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ARCADIAN 
 ADVENTURES 
 
 WITH THE IDLE RICH 
 
 BY STEPHEN LE ACOCK 
 
 AUTHOR OF "BEHIND THE BEYOND" 
 "NONSENSE NOVELS," "LITERARY LAPSES," ETC. 
 
 NEW YORK : JOHN LANE COMPANY 
 LONDON : JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD 
 TORONTO : BELL & COCKBURN : MCMXIV 
 
 Uy^.u Z 
 

 COPYBIGHT, I914, BY 
 
 THE CROWELL PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY 
 
 JOHN LANE COMPANY \J 
 
 NOV -b 1914 
 
 :!.A:j882r)2 ^'' 
 
 <u^~ t- 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Chapter Page 
 
 I. A Little Dinner With Mr. Lucullus 
 
 Fyshe 9 
 
 II. The Wizard of Finance .... 48 
 
 III. The Arrested Philanthropy of Mr. Tom- 
 
 linson 77 
 
 IV. The Yahi-Bahi Oriental Society of Mrs. 
 
 Rasselyer-Brown 115 
 
 V. The Love Story of Mr. Peter Spillikins . 156 
 
 - VI. The Rival Churches of St. Asaph and St. 
 
 OsoPH 200 
 
 Vn. The Ministrations of the Rev. Utter- 
 must DUMFARTHING 234 
 
 Vin. The Great Fight for Clean Government 274 
 
ARCADIAN ADVENTURES 
 WITH THE IDLE RICH 
 
ARCADIAN ADVENTURES 
 WITH THE IDLE RICH 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 BEHIND THE BEYOND 
 NONSENSE NOVELS 
 LITERARY LAPSES 
 
 SUNSHINE SKETCHES 
 
Chapter I. — A Little Dinner with Mr, 
 JLucullus Fyshe 
 
 THE Mausoleum Club stands on the 
 quietest corner of the best residen- 
 tial street in the City. It is a Gre- 
 cian building of white stone. About 
 It are great elm trees with birds — the most ex- 
 pensive kind of birds — singing in the branches. 
 The street in the softer hours of the morning 
 has an almost reverential quiet. Great mo- 
 tors move drowsily along it, with solitary chauf- 
 feurs returning at 10.30 after conveying the 
 earlier of the millionaires to their down-town 
 offices. The sunlight flickers through the elm 
 trees, illuminating expensive nursemaids wheel- 
 ing valuable children in little perambulators. 
 Some of the children are worth millions and 
 millions. In Europe, no doubt, you may see in 
 the Unter den Linden avenue or the Champs 
 Elysees a little prince or princess go past with 
 a clattering mihtary gutrd to do honour. But 
 that is nothing. It is not half so Impressive, in 
 the real sense, as what you may observe every 
 morning on Plutoria Avenue beside the Mauso- 
 leum Club In the quietest part of the city. 
 9 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 Here you may see a little toddling princess in a 
 rabbit suit who owns fifty distilleries in her own 
 right. There, in a lacquered perambulator, 
 sails past a little hooded head that controls from 
 its cradle an entire New Jersey corporation. 
 The United States attorney-general is suing her 
 as she sits, in a vain attempt to make her dis- 
 solve herself into constituent companies. Near 
 by is a child of four, in a khaki suit, who repre- 
 sents the merger of two trunk line railways. 
 You may meet in the flickered sunlight any 
 number of little princes and princesses far more 
 real than the poor survivals of Europe. Incal- 
 culable infants wave their fifty-dollar ivory rat- 
 tles in an inarticulate greeting to one another. 
 A million dollars of preferred stock laughs 
 merrily in recognition of a majority control go- 
 ing past in a go-cart drawn by an imported 
 nurse. And through it all the sunlight falls 
 through the elm-trees, and the birds sing and 
 the motors hum, so that the whole world as 
 seen from the boulevard of Plutoria Avenue is 
 the very pleasantest place imaginable. 
 
 Just below Plutoria Avenue, and parallel 
 with it, the trees die out and the brick and stone 
 of the City begins in earnest. Even from the 
 Avenue you see the tops of the sky-scraping 
 buildings in the big commercial streets, and can 
 hear or almost hear the roar of the elevated 
 railway, earning dividends. And beyond that 
 
 10 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 again the City sinks lower, and is choked and 
 crowded with the tangled streets and little 
 houses of the slums. 
 
 In fact, if you were to mount to the roof of 
 the Mausoleum Club itself on Plutoria Avenue 
 you could almost see the slums from there. 
 But why should you? And on the other hand, 
 if you nev^er went up on the roof, but only dined 
 inside among the palm-trees, you would never 
 know that the slums existed — which is much 
 better. 
 
 There are broad steps leading up to the club, 
 so broad and so agreeably covered with mat- 
 ting that the physical exertion of lifting one- 
 self from one's motor to the door of the club 
 Is reduced to the smallest compass. The richer 
 members are not ashamed to take the steps one 
 at a time, first one foot and then the other; 
 and at tight money periods, when there is a 
 black cloud hanging over the Stock Exchange, 
 you may see each and every one of the mem- 
 bers of the Mausoleum Club dragging himself 
 up the steps after this fashion, his restless eyes 
 filled with the dumb pathos of a man wondering 
 where he can put his hand on half a million 
 dollars. 
 
 But at gayer times, when there are gala re- 
 ceptions at the club, its steps are all buried un- 
 der expensive carpet, soft as moss and covered 
 over with a long pavilion of red and white 
 II 
 
Arcadian Adventures tvith the Idle Rich 
 
 awning to catch the snowflakes; and beautiful 
 ladies are poured into the club by the motorful. 
 Then indeed it is turned into a veritable Arca- 
 dia; and for a beautiful pastoral scene, such as 
 would have gladdened the heart of a poet who 
 understood the cost of things, commend me to 
 the Mausoleum Club on just such an evening. 
 Its broad corridors and deep recesses are filled 
 with shepherdesses such as you never saw, 
 dressed in beautiful shimmering gowns, and 
 wearing feathers in their hair that droop off 
 sideways at every angle known to trigonometry. 
 And there are shepherds too with broad white 
 waistcoats and little patent leather shoes and 
 heavy faces and congested cheeks. And there 
 is dancing and conversation among the shep- 
 herds and shepherdesses, with such brilliant 
 flashes of wit and repartee about the rise in 
 Wabash and the fall in Cement that the soul of 
 Louis Quatorze would leap to hear it. And 
 later there is supper at little tables, when the 
 shepherds and shepherdesses consume preferred 
 stocks and gold-interest bonds in the shape of 
 chilled champagne and iced asparagus, and 
 great platefuls of dividends and special quar- 
 terly bonuses are carried to and fro in silver 
 dishes by Chinese philosophers dressed up to 
 look like waiters. 
 
 But on ordinary days there are no ladies in 
 the club, but only the shepherds. You may see 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 them sitting about in little groups of two and 
 three under the palm-trees drinking whiskey 
 and soda; though of course the more temper- 
 ate among them drink nothing but whiskey and 
 Lithia water, and those who have important 
 business to do in the afternoon limit themselves 
 to whiskey and Radnor, or whiskey and Magi 
 water. There are as many kinds of bubbling, 
 gurgling, mineral waters in the caverns of the 
 Mausoleum Club as ever sparkled from the 
 rocks of Homeric Greece. And when you have 
 once grown used to them, it is as impossible to 
 go back to plain water as it is to live again in 
 the forgotten house in a side street that you in- 
 habited long before you became a member. 
 
 Thus the members sit and talk in undertones 
 that float to the ear through the haze of Ha- 
 vana smoke. You may hear the older men ex- 
 plaining that the country is going to absolute 
 ruin, and the younger ones explaining that the 
 country is forging ahead as it never did before; 
 but chiefly they love to talk of great national 
 questions, such as the protective tariff and the 
 need of raising It, the sad decline of the moral- 
 ity of the working man, the spread of syndical- 
 ism and the lack of Christianity In the labour 
 class, and the awful growth of selfishness among 
 the mass of the people. 
 
 So they talk, except for two or three that 
 drop off to directors' meetings, till the after- 
 13 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 noon fades and darkens into evening, and the 
 noiseless Chinese philosophers turn on soft 
 lights here and there among the palm-trees. 
 Presently they dine at white tables glittering 
 with cut glass and green and yellow Rhine 
 wines ; and after dinner they sit again among 
 the palm-trees, half hidden in the blue smoke, 
 still talking of the tariff and the labour class 
 and trying to wash away the memory and the 
 sadness of it in floods of mineral waters. So 
 the evening passes into night, and one by one 
 the great motors come throbbing to the door, 
 and the Mausoleum Club empties and darkens 
 till the last member is borne away and the Ar- 
 cadian day ends in well-earned repose. 
 
 "I want you to give me your opinion very, 
 very frankly," said Mr. LucuUus Fyshe on one 
 side of the luncheon table to the Rev. Fareforth 
 Furlong on the other. 
 
 "By all means," said Mr. Furlong. 
 
 Mr. Fyshe poured out a wineglassful of soda 
 and handed it to the rector to drink. 
 
 "Now tell me very truthfully," he said, "is 
 there too much carbon in it?" 
 
 "By no means," said Mr. Furlong. 
 
 "And — quite frankly — not too much hydro- 
 gen?" 
 
 "Oh, decidedly not." 
 
 "And you would not say that the percentage 
 14 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 of sodium bicarbonate was too great for the 
 ordinary taste?" 
 
 "I certainly should not," said Mr. Furlong, 
 and in this he spoke the truth. 
 
 "Very good then," said Mr. Fyshe, "I shall 
 use it for the Duke of Dulham this afternoon." 
 
 He uttered the name of the Duke with that 
 quiet, democratic carelessness which meant that 
 he didn't care whether half a dozen other mem- 
 bers lunching at the club could hear or not. 
 After all, what was a duke to a man who was 
 president of the People's Traction and Subur- 
 ban Co. and the Republican Soda and Siphon 
 Co-operative, and chief director of the People's 
 District Loan and Savings? If a man with a 
 broad basis of popular support like that was 
 proposing to entertain a duke, surely there 
 could be no doubt about his motives? None 
 at all. 
 
 Naturally, too, if a man manufactures soda 
 himself, he gets a little over-sensitive about the 
 possibility of his guests noticing the existence 
 of too much carbon in it. 
 
 In fact, ever so many of the members of the 
 Mausoleum Club manufacture things, or cause 
 them to be manufactured, or — what is the same 
 thing — merge them when they are manufac- 
 tured. This gives them their peculiar chemical 
 attitude towards their food. One often sees a 
 member suddenly call the head waiter at break- 
 15 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 fast to tell him that there Is too much ammonia 
 in the bacon; and another one protest at the 
 amount of glucose in the olive oil; and another 
 that there is too high a percentage of nitrogen 
 in the anchovy. A man of distorted imagina- 
 tion might think this tasting of chemicals in the 
 food a sort of nemesis of fate upon the mem- 
 bers. But that would be very foolish, for in 
 every case the head waiter, who is the chief of 
 the Chinese philosophers mentioned above, says 
 that he'll see to it immediately and have the 
 percentage removed. And as for the members 
 themselves, they are about as much ashamed of 
 manufacturing and merging things as the Mar- 
 quis of Salisbury is ashamed of the founders of 
 the Cecil family. 
 
