof. The fellow has managed to surround himself with such an air of good faith from start to finish that will be deduced hard to get at him. "'What will he do now?' said Beatum. "'I tell you what he'll do. Mark my words. Within twenty-four hours he'll clear out and be out of the state, and if they want to get him, they'll have to extradite. I tell you, he's a man of extraordinary capacity. The rest of us are nowhere beside him.' In which, perhaps, there was some truth. "'Well, mother,' said the wizard, when he reached the thousand-dollar suite after his interview with Skinnier and beat him, his face irradiated with simple joy. "'It's done. I've put the college now in a position it never was in before, nor any other college. The lawyers say so themselves.' "'That's good,' said mother. "'Yes, and it's a good thing I didn't lose the money when I tried to. You see, mother, what I hadn't realized was the good that could be done with all that money if a man put his heart into it. They can start in as soon as they like and tear down those buildings. My, but it's just wonderful what you can do with money. I'm glad I didn't lose it.' So they talked far into the evening. That night they slept in an Aladdin's palace filled with golden fancies. And in the morning the palace and all its visions fell tumbling about their heads in sudden and awful catastrophe. For with Tomlinson's first descent to the rotunda it broke. The whole great space seemed filled with the bulletins and the broad side sheets of the morning papers, the crowds surging to and fro, buying the papers, men reading them as they stood, and everywhere in great letters there met his eye, collapse of the eerie oriferous, the great gold swindle, arrest of the man Tomlinson expected this morning. So stood the wizard of finance beside a pillar, the paper fluttering in his hand, his eyes fixed, while about him a thousand eager eyes and rushing tongues sent shame into his stricken heart. And there his boy Fred sent from upstairs found him, and at the sight of the seething crowd and his father's stricken face, aged as it seemed all in a moment, the boy's soul woke within him. What had happened he could not tell, only that his father stood there, dazed, beaten, and staring at him on every side in giant letters, arrest of the man Tomlinson. "'Come, father, come upstairs,' he said, and took him by the arm dragging him through the crowd. In the next half hour as they sat and waited for the arrest in the false grandeur of the thousand-dollar suite, Tomlinson, his wife, and Fred, the boy, learned more than all the teaching of the industrial faculty of Plutoria University could have taught him in a decade. Adversity laid its hand upon him, and at its touch his adolescent heart turned to finer stuff than the salted gold of the eerie oriferous. As he looked upon his father's broken figure, waiting meekly for arrest, and his mother's blubbered face, a great wrath that burned itself into his soul. "'When the sheriff comes,' said Tomlinson, and his lip trembled as he spoke, he had no other picture of arrest than that. "'They can't arrest you, father,' broke out the boy. "'You've done nothing. You never swindled them. I tell you if they try to arrest you all,' and his voice broke and stomped upon a sob, and his hands clenched in passion. "'You stay here, you and mother. All go down. Give me your money, and I'll go and pay them, and we'll get out of this and go home. They can't stop us. There's nothing to arrest you for.' Nor was there. Fred paid the bill and molested, saved for the prying eyes and babbling tongues of the rotunda. And a few hours from that, while the town was still ringing with news of his downfall, the wizard with his wife and son walked down from their thousand-dollar suite into the corridor, their hands burdened with their satchels. A waiter, with something between a sneer and an obsequious smile upon his face, reached out for the belises, wondering if it was still worthwhile. "'You get to hell out of that,' said Fred. He had put on again his rough store-suit in which he had come from Cahoga County, and there was a dangerous look about his big shoulders and his set jaw, and the waiter slunk back. So did they pass, unarrested and unhindered, through corridor and rotunda to the outer portals of the great hotel. Beside the door of the paliver, as they passed out, was a tall official with a uniform and a round hat. He was called by the authorities a chaussure, or a commissionaire, or some foreign name to mean that he did nothing. At the sight of him the wizard's face flushed for a moment with a look of his old perplexity. I wonder, he began to murmur, how much I ought. Not a damn scent, father, said Fred, as he shouldered past the magnificence assure. Let him work. With which admirable doctor in the wizard and his son passed from the portals of the grand paliver. Nor was there any arrest either then or later, in spite of the expectations of the rotunda and the announcements of the financial undertone, the man Tomlinson was not arrested, neither as he left the grand paliver, nor as he stood waiting at the railroad station with Fred and mother for the outgoing train for Cahoga County. There was nothing to arrest him for. That was not the least strange part of the career of the Wizard of Finance, for when all the affairs of the eerie oriferous consolidated were presently calculated up by the labors of skinner and beatum, and the legal representatives of the orphans and the idiots and the deaf mutes, they resolved themselves into the most beautiful and complete cipher conceivable. The salted gold about paid for the cost of the incorporation certificate, the development capital had disappeared and those who lost most preferred to say the least about it. And for Tomlinson, if one added up his gains on the stock market before the fall and subtracted his bill at the grand paliver and the thousand dollars which he gave to skinner and beatum to recover his freehold on the lower half of his farm, and the cost of three tickets to Cahoga station, the debit and credit account balanced to a hair. Thus did the whole fortune of Tomlinson vanish in a night, even as the golden palace seen in the mirage of a desert sunset may fade before the eyes of the beholder and leave no trace behind. It was some months after the collapse of the eerie oriferous that the university conferred upon Tomlinson the degree of Doctor of Letters in absentia. A university must keep its word, and Dean Elderberry Foybl, who was honesty itself, had stubbornly maintained that a vote of the faculty of arts once taken and written in the minute book became as irrefragable as the Devonian Rock itself. So the degree was conferred, and Dean Elderberry Foybl, standing in a long red gown before Dr. Boomer, seated in a long blue gown, read out after the ancient custom of the college, the Latin statement of the award of the degree of Doctor of Letters. Edwardus, Tomlinsonius, Ver, Clarissimus, Doctissimus, Pratissimus, and a great many other things all ending in Isimus. But the recipient was not there to receive. He stood at that moment with his boy Fred on a windy hillside beside Lake Erie, where Tomlinson's creek ran again untrammeled to the lake. Nor was the scene altered to the eye for Tomlinson and his son had long since broken a hole in the dam with a pickaxe and crowbar, and day by day the angry water carried down the vestiges of the embankment till all were gone. The cedar poles of the electric lights had been cut into fence rails. The wooden shanties of the Italian gang of eryphous workers had been torn down and split into firewood, and where they had stood, the bird oaks and the thistles of the luxuriant summer conspired to hide the traces of their shame. Nature reached out its hand and drew its coverlet of green over the grave of the vanished El Dorado. And as the wizard and his son stood upon the hillside, they saw nothing but the land sloping to the lake and the creek murmuring again to the willows, while the offshore wind rippled the rushes of the shallow water. End of Chapter 3 Part 2 Recording by Joelle Peebles Chapter 4 Part 1 of Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Joelle Peebles Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich by Stephen Leacock. Chapter 4 The Yahibahe Oriental Society of Mrs. Rasselier Brown Part 1 Mrs. Rasselier Brown lived on Plutoria Avenue in a vast sandstone palace, in which she held those fashionable entertainments which have made the name of Rasselier Brown what it is. Mr. Rasselier Brown lived there also. The exterior of the house was more or less a model of the façade of an Italian palazzo of the 16th century. If one question Mrs. Rasselier Brown at dinner in regard to this, which was only a fair return for drinking $5 champagne, she answered that the façade was synchrocentisty, but that it reproduced also the serocenic mullioned window of the Sienese school. But if the guest said later in the evening to Mr. Rasselier Brown that he understood that his house was synchrocentisty, he answered that he guessed it was. After which remark and an interval of silence Mr. Rasselier Brown would probably ask the guest if he was dry. So from that one can tell exactly the sort of people the Rasselier Browns were. In other words, Mr. Rasselier Brown was a severe handicap to Mrs. Rasselier Brown. He was more than that. The word isn't strong enough. He was, as Mrs. Rasselier Brown herself confessed to her confidential circle of three hundred friends, a drag. It was also a tie and a weight and a burden, and in Mrs. Rasselier Brown's religious moments, a crucifix. Even in the early years of their married life, some twenty or twenty five years ago, her husband had been a drag on her by being in the coal and wood business. It is hard for a woman to have to realize that her husband is making a fortune out of coal and wood and that people know it. It ties one down. What a woman wants most of all, this of course is merely a quotation from Mrs. Rasselier Brown's own thoughts as expressed to her three hundred friends, is room to expand, to grow. The hardest thing in the world is to be stifled, and there is nothing more stifling than a husband who doesn't know a giato from a Carlo Dolci, but who can distinguish nut coal from egg and is never asked to dinner without talking about the furnace. These, of course, were early trials. They had passed to some extent, or were at any rate garlanded with