 What more natural therefore than that Mr. 
 Lucullus Fyshe, before serving the soda to the 
 Duke, should try it on somebody else? And 
 what better person could be found for this 
 than Mr. Furlong, the saintly young rector of 
 St. Asaph's, who had enjoyed the kind of ex- 
 pensive college education calculated to develop 
 all the faculties. Moreover, a rector of the 
 Anglican Church who has been in the foreign 
 mission field is the kind of person from whom 
 one can find out, more or less incidentally, how 
 one should address and converse with a duke, 
 and whether you call him, "Your Grace," or 
 "His Grace," or just "Grace," or "Duke," or 
 i6 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 what. All of which things would seem to a 
 director of the People's Bank and the presi- 
 dent of the Republican Soda Co. so trivial in 
 importance that he would scorn to ask about 
 them. 
 
 So that was why Mr. Fyshe had asked Mr. 
 Furlong to lunch with him, and to dine with him 
 later on in the same day at the Mausoleum 
 Club to meet the Duke of Dulham. And Mr. 
 Furlong, realising that a clergyman must be all 
 things to all men and not avoid a man merely 
 because he is a duke had accepted the invita- 
 tion to lunch, and had promised to come to 
 dinner, even though it meant postponing the 
 Willing Workers' Tango Class of St. Asaph's 
 until the following Friday. 
 
 Thus it had come about that Mr. Fyshe was 
 seated at lunch, consuming a cutlet and a pint 
 of Moselle in the plain, downright fashion of a 
 man so democratic that he is practically a revo- 
 lutionary socialist, and doesn't mind saying so; 
 and the young rector of St. Asaph's was sitting 
 opposite to him in a religious ecstasy over a 
 salmi of duck. 
 
 "The Duke arrived this morning, did he 
 not?" said Mr. Furlong. 
 
 "From New York," said Mr. Fyshe; "he is 
 staying at the Grand Palaver. I sent a telegram 
 through one of our New York directors of the 
 17 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 Traction, and his Grace has very kindly prom- 
 ised to come over here to dine." 
 
 "Is he here for pleasure?" asked the rector. 
 
 "I understand he is — " Mr. Fyshe was going 
 to say "about to invest a large part of his for- 
 tune in American securities," but he thought bet- 
 ter of it. Even with the clergy it is well to be 
 careful. So he substituted "is very much inter- 
 ested in studying American conditions." 
 
 "Does he stay long?" asked Mr. Furlong. 
 
 Had Mr. Lucullus Fyshe replied quite truth- 
 fully, he would have said, "Not if I can get his 
 money out of him quickly," but he merely an- 
 swered, "That I don't know." 
 
 "He will find much to interest him," went on 
 the rector in a musing tone. "The position of 
 the Anglican Church in America should afford 
 him an object of much consideration. I under- 
 stand," he added, feeling his way, "that his 
 Grace is a man of deep piety." 
 
 "Very deep," said Mr. Fyshe. 
 
 "And of great philanthropy?" 
 
 "Very great." 
 
 "And I presume," said the rector, taking a 
 devout sip of the unfinished soda, "that he is a 
 man of immense wealth?" 
 
 "I suppose so," answered Mr. Fyshe quite 
 carelessly; "all these fellows are." — Mr. Fyshe 
 generally referred to the British aristocracy as 
 "these fellows" — "Land, you know, feudal 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 estates ; sheer robbery, I call it. How the work- 
 ing class, the proletariat, stand for such tyranny 
 is more than I can see. Mark my words. Fur- 
 long, some day they'll rise and the whole thing 
 will come to a sudden end." 
 
 Mr. Fyshe was here launched upon his fa- 
 vourite topic; but he interrupted himself, just 
 for a moment, to speak to the waiter. 
 
 "What the devil do you mean," he said, "by 
 serving asparagus half cold?" 
 
 "Very sorry, sir," said the waiter, "shall I 
 take it out?" 
 
 "Take it out? Of course take it out, and see 
 that you don't serve me stuff of that sort again, 
 or I'll report you." 
 
 "Very sorry, sir," said the waiter. 
 
 Mr. Fyshe looked at the vanishing waiter 
 with contempt upon his features. "These pam- 
 pered fellows are getting unbearable," he said. 
 "By Gad, if I had my way I'd fire the whole lot 
 of them: lock 'em out, put 'em on the street. 
 That would teach 'em. Yes, Furlong, you'll 
 live to see it that the whole working class will 
 one day rise against the tyranny of the upper 
 classes, and society will be overwhelmed." 
 
 But if Mr. Fyshe had realised that at that 
 moment, in the kitchen of the Mausoleum Club, 
 in those sacred precincts themselves, there was 
 a walking delegate of the Waiters' Interna- 
 tional Union leaning against a sideboard, with 
 19 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 his bowler hat over one corner of his eye, and 
 talking to a little group of the Chinese philos- 
 ophers, he would have known that perhaps the 
 social catastrophe was a little nearer than even 
 he suspected. 
 
 "Are you inviting any one else to-night?" 
 asked Mr. Furlong. 
 
 "I should have liked to ask your father," 
 said Mr. Fyshe, "but unfortunately he is out 
 of town." 
 
 What Mr. Fyshe really meant was, "I am 
 extremely glad not to have to ask your father, 
 whom I would not introduce to the Duke on 
 any account." 
 
 Indeed, Mr. Furlong, senior, the father of 
 the rector of St. Asaph's, who was President 
 of the New Amalgamated Hymnal Corpora- 
 tion, and Director of the Hosanna Pipe and 
 Steam Organ, Limited, was entirely the wrong 
 man for Mr. Fyshe's present purpose. In fact, 
 he was reputed to be as smart a man as ever 
 sold a Bible. At this moment he was out of 
 town, busied in New York with the preparation 
 of the plates of his new Hindu Testament 
 (copyright) ; but had he learned that a duke 
 with several millions to Invest was about to 
 visit the city, he would not have left it for the 
 whole of Hindustan. 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 "I suppose you are asking Mr. Boulder," 
 said the rector. 
 
 "No," answered Mr. Fyshe very decidedly, 
 dismissing the name absolutely. 
 
 Indeed, there was even better reason not to 
 introduce Mr. Boulder to the Duke. Mr. Fyshe 
 had made that sort of mistake once, and never 
 Intended to make It again. It was only a year 
 ago, on the occasion of the visit of young Vis- 
 count FItzThistle to the Mausoleum Club, that 
 Mr. Fyshe had Introduced Mr. Boulder to the 
 Viscount and had suffered grievously thereby. 
 For Mr. Boulder had no sooner met the Vis- 
 count than he Invited him up to his hunting- 
 lodge in Wisconsin, and that was the last thing 
 known of the Investment of the FItzThistle 
 fortune. 
 
 This Mr. Boulder of whom Mr. Fyshe spoke 
 might indeed have been seen at that moment at 
 a further table of the lunch room eating a soli- 
 tary meal, an oldish man with a great frame 
 suggesting broken strength, with a white beard 
 and with falling under-eyelids that made him 
 look as If he were just about to cry. His eyes 
 were blue and far away, and his still, mourn- 
 ful face and his great bent shoulders seemed 
 to suggest all the power and mystery of high 
 finance. 
 
 Gloom indeed hung over him. For, when 
 one heard him talk of listed stocks and cumu- 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 lative dividends, there was as deep a tone in his 
 quiet voice as if he spoke of eternal punishment 
 and the wages of sin. 
 
 Under his great hands a chattering viscount, 
 or a sturdy duke, or a popinjay Italian marquis 
 was as nothing. 
 
 Mr. Boulder's methods with titled visitors 
 investing money in America were deep. He 
 never spoke to them of money, not a word. He 
 merely talked of the great American forest — 
 he had been born sixty-five years back, in a lum- 
 ber state — and, when he spoke of primeval 
 trees and the howl of the wolf at night among 
 the pines, there was the stamp of reality about 
 it that held the visitor spellbound; and when 
 he fell to talking of his hunting-lodge far away 
 in the Wisconsin timber, duke, earl, or baron 
 that had ever handled a double-barrelled ex- 
 press rifle listened and was lost. 
 
 "I have a little place," Mr. Boulder would 
 say in his deep tones that seemed almost like a 
 sob, "a sort of shooting box, I think you'd call 
 it, up in Wisconsin; just a plain place" — he 
 would add, almost crying — *'made of logs." 
 
 "Oh, really," the visitor would interject, 
 "made of logs. By Jove, how interesting!" 
 
 All titled people are fascinated at once with 
 logs, and Mr. Boulder knew it — at least sub- 
 consciously. 
 
 "Yes, logs," he would continue, still in deep 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 sorrow; "just the plain cedar, not squared, you 
 know, the old original timber; I had them cut 
 right out of the forest." 
 
 By this time the visitor's excitement was ob- 
 vious. "And is there game there?" he would 
 ask. 
 
 "We have the timber wolf," said Mr. Boul- 
 der, his voice half choking at the sadness of the 
 thing, "and of course the jack wolf and the 
 lynx." 
 
 "And are they ferocious?" 
 
 "Oh, extremely so — quite uncontrollable." 
 
 On which the titled visitor was all excitement 
 to start for Wisconsin at once, even before Mr. 
 Boulder's invitation was put in words. 
 
 And when he returned a week later, all 
 tanned and wearing bush-whackers' boots, and 
 covered with wolf bites, his whole available 
 fortune was so completely invested in Mr. Boul- 
 der's securities that you couldn't have shaken 
 twenty-five cents out of him upside down. 
 
 Yet the whole thing had been done merely 
 incidentally — round a big fire under the Wis- 
 consin timber, with a dead wolf or two lying in 
 the snow. 
 
 So no wonder that Mr. Fyshe did not pro- 
 pose to invite Mr. Boulder to his little dinner. 
 No, indeed. In fact, his one aim was to keep 
 Mr. Boulder and his log house hidden from 
 the Duke. 
 
 23 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 And equally no wonder that as soon as Mr. 
 Boulder read of the Duke's arrival in New- 
 York, and saw by the Commercial Echo and 
 Financial Undertone that he might come to the 
 City looking for investments, he telephoned at 
 once to his little place in Wisconsin — which 
 had, of course, a primeval telephone wire run- 
 ning to it — and told his steward to have the 
 place well aired and good fires lighted; and he 
 especially enjoined him to see if any of the 
 shanty men thereabouts could catch a wolf or 
 two, as he might need them. 
 
 "Is no one else coming then?" asked the 
 rector. 
 
 "Oh yes. President Boomer of the Univer- 
 sity. We shall be a party of four. I thought 
 the Duke might be interested in meeting 
 Boomer. He may care to hear something of 
 the archaeological remains of the continent." 
 
 If the Duke did so care, he certainly had a 
 splendid chance in meeting the gigantic Dr. 
 Boomer, the president of Plutoria University. 
 
 If he wanted to know anything of the exact 
 distinction between the Mexican Pueblo and the 
 Navajo tribal house, he had his opportunity 
 right now. If he was eager to hear a short 
 talk — say half an hour — on the relative an- 
 tiquity of the Neanderthal skull and the gravel 
 deposits of the Missouri, his chance had come. 
 24 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 He could learn as much about the stone age and 
 the bronze age, in America, from President 
 Boomer, as he could about the gold age and 
 the age of paper securities from Mr. Fyshe 
 and Mr. Boulder. 
 
 So what better man to meet a duke than an 
 archaeological president? 
 
 And if the Duke should feel inclined, as a 
 result of his American visit (for Dr. Boomer, 
 who knew everything, understood what the 
 Duke had come for) inclined, let us say, to 
 endow a chair in Primitive Anthropology, or 
 do any useful little thing of the sort, that was 
 only fair business all round; or if he even was 
 wilHng to give a moderate sum towards the 
 general fund of Plutoria University — enough, 
 let us say, to enable the president to dismiss 
 an old professor and hire a new one — that 
 surely was reasonable enough. 
 
 The president, therefore, had said yes to 
 Mr. Fyshe's invitation with alacrity, and had 
 taken a look through the list of his more in- 
 competent professors to refresh his memory. 
 
 The Duke of Dulham had landed in New 
 York five days before and had looked round 
 eagerly for a field of turnips, but hadn't seen 
 any. He had been driven up Fifth Avenue and 
 had kept his eyes open for potatoes, but there 
 were none. Nor had he seen any shorthorns in 
 
 25 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 Central Park, nor any Southdowns on Broad- 
 way. For the Duke, of course, like all dukes, 
 was agricultural from his Norfolk jacket to 
 his hobnailed boots. 
 
 At his restaurant he had cut a potato in two 
 and sent half of it to the head waiter to know 
 if it was Bermudian. It had all the look of an 
 early Bermudian, but the Duke feared from the 
 shading of it that it might be only a late Trini- 
 dad. And the head waiter sent it to the chef, 
 mistaking it for a complaint, and the chef sent 
 it back to the Duke with a message that it was 
 not a Bermudian but a Prince Edward Island. 
 And the Duke sent his compliments to the chef, 
 and the chef sent his compliments to the Duke. 
 And the Duke was so pleased at learning this 
 that he had a similar potato wrapped up for 
 him to take away, and tipped the head waiter 
 twenty-five cents, feeling that in an extravagant 
 country the only thing to do is to go the people 
 one better. So the Duke carried the potato 
 round for five days in New York and showed 
 It to everybody. But beyond this he got no 
 sign of agriculture out of the place at all. No 
 one who entertained him seemed to know what 
 the beef that they gave him had been fed on; 
 no one, even In what seemed the best society, 
 could talk rationally about preparing a hog 
 for the breakfast table. People seemed to eat 
 cauliflower without distinguishing the Denmark 
 26 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 variety from the Oldenburg, and few, If any, 
 knew Sileslan bacon even when they tasted it. 
 And when they took the Duke out twenty-five 
 miles into what was called the country, there 
 were still no turnips, but only real estate, and 
 railway embankments, and advertising signs; 
 so that altogether the obvious and visible de- 
 cline of American agriculture In what should 
 have been its leading centre saddened the 
 Duke's heart. Thus the Duke passed four 
 gloomy days. Agricuture vexed him, and still 
 more, of course, the money concerns which had 
 brought him to America. 
 
 Money is a troublesome thing. But it has 
 got to be thought about even by those who were 
 not brought up to it. If, on account of money 
 matters, one has been driven to come over to 
 America in the hope of borrowing money, the 
 awkwardness of how to go about it naturally 
 makes one gloomy and preoccupied. Had there 
 been broad fields of turnips to walk in and Hol- 
 steln cattle to punch in the ribs, one might have 
 managed to borrow it in the course of gentle- 
 manly intercourse, as from one cattle-man to 
 another. But in New York, amid piles of 
 masonry and roaring street-traflic and glitter- 
 ing lunches and palatial residences, one simply 
 couldn't do it. 
 
 Herein lay the truth about the Duke of Dul- 
 ham's visit and the error of Mr. Lucullus Fyshe, 
 27 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 Mr. Fyshe was thinking that the Duke had 
 come to lend money. In reality he had come 
 to borrow it. In fact, the Duke was reckoning 
 that by putting a second mortgage on Dulham 
 Towers for twenty thousand sterling, and by 
 selling his Scotch shooting and leasing his Irish 
 grazing and sub-letting his Welsh coal rent he 
 could raise altogether a hundred thousand 
 pounds. This, for a duke, is an enormous sum. 
 If he once had it he would be able to pay off 
 the first mortgage on Dulham Towers, buy in 
 the rights of the present tenant of the Scotch 
 shooting and the claim of the present mort- 
 gagee of the Irish grazing, and in fact be just 
 where he started. This is ducal finance, which 
 moves always in a circle. 
 
 In other words the Duke was really a poor 
 man — not poor in the American sense, where 
 poverty comes as a sudden blighting stringency, 
 taking the form of an inability to get hold of a 
 quarter of a million dollars, no matter how 
 badly one needs it, and where it passes like a 
 storm-cloud and is gone, but poor in that perma- 
 nent and distressing sense known only to the 
 British aristocracy. The Duke's case, of course, 
 was notorious, and Mr, Fyshe ought to have 
 known of it. The Duke was so poor that the 
 Duchess was compelled to spend three or four 
 months every year at a fashionable hotel on 
 the Riviera simply to save money, and his eldest 
 28 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 son, the young Marquis of Beldoodle, had to 
 put in most of his time shooting big game in 
 Uganda, with only twenty or twenty-five beat- 
 ers, and with so few carriers and couriers and 
 such a dearth of elephant men and hyena boys 
 that the thing was a perfect scandal. The Duke 
 indeed was so poor that a younger son, simply 
 to add his efforts to those of the rest, was com- 
 pelled to pass his days in mountain climbing in 
 the Himalayas, and the Duke's daughter was 
 obliged to pay long visits to minor German 
 princesses, putting up with all sorts of hardship. 
 And while the ducal family wandered about in 
 this way — cHmbing mountains, and shooting 
 hyenas, and saving money, the Duke's place or 
 seat, Dulham Towers, was practically shut up, 
 with no one in it but servants and housekeepers 
 and gamekeepers and tourists; and the picture 
 galleries, except for artists and visitors and vil- 
 lagers, were closed; and the town house, except 
 for the presence of servants and tradesmen and 
 secretaries, was absolutely shut. But the Duke 
 knew that rigid parsimony of this sort, if kept 
 up for a generation or two, will work wonders, 
 and this sustained him; and the Duchess knew 
 it, and it sustained her; in fact, all the ducal 
 family, knowing that it was only a matter of a 
 generation or two, took their misfortune very 
 cheerfully. 
 
 The only thing that bothered the Duke was 
 29 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 borrowing money. This was necessary from 
 time to time when loans or mortgages fell in, 
 but he hated it. It was beneath him. His an- 
 cestors had often taken money, but had never 
 borrowed it, and the Duke chafed under the 
 necessity. There was something about the 
 process that went against the grain. To sit 
 down in pleasant converse with a man, perhaps 
 almost a gentleman, and then lead up to the 
 subject and take his money from him, seemed to 
 the Duke's mind essentially low. He could 
 have understood knocking a man over the head 
 with a fire shovel and taking his money, but 
 not borrowing it. 
 
 So the Duke had come to America, where 
 borrowing is notoriously easy. Any member of 
 the Mausoleum Club, for instance, would bor- 
 row fifty cents to buy a cigar, or fifty thousand 
 dollars to buy a house, or five millions to buy a 
 railroad with complete indifference, and pay it 
 back, too, if he could, and think nothing of it. 
 In fact, ever so many of the Duke's friends 
 were known to have borrowed money in Amer- 
 ica with magical ease, pledging for it their seats 
 or their pictures, or one of their daughters — 
 anything. 
 
 So the Duke knew it must be easy. And yet, 
 
 incredible as it may seem, he had spent four 
 
 days in New York, entertained everywhere, and 
 
 made much of, and hadn't borrowed a cent. He 
 
 30 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 had been asked to lunch In a Riverside palace, 
 and, fool that he was, had come away without 
 so much as a dollar to show for it. He had 
 been asked to a country house on the Hudson, 
 and, like an idiot — he admitted it himself — 
 hadn't asked his host for as much as his train 
 fare. He had been driven twice round Central 
 Park In a motor and had been taken tamely 
 back to his hotel not a dollar the richer. The 
 thing was childish, and he knew it. But to 
 save his life the Duke didn't know how to be- 
 gin. None of the things that he was able to 
 talk about seemed to have the remotest connec- 
 tion with the subject of money. The Duke was 
 able to converse reasonably well over such top- 
 ics as the approaching downfall of England 
 (they had talked of it at Dulham Towers for 
 sixty years), or over the duty of England to- 
 ward China, or the duty of England to Persia, 
 or its duty to aid the Young Turk Movement, 
 and Its duty to check the Old Servia agitation. 
 The Duke became so interested in these topics 
 and in explaining that while he had never been 
 a Little Englander he had always been a Big 
 : Turk, and that he stood for a Small Bulgaria 
 ' and a Restricted Austria, that he got further 
 and further away from the topic of money, 
 which was what he really wanted to come to; 
 1 and the Duke rose from his conversations with 
 j a look of such obvious distress on his face that 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 everybody realised that his anxiety about Eng- 
 land was killing him. 
 
 And then suddenly light had come. It was 
 on his fourth day in New York that he unex- 
 pectedly ran into the Viscount Belstairs (they 
 had been together as young men in Nigeria, 
 and as middle-aged men in St. Petersburg), 
 and Belstairs, who was in abundant spirits and 
 who was returning to England on the Glori- 
 tania at noon the next day, explained to the 
 Duke that he had just borrowed fifty thousand 
 pounds, on security that wouldn't be worth a 
 halfpenny in England. 
 
 And the Duke said with a sigh, "How the 
 deuce do you do it, Belstairs?" 
 
 "Do what?" 
 
 "Borrow it," said the Duke. "How do you 
 manage to get people to talk about it? Here I 
 am wanting to borrow a hundred thousand, and 
 I'm hanged if I can even find an opening." 
 
 At which the Viscount had said, "Pooh, 
 pooh! you don't need any opening. Just bor- 
 row it straight out — ask for it across a dinner 
 table, just as you'd ask for a match; they think 
 nothing of it here." 
 
 "Across the dinner table?" repeated the 
 Duke, who was a literal man. 
 
 "Certainly," said the Viscount. "Not too 
 soon, you know — say after a second glass of 
 wine. I assure you it's absolutely nothing." 
 i2 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 And it was just at that moment that a tele- 
 gram was handed to the Duke from Mr. Lucul- 
 lus Fyshe, praying him, as he was reported to 
 be visiting the next day the City where the 
 Mausoleum Club stands, to make acquaintance 
 with him by dining at that institution. 
 
 And the Duke, being as I say a literal man, 
 decided that just as soon as Mr. Fyshe should 
 give him a second glass of wine, that second 
 glass should cost Mr. Fyshe a hundred thousand 
 pounds sterling. 
 
 And oddly enough, at about the same mo- 
 ment, Mr. Fyshe was calculating that provided 
 he could make the Duke drink a second glass of 
 the Mausoleum champagne, that glass would 
 cost the Duke about five million dollars. 
 
 So the very morning after that the Duke had 
 arrived on the New York express in the City; 
 and being an ordinary, democratic, commercial 
 sort of place, absorbed in its own affairs, it 
 made no fuss over him whatever. The morn- 
 ing edition of the Pliitopian Citizen simply said, 
 "We understand that the Duke of Dulham ar- 
 rives at the Grand Palaver this morning," after 
 which it traced the Duke's pedigree back to 
 Jock of Ealing in the twelfth century and let 
 the matter go at that; and the noon edition of 
 the People's Advocate merely wrote, "We learn 
 that Duke Dulham is in town. He is a relation 
 
 22, 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 of Jack Ealing." But the Commercial Echo 
 and Financial Undertone, appearing at four 
 o'clock, printed in its stock market columns the 
 announcement : "We understand that the Duke 
 of Dulham, who arrives in town to-day, is pro- 
 posing to invest a large sum of money in Ameri- 
 can Industrials." 
 