the roses of time. But the drag remained. Even when the retail coal and wood stage was long since over, it was hard to have to put up with a husband who owned a coal mine and who bought pulp forests instead of illuminated missiles of the twelfth century. A coal mine is a dreadful thing at a dinner table. It humbles one's so before one's guests. It wouldn't have been so bad, this Mrs. Rasselier Brown herself admitted, if Mr. Rasselier Brown did anything. This phrase should be clearly understood. It meant if there was any one thing that he did, for instance, if he had only collected anything. Thus, there was Mr. Lucullus Feisch, who made soda water, but at the same time everybody knew that he had the best collection of broken Italian furniture on the Continent. There wasn't a sound piece among the lot. And there was the similar example of old Mr. Feathertop. He didn't exactly collect things. He repudiated the name. He was want to say, Don't call me a collector, I'm not. I simply pick things up. Just where I happen to be. Rome, Warsaw, Bucharest, anywhere. And it is to be noted what fine places these are to happen to be. And to think that Mr. Rasselier Brown would never put his foot outside of the United States. Whereas Mr. Feathertop would come back from what he called a run to Europe, and everybody would learn in a week that he had picked up the back of a violin in Dresden, actually discovered it in a violin shop, and the lid of an Etruscan kettle, he had lighted on it by pure chance in a kettle shop in Etruria, and Mrs. Rasselier Brown would feel faint with despair at the non-entity of her husband. So one can understand how heavy her burden was. My dear, she often said to her bosom friend, Miss Snagg, I shouldn't mind things so much. The things she wouldn't mind were, let us say, the two million dollars of standing timber which Brown limited the ominous business name of Mr. Rasselier Brown were buying that year. If Mr. Rasselier Brown did anything, but he does nothing, every morning after breakfast off to his wretched office, and never back till dinner, and in the evening nothing but his club or some business meeting, one would think he would have more ambition, how I wish I had been a man. It was certainly a shame. So it came that in almost everything she undertook, Mrs. Rasselier Brown had to act without the least help from her husband. Every Wednesday, for instance, when the Dante Club met at her house, they selected four lines each week to meditate on, and then discuss them at lunch. Mrs. Rasselier Brown had to carry the whole burden of it, her very phrase, the whole burden, alone. Anyone who has carried four lines of Dante through a motel lunch knows what a weight it is. In all these things her husband was useless, quite useless. It is not right to be ashamed of one's husband, and to do her justice Mrs. Rasselier Brown always explained to her three hundred intimates that she was not ashamed of him, in fact that she refused to be. But it was hard to see him brought into comparison at their own table with superior men. Put him, for instance, beside Mr. Sickley Snoop, the sex poet, and where was he? Nowhere. He couldn't even understand what Mr. Snoop was saying, and when Mr. Snoop would stand on the hearth rug with a cup of tea balanced in his hand, and discuss whether sex was or was not the dominant note in Botticelli, Mr. Rasselier Brown would be skulking in a corner in his ill-fitting dress suit. His wife would often catch with an agonized ear such scraps of talk as, when I was first in the coal and wood business, or it's a coal that burns quicker than egg, but it hasn't the heaning power of nut, or even in a low undertone the words, if you're feeling dry while he's reading, and this at a time when everybody in the room ought to have been listening to Mr. Snoop. Nor was even this the whole burden of Mrs. Rasselier Brown. There was another part of it which was perhaps more real, though Mrs. Rasselier Brown herself never put it into words. In fact, of this part of her burden she never spoke, even to her bosom friend Miss Snagg, nor did she talk about it to the ladies of the Dante Club, nor did she make speeches on it to the members of the Women's Afternoon Art Society, nor to the Monday Bridge Club. But the members of the Bridge Club and the Art Society and the Dante Club all talked about it among themselves. Stated very simply it was this. Mr. Rasselier Brown drank. It was not meant that he was a drunkard, or that he drank too much, or anything of that sort. He drank. That was all. There was no excess about it. Mr. Rasselier Brown, of course, began the day with an eye-opener, and, after all, that alert man does not wish his eyes well-open in the morning. He followed it usually just before breakfast with a bracer, and what wiser precaution can a businessman take than to brace his breakfast? On his way to business he generally had his motor stopped at the Grand Palover, for a moment, if it was a raw day, and dropped in and took something to keep out the damp. If it was a cold day he took something to keep out the cold. And if it was one of those clear sunny days that are so dangerous to the system he took whatever the bartender, a recognized health expert, suggested to tone the system up, after which he could sit down in his office and transact more business and bigger business in coal, charcoal, wood, pulp, pulp, wood, and wood pulp in two hours than any other man in the business could in a week. Naturally so, for he was braced and propped and toned up, and his eyes had been opened and his brain cleared. Till outside a very big business, indeed, few men were on a footing with him. In fact, it was business itself which had compelled Mr. Rasselier-Brown to drink. It is all very well for a junior clerk on twenty dollars a week to do his work on sandwiches and malted milk. In big business it is not possible. When a man begins to rise in business, as Mr. Rasselier-Brown had begun twenty-five years ago, he finds that if he wants to succeed he must cut malted milk clear out. In any position of responsibility a man has got to drink. No really big deal can be put through without it. If two keen men, sharp as flint, get together to make a deal in which each intends to outdo the other, the only way to succeed is for them to adjourn to some such place as the luncheon room of the Mausoleum club, and both get partially drunk. This is what is called the personal element in business, and beside it, plotting industry is nowhere. Most of all do these principles hold true in such manly out-of-door enterprises as the forest and timber business, where one deals constantly with chief rangers and pathfinders and wood-stalkers, whose very names seem to suggest a horn of whiskey under a hemlock tree. But, let it be repeated and carefully understood, there was no excess about Mr. Rasselier-Brown's drinking. Indeed, whatever he might be compelled to take during the day, and at the Mausoleum club in the evening, after his return from his club at night, Mr. Rasselier-Brown made it a fixed rule to take nothing. He might perhaps, as he passed into the house, step into the dining room and take a very small drink at the side-board, but this he counted as part of the return itself, and not after it. And he might, if his brain were over-fatigued, drop down later in the night in his pajamas and dressing-gown when the house was quiet, and compose his mind with a brandy and water, or something suitable to the stillness of the hour. But this was not really a drink. Mr. Rasselier-Brown called it a nip, and, of course, any man may need a nip at a time when he would scorn a drink. But, after all, a woman may find herself again in her daughter. There, at least, is consolation. For, as Mrs. Rasselier-Brown herself admitted, her daughter, Dolphemia, was herself again. There were, of course, differences, certain differences of face and appearance. Mr. Snoop had expressed this fact exquisitely when he said that it was the difference between a Byrne-Jones and a Dante Gabriel Rossetti. But even at that the mother and daughter were so alike that people, certain people, were constantly mistaking them on the street. And as everybody that mistook them was apt to be asked to dine on five-dollar champagne, there was plenty of temptation towards error. There is no doubt that Dolphemia Rasselier-Brown was a girl of remarkable character and intellect. So was any girl who has beautiful golden hair parted in thick bands on her forehead, and deep blue eyes soft as an Italian sky. Even the oldest and most serious men in town admitted that in talking to her they were aware of a grasp, a reach, a depth that surprised them. Thus old Judge Longer Still, who talked to her at dinner for an hour on the jurisdiction of the Interstate Commerce Commission, felt sure from the way in which she looked up in his face at intervals and said, how interesting, that she had the mind of a lawyer. And Mr. Brace, the consulting engineer who showed her on the tablecloth at dessert with three forks and a spoon, the method in which the overflow of the spillway of the Gatun Dam is regulated, felt assured from the way she leaned her face on her hand sideways and said, how extraordinary, that she had the brain of an engineer. Similarly foreign visitors to the social circles of the city were delighted with her. This count fits thistle, who explained to Dolphemia for half an hour the intricacies of the Irish situation was captivated at the quick grasp she showed by asking him at the end, without a second's hesitation. And which are the nationalists? This kind of thing represents female intellect in its best form. Every man that is really a man is willing to recognize it at once. As to the young men, of course they flocked to the Rasselier Brown residence in Scholes. There were batches of them every Sunday afternoon at five o'clock, encased in long black frock coats, sitting very rigidly in upright chairs, trying to drink tea with one hand. One might see athletic young college men of the football team, trying hard to talk about Italian music, and Italian tenors from the Grand Opera doing their best to talk about college football. There were young men in business talking about art, and young men in art talking about religion, and young clergymen talking about business. Because the Rasselier Brown residence was the kind of cultivated home where people of education and taste are at liberty to talk about things they don't know, and to utter freely ideas that they haven't got. It was only now and again when one of the professors from the college across the avenue came booming into the room that the whole conversation was pulverized into dust under the hammer of accurate knowledge. The whole process was what was called by those who understood such things a salon. Many people said that Mrs. Rasselier Brown's afternoons at home were exactly like the delightful salons of the eighteenth century. And whether the gatherings were or were not salons of the eighteenth century, there is no doubt that Mr. Rasselier Brown, under whose care certain favored guests dropped quietly into the back alcove of the dining room, did his best to put the gathering on a par with the best saloons of the twentieth. Now it so happened that there had come a singularly slack moment in the social life of the city. The grand opera had sung itself into a huge deficit and closed. There remained nothing of it except the efforts of a committee of ladies to raise enough money to enable Senior Poofy to leave town, and a generous attempt of another committee to gather funds in order to keep Senior Pasty in the city. Beyond this opera was dead, though the fact that the deficit was nearly twice as large as it had been the year before showed that public interest in music was increasing. It was indeed a singularly trying time of the year. It was too early to go to Europe and too late to go to Bermuda. It was too warm to go south, yet still too cold to go north. In fact, one was almost compelled to stay at home, which was dreadful. As a result, Mrs. Rassellier Brown and her three hundred friends moved backwards and forwards on Clutoria Avenue, seeking novelty in vain. They washed in waves of silk from tango tees to bridge afternoons. They poured in liquid avalanches of color into crowded receptions, and they sat in glittering rows and listened to lectures on the enfranchisement of the female sex. But for the moment all was weariness. Now it happened, whether by accident or design, that just at this moment of General NUI, Mrs. Rassellier Brown and her three hundred friends first heard of the presence in the city of Mr. Yahibahi, the celebrated Oriental Mystic. He was so celebrated that nobody even thought of asking who he was or where he came from. They merely told one another and repeated it that he was the celebrated Yahibahi. They added for those who needed the knowledge that the name was pronounced Yahibahi, and that the doctrine taught by Mr. Yahibahi was Buhuism. This latter, if anyone inquired further, was explained to be a form of shuduism, only rather more intense. In fact it was esoteric, on receipt of which information everybody remarked at once how infinitely superior the Oriental peoples are to ourselves. Now, as Mrs. Rassellier Brown was always a leader in everything that was done in the best circles on Plutoria Avenue, she was naturally among the first to visit Mr. Yahibahi. My dear, she said, in describing afterwards her experience to her Buhuism friend, Ms. Snagg, it was most interesting. We drove away down to the queerest part of the city and went to the strangest little house imaginable, up the narrowest stairs one ever saw, quite eastern in fact, just like a scene out of the Koran. How fascinating, said Ms. Snagg, but as a matter of fact, if Mr. Yahibahi's house had been inhabited as it might have been by a streetcar conductor or a railway breaksman, Mrs. Rassellier Brown wouldn't have thought it in any way peculiar or fascinating. It was all hung with curtains inside, she went on, with figures of snakes and Indian gods, perfectly weird. And did you see Mr. Yahibahi? asked Ms. Snagg. Oh no, my dear, I only saw his assistant, Mr. Ram Spud, such a queer little round man, a Bengali, I believe. He put his back against a curtain and spread out his arms sideways and wouldn't let me pass. He said that Mr. Yahibahi was in meditation and mustn't be disturbed. How delightful, echoed Ms. Snagg. But in reality, Mr. Yahibahi was sitting behind the curtain, eating a ten-cent can of pork and beans. What I like most about Eastern people, went on, Mrs. Rassellier Brown, is their wonderful delicacy of feeling. After I had explained about my invitation to Mr. Yahibahi, to come and speak to us on Buhuism, and was going away, I took a dollar bill out of my purse and laid it on the table. You should have seen the way Mr. Ram Spud took it. He made the deepest salam and said, Isis, guard you, beautiful lady. Such perfect courtesy, and yet with the air of scorning the money. As I passed out, I couldn't help slipping another dollar into his hand, and he took it as if utterly unaware of it, and muttered, Osiris, keep you, O flower of women. And as I got into the motor, I gave him another dollar, and he said, Osis and Osiris, both prolong your existence, O lily of the rice field. And after he said it, he stood beside the door of the motor, and waited without moving till I left. He had such a strange, wrapped look, as if he were still expecting something. How exquisite, murmured Miss Snagg. It was her business in life to murmur such things as this for Mrs. Rasselier Brown. On the whole, reckoning grand opera tickets and dinners, she did very well out of it. Is it not, said Mrs. Rasselier Brown, so different from our men? I felt so ashamed of my chauffeur, our new man, you know. He seemed such a contrast beside Ram's spud. The rude way in which he opened the door, and the rude way in which he climbed onto his own seat, and the rudeness with which he turned on the power, I felt positively ashamed. And he so managed it, I am sure he did it on purpose, that the car splashed a lot of mud over Mr. Spud as it started. Yet oddly enough, the opinion of other people on this new chauffeur, that of Miss Delphemia Rasselier Brown herself, for example, to whose service he was especially attached, was very different. The great recommendation of him in the eyes of Miss Delphemia and her friends, and the thing that gave him a touch of mystery was, and what higher qualifications can a chauffeur want, that he didn't look like a chauffeur at all. My dear Delphie, whispered Miss Philip of Furlong, the rector's sister, who was at that moment Delphemia's second self, as they sat behind the new chauffeur. Don't tell me that he is a chauffeur, because he isn't. He can chauff, of course, but that's nothing. For the new chauffeur had a bronzed face, hard as metal, and a stern eye, and when he put on a chauffeur's overcoat, somehow it seemed to turn into a military greatcoat, and even when he put on the round cloth cap of his profession, it was converted straight away into a military shackle. And by Miss Delphemia and her friends it was presently reported, or was invented, that he had served in the Philippines, which explained at once the scar upon his forehead, which must have been received at Ilo, or Huila-Uila, or some other suitable place. But what affected Miss Delphemia Brown herself was the splendid rudeness of the chauffeur's manner. It was so different from that of the young men of the salon. Thus when Mr. Sickley Snoop handed her into the car at any time, he would dance about saying, Allow me, and permit me, and would dive forward to arrange the robes. But the Philippine chauffeur merely swung the door open and said to Delphemia, Get in, and then slammed it. This, of course, sent a thrill up the spine and through the imagination of Miss Delphemia Rasselier Brown, because it showed that the chauffeur was a gentleman in disguise. She thought it very probable that he was a British nobleman, a younger son, very wild, of a ducal family, and she had her own theories as to why he had entered the service of the Rasselier Browns. To be quite candid about it, she expected that the Philippine chauffeur meant to elope with her, and every time he drove her from a dinner or a dance, she sat back luxuriously, wishing and expecting the elopement to begin. But for the time being, the interest of Delphemia, as of everybody else that was anybody at all, centered round Mr. Yahibahe and the new cult of Buhuism. After the visit of Mrs. Rasselier Brown, a great number of ladies, also in motors, drove down to the house of Mr. Yahibahe, and all of them, whether they saw Mr. Yahibahe himself, or his Bengali assistant, Mr. Ram Spud, came back delighted. Such exquisite tact, said one, such delicacy. As I was about to go, I laid a five-dollar gold piece on the edge of the little table. Mr. Spud scarcely seemed to see it. He murmured, O Cyrus, help you, and pointed to the ceiling. I raised my eyes instinctively, and when I lowered them, the money had disappeared. I think he must have caused it to vanish. Oh, I'm sure he did, said the listener. Others came back with wonderful stories of Mr. Yahibahe's occult powers, especially his marvelous gift of reading the future. Mrs. Buncomhurst, who had just lost her third husband by divorce, had received from Mr. Yahibahe a glimpse into the future that was almost uncanny in its exactness. She had asked for a divination, and Mr. Yahibahe had affected one by causing her to lay six ten-dollar pieces on the table, arranged in the form of a mystic serpent. Over these he had bent and peered deeply, as if seeking to unravel their meaning, and finally he had given her the prophecy. Many things are yet to happen before others begin. How does he do it? asked everybody. As a result of all this it naturally came about that Mr. Yahibahe and Mr. Ramsbud were invited to appear at the residence of Mrs. Rasselier Brown, and it was understood that steps would be taken to form a special society to be known as the Yahibahe Oriental Society. Mr. Sickley Snoop, the sex poet, was the leading spirit in the organization. He had a special fitness for the task. He had actually resided in India. In fact, he had spent six weeks there on a stopover ticket of around the world six hundred thirty-five dollar steamship pilgrimage, and he knew the whole country from Jehumba poor in Butal to Jehumbalabad in the Carnatic. So he was looked upon as a great authority on India, China, Mongolia, and all such places by the ladies of Plutoria Avenue. Next in importance was Mrs. Bumkenhurst, who became later by a perfectly natural process the president of the society. She was already president of the Daughters of the Revolution, a society confined exclusively to the descendants of Washington's officers and others. She was also