 And of course that announcement reached 
 every member of the Mausoleum Club within 
 twenty minutes. 
 
 The Duke of Dulham entered the Mauso- 
 leum Club that evening at exactly seven of the 
 clock. He was a short, thick man with a shaven 
 face, red as a brick, and grizzled hair, and 
 from the look of him he could have got a job 
 at sight in any lumber camp in Wisconsin. He 
 wore a dinner jacket, just like an ordinary per- 
 son, but even without his Norfolk coat and his 
 hobnailed boots there was something in the way 
 in which he walked up the long main hall of the 
 Mausoleum Club that every imported waiter 
 in the place recognised in an instant. 
 
 The Duke cast his eye about the club and 
 approved of it. It seemed to him a modest, 
 quiet place, very different from the staring os- 
 tentation that one sees too often in a German 
 hof or an Italian palazzo. He liked it. 
 
 Mr. Fyshe and Mr. Furlong were standing 
 in a deep alcove or bay where there was a fire 
 
 34 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 and india-rubber trees and pictures with shaded 
 lights and a whiskey-and-soda table. There 
 the Duke joined them. Mr. Fyshe he had met 
 already that afternoon at the Palaver, and he 
 called him "Fyshe" as if he had known him 
 forever; and indeed, after a few minutes he 
 called the rector of St. Asaph's simply "Fur- 
 long," for he had been familiar with the Angli- 
 can clergy in so many parts of the world that 
 he knew that to attribute any peculiar godliness 
 to them, socially, was the worst possible taste. 
 
 "By Jove," said the Duke, turning to tap the 
 leaf of a rubber-tree with his finger, "that fel- 
 low's a Nigerian, isn't he?" 
 
 "I hardly know," said Mr. Fyshe, "I imagine 
 so"; and he added, "You've been in Nigeria, 
 Duke?" 
 
 "Oh, some years ago," said the Duke, "after 
 big game, you know — fine place for it." 
 
 "Did you get any?" asked Mr. Fyshe. 
 
 "Not much," said the Duke; "a hippo or 
 two." 
 
 "Ah," said Mr. Fyshe. 
 
 "And, of course, now and then a giro," the 
 Duke went on, and added, "My sister was luck- 
 ier, though; she potted a rhino one day, straight 
 out of a doolie; I call that rather good." 
 
 Mr. Fyshe called it that too. 
 
 "Ah, now here's a good thing," the Duke 
 went on, looking at a picture. He carried in his 
 35 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 waist-coat pocket an eyeglass that he used for 
 pictures and for Tamworth hogs, and he put it 
 to his eye with one hand, keeping the other in 
 the left pocket of his jacket; "and this — this is 
 a very good thing," 
 
 "I believe so," said Mr. Fyshe. 
 
 "You really have some awfully good things 
 here," continued the Duke. He had seen far 
 too many pictures in too many places ever to 
 speak of "values" or "compositions" or any- 
 thing of that sort. The Duke merely looked at 
 a picture and said, "Now here's a good thing," 
 or "Ah! here now is a very good thing," or, 
 "I say, here's a really good thing." 
 
 No one could get past this sort of criticism. 
 The Duke had long since found it bullet-proof. 
 
 "They showed me some rather good things 
 In New York," he went on, "but really the 
 things you have here seem to be awfully good 
 things." 
 
 Indeed, the Duke was truly pleased with the 
 pictures, for something In their composition, 
 or else In the soft, expensive light that shone on 
 them, enabled him to see in the distant back- 
 ground of each a hundred thousand sterling 
 And that is a very beautiful picture indeed. 
 
 "When you come to our side of the water, 
 Fyshe," said the Duke, "I must show you my 
 Botticelli." 
 
 Had Mr. Fyshe, who knew nothing of art, 
 36 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 expressed his real thought, he would have said, 
 "Show me your which ?" But he only answered, 
 "I shall be delighted to see it." 
 
 In any case there was no time to say more, 
 for at this moment the portly figure and the 
 great face of Dr. Boomer, president of Plutoria 
 University, loomed upon them. And with him 
 came a great burst of conversation that blew 
 all previous topics into fragments. He was in- 
 troduced to the Duke, and shook hands with 
 Mr. Furlong, and talked to both of them, and 
 named the kind of cocktail that he wanted, all 
 in one breath, and in the very next he was ask- 
 ing the Duke about the Babylonian hieroglyphic 
 bricks that his grandfather, the thirteenth 
 Duke, had brought home from the Euphrates, 
 and which every archaeologist knew were pre- 
 served in the Duke's library at Dulham Towers. 
 And though the Duke hadn't known about the 
 bricks himself, he assured Dr. Boomer that his 
 grandfather had collected some really good 
 things, quite remarkable. 
 
 And the Duke, having met a man who knew 
 about his grandfather, felt in his own element. 
 In fact, he was so delighted with Dr. Boomer 
 and the Nigerian rubber-tree and the shaded 
 pictures and thq charm of the whole place and 
 the certainty that half a million dollars was 
 easily findable in it, that he put his eye-glass 
 back in his pocket and said, 
 37 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 "A charming club you have here, really most 
 charming." 
 
 "Yes," said Mr. Fyshe, in a casual tone, "a 
 comfortable place, we like to think." 
 
 But if he could have seen what was happen- 
 ing below in the kitchens of the Mausoleum 
 Club, Mr. Fyshe would have realised that just 
 then it was turning into a most uncomfortable 
 place. 
 
 For the walking delegate with his hat on side- 
 ways, who had haunted it all day, was busy now 
 among the assembled Chinese philosophers, 
 writing down names and distributing strikers' 
 cards of the International Union and assuring 
 them that the "boys" of the Grand Palaver had 
 all walked out at seven, and that all the "boys" 
 of the Commercial and the Union and of every 
 restaurant in town were out an hour ago. 
 
 And the philosophers were taking their cards 
 and hanging up their waiters' coats and putting 
 on shabby jackets and bowler hats, worn side- 
 ways, and changing themselves by a wonderful 
 transformation from respectable Chinese to 
 slouching loafers of the lowest type. 
 
 But Mr. Fyshe, being in an alcove and not in 
 the kitchens, saw nothing of these things. Not 
 even when the head waiter, shaking with ap- 
 prehension, appeared with cocktails made by 
 himselt, in glasses that he himself had had to 
 wipe, did Mr. Fyshe, absorbed in the easy 
 38 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 urbanity of the Duke, notice that anything was 
 amiss. 
 
 Neither did his guests. For Dr. Boomer, 
 having discovered that the Duke had visited 
 Nigeria, was asking him his opinion of the 
 famous Bimbaweh remains of the lower Niger. 
 The Duke confessed that he really hadn't no- 
 ticed them, and the Doctor assured him that 
 Strabo had indubitably mentioned them (he 
 would show the Duke the very passage), and 
 that they apparently lay, if his memory served 
 him, about half-way between Oohat and Ohat; 
 whether above Oohat and below Ohat or above 
 Ohat and below Oohat he would not care to 
 say for a certainty; for that the Duke must wait 
 till the president had time to consult his hbrary. 
 
 And the Duke was fascinated forthwith with 
 the president's knowledge of Nigerian geog- 
 raphy, and explained that he had once actually 
 descended from below Tlm.buctoo to Oohat in 
 a doolie manned only by four swats. 
 
 So presently, having drunk the cocktails, the 
 party moved solemnly in a body from the al- 
 cove towards the private dining-room upstairs, 
 still busily talking of the Bimbaweh remains, 
 and the swats, and whether the doolie was, or 
 was not, the original goatskin boat of the book 
 of Genesis. 
 
 And when they entered the private dining- 
 room with its snow-white table and cut glass 
 39 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 and flowers (as arranged by a retreating phil- 
 osopher now heading towards the Gaiety The- 
 atre with his hat over his eyes) , the Duke again 
 exclaimed, 
 
 "Really, you have a most comfortable club — 
 delightful." 
 
 So they sat down to dinner, over which Mr. 
 Furlong offered up a grace as short as any that 
 are known even to the Anglican clergy. And 
 the head waiter, now in deep distress — for he 
 had been sending out telephone messages in 
 vain to the Grand Palaver and the Continental, 
 like the captain of a sinking ship — served oys- 
 ters that he had opened himself and poured 
 Rhine wine with a trembling hand. For he 
 knew that unless by magic a new chef and a 
 waiter or two could be got from the Palaver, 
 all hope was lost. 
 
 But the guests still knew nothing of his fears. 
 Dr. Boomer was eating his oysters as a Niger- 
 ian hippo might eat up the crew of a doolie, in 
 great mouthfuls, and commenting as he did so 
 upon the luxuriousness of modern life. 
 
 And in the pause that followed the oysters 
 he illustrated foi the Duke with two pieces of 
 bread the essential difference in structure be- 
 tween the Mexican pueblo and the tribal house 
 of the Navajos, and lest the Duke should con- 
 found either or both of them with the adobe 
 40 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 hut of the Bimbaweh tribes he showed the dif- 
 ference at once with a couple of olives. 
 
 By this time, of course, the delay in the ser- 
 vice was getting noticeable. Mr. Fyshe was 
 directing angry glances towards the door, look- 
 ing for the reappearance of the waiter, and 
 growHng an apology to his guests. But the 
 president waved the apology aside. 
 
 "In my college days," he said, "I should 
 have considered a plate of oysters an ample 
 meal. I should have asked for nothing more. 
 We eat," he said, "too much." 
 
 This, of course, started Mr. Fyshe on his 
 favourite topic, "Luxury!" he exclaimed, "I 
 should think so! It is the curse of the age. 
 The appalling growth of luxury, the piling up 
 of money, the ease with which huge fortunes 
 are made" (Good! thought the Duke, here we 
 are comJng to it), "these are the things that 
 are going to ruin us. Mark my words, the 
 whole thing is bound to end in a tremendous 
 crash. I don't mind telling you, Duke — my 
 friends here, I am sure, know it already — that 
 I am more or less a revolutionary socialist. I 
 am absolutely convinced, sir, that our modern 
 civilisation will end in a great social catastrophe. 
 Mark what I say" — and here Mr. Fyshe be- 
 came exceedingly impressive — "a great social 
 catastrophe. Some of us may not live to see it, 
 41 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 perhaps; but you, for Instance, Furlong, are a 
 younger man; you certainly will." 
 
 But here Mr. Fyshe was understating the 
 case. They were all going to live to see it, 
 right on the spot. 
 
 For it was just at this moment, when Mr. 
 Fyshe was talking of the social catastrophe and 
 explaining with flashing eyes that it was bound 
 to come, that it came; and when it came it lit, 
 of all places in the world, right there in the 
 private dining-room of the Mausoleum Club. 
 
 For the gloomy head waiter re-entered and 
 leaned over the back of Mr, Fyshe's chair and 
 whispered to him. 
 
 "Eh? what?" said Mr. Fyshe. 
 
 The head waiter, his features stricken with 
 Inward agony, whispered again. » 
 
 "The infernal, damn scoundrels!" said Mr. 
 Fyshe, starting back in his chair. "On strike: 
 In this club! It's an outrage!" 
 
 "I'm very sorry, sir. I didn't like to tell you, 
 sir. I'd hoped I might have got help from the 
 outside, but it seems, sir, the hotels are all the 
 same way." 
 
 "Do you mean to say," said Mr. Fyshe, 
 speaking very slowly, "that there is no dinner?" 
 