president of the Sisters of England, an organization limited exclusively to women born in England and elsewhere. Of the Daughters of Kossuth, made up solely of Hungarians and Friends of Hungary and other nations, and of the Circle of Friends Joseph, which was composed exclusively of the Partisans and others of Austria. In fact, ever since she had lost her third husband, Mrs. Bumkenhurst had thrown herself, that was her phrase, into outside activities. Her one wish was on her own statement to lose herself. So, very naturally, Mrs. Rasselier-Brown looked at once to Mrs. Bumkenhurst to preside over the meetings of the new society. End of Chapter 4, Part 1, Recording by Joelle Peebles Chapter 4, Part 2 of Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich This is a library box recording. All library box recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibreVox.org Recording by Joelle Peebles Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich by Stephen Leacock Chapter 4, The Yahibahe Oriental Society of Mrs. Rasselier-Brown Part 2 The large dining room at the Rasselier-Browns had been cleared out as a sort of auditorium, and in it some 50 or 60 of Mrs. Rasselier-Brown's more intimate friends had gathered. The whole meeting was composed of ladies, except for the presence of one or two men who represented special cases. There was, of course, little Mr. Spillikins, with his vacuous face and football hair, who was there, as everybody knew, on account of Delfinia. And there was old Judge Longerstill, who sat leaning on a gold-headed stick with his head sideways, trying to hear some fraction of what was being said. He came to the gathering in the hope that it would prove a likely place for seconding a vote of thanks and saying a few words—half an hour's talk, perhaps—on the Constitution of the United States, failing that he felt sure that at least someone would call him this eminent old gentleman, and even that was better than staying at home. But for the most part the audience was composed of women, and they sat in a little buzz of conversation waiting for Mr. Yahibahe. I wonder, called Mrs. Bumkenhurst from the chair, if some lady would be good enough to write minutes. Miss Snagg, I wonder if you would be kind enough to write minutes, could you? I shall be delighted, said Miss Snagg, but I'm afraid there's hardly time to write them before we begin, is there? Oh, but it would be all right to write them afterwards. Of course, to several ladies who understood such things. It's quite often done that way. And I should like to move that we vote a Constitution, said a stout lady, with a double eyeglass. Is that carried? said Mrs. Bumkenhurst. All those in favour, please signify. Nobody stirred. Carried, said the President. And perhaps you would be good enough, Mrs. Feisch, she said, turning towards the stout lady, to write the Constitution. Do you think it necessary to write it, said Mrs. Feisch? I should like to move, if I may, that I almost wonder whether it is necessary to write the Constitution, unless, of course, anybody thinks that we really ought to. Ladies, said the President. You have heard the motion. All those against it. There was no sign. All those in favour of it? There was still no sign. Lost, she said. Then, looking across at the clock on the mantelpiece, and realising that Mr. YAHI BAHI must have been delayed, and that something must be done, she said. And now, ladies, as we have in our midst a most eminent gentleman, who probably has thought more deeply about constitutions than all eyes turned at once towards Judge Longer Still. But as Fortune had it at this very moment, Mr. Sickley Snoop entered, followed by Mr. YAHI BAHI and Mr. Ram Spud. Mr. YAHI BAHI was tall. His drooping oriental costume made him taller still. He had a long brown face and liquid brown eyes of such depth, that when he turned them full upon the ladies before him, a shiver of interest and apprehension followed in the track of his glance. My dear, said Miss Snag afterwards, he seemed simply to see right through us. This was correct, he did. Mr. Ram Spud presented a contrast to his superior. He was short and round, with a dimpled mahogany face, and eyes that twinkled in it like little puddles of molasses. His head was bound in a turban, and his body was swabbed in so many bands and sashes that he looked almost circular. The clothes of both Mr. YAHI BAHI and Ram Spud were covered with the mystic signs of Buddha and the seven serpents of Vishnu. It was impossible, of course, for Mr. YAHI BAHI or Mr. Ram Spud to address the audience. Their knowledge of English was known to be too slight for that. Their communications were expressed entirely through the medium of Mr. Snoop, and even he explained afterwards that it was very difficult. The only languages of India which he was able to speak, he said, with any fluency, were Gargamic and Gumaic, both of these being old Dravidian dialects with only two hundred and three words in each, and hence in themselves very difficult to converse in. Mr. YAHI BAHI answered in what Mr. Snoop understood to be the Iramic of the Vedas, a very rich language, but one which, unfortunately, he did not understand. The dilemma is one familiar to all Oriental scholars. All of this Mr. Snoop explained in the opening speech which he proceeded to make, and after this he went on to disclose, amid deep interest, the general nature of the cult of Buhuism. He said that they could best understand it if he told them that its central doctrine was that of BAHI. Indeed the first aim of all followers of the cult was to attain to BAHI. Anybody who could spend a certain number of hours each day, say sixteen, in silent meditation on Buhuism, would find his mind gradually reaching a condition of BAHI. The chief aim of BAHI itself was sacrifice. A true follower of the cult must be willing to sacrifice his friends or his relatives, and even strangers, in order to reach BAHI. In this way one was able fully to realize oneself and enter into the higher indifference. Beyond this further meditation and fasting, by which was meant living solely on fish, fruit, wine, and meat, one presently attained to complete swaraj or control of self, and might in time pass into the absolute nirvana or the negation of emptiness, the supreme goal of Buhuism. As a first step to all this Mr. Snoop explained, each neophyte or candidate for holiness must, after searching his own heart, send ten dollars to Mr. YAHI BAHI. Gold, it appeared, was recognized in the cult of Buhuism as typifying the three chief virtues, whereas silver or paper money did not. Even national banknotes were only regarded as due, or a halfway paliation, and outside currencies such as Canadian or Mexican bills were looked upon as entirely Buh, or contemptible. The oriental view of money said Mr. Snoop was far superior to our own, but it also might be attained by deep thought, and, as a beginning, by sending ten dollars to Mr. YAHI BAHI. After this Mr. Snoop, in conclusion, read a very beautiful Hindu poem translating it as he went along. It began, O cow, standing beside the Ganges, and apparently without visible occupation, and it was voted exquisite by all who heard it. The absence of rhyme and the entire removal of ideas marked it as far beyond anything reached as yet by occidental culture. When Mr. Snoop had concluded, the President called upon Judge longer still for a few words of thanks, which he gave, followed by a brief talk on the Constitution of the United States. After this the society was declared constituted. Mr. YAHI BAHI made four salams, one to each point of the compass, and the meeting dispersed. And that evening, over fifty dinner tables, everybody discussed the nature of BAHI and tried in vain to explain it to men too stupid to understand. Now it so happened that on the very afternoon of this meeting at Mrs. Rasselier-Brown's, the Philippine chauffeur did a strange and peculiar thing. He first asked Mr. Rasselier-Brown for a few hours' leave of absence to attend the funeral of his mother-in-law. This was a request which Mr. Rasselier-Brown on principle never refused to a man-servant. Whereupon the Philippine chauffeur, no longer attired as one, visited the residence of Mr. YAHI BAHI. He led himself in with a marvelous little key which he produced from a very wonderful bunch of such. He was in the house for nearly half an hour, and when he emerged, the note-book in his breast-pocket, had there been an eye to read it, would have been seen to be filled with stranger details in regard to Oriental mysticism than even Mr. YAHI BAHI had given the world. So strange were they that, before the Philippine chauffeur returned to the Rasselier-Brown residence, he telegraphed certain and sundry parts of them to New York. But why he should have addressed them to the head of a detective bureau instead of to a college of Oriental research, it passes the imagination to conceive. But as the chauffeur duly reappeared at motor time in the evening, the incident passed unnoticed. It is beyond the scope of the present narrative to trace the progress of Buhuism during the splendid but brief career of the YAHI BAHI Oriental Society. There could be no doubt of its success. Its principles appealed with great strength to all the more cultivated among the ladies of Plutoria Avenue. There was something in the Oriental mysticism of its doctrines which rendered previous belief stale and purile. The practice of the sacred rites began at once. The ladies' counters of the Plutorian banks were inundated with requests for ten dollar pieces in exchange for banknotes. At dinner in the best houses nothing was eaten except a thin soup, or brew, followed by fish, succeeded by meat or by game, especially such birds, as are particularly pleasing to Buddha, as the partridge, the pheasant, and the woodcock. After this, except for fruits and wine, the principle of swaraj, or denial of self, was rigidly imposed. Special Oriental dinners of this sort were given, followed by listening to the reading of Oriental poetry with closed eyes and with the mind as far as possible in a state of stodge, or negation of thought. By this means the general doctrine of Buhuism spread rapidly. Indeed a great many of the members of the society soon attained to a stage of BAHI, or the higher indifference, that it would have been hard to equal outside of Jagapur, or Jambambadbhaan. For example, when Mrs. Bumkenhurst learned of the remarriage of