 "I'm sorry, sir," moaned the waiter. "It 
 appears the chef hadn't even cooked It. Be- 
 yond what's on the table, sir, there's nothing." 
 
 The social catastrophe had come. 
 42 
 
Arcadian Adventures tcith the Idle Rich 
 
 Mr. Fyshe sat silent with his fist clenched. 
 Dr. Boomer, with his great face transfixed, 
 stared at the empty oyster-shells, thinking per- 
 haps of his college days. The Duke, with his 
 hundred thousand dashed from his lips in the 
 second cup of champagne that was never served, 
 thought of his politeness first and murmured 
 something about taking them to his hotel. 
 
 But there is no need to follow the unhappy 
 details of the unended dinner. Mr. Fyshe's 
 one idea was to be gone: he was too true an 
 artist to think that finance could be carried on 
 over the table-cloth of a second-rate restaurant, 
 or on an empty stomach in a deserted club. The 
 thing must be done over again; he must wait his 
 time and begin anew. 
 
 And so it came about that the little dinner- 
 party of Mr. Lucullus Fyshe dissolved itself 
 into its constituent elements, like broken pieces 
 of society in the great cataclysm portrayed by 
 Mr. Fyshe himself. 
 
 The Duke was bowled home in a snorting 
 motor to the brilliant rotunda of the Grand 
 Palaver, itself waiterless and supperless. 
 
 The rector of St. Asaph's wandered off home 
 to his rectory, musing upon the contents of its 
 pantry. 
 
 And Mr. Fyshe and the gigantic Doctor 
 walked side by side homewards along Plutoria 
 Avenue, beneath the elm trees. 
 43 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 Nor had they gone any great distance before 
 Dr. Boomer fell to talking of the Duke. 
 
 "A charming man," he said, "delightful. I 
 feel extremely sorry for him." 
 
 "No worse off, I presume, than any of the 
 rest of us," growled Mr. Fyshe, who was feel- 
 ing in the sourest of democratic moods; "a man 
 doesn't need to be a duke to have a stomach." 
 
 "Oh, pooh, pooh!" said the president, wav- 
 ing the topic aside with his hand in the air; "I 
 don't refer to that. Oh, not at all. I was 
 thinking of his financial position — an ancient 
 family like the Dulhams; it seems too bad al- 
 together." 
 
 For, of course, to an achseologist like Dr. 
 Boomer an intimate acquaintance with the pedi- 
 gree and fortunes of the greater ducal families 
 from Jock of Ealing downwards was nothing. 
 It went without saying. As beside the Neander- 
 thal skull and the Bimbaweh ruins It didn't 
 count. 
 
 Mr. Fyshe stopped absolutely still in his 
 tracks. "His financial position?" he questioned, 
 quick as a lynx. 
 
 "Certainly," said Dr. Boomer; "I had taken 
 it for granted that you knew. The Dulham 
 family are practically ruined. The Duke, I 
 imagine, is under the necessity of mortgaging 
 his estates; indeed, I should suppose he Is here 
 in America to raise money." 
 44 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 Mr. Fyshe was a man of lightning action. 
 Any man accustomed to the Stock Exchange 
 learns to think quickly. 
 
 "One moment!" he cried; "I see we are right 
 at your door. May I just run in and use your 
 telephone? I want to call up Boulder for a 
 moment." 
 
 Two minutes later Mr. Fyshe was saying into 
 the telephone, "Oh, is that you, Boulder? I 
 was looking for you in vain to-day — wanted 
 you to meet the Duke of Dulham, who came in 
 quite unexpectedly from New York; felt sure 
 you'd like to meet him. Wanted you at the 
 club for dinner, and now it turns out that the 
 club's all upset — waiters' strike or some such 
 rascality — and the Palaver, so I hear, is in the 
 same fix. Could you possibly " 
 
 Here Mr. Fyshe paused, listening a moment 
 and then went on, "Yes, yes; an excellent idea 
 — most kind of you. Pray do send your motor 
 to the hotel and give the Duke a bite of dinner. 
 No, I won't join you, thanks. Most kind. 
 Good-night " 
 
 And within a few minutes more the motor of 
 Mr. Boulder was rolling down from Plutoria 
 Avenue to the Grand Palaver Hotel. 
 
 What passed between Mr. Boulder and the 
 Duke that evening is not known. That they 
 must have proved congenial company to one 
 45 
 
Arcadian Adventures tvith the Idle Rich 
 
 another there is no doubt. In fact, It would 
 seem that, dissimilar as they were in many 
 ways, they found a common bond of interest in 
 sport. And it is quite likely that Mr. Boulder 
 may have mentioned that he had a hunting- 
 lodge — what the Duke would call a shooting- 
 box — in Wisconsin woods, and that it was made 
 of logs, rough cedar logs not squared, and that 
 the timber wolves and others which surrounded 
 it were of a ferocity without parallel. 
 
 Those who know the Duke best could meas- 
 ure the effect of that upon his temperament. 
 
 At any rate, it is certain that Mr. Lucullus 
 Fyshe at his breakfast-table next morning 
 chuckled with suppressed joy to read in the 
 Pliitopian Citizen the item : 
 
 "We learn that the Duke of Dulham, who 
 has been paying a brief visit to the City, leaves 
 this morning with Mr. Asmodeus Boulder for 
 the Wisconsin woods. We understand that 
 Mr. Boulder intends to show his guest, v/ho is 
 an ardent sportsman, something of the Ameri- 
 can wolf." 
 
 And so the Duke went whirling westwards 
 and northwards with Mr. Boulder in the draw- 
 ing-room end of a Pullman car, that was all lit- 
 tered up with double-barrelled express rifles 
 and leather game bags, and lynx catchers and 
 wolf traps and Heaven knows what. And the 
 46 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 Duke had on his very roughest sporting suit, 
 made, apparently, of alligator hide; and as he 
 sat there with a rifle across his knees, while the 
 train swept onward through open fields and 
 broken woods, the real country at last, towards 
 the Wisconsin forest, there v/as such a light of 
 genial happiness in his face that had not been 
 seen there since he had been marooned in the 
 mud jungles of Upper Burmah. 
 
 And opposite, Mr. Boulder looked at him 
 with fixed, silent eyes, and murmured from time 
 to time some renewed information of the feroc- 
 ity of the timber wolf. 
 
 But of wolves other than the timber wolf, 
 and fiercer still, into whose hands the Duke 
 might fall in America, he spoke never a word. 
 
 Nor is it known in the record what happened 
 in Wisconsin, and to the Mausoleum Club the 
 Duke and his visit remained only as a passing 
 and a pleasant memory. 
 
 47 
 
Chapter II, — The Wizard of Finance 
 
 DOWN in the City itself, just below the 
 residential street where the Mauso- 
 leum Club is situated, there stands 
 overlooking Central Square the 
 Grand Palaver Hotel. It is, in truth, at no 
 great distance from the club, not half a minute 
 in one's motor. In fact, one could almost 
 walk it. 
 
 But in Central Square the quiet of Plutoria 
 Avenue is exchanged for another atmosphere. 
 There are fountains that splash unendingly and 
 mingle their music with the sound of the motor- 
 horns and the clatter of the cabs. There are 
 real trees and little green benches, with people 
 reading yesterday's newspaper, and grass cut 
 into plots among the asphalt. There is at one 
 end a statue of the first governor of the state, 
 life-size, cut in stone; and at the other a statue 
 of the last, ever so much larger than life, cast 
 in bronze. And all the people who pass by 
 pause and look at this statue and point at it with 
 walking sticks, because it is of extraordinary 
 interest; in fact, it is an example of the new 
 electro-chemical process of casting by which you 
 a8 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 can cast a state governor any size you like, no 
 matter what you start from. Those who know 
 about such things explain what an interesting 
 contrast the two statues are; for in the case of 
 the governor of a hundred years ago one had to 
 start from plain, rough material and work pa- 
 tiently for years to get the effect, whereas now 
 the material doesn't matter at all, and with any 
 sort of scrap, treated in the gas furnace under 
 tremendous pressure, one may make a figure of 
 colossal size like the one in Central Square. 
 
 So naturally Central Square with Its trees 
 and Its fountains and its statues is one of the 
 places of chief Interest In the City. But espe- 
 cially because there stands along one side of It 
 the vast pile of the Grand Palaver Hotel. It 
 rises fifteen stories high and fills all one side 
 of the square. It has, overlooking the trees in 
 the square, twelve hundred rooms with three 
 thousand windows, and it would have held all 
 George Washington's army. Even people In 
 other cities who have never seen it know it well 
 from its advertising; "the most homelike hotel 
 In America," so it is labelled in all the maga- 
 zines, the expensive ones, on the continent. In 
 fact, the aim of the company that owns the 
 Grand Palaver — and they do not attempt to 
 conceal it — is to make the place as much a home 
 as possible. Therein lies its charm. It is a 
 home. You realise that when you look up at 
 49 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 the Grand Palaver from the square at night 
 when the twelve hundred guests have turned 
 on the lights of the three thousand windows. 
 You realise it at theatre time when the great 
 strings of motors come sweeping to the doors 
 of the Palaver, to carry the twelve hundred 
 guests to twelve hundred seats In the theatres 
 at four dollars a seat. But most of all do you 
 appreciate the character of the Grand Palaver 
 when you step into Its rotunda. Aladdin's 
 enchanted palace was nothing to It. It has a 
 vast ceiling with a hundred glittering lights, and 
 within It night and day Is a surging crowd that 
 is never still and a babel of voices that Is never 
 hushed, and over all there hangs an enchanted 
 cloud of thin blue tobacco smoke such as might 
 enshroud the conjured vision of a magician of 
 Bagdad or Damascus. 
 
 In and through the rotunda there are palm- 
 trees to rest the eye and rubber-trees in boxes 
 to soothe the mind, and there are great leather 
 lounges and deep arm-chairs, and here and 
 there huge brass ash-bowls as big as Etruscan 
 tear-jugs. Along one side is a counter with 
 grated wickets like a bank, and behind it are 
 five clerks with flattened hair and tall collars, 
 dressed In long black frock-coats all day like 
 members of a legislature. They have great 
 books in front of them In which they study un- 
 ceasingly, and at their lightest thought they 
 so 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 strike a bell with the open palm of their hand, 
 and at the sound of it a page boy in a monkey 
 suit, with G. P. stamped all over him in brass, 
 bounds to the desk and off again, shouting a 
 call into the unheeding crowd vociferously. The 
 sound of it fills for a moment the great space 
 of the rotunda ; it echoes down the corridors to 
 the side; it floats, softly melodious, through the 
 palm-trees of the ladies' palm room; it is heard, 
 fainter and fainter, in the distant grill, and in 
 the depths of the barber shop below the level 
 of the street the barber arrests a moment the 
 drowsy hum of his shampoo brushes to catch 
 the sound — as might a miner in the sunken gal- 
 leries of a coastal mine cease In his toil a mo- 
 ment to hear the distant murmur of the sea. 
 
 And the clerks call for the pages, the pages 
 call for the guests, and the guests call for the 
 porters, the bells clang, the elevators rattle, 
 till home Itself was never half so home-like. 
 
 "A call for Mr. Tomllnson ! A call for Mr. 
 Tomhnson 1" 
 
 So went the sound, echoing through the ro- 
 tunda. 
 
 And as the page boy found him and handed 
 him on a salver a telegram to read, the eyes of 
 the crowd about him turned for a moment to 
 look upon the figure of Tomlinson, the Wizard 
 of Finance. 
 