her second husband, she had lost him three years before, owing to a difference of opinion on the emancipation of women, she showed the most complete BAHI possible. And when Miss Snag learned that her brother in Venezuela had died a very sudden death brought on by drinking rum for seventeen years, and had left her ten thousand dollars, the BAHI which she exhibited almost amounted to Nirvana. In fact, the very general dissemination of the Oriental idea became more and more noticeable with each week that passed. Some members attained to so complete a BAHI, or higher indifference, that they even ceased to attend the meetings of the society. Others reached a swaraj, or control of self, so great that they no longer read its pamphlets, while others, again actually passed into Nirvana, to a complete negation of self, so rapidly that they did not even pay their subscriptions. But features of this sort, of course, are familiar wherever a successful occult creed makes its way against the prejudices of the multitude. The really notable part of the whole experience was the marvelous demonstration of occult power which attended the final seance of the society, the true nature of which is still wrapped in mystery. For some weeks it had been rumored that a very special feat, or demonstration of power, by Mr. YAHI BAHI was under contemplation. In fact, the rapid spread of swaraj, and of Nirvana among the members, rendered such a feat highly desirable. Just what form the demonstration would take was for some time a matter of doubt. It was whispered at first that Mr. YAHI BAHI would attempt the mysterious eastern rite of burying Ramsbud alive in the garden of the Rassoulier-Brown residence, and leaving him there in a state of stodge, or suspended in an ignition, for eight days. But this project was abandoned, owing to some doubt, apparently in the mind of Mr. Ramsbud, as to his astral fitness for the high state of stodge necessitated by the experiment. At last it became known to the members of the push, or inner circle, under the seal of confidence, that Mr. YAHI BAHI would attempt nothing less than the supreme feat of occultism, namely, a reincarnation, or more correctly, a re-astralization of Buddha. The members of the inner circle shivered with a luxurious sense of mystery when they heard of it. Has it ever been done before? they asked of Mr. Snoop. Only a few times, he said, once, I believe, by J. M. Bum, the famous yogi of the Carnatic, once, perhaps twice, by Buhu, the founder of the sect. But it is looked upon as extremely rare. Mr. YAHI tells me that the great danger is that, if the slightest part of the formula is incorrectly observed, the person attempting the astralization is swallowed up into nothingness. However, he declares himself willing to try. The seance was to take place at Mrs. Rasselier Brown's residence, and was to be at midnight. At midnight, said each member in surprise, and the answer was, yes, at midnight. You see, midnight here is exactly midday in Allahabad in India. This explanation was, of course, ample. Midnight, repeated everybody to everybody else, is exactly midday in Allahabad. That made things perfectly clear, whereas if midnight had been midday in Timbuktu, the whole situation would have been different. Each of the ladies was requested to bring to the seance some ornament of gold, but it must be plain gold without any setting of stones. It was known already that, according to the cult of Buhuism, gold, plain gold, is the seat of the three virtues, beauty, wisdom, and grace. Therefore, according to the creed of Buhuism, anyone who has enough gold, plain gold, is endowed with these virtues, and is all right. All that is needed is to have enough of it, the virtues follow as a consequence. But for the great experiment the gold used must not be set with stones, with the one exception of rubies, which are known to be endowed with the three attributes of Hindu worship, modesty, loquacity, and pomposity. In the present case, it was found that, as a number of ladies had nothing but gold ornaments set with diamonds, a second exception was made, especially as Mr. Yahibahe, on appeal, decided that diamonds, though less pleasing to Buddha than rubies, possessed the secondary Hindu virtues of divisibility, movability, and disposability. On the evening in question the residents of Mrs. Rassellier-Brown might have been observed at midnight wrapped in utter darkness. No lights were shown. A single taper, brought by Ram Spud, from the Taj Mahal, and resembling in its outer texture those sold at the Five and Ten store, near Mr. Spud's residence, burned on a small table in the vast dining-room. The servants had been sent upstairs and expressly enjoined to retire at half-past ten. Moreover, Mr. Rassellier-Brown had had to attend that evening at the Mausoleum Club, a meeting of the trustees of the Church of St. Asaf. And he had come home at eleven o'clock, as he always did after diocesan work of this sort, quite used up, in fact so fatigued that he had gone upstairs to his own suite of rooms sideways, his knees bending under him, so utterly used up was he with his church's work that, as far as any interest in what might be going on in his own residence, he had attained to a state of bahi, or higher indifference, that even Buddha might have envied. The guests, as had been arranged, arrived noiselessly and on foot. All motors were left at least a block away. They made their way up the steps of the darkened house, and were admitted without ringing, the door opening silently in front of them. Mr. Yahebahi and Mr. Ram Spud, who had arrived on foot carrying a large parcel, were already there, and were behind a screen in the darkened room, reported to be in meditation. At a whispered word from Mr. Snoop, who did duty at the door, all furs and wraps were discarded in the hall and laid in a pile. Then the guests passed silently into the great dining-room. There was no light in it except the dim taper, which stood on a little table. On this table each guest, as instructed, laid an ornament of gold, and at the same time was uttered in a low voice the word kusfu. This means, O Buddha, I herewith lay my unworthy offering at thy feet. Take it and keep it for ever. It was explained that this was only a form. What is he doing? whispered the assembled guests, as they saw Mr. Yahebahi pass across the darkened room and stand in front of the side-board. Hush, said Mr. Snoop, he's laying the propitiatory offering for Buddha. It's an Indian rite, whispered Mrs. Rassellier-Brown. Mr. Yahebahi could be seen dimly moving chew and fro in front of the side-board. There was a faint clinking of glass. He has to set out a glass of Burmese brandy, powdered over with nutmeg and aromatics, whispered Mrs. Rassellier-Brown. I had the greatest hunt to get it all for him. He said that nothing but Burmese brandy would do, because in the Hindu religion the god can only be invoked with Burmese brandy, or, failing that, hennesses with three stars, which is not entirely displeasing to Buddha. The aromatics, whispered Mr. Snoop, are supposed to waft a perfume or incense to reach the nostrils of the god. The glass of propitiatory wine and the aromatic spices are mentioned in the Vishnu Buddha-yat. Mr. Yahebahi, his preparations completed, was now seen to stand in front of the side-board, bowing deeply four times in an oriental salam. The light of the single taper had by this time burned so dim that his movements were vague and uncertain. His body cast great flickering shadows on the half-seen wall. From his throat there issued a low wail in which the word wa-wa could be distinguished. The excitement was intense. What does wa mean? whispered Mr. Spillikins. Hush! said Mr. Snoop. It means, O Buddha, wherever thou art in thy lofty nirvana, descend yet once in astral form before our eyes. Mr. Yahebahi rose. He was seen to place one finger on his lips, and then silently moving across the room. He disappeared behind the screen. Of what Mr. Ramsbud was doing during this period there is no record. It was presumed that he was still praying. The stillness was now absolute. We must wait in perfect silence, whispered Mr. Snoop from the extreme tips of his lips. Everybody sat in strained intensity, silent looking towards the vague outline of the sideboard. The minutes passed. No one moved. All were spellbound in expectancy. Still the minutes passed. The taper had flickered down till the great room was almost in darkness. Could it be that by some neglect in the preparations, the substitution perhaps of the wrong brandy, the astralization could not be affected? But no. Quite suddenly it seemed everybody in the darkened room was aware of a presence. That was the word as afterwards repeated in a hundred confidential discussions, a presence. One couldn't call it a body, it wasn't. It was a figure, an astral form, a presence. Buddha, they gasped as they looked at it. Just how the figure entered the room the spectators could never afterwards agree. Some thought it appeared through the wall, deliberately astralizing itself as it passed through the bricks. Others seemed to have seen it pass in at the farther door of the room, as if it had astralized itself at the foot of the stairs in the back of the hall outside. Be that as it may, there it stood before them, the astralized shape of the Indian deity, so that to every lip there rose the half-articulated word Buddha. Or at least to every lip except that of Mrs. Rasselier Brown. From her there came no sound. The figure, as afterwards described, was attired in a long shirak, such as is worn by the grand llama of Tibet, and resembling, if the comparison were not profane, a modern dressing gown. The legs, if one might so call them, of the apparition were unwrapped in loose Punjamas, a word which is said to be the origin of the modern Pajamas, while the feet, if they were feet, were encased in loose slippers. Buddha moved slowly across the room. Arrived at the sideboard, the astral figure paused, and even in the uncertain light Buddha was seen to raise and drink the propitiatory offering. That much was perfectly clear. Whether Buddha spoke or not is doubtful. Certain of the spectators thought that he said, must have forgotten it. Which is Hindustani for blessings on this house. To Mrs. Rasselier Brown's distracted mind, it seemed as if Buddha said, I must have forgotten it. But this wild fancy she never breathed to a soul. Silently Buddha recrossed the room, slowly wiping one arm across his mouth after the Hindu gesture farewell. For perhaps a full minute after the disappearance of Buddha, not a soul, moved. Then quite suddenly Mrs. Rasselier Brown, unable to stand the tension any longer, pressed an electric switch, and the whole room was flooded with light. There sat the affrighted guests, staring at one another with pale faces. But to the amazement and horror of all, the little table in the center stood empty. Not a single gem, not a fraction of the gold that had laid upon it was left. All had disappeared. The truth seemed to burst upon every one at once. There was no doubt of what had happened. The gold and the jewels had been de-astralized. Under the occult power of the vision they had been demonetized, engulfed into the astral plain along with the vanishing Buddha. Filled with the sense of horror still to come, somebody pulled aside the little screen. They fully expected to find a lifeless bodies of Mr. Yahibahe and the faithful Ram Spud. What they saw before them was more dreadful still. The outer oriental garments of the two devotees lay strewn upon the floor. The long sash of Mr. Yahibahe and the thick turban of Ram Spud were side by side near them. Almost sickening in its repulsive realism was the thick black head of hair of the junior devotee. Apparently torn from his scalp as if by lightning and bearing a horrible resemblance to the cast-off wig of an actor. The truth was too plain. They are engulfed, cried a dozen voices at once. It was realized in a flash that Yahibahe and Ram Spud had paid the penalty of their daring with their lives. Through some fatal neglect against which they had fairly worn the participants of the seance, the two orientals had been carried bodily in the astral plain. How dreadful, murmured Mr. Snoop, we must have made some awful error. Are they deastralized? murmured Mrs. Buncomhurst. Not a doubt of it, said Mr. Snoop. And then another voice in the group was heard to say, We must hush it up. We can't have it known. On which a chorus of voices joined in, everybody urging that it must be hushed up. Couldn't you try to re-astralize them, said somebody to Mr. Snoop? No, no, said Mr. Snoop, still shaking. Better not to try. We must hush it up if we can. And the general assent to this sentiment showed that, after all, the principles of Bahi, or indifference to others, had taken a real root in the society. Hush it up, cried everybody, and there was a general move towards the hall. Good heavens, exclaimed Mrs. Buncomhurst, are raps. Deastralized, said the guests. There was a moment of further consternation as everybody gazed at the spot where the ill-fated pile of furs and raps had lain. Never mind, said everybody, let's go without them. Don't stay. Just think if the police should. And at the word police, all of a sudden there was heard in the street the clanging of a bell and the racing gallop of the horses of the police patrol wagon. The police, cried everybody, hush it up, hush it up. For, of course, the principles of Bahi are not known to the police. In another moment the doorbell of the house rang with a long and violent peal, and in a second, as it seemed, the whole hall was filled with bulky figures uniformed in blue. It's all right, Mrs. Rasselier-Brown, cried a loud, firm voice from the sidewalk. We have them both. Everything is here. We got them before they'd gone a block. But if you don't mind, the police must get a couple of names for witnesses in the warrant. It was the Philippine chauffeur, but he was no longer attired as such. He wore the uniform of an inspector of police, and there was the metal badge of the detective department now ostentatiously outside his coat. And beside him, one on each side of him, there stood the de-astralized forms of Yahibahe and Ram's bud. They wore long overcoats, doubtless the contents of the magic parcels, and the Philippine chauffeur had a grip of iron on the neck of each as they stood. Mr. Spud had lost his oriental hair, and the face of Mr. Yahibahe, perhaps in the struggle which had taken place, had been scraped white in patches. They were making no attempt to break away. Indeed, Mr. Spud, with that complete Bahi, or submission to fate, which is attained only by long services and state penitentiaries, was smiling and smoking a cigarette. We were waiting for them, explained a tall police officer to the two or three ladies who now gathered round him with a return of courage. They had the stuff in a hand cart, and were pushing it away. The chief caught them at the corner and rang the patrol from there. You'll find everything all right, I think, ladies. He added, as a burly assistant was seen carrying an armload of furs of the steps. Somehow many of the ladies realized at the moment what cheery, safe, reliable people policemen in blue are, and what a friendly, familiar shelter they offer against the wiles of Oriental occultism. Are they old criminals, someone asked? Yes, ma'am. They've worked the same thing in four cities already, and both of them have done time and lots of it. They've only been out six months. No need to worry over them, he concluded with a shrug of the shoulders. So the furs were restored and the gold and the jewels parceled out among the owners, and in due course Mr. Yahibah and Mr. Ram's spud were lifted up into the patrol wagon, where they seated themselves with the composure worthy of the best traditions of Jahambaba and Bahulapur. In fact, Mr. Spud was heard to address the police as boys, and to remark that they had got them good that time. So the seance ended and the guests vanished, and the Yahibah society terminated itself without even a vote of dissolution. And in all the later confidential discussions of the episode, only one point of mysticism remained. After they had time, really, to reflect on it, free from all danger of arrest, the members of the society realized that on one point the police were entirely off the truth of things. For Mr. Yahibah, whether a thief or not, and whether he came from the Orient or, as the police said, from Missouri, had actually succeeded in re-astralizing Buddha. Nor was anyone more emphatic on this point than Mrs. Rasselier Brown herself, for after all, she said, if it was not Buddha, who was it? And the question was never answered. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Linda Ferguson. Almost any day on Platoria Avenue, or thereabouts, you may see little Mr. Spilligans out walking with his four tall sons, who are practically as old as himself. To be exact, Mr. Spilligans is 24, and Bob, the oldest of the boys, must be at least twenty. Their exact ages are no longer known, because, by a dreadful accident, their mother forgot them. This was at a time when the boys were all at Mr. Wackham's Academy for Exceptional Youth in the foothills of Tennessee, and while their mother, Mrs. Everly, was spending the winter on the Riviera, and felt that, for their own sake, she must not allow herself to have the boys with her. But now, of course, since Mrs. Everly has remarried and become Mrs. Everly Spilligans, there is no need to keep them at Mr. Wackham's any longer. Mr. Spilligans is able to look after them. Mr. Spilligans generally wears a little top hat and an English morning coat. The boys are in eaten jackets and black trousers, which, at their mother's wish, are kept just a little too short for them. This is because Mrs. Everly Spilligans feels that the day will come, some day, say fifteen years hence, when the boys will no longer be children, and meantime it is so nice to feel that they are still mere boys. Bob is the oldest, but Sib, the youngest, is the tallest, whereas Willie, the third boy, is the dullest, although this has often been denied by those who claim that Gibb, the second boy, is just a trifle duller. Thus, at any rate, there is a certain equality in good fellowship all round. Mrs. Everly Spilligans is not to be seen walking with them. She is probably at the race-meat, being taken there by Captain Cormorant of the United States Navy, which Mr. Spilligans considers very handsome of him. Every now and then, the captain, being in the Navy, is compelled to be at sea for perhaps a whole afternoon or even several days, in which case Mrs. Everly Spilligans is very generally taken to the Hunt Club or the Country Club by Lieutenant Hawke, which Mr. Spilligans regards as awfully thoughtful of him. Or if Lieutenant Hawke is also out of town for the day, as he sometimes has to be, because he is in the United States Army, Mrs. Everly Spilligans is taken out by old Colonel Shake, who is in the State Militia, and who is at leisure all the time. During their walks on Platoria Avenue, one may hear the four boys addressing Mr. Spilligans as father and dad in deep bullfrog voices. Say, Dad, draws Bob, couldn't we all go to the ball game? No, say, Dad, says Gibb. Let's all go back to the house and play fifty cent pool in the billiard room. All right, boys, says Mr. Spilligans. And a few minutes later, one may see them all hustling up the steps of the Everly Spilligans mansion, quite eager at the prospect and all talking together. Now the whole of this daily panorama, to the eye that can read it, represents the outcome of the tangled love story of Mr. Spilligans, which culminated during the summer house party at Castel Casteggio, the woodland retreat of Mr. and Mrs. Newbury. But to understand the story, one must turn back a year or so to the time when Mr. Peter Spilligans used to walk on Platoria Avenue alone or sit in the Mausoleum Club listening to the advice of people who told him that he really ought to get married. In those days, the first thing that one noticed about Mr. Peter Spilligans was his exalted view of the other sex. Every time he passed a beautiful woman in the street, he said to himself, I say, even when he met a moderately beautiful one, he murmured, by Jove. When an Easter hat went sailing past or a group of summer parasols to talking on a leafy corner, Mr. Spilligans ejaculated, my word. At the opera and at Tango T's, his projecting blue eyes almost popped out of his head. Similarly, if he happened to be with one of his friends, he would murmur, I say, do look at that beautiful girl, or would exclaim, I say, don't look, but isn't that an awfully pretty girl across the street, or at the opera, old man, don't let her see looking, but do you see that lovely girl in the box opposite? One must add to this that