 51 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 There he stood in his wide-awake hat and his 
 long black coat, his shoulders slightly bent with 
 his fifty-eight years. Anyone who had known 
 him in the olden days on his bush farm beside 
 Tomlinson's Creek in the country of the Great 
 Lakes would have recognised him in a moment. 
 There was still on his face that strange, puzzled 
 look that it habitually wore, only now, of course, 
 the financial papers were calling it "unfathom- 
 able." There was a certain way in which his 
 eye roved to and fro inquiringly that might 
 have looked like perplexity, were it not that 
 the Financial Undertone had recognised it as 
 the "searching look of a captain of industry." 
 One might have thought that for all the good- 
 ness in it there was something simple in his face, 
 were it not that the Commercial and Pictorial 
 Review had called the face "inscrutable," and 
 had proved it so with an illustration that left 
 no doubt of the matter. Indeed, the face of 
 Tomlinson of Tomlinson's Creek, now Tom- 
 linson the Wizard of Finance, was not com- 
 monly spoken of as a face by the paragraphers 
 of the Saturday magazine sections, but was 
 more usually referred to as a mask; and it 
 would appear that Napoleon the First had had 
 one also. The Saturday editors were never 
 tired of describing the strange, impressive per- 
 sonality of Tomlinson, the great dominating 
 character of the newest and highest finance. 
 
 52 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 From the moment when the interim prospectus 
 of the Erie Auriferous Consolidated had broken 
 like a tidal wave over Stock Exchange circles, 
 the picture of Tomlinson, the sleeping share- 
 holder of uncomputed millions, had filled the im- 
 agination of every dreamer in a nation of poets. 
 
 They all described him. And when each had 
 finished he began again. 
 
 "The face," so wrote the editor of the "Our 
 Own Men" section of Ourselves Monthly, "is 
 that of a typical American captain of finance, 
 hard, yet with a certain softness, broad but with 
 a certain length, ductile but not without its own 
 firmness." 
 
 "The mouth," so wrote the editor of the 
 "Success" column of Brains, "is strong but pli- 
 able, the jaw firm and yet movable, while there 
 is something in the set of the ear that suggests 
 the swift, eager mind of the born leader of 
 men." 
 
 So from state to state ran the portrait of 
 Tomlinson of Tomlinson's Creek, drawn by 
 people who had never seen him; so did it reach 
 out and cross the ocean, till the French journals 
 inserted a picture which they used for such oc- 
 casions, and called it Monsieur Tomlinson, 
 nouveau capitaine de la haute finance en 
 Amerique; and the German weeklies, inserting 
 also a suitable picture from their stock, marked 
 it Herr Tomlinson, Amerikanischer Industrte- 
 
 53 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 und Finanzcapitdn. Thus did Tomlinson float 
 from Tomlinson's Creek beside Lake Erie to 
 the very banks of the Danube and the Drave. 
 
 Some writers grew lyric about him. What 
 visions, they asked, could one but read them, 
 must lie behind the quiet, dreaming eyes of that 
 inscrutable face? 
 
 They might have read them easily enough, 
 had they but had the key. Anyone who looked 
 upon Tomlinson as he stood there in the roar 
 and clatter of the great rotunda of the Grand 
 Palaver with the telegram in his hand, fumbhng 
 at the wrong end to open it, might have read the 
 visions of the master-mind had he but known 
 their nature. They were simple enough. For 
 the visions in the mind of Tomlinson, Wizard 
 of Finance, were for the most part those of a 
 wind-swept hillside farm beside Lake Erie, 
 where Tomlinson's Creek runs down to the low 
 edge of the lake, and where the off-shore wind 
 ripples the rushes of the shallow water: that, 
 and the vision of a frame house, and the snake 
 fences of the fourth concession road where it 
 falls to the lakeside. And if the eyes of the 
 man are dreamy and abstracted, it is because 
 there lies over the vision of this vanished farm 
 an infinite regret, greater in its compass than 
 all the shares the Erie Auriferous Consolidated 
 has ever thrown upon the market. 
 
 54 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 When Tomllnson had opened the telegram 
 he stood with it for a moment in his hand, look- 
 ing the boy full in the face. His look had in it 
 that peculiar far-away quality that the news- 
 papers were calling "Napoleonic abstraction." 
 In reality he was wondering whether to give the 
 boy twenty-five cents or fifty. 
 
 The message that he had just read was 
 worded, "Morning quotations show preferred 
 A. G. falling rapidly recommend instant sale 
 no confidence send instructions." 
 
 The Wizard of Finance took from his pocket 
 a pencil (it was a carpenter's pencil) and wrote 
 across the face of the message, 
 
 "Buy me quite a bit more of the same yours 
 truly." 
 
 This he gave to the boy. "Take it over to 
 him," he said, pointing to the telegraph corner 
 of the rotunda. Then after another pause he 
 mumbled, "Here, sonny," and gave the boy a 
 dollar. 
 
 With that he turned to walk towards the ele- 
 vator, and all the people about him who had 
 watched the signing of the message knew that 
 some big financial deal was going through — a 
 coup, in fact, they called it. 
 
 The elevator took the Wizard to the second 
 
 floor. As he went up he felt in his pocket and 
 
 gripped a quarter, then changed his mind and 
 
 felt for a fifty-cent piece, and finally gave them 
 
 55 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 both to the elevator boy, after which he walked 
 along the corridor till he reached the corner 
 suite of rooms, a palace in itself, for which he 
 was paying a thousand dollars a month ever 
 since the Erie Auriferous Consolidated Com- 
 pany had begun tearing up the bed of Tomlin- 
 son's Creek in Cahoga County with its hy- 
 draulic dredges. 
 
 "Well, mother," he said as he entered. 
 
 There was a woman seated near the window, 
 a woman with a plain, homely face such as they 
 wear in the farm kitchens of Cahoga County, 
 and a set of fashionable clothes upon her such 
 as they sell to the ladies of Plutoria Avenue. 
 
 This was 'mother,' the wife of the Wizard 
 of Finance and eight years younger than him- 
 self. And she too was in the papers and the 
 public eye; and whatsoever the shops had fresh 
 from Paris, at fabulous prices, that they sold 
 to mother. They had put a Balkan hat upon 
 her with an upright feather, and they had hung 
 gold chains on her, and everything that was 
 most expensive they had hung and tied on 
 mother. You might see her emerging any morn- 
 ing from the Grand Palaver in her beetle-back 
 jacket and her Balkan hat, a figure of infinite 
 pathos. And whatever she wore, the lady ed- 
 itors of Spring Notes and Causcrie dii Boudoir 
 wrote it out in French, and one paper had called 
 her a belle chatelaine, and another had spoken 
 56 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 of her as a grande dame, which the Tomllnsons 
 thought must be a misprint. 
 
 But in any case, for Tomllnson the Wizard 
 of Finance it was a great relief to have as his 
 wife a woman like mother, because he knew that 
 she had taught school in Cahoga County and 
 could hold her own in the city with any of 
 them. 
 
 So mother spent her time sitting in her beetle 
 jacket in the thousand-dollar suite, reading new 
 novels in brilliant paper covers. And the Wiz- 
 ard on his trips up and down to the rotunda 
 brought her the very best, the ones that cost a 
 dollar fifty, because he knew that out home she 
 had only been able to read books like Nathaniel 
 Hawthorne and Walter Scott, that were only 
 worth ten cents. 
 
 "How's Fred?" said the Wizard, laying aside 
 his hat, and looking towards the closed door of 
 an inner room. "Is he better?" 
 
 "Some," said mother. "He's dressed, but 
 he's lying down." 
 
 Fred was the son of the Wizard and mother. 
 In the inner room he lay on a sofa, a great 
 hulking boy of seventeen in a flowered dressing- 
 gown, fancying himself ill. There was a packet 
 of cigarettes and a box of chocolates on a chair 
 beside him, and he had the blind drawn and his 
 eyes half-closed to impress himself. 
 57 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 Yet this was the same boy that less than a 
 year ago on Tomlinson's Creek had worn a 
 rough store suit and set his sturdy shoulders to 
 the buck-saw. At present Fortune was busy 
 taking from him the golden gifts which the 
 fairies of Cahoga County, Lake Erie, had laid 
 in his cradle seventeen years ago. 
 
 The Wizard tip-toed into the inner room, 
 and from the open door his listening wife could 
 hear the voice of the boy saying, in a tone as of 
 one distraught with suffering: 
 
 "Is there any more of that jelly?" 
 
 "Could he have any, do you suppose?" asked 
 Tomlinson coming back. 
 
 "It's all right," said mother, "if it will sit 
 on his stomach." 
 
 For this, in the dietetics of Cahoga County, 
 is the sole test. All those things can be eaten 
 which will sit on the stomach. Anything that 
 won't sit there is not eatable. 
 
 "Do you suppose I could get them to get 
 any?" questioned Tomlinson. "Would it be all 
 right to telephone down to the office, or do you 
 think it would be better to ring?" 
 
 "Perhaps," said his wife, "it would be better 
 to look out into the hall and see if there isn't 
 someone round that would tell them." 
 
 This was the kind of problem with which 
 Tomlinson and his wife, in their thousand-dol- 
 lar suite in the Grand Palaver, grappled all 
 S8 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 day. And when presently a tall waiter in dress- 
 clothes appeared, and said, "Jelly? Yes, sir, 
 immediately, sir; would you like, sir. Mara- 
 schino, sir, or Portovino, sir?" Tomlinson 
 gazed at him gloomily, wondering if he would 
 take five dollars. 
 
 "What does the doctor say is wrong with 
 Fred?" asked Tomlinson, when the waiter had 
 gone. 
 
 "He don't just say," said mother; "he said 
 he must keep very quiet. He looked in this 
 morning for a minute or two, and he said he'd 
 look in later in the day again. But he said to 
 keep Fred very quiet." 
 
 Exactly! In other words Fred had pretty 
 much the same complaint as the rest of Dr. 
 Slyder's patients on Plutoria Avenue, and was 
 to be treated in the same way. Dr. Slyder, 
 who was the most fashionable practitioner in 
 the City, spent his entire time moving to and 
 fro in an almost noiseless motor earnestly ad- 
 vising people to keep quiet. "You must keep 
 very quiet for a little while," he would say with 
 a sigh, as he sat beside a sick-bed. As he drew 
 on his gloves in the hall below he would shake 
 his head very impressively and say, "You must 
 keep him very quiet," and so pass out, quite 
 soundlessly. By this means Dr. Slyder often 
 succeeded in keeping people quiet for weeks. 
 It was all the medicine that he knew. But it 
 59 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 was enough. And as his patients always got 
 well — there being nothing wrong with them — 
 his reputation was immense. 
 
 Very naturally the Wizard and his wife were 
 impressed with him. They had never seen such 
 therapeutics in Cahoga County, where the prac- 
 tice of medicine is carried on with forceps, 
 pumps, squirts, splints, and other instruments 
 of violence. 
 
 The waiter had hardly gone when a boy ap- 
 peared at the door. This time he presented 
 to Tomlinson not one telegram but a little bun- 
 dle of them. 
 
 The Wizard read them with a lengthening 
 face. The first ran something like this, "Con- 
 gratulate you on your daring market turned 
 instantly" ; and the next, "Your opinion justi- 
 fied market rose have sold at 20 points profit"; 
 and a third, "Your forecast entirely correct 
 C. P. rose at once send further instructions." 
 