Mr. Spilligans, in spite of his large and bulging blue eyes, enjoyed the heavenly gift of short sight. As a consequence, he lived in a world of amazingly beautiful women, and as his mind was focused in the same way as his eyes, he endowed them with all the virtues and graces which ought to adhere to fifty-dollar flowered hats and serice parasols with ivory handles. Nor to do him justice did Mr. Spilligans confine his attitude to his view of women alone. He brought it to bear on everything. Every time he went to the opera, he would come away enthusiastic, saying, by Jove, isn't it simply splendid? Of course, I haven't the ear to appreciate it. I'm not musical, you know, but even with the little that I know, it's great, and absolutely puts me to sleep. And of each new novel that he bought, he said, it's a perfectly wonderful book. Of course, I haven't the head to understand it, so I didn't finish it, but it's simply thrilling. Similarly with painting. It's one of the most marvellous pictures I ever saw, he would say. Of course, I have no eye for pictures, and I couldn't see anything in it, but it's wonderful. The career of Mr. Spilligans, up to the point of which we are speaking, had hitherto not been very satisfactory, or at least not from the point of view of Mr. Balder, who was his uncle and trustee. Mr. Balder's first idea had been to have Mr. Spilligans attend the university. Dr. Boomer, the President, had done his best to spread abroad the idea that a university education was perfectly suitable, even for the rich, that it didn't follow that because a man was a university graduate, he need either work or pursue his studies any further, that what the university aimed to do was merely to put a certain stamp upon a man. That was all, and this stamp, according to the tenor of the President's convocation addresses, was perfectly harmless. No one ought to be afraid of it. As a result, a great many of the very best young men in the city, who had no need for education at all, were beginning to attend college. It remarked, said Dr. Boomer, a revolution. Mr. Spilligans himself was fascinated with his studies. The professors seemed to him living wonders. By Jove, he said. The Professor of Mathematics is a marvel. You ought to see him explaining trigonometry on the blackboard. You can't understand a word of it. He hardly knew which of his studies he liked best. Physics, he said, is a wonderful study. I got five percent in it, but by Jove I had to work for it. I'd go in for it all together if they'd led me. But that was just the trouble. They wouldn't, and so in course of time Mr. Spilligans was compelled, for academic reasons, to abandon his life work. His last words about it were, Gad, a nearly pasting trigonometry, and it always said afterwards that he had got a tremendous lot out of the university. After that, as he had to leave the university, his trustee, Mr. Boulder, put Mr. Spilligans into business. It was, of course, his own business. One of the many enterprises for which Mr. Spilligans, ever since he was 21, had already been signing documents and counter-signing checks. So Mr. Spilligans found himself in a mahogany office selling wholesale oil, and he liked it. He said that business sharpened one up tremendously. I'm afraid, Mr. Spilligans, a caller in the mahogany office would say, that we can't meet you at five dollars. Four seventy is the best we can do at the present market. My dear chap, said Mr. Spilligans, that's all right. After all, thirty cents isn't much, eh, what? Dash it all, man, we won't fight about thirty cents. How much do you want? Well, at four seventy it will take twenty thousand barrels. By Jove, said Mr. Spilligans, twenty thousand barrels, Gad, you want a lot, don't you? Pretty big sale, eh, for a beginner like me. I guess Uncle will be tickled to death. So tickled was he, that after a few weeks of oil-selling, Mr. Boulder urged Mr. Spilligans to retire, and wrote off many thousands of dollars from the capital value of his estate. So after this there was only one thing for Mr. Spilligans to do, and everybody told him so, namely, to get married. Spilligans, said his friends at the club after they had taken all his loose money over the card table, you ought to get married. Think so, said Mr. Spilligans. Goodness knows he was willing enough. In fact, up to this point Mr. Spilligans' whole existence had been one long aspiring sigh directed towards the joys of matrimony. In his brief college days his timid glances had wandered by an irresistible attraction towards the seats on the right hand side of the classroom where the girls of the first year sat, with golden pigtails down their backs doing trigonometry. He would have married any of them, but when a girl can work out trigonometry at sight, what use can she possibly have for marriage? None. Mr. Spilligans knew this, and it kept him silent. And even when the most beautiful girl in the class married the demonstrator and thus terminated her studies in her second year, Spilligans realised that it was only because the man was, undeniably, a demonstrator and new things. Later on, when Spilligans went into business and into society, the same fate pursued him. He loved, for at least six months, Georgiana McTig, the niece of the Presbyterian Minister of St. Ocifs. He loved her so well that for her sake he temporarily abandoned his purest St. Assif's, which was Episcopalian, and listened to fourteen consecutive sermons on hell. But the affair got no further than that. Once or twice indeed, Spilligans walked home with Georgiana from church and talked about hell with her, and once her uncle asked him into the man's for cold supper after evening service, and they had a long talk about hell, all through the meal and upstairs in the sitting room afterwards. But somehow Spilligans could get no further with it. He read up all he could about hell, so as to be able to talk with Georgiana, but in the end it failed. A young minister, fresh from college, came and preached at St. Ocifs six special sermons on the absolute certainty of eternal punishment, and he married Ms. McTig as a result of it. And, meantime, Mr. Spilligans had got engaged, or practically so, to Adelina lightly, not that he had spoken to her, but he considered himself bound to her. For her sake he had given up hell altogether, and was dancing till two in the morning, and studying Action Bridge out of a book. For a time he felt so sure that she meant to have him, that he began bringing his greatest friend, Edward Ruff, of the college football team, of whom Spilligans was very proud, up to lightly's residence. He especially wanted Adelina and Edward to be great friends, so that Adelina and he might ask Edward up to the house after he was married. And they got to be such great friends, and so quickly, that they were married in New York that autumn. After which Spilligans used to be invited up to the house by Edward and Adelina. They both used to tell him how much they owed him, and they too used to join in the chorus and say, you know, Peter, you're awfully silly not to get married. Now all this had happened and finished at about the time when the Yahi Bahi Society ran its course. At its first meeting, Mr. Spilligans had met Dolphemia Russell Ye Brown. At the very side of her, he began reading up the life of Buddha and a translation of a panashad, so as to fit himself to aspire to live with her. Even when the society ended in disaster, Mr. Spilligans' love only burned the stronger. Consequently, as soon as he knew that Mr. and Mrs. Russell Ye Brown were going away for the summer, and that Dolphemia was to go to stay with the Newberries at Castel Casteglio, this latter place the summer retreat of the Newberries became the one spot on earth for Mr. Peter Spilligans. Naturally, therefore, Mr. Spilligans was presently transported to the seventh heaven when in due course of time he received a note which said, We shall be so pleased if you can come out and spend a week or two with us here. We will send the car down to the Thursday train to meet you. We live here in the simplest fashion possible. In fact, as Mr. Newberry says, we are just roughing it, but I am sure you don't mind for a change. Dolphemia is with us, but we are quite a small party. The note was signed, Margaret Newberry, and was written on heavy cream paper with a silver monogram such as people use when roughing it. The Newberries, like everybody else, went away from town in the summertime. Mr. Newberry, being still in business after a fashion, it would not have looked well for him to remain in town throughout the year. He would have created a bad impression on the market as to how much he was making. In fact, in the early summer, everybody went out of town. The few who ever revisited the place in August reported that they hadn't seen a soul on the street. It was a sort of longing for the simple life, for nature that came over everybody. Some people sought it at the seaside, when nature had thrown out her broad plank walks and her long piers and her vaudeville shows. Others sorted in the heart of the country, when nature had spread her oiled motor roads and her wayside ins. Others, like the Newberries, preferred to rough it in country residences of their own. Some of the people, as already said, went for business reasons to avoid the suspicion of having to work all the year round. Others went to Europe to avoid the reproach of living always in America. Others, perhaps most people, went for medical reasons, being sent away by their doctors. Not that they were ill, but the doctors of Platoria Avenue, such as Dr. Slider, always preferred to send all their patients out of town during the summer months. No well-to-do doctor cares to be bothered with them, and of course, patients, even when they are anxious to go anywhere on their own account, much prefer to be sent there by their doctor. My dear madam, Dr. Slider would say to a lady who, as he knew, was most anxious to go to Virginia, there's really nothing I can do for you. Here he spoke the truth. It's not a case of treatment. It's simply a matter of dropping everything and going away. Now, why don't you go for a month or two to some quiet place where you will simply do nothing? She never, as he knew, did anything anyway. What do you say to Hot Springs, Virginia? Absolute quiet, good golf, not a soul there, plenty of tennis. Or else he would say, my dear madam, you're simply worn out. Why don't you just drop everything and go to Canada? Perfectly quiet, not a soul there, and I believe nowadays quite fashionable. Thus, after all the patients had been sent away, Dr. Slider and his colleagues of Platoria Avenue managed to slip away themselves for a month or two, heading straight for Paris and Vienna. There they were able, so they said, to keep in touch with what Continental doctors were doing. They probably were. Now, it so happened that both the parents of Miss Dolphime Russell Ye Brown had been sent out of town in this fashion. Mrs. Russell Ye Brown's distressing experience with Yahi Bahi had left her in a condition in which she was utterly fit for nothing, except to go on a Mediterranean cruise with about 80 other people also fit for nothing. Mr. Russell Ye Brown himself, though never exactly an invalid, had confessed that after all the fuss of the Yahi Bahi business, he needed bracing up, needed putting into shape, and had put himself into Dr. Slider's hands. The doctor had examined him, questioned him searchingly as to what he drank, and ended by prescribing port wine to be taken firmly and unflinchingly during the evening, and for the daytime, at any moment of exhaustion, a light quartile such as rye whiskey or rum and vichy water, in addition to which Dr. Slider had recommended Mr. Russell Ye Brown to leave town. Why don't you go down to Nagahacket on the Atlantic, he said? Is that in Maine? said Mr. Russell Ye Brown in horror. Oh, dear me, no! answered the doctor reassuringly. It's in New Brunswick, Canada, excellent place, most liberal license laws, first-class cuisine and a bar in the hotel, no tourists, no golf, too cold to swim, just the place to enjoy oneself. So Mr. Russell Ye Brown had gone away also, and as a result, Dolphemia Russell Ye Brown, at the particular moment of which we speak, was declared by the Bedouin Society column of the Platorian Daily Dollar to be staying with Mr. and Mrs. Newbury at their charming retreat, Castel Casteglio. The Newberries belong to the class of people whose one aim in the summer is to lead the simple life. Mr. Newbury himself said that his one idea of a vacation was to get right out into the bush and put on old clothes and just eat when he felt like it. This was why he had built Castel Casteglio. It stood about forty miles from the city, out among the wooded hills on the shore of a little lake. Except for the fifteen or twenty residents like it that dotted the sides of the lake, it was entirely isolated. The only way to reach it was by the motor-road that wound its way among leafy hills from the railway station fifteen miles away. Every foot of the road was private property, as all nature ought to be. The whole country about Castel Casteglio was absolutely primeval, or at any rate, as primeval as scotch gardeners and French landscape artists could make it. The lake itself lay like a sparkling gem from nature's workshop, except that they had raised the level of it ten feet, stoned bank the sides, cleared out the brush, and put a motor-road round it. Beyond that it was pure nature. Castel Casteglio itself a beautiful house of white brick with sweeping piazzas and glittering conservatories, standing among great trees with rolling lawns broken with flower beds as the ground sloped to the lake, was perhaps the most beautiful house of all. At any rate it was an ideal spot to wear old clothes in, to dine early, at seven thirty, and except for tennis parties, motor-boat parties, lawn teas, and golf, to live absolutely to one's self. It should be explained that the house was not called Castel Casteglio because the newberries were Italian—they were not—nor because they owned estates in Italy. They didn't, nor had travelled there. They hadn't. Indeed, for a time they had thought of giving it a Welsh name, or a scotch. But the beautiful country residents of the Asterix-Thompsons had stood close by in the same primeval country, was already called Penigaride, and the wooden retreat of the hyphen Joneses just across the little lake was called Strathathon Narcly, and the charming chalet of the Wilson Smith was called Yodel Doodle, so it seemed fairer to select an Italian name. By Jove, Miss Furlong, how awfully good of you to come down! The little suburban train, two cars only, both first class, for the train went nowhere except out into the primeval wilderness, had drawn up at the diminutive roadside station. Mr. Spillagans had alighted, and there was Miss Philippa Furlong, sitting behind the chauffeur in the newberry's motor. She was looking as beautiful as only the younger sister of a high church Episcopalian Rector can look, dressed in white, the colour of saintliness, on a beautiful morning in July. There was no doubt about Philippa Furlong. Her beauty was of that peculiar and almost sacred kind found only in the immediate neighbourhood of the high church clergy. It was admitted by all who envied or admired her that she could enter a church more gracefully, move more swimmingly up the aisle, and pray better than any girl on Platoria Avenue. Mr. Spillagans, as he gazed at her in her white summer dress and wide picture hat, with her parasol nodding above her head, realised that after all, religion, as embodied in the younger sisters of the high church clergy, fills a great place in the world. By Jove, he repeated, how awfully good of you! Not a bit, said Philippa. Hop in. Dolphemia was coming, but she couldn't. Is that all you have with you? The last remark was ironical. It referred to the two quite large steamer trunks of Mr. Spillagans that were being loaded, together with his suitcase, tennis racket, and golf kit, on the four part of the motor. Mr. Spillagans, as a young man of social experience, had roughed it before. He knew what a lot of clothes one needs for it. So the motor sped away, and went bowling noiselessly over the oiled road, and turning corners where the green boughs of the great trees almost switched in their faces, and rounding and twisting among curves of the hills as it carried Spillagans and Philippa away from the lower domain, or ordinary fields and farms, up into the enchanted country of private property, and the magic castles of Casteglio and Penigaride. Mr. Spillagans must have assured Philippa at least a dozen times in starting off how awfully good it was of her to come down in the motor, and he was so pleased at her coming to meet him, that Philippa never even hinted that the truth was, that she had expected somebody else on the same train. For to a girl brought up in the principles of the High Church, the truth is a very sacred thing. She keeps it to herself. And naturally, with such a sympathetic listener, it was not long before Mr. Spillagans had begun to talk of Dolphemia and his hopes. I don't know whether she really cares for me or not, said Mr. Spillagans, but I have pretty good hope. The other day, or at least about two months ago, at one of the Yahi Bahi meetings, you were not in that, were you? he said, breaking off. Only just at the beginning, said Philippa, we went to Bermuda. Oh yes, I remember. Do you know, I thought it pretty rough at the end, especially on Ram's bud. I liked him. I sent him two pounds of tobacco to the penitentiary last week. You can get it to them, you know, if you know how. But what were you going to say? asked Philippa. Oh yes, said Mr. Spillagans, and he realized that he had actually drifted off the topic of Dolphemia, a thing that had never happened to him before. I was going to say that one of the meetings, you know, I asked her if I might call her Dolphemia. And what did she say to that? asked Philippa. She said she didn't care what I called her, so I think that looks pretty good, don't you? Orfully good, said Philippa. And a little after that I took her slippers home from the charity-ball at the Grand Palava. Archie Jones took her home herself in his car, but I took her slippers. She'd forgotten them. I thought that a pretty good sign, wasn't it? You wouldn't let a chap carry around your slippers unless you knew him pretty well, would you, Miss Philippa? Oh no, nobody would, said Philippa. This, of course, was the standing principal of the Anglican Church. And a little after that Dolphemia and Charlie Milston and I were walking to Mrs. Bunkamhurst's musical, and we'd only just started along the street when she stopped and sent me back for her music. Me, mind you, not Charlie. That seems to me awfully significant. It seems to speak volumes, said Philippa. Doesn't it? said Mr. Spillicons. You don't mind my telling you all about this, Miss Philippa? he added. Incidentally, Mr. Spillicons felt that it was right to call her Miss Philippa, because she had a sister who was really Miss Furlong, so it would have been quite wrong, as Mr. Spillicons realized, to have called Miss Philippa by her surname. In any case, the beauty of the morning was against it. I don't mind a bit, said Philippa. I think it's awfully nice of you to tell me about it. She didn't add that she knew all about it already. You see, said Mr. Spillicons, you're so awfully sympathetic. It makes it so easy to talk to you. With other girls, especially with clever ones, even with Dolphemia, I often feel a perfect jackass beside them, but I don't feel that way with you at all. Don't you really? said Philippa. But the honest admiration in Mr. Spillicons protruding blue eyes forbade a sarcastic answer. By Jove, said Mr. Spillicons presently, with complete irrelevance. I hope you don't mind my saying it, but you look awfully well in white. Stunning! He felt that a man who was a fiancéed, or practically so, was allowed the small liberty of paying honest compliments. Oh, this old thing! laughed Philippa with a contemptuous shake of address. But up here, you know, we just wear anything. She didn't say that this old thing was only two weeks old and had cost eighty dollars, or the equivalent of one person's pew rent at St. Assif's for six months. And after that, there had only time—so it seemed to Mr. Spillicons—for two or three remarks, and he had scarcely had leisure to reflect what a charming girl Philippa had grown to be, since she went to Bermuda, the effect no doubt of the climate of those fortunate islands, when quite suddenly they rounded a curve into an avenue of nodding trees, and there were the great lawn and wide piazzas and the conservatories of Castel Casteglio right in front of them. Here we are, said Philippa, and there's Mr. Newbury out on the lawn.