 These and similar messages were from brok- 
 ers' offices, and all of them were in the same 
 tone; one told him that C. P. was up, and an- 
 other T. G. P. had passed 129, and another 
 that T. C. R. R, had risen ten — all of which 
 things were imputed to the wonderful sagacity 
 of Tomlinson. Whereas if they had told him 
 that X. Y. Z. had risen to the moon he would 
 have been just as wise as to what it meant. 
 
 "Well," said the wife of the Wizard as her 
 60 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 husband finished looking through the reports, 
 "how are things this morning? Are they any- 
 better ?" 
 
 "No," said Tomlinson, and he sighed as he 
 said it; "this is the worst day yet. It's just been 
 a shower of telegrams, and mostly all the same. 
 I can't do the figuring of it lilce you can, but I 
 reckon I must have made another hundred thou- 
 sand dollars since yesterday." 
 
 "You don't say so!" said mother, and they 
 looked at one another gloomily. 
 
 "And half a million last week, wasn't it?" 
 said Tomlinson as he sank into a chair. "I'm 
 afraid, mother," he continued, "it's no good. 
 We don't know how. We weren't brought up 
 to it." 
 
 All of which meant that if the editor of the 
 Monetary Afternoon or Financial Sunday had 
 been able to know what was happening with 
 the two wizards, he could have written up a 
 news story calculated to electrify all America. 
 
 For the truth was that Tomlinson, the Wizard 
 of Finance, was attempting to carry out a coup 
 greater than any as yet attributed to him by the 
 Press. He was trying to lose his money. That, 
 in the sickness of his soul, crushed by the Grand 
 Palaver, overwhelmed with the burden of high 
 finance, had become his aim, to be done with it, 
 to get rid of his whole fortune. 
 
 But if you own a fortune that is computed 
 6i 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 anywhere from fifty millions up, with no limit 
 at the top, if you own one-half of all the pre- 
 ferred stock of an Erie Auriferous Consoli- 
 dated that is digging gold in hydraulic bucket- 
 fuls from a quarter of a mile of river bed, the 
 task of losing it is no easy matter. 
 
 There are men, no doubt, versed in finance, 
 who might succeed in doing it. But they have 
 a training that Tomlinson lacked. Invest it as 
 he would in the worst securities that offered, 
 the most rickety of stock, the most fraudulent 
 bonds, back it came to him. When he threw a 
 handful away, back came two in its place. And 
 at every new coup the crowd applauded the 
 incomparable daring, the unparalleled presci- 
 ence of the Wizard. 
 
 Like the touch of Midas, his hand turned 
 everything to gold. 
 
 "Mother," he repeated, "it's no use. It's 
 like this here Destiny, as the books call it." 
 
 The great fortune that Tomlinson, the Wiz- 
 ard of Finance, was trying his best to lose had 
 come to him with wonderful suddenness. As 
 yet it was hardly six months old. As to how 
 it had originated, there were all sorts of stories 
 afloat in the weekly illustrated press. They 
 agreed mostly on the general basis that Tom- 
 linson had made his vast fortune by his own 
 indomitable pluck and dogged industry. Some 
 62 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 said that he had been at one time a mere farm 
 hand who, by sheer doggedness, had fought his 
 way from the hay-mow to the control of the 
 produce market of seventeen states. Others 
 had it that he had been a lumber-jaclc who, by 
 sheer doggedness, had got possession of the 
 whole lumber forest of the Lake district. Oth- 
 ers said that he had been a miner in a Lake 
 Superior copper mine who had, by the dogged- 
 ness of his character, got a practical monopoly 
 of the copper supply. These Saturday articles, 
 at any rate, made the Saturday reader rigid 
 with sympathetic doggedness himself, which 
 was all that the editor (who was doggedly try- 
 ing to make the paper pay) wanted to effect. 
 
 But in reality the making of Tomlinson's for- 
 tune was very simple. The recipe for it is open 
 to anyone. It is only necessary to own a hillside 
 farm beside Lake Erie where the uncleared 
 bush and the broken fields go straggling down 
 to the lake, and to have running through it a 
 creek, such as that called Tomlinson's, brawling 
 among the stones and willows, and to discover 
 In the bed of a creek — a gold mine. 
 
 That is all. 
 
 Nor is It necessary in these well-ordered days 
 to discover the gold for one's self. One might 
 have lived a lifetime on the farm, as Tomlin- 
 son's father had, and never discover it for one's 
 self. For that Indeed the best medium of des- 
 63 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 tiny is a geologist, let us say the senior professor 
 of geology at Plutoria University. 
 
 That was how it happened. 
 
 The senior professor, so it chanced, was 
 spending his vacation near by on the shores of 
 the lake, and his time was mostly passed — for 
 how better can a man spend a month of pleas- 
 ure? — in looking for outcroppings of Devonian 
 rock of the post-tertiary period. For which 
 purpose he carried a vacation hammer in his 
 pocket, and made from time to time a note or 
 two as he went along, or filled his pockets with 
 the chippings of vacation rocks. 
 
 So it chanced that he came to Tomlinson's 
 Creek at the very point where a great slab of 
 Devonian rock bursts through the clay of the 
 bank. When the senior professor of geology 
 saw it and noticed a stripe like a mark on a 
 tiger's back — a fault he called it — that ran over 
 the face of the block, he was at it in an instant, 
 beating off fragments with his little hammer. 
 
 Tomlinson and his boy Fred were logging in 
 the underbrush near by with a long chain and 
 yoke of oxen, but the geologist was so excited 
 that he did not see them till the sound of his 
 eager hammer had brought them to his side. 
 They took him up to the frame house in the 
 clearing, where the chatelaine was hoeing a 
 potato patch with a man's hat on her head, and 
 64 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 they gave him buttermilk and soda cakes, but 
 his hand shook so that he could hardly eat them. 
 The geologist left Cahoga station that night 
 for the City with a newspaper full of specimens 
 inside his suit-case, and he knew that if any 
 person or persons would put up money enough 
 to tear that block of rock away and follow the 
 fissure down, there would be found there some- 
 thing to astonish humanity, geologists and all. 
 
 After that point in the launching of a gold 
 mine the rest is easy. Generous, warm-hearted 
 men, interested in geology, were soon found. 
 There was no stint of money. The great rock 
 was torn sideways from its place, and from be- 
 neath it the crumbled, glittering rock-dust that 
 sparkled in the sun was sent in little boxes to 
 the testing laboratories of Plutoria University. 
 There the senior professor of geology had sat 
 up with it far into the night in a darkened 
 laboratory, with little blue flames playing under- 
 neath crucibles, as in a magician's cavern, and 
 with the door locked. And as each sample that 
 he tested was set aside and tied in a cardboard 
 box by itself, he labelled it "aur. p. 75," and 
 the pen shook in his hand as he marked it. For 
 to professors of geology those symbols mean 
 "this is seventy-five per cent pure gold." So 
 it was no wonder that the senior professor of 
 geology working far into the night among the 
 65 
 
Arcadian Adventures with, the Idle Rich 
 
 blue flames shook with excitement; not, of 
 course, for the gold's sake as money (he had 
 no time to think of that), but because if this 
 thing was true it meant that an auriferous vein 
 had been found in what was Devonian rock 
 of the post-tertiary stratification, and if that 
 was so it upset enough geology to spoil a text- 
 book. It would mean that the professor could 
 read a paper at the next Pan-Geological Con- 
 ference that would turn the whole assembly into 
 a bedlam. 
 
 It pleased him, too, to know that the men he 
 was dealing with were generous. They had 
 asked him to name his own price for the tests 
 that he made, and when he had said two dollars 
 per sample they had told him to go right ahead. 
 The professor was not, I suppose, a mercenary 
 man, but it pleased him to think that he could 
 clean up sixteen dollars in a single evening in 
 his laboratory. It showed, at any rate, that 
 business men put science at its proper value. 
 Strangest of all was the fact that the men had 
 told him that even this ore was apparently noth- 
 ing to what there was; it had all come out of 
 one single spot in the creek, not the hundredth 
 part of the whole claim. Lower down, where 
 they had thrown the big dam across to make 
 the bed dry, they were taking out this same stuff 
 and even better, so they said, in cartloads. 
 The hydrauhc dredges were tearing it from the 
 66 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 bed of the creek all day, and at night a great 
 circuit of arc lights gleamed and sputtered over 
 the roaring labour of the friends of geological 
 research. 
 
 Thus had the Erie Auriferous Consolidated 
 broken In a tidal wave over financial circles. 
 On the Stock Exchange, In the down-town of- 
 fices, and among the palm-trees of the Mauso- 
 leum Club they talked of nothing else. And 
 so great was the power of the wave that It 
 washed Tomllnson and his wife along on the 
 crest of It, and landed them fifty feet up In their 
 thousand-dollar suite In the Grand Palaver. 
 And as a result of It "mother" wore a beetle- 
 back jacket, and Tomllnson received a hundred 
 telegrams a day, and Fred quit school and ate 
 chocolates. 
 
 But In the business world the most amazing 
 thing about It was the wonderful shrewdness of 
 Tomllnson. 
 
 The first sign of it had been that he had ut- 
 terly refused to allow the Erie Auriferous Con- 
 solidated (as the friends of geology called 
 themselves) to take over the top half of the 
 Tomllnson farm. For the bottom part he let 
 them give him one-half of the preferred stock 
 In the company In return for their supply of 
 development capital. This was their own prop- 
 osition ; In fact, they reckoned that In doing this 
 they were trading about two hundred thousand 
 67 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 dollars' worth of machinery for, say ten million 
 dollars of gold. But it frightened them when 
 Tomlinson said "Yes" to the offer, and when 
 he said that as to common stock they might 
 keep it, it was no use to him, they were alarmed 
 and uneasy till they made him take a block of 
 it for the sake of market confidence. 
 
 But the top end of the farm he refused to 
 surrender, and the friends of applied geology 
 knew that there must be something pretty large 
 behind this refusal; the more so as the reason 
 that Tomlinson gave was such a simple one. 
 He said that he didn't want to part with the top 
 end of the place because his father was buried 
 on it beside the creek, and so he didn't want 
 the dam higher up, not for any consideration. 
 
 This was regarded in business circles as a 
 piece of great shrewdness. "Says his father is 
 buried there, eh? Devilish shrewd that!" 
 
 It was so long since any of the members of 
 the Exchange or the Mausoleum Club had wan- 
 dered into such places as Cahoga County that 
 they did not know that there was nothing 
 strange in what Tomlinson said. His father 
 was buried there, on the farm itself, in a grave 
 overgrown with raspberry bushes, and with a 
 wooden headstone encompassed by a square of 
 cedar rails, and slept as many another pioneer 
 of Cahoga is sleeping. 
 
 "Devilish smart idea!" they said; and forth- 
 68 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 with half the financial men of the city buried 
 their fathers, or professed to have done so, in 
 likely places — along the prospective right-of- 
 way of a suburban railway, for example; in 
 fact, in any place that marked them out for the 
 joyous resurrection of an expropriation pur- 
 chase. 
 
 Thus the astounding shrewdness of Tomlin- 
 son rapidly became a legend, the more so as he 
 turned everything he touched to gold. 
 
 They narrated little stories of him in the 
 whiskey-and-soda corners of the Mausoleum 
 Club. 
 
 "I put it to him in a casual way," related, for 
 example, Mr. Lucullus Fyshe, "casually, but 
 quite frankly. I said, 'See here, this is just a 
 bagatelle to you, no doubt, but to me it might 
 be of some use. T. C. bonds,' I said, 'have 
 risen twenty-two and a half in a week. You 
 know as well as I do that they are only col- 
 lateral trust, and that the stock underneath 
 never could and never can earn a par dividend. 
 Now,' I said, 'Mr. Tomllnson, tell me what all 
 that means?' Would you believe it, the fellow 
 looked me right In the face in that queer way he 
 has and he said, 'I don't know!' " 
 
 "He said he didn't know!" repeated the lis- 
 tener, in a tone of amazement and respect. 
 "By Jove! eh? he said he didn't know! The 
 man's a wizard!" 
 
 69 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 "And he looked as If he didn't!" went on 
 Mr. Fyshe. "That's the deuce of it. That 
 man when he wants to can put on a look, sir, 
 that simply means nothing, absolutely nothing." 
 
 In this way Tomllnson had earned his name 
 of the Wizard of American Finance. 
 
 And meantime Tomllnson and his wife, 
 within their suite at the Grand Palaver, had 
 long since reached their decision. For there 
 was one aspect and only one in which Tomlln- 
 son was really and truly a wizard. He saw 
 clearly that for himself and his wife the vast 
 fortune that had fallen to them was of no man- 
 ner of use. What did It bring them? The 
 noise and roar of the City In place of the silence 
 of the farm and the racket of the great rotunda 
 to drown the remembered murmur of the waters 
 of the creek. 
 
 So Tomllnson had decided to rid himself of 
 his new wealth, save only such as might be 
 needed to make his son a different kind of man 
 from himself. 
 
 "For Fred, of course," he said, "it's different. 
 But out of such a lot as that It'll be easy to keep 
 enough for him. It'll be a grand thing for 
 Fred, this money. He won't have to grow up 
 like you and me. He'll have opportunities we 
 never got." 
 
 He was getting them already. The oppor- 
 tunity to wear seven-dollar patent leather shoes 
 70 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 and a bell-shaped overcoat with a silk collar, 
 to lounge into moving picture shows and eat 
 chocolates and smoke cigarettes — all these op- 
 portunities he was gathering immediately. 
 Presently, when he learned his way round a 
 little, he would get still bigger ones. 
 
 "He's improving fast," said mother. She 
 was thinking of his patent leather shoes. 
 
 "He's popular," said his father. "I 
 notice it downstairs. He sasses any of them 
 just as he likes; and no matter how busy they 
 are, as soon as they see it's Fred they're all 
 ready to have a laugh with him." 
 
 Certainly they were, as any hotel clerk with 
 plastered hair is ready to laugh with the son of 
 a multimillionaire. It's a certain sense of hu- 
 mour that they develop. 
 
 "But for us, mother," said the Wizard, 
 "we'll be rid of it. The gold is there. It's not 
 right to keep it back. But we'll just find a way 
 to pass it on to folks that need it worse than 
 we do." 
 
 For a time they had thought of giving away 
 the fortune. But how? Who did they know 
 that would take it? 
 
 It had crossed their minds — for who could 
 live in the City a month without observing the 
 imposing buildings of Plutoria University, as 
 fine as any departmental store in town? — that 
 they might give it to the college. 
 71 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 But there, it seemed, the way was blocked. 
 
 "You see, mother," said the puzzled Wizard, 
 "we're not known. We're strangers. I'd look 
 fine going up there to the college and saying, 'I 
 want to give you people a million dollars.' 
 They'd laugh at me !" 
 
 "But don't one read it in the papers," his 
 wife had protested, "where Mr. Carnegie gives 
 ever so much to the colleges, more than all 
 we've got, and they take it?" 
 
 "That's different," said the Wizard. "He's 
 in with them. They all know him. Why, he's 
 •a sort of chairman of different boards of col- 
 leges, and he knows all the heads of the schools, 
 and the professors, so it's no wonder that if he 
 offers to give a pension, or anything, they take 
 it. Just think of me going up to one of the 
 professors up there in the middle of his teach- 
 ing and saying, 'I'd like to give you a pension 
 for life!' Imagine it! Think what he'd say!" 
 
 But the Tomlinsons couldn't imagine it, 
 which was just as well. 
 
 So it came about that they had embarked on 
 their system. Mother, who knew most arith- 
 metic, was the leading spirit. She tracked out 
 all the stocks and bonds in the front page of the 
 Financial Undertone, and on her recommenda- 
 tion the Wizard bought. They knew the stocks 
 only by their letters, but this itself gave a touch 
 of high finance to their deliberations. 
 72 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 "I'd buy some of this R. O. P. if I was you," 
 said mother; "it's gone down from 127 to 107 
 in two days, and I reckon it'll be all gone in ten 
 days or so." 
 
 "Wouldn't 'G. G. deb.' be better? It goes 
 down quicker." 
 
 "Well, it's a quick one," she assented, "but 
 it don't go down so steady. You can't rely on 
 it. You take ones like R. O. P. and T. R. R. 
 pfd. ; they go down all the time and you know 
 where you are." 
 
 As a result of which Tomlinson would send 
 his instructions. He did it all from the ro- 
 tunda in a way of his own that he had evolved 
 with a telegraph clerk who told him the names 
 of brokers, and he dealt thus through brokers 
 whom he never saw. As a result of this, the 
 sluggish R. O. P. and T. R. R. would take as 
 sudden a leap into the air as might a mule with 
 a galvanic shock applied to its tail. At once 
 the word was whispered that the "Tomlinson 
 interests" were after the R. O. P. to reorganise 
 it, and the whole floor of the Exchange scram- 
 bled for the stock. 
 
 And so it was that after a month or two of 
 these operations the Wizard of Finance saw 
 himself beaten. 
 
 "It's no good, mother," he repeated, "it's 
 just a kind of Destiny." 
 
 Destiny perhaps it was. 
 73 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 But, if the Wizard of Finance had known it, 
 at this very moment when he sat with the Alad- 
 din's palace of his golden fortune reared so 
 strangely about him, Destiny was preparing for 
 him still stranger things. 
 
 Destiny, so it would seem, was devising its 
 own ways and m.eans of dealing with Tomlin- 
 son's fortune. As one of the ways and means, 
 Destiny was sending at this moment as its spe- 
 cial emissaries two huge, portly figures, wearing 
 gigantic goloshes, and striding downwards from 
 the halls of Plutoria University to the Grand 
 Palaver Hotel. And one of these was the gi- 
 gantic Dr. Boomer, the president of the col- 
 lege, and the other was his professor of Greek, 
 almost as gigantic as himself. And they carried 
 in their capacious pockets bundles of pamphlets 
 on "Archaeological Remains of Mitylene," and 
 the "Use of the Greek Pluperfect," and little 
 treatises such as "Education and Philanthropy," 
 by Dr. Boomer, and "The Excavation of Mity- 
 lene: An Estimate of Cost," by Dr. Boyster, 
 "Boomer on the Foundation and Maintenance 
 of Chairs," etc. 
 
 Many a man in city finance who had seen Dr. 
 Boomer enter his office with a bundle of these 
 monographs and a fighting glitter in his eyes 
 had sunk back in his chair in dismay. For it 
 meant that Dr. Boomer had tracked him out for 
 74 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 a benefaction to the University, and that all 
 resistance was hopeless. 
 
 When Dr. Boomer once laid upon a capital- 
 ist's desk his famous pamphlet on the "Use of 
 the Greek Pluperfect," it was as if an Arabian 
 sultan had sent the fatal bow-string to a con- 
 demned pasha, or Morgan the buccaneer had 
 served the death-sign on a shuddering pirate. 
 
 So they came nearer and nearer, shouldering 
 the passers-by. The sound of them as they 
 talked v/as like the roaring of the sea as Homer 
 heard it. Never did Castor and Pollux come 
 surging into battle as Dr. Boomer and Dr. 
 Boyster bore down upon the Grand Palaver 
 Hotel. 
 
 Tomlinson, the Wizard of Finance, had hesi- 
 tated about going to the university. The uni- 
 versity was coming to him. As for those 
 millions of his, he could take his choice — dormi- 
 tories, apparatus, campuses, buildings, endow- 
 ment, anything he liked — but choose he must. 
 And if he feared that after all his fortune was 
 too vast even for such a disposal. Dr. Boomer 
 would show him how he might use it in digging 
 up ancient Mitylene, or modern Smyrna, or the 
 lost cities of the Plain of Pactolus. If the size 
 of the fortune troubled him Dr. Boomer would 
 dig him up the whole African Sahara from 
 Alexandria to Morocco, and ask for more. 
 
 But if Destiny held all this for TomHnson in 
 75 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 its outstretched palm before It, it concealed 
 stranger things still beneath the folds of its 
 toga. 
 
 There were enough surprises there to turn 
 the faces of the whole directorate of the Erie 
 Auriferous Consolidated as yellow as the gold 
 that they mined. 
 
 For at this very moment, while the president 
 of Plutoria University drew nearer and nearer 
 to the Grand Palaver Hotel, the senior profes- 
 sor of geology was working again beside the 
 blue flames in his darkened laboratory. And 
 this time there was no shaking excitement over 
 him. Nor were the labels that he marked, as 
 sample followed sample in the tests, the same 
 as those of the previous marking. Not by any 
 means. 
 
 And his grave face as he worked in silence 
 was as still as the stones of the post-tertiary 
 period. 
 
Chapter III. — The Arrested Philanthropy 
 of Mr. Tomlinson 
 
 THIS, Mr. Tomlinson, is our campus," 
 said President Boomer as they 
 passed through the iron gates of 
 Plutoria University. 
 
 "For camping?" said the Wizard. 
 
 "Not exactly," answered the president, 
 "though it would, of course, suit for that. 
 Nihil humaniim alienum, eh?" and he broke 
 into a loud, explosive laugh, while his spectacles 
 irradiated that peculiar form of glee derived 
 from a Latin quotation by those able to enjoy 
 it. Dr. Boyster, walking on the other side of 
 Mr. Tomlinson, joined in the laugh in a deep, 
 reverberating chorus. 
 
 The two had the Wizard of Finance be- 
 tween them, and they were marching him up to 
 the University. He was taken along much as 
 is an arrested man who has promised to go 
 quietly. They kept their hands off him, but 
 they watched him sideways through their spec- 
 tacles. At the least sign of restlessness they 
 doused him with Latin. The Wizard of Fi- 
 nance, having been marked out by Dr. Boomer 
 and Dr. Boyster as a prospective benefactor, 
 
 77 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 was having Latin poured over him to reduce 
 him to the proper degree of plasticity. 
 
 They had already put him through the first 
 stage. They had, three days ago, called on 
 him at the Grand Palaver and served him with 
 a pamphlet on "The Excavation of Mitylene" 
 as a sort of writ. Tomlinson and his wife had 
 looked at the pictures of the ruins, and from the 
 appearance of them they judged that Mitylene 
 was in Mexico, and they said that it was a 
 shame to see it in that state and that the United 
 States ought to intervene. 
 
 As the second stage on the path of philan- 
 thropy, the Wizard of Finance was now being 
 taken to look at the university. Dr. Boomer 
 knew by experience that no rich man could look 
 at it without wanting to give it money. 
 
 And here the president had found that there 
 is no better method of dealing with business 
 men than to use Latin on them. For other pur- 
 poses the president used other things. For 
 example at a friendly dinner at the Mausoleum 
 Club where light conversation was in order, 
 Dr. Boomer chatted, as has been seen, on the 
 archaeological remains of the Navajos. In the 
 same way, at Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown's Dante 
 luncheons, he generally talked of the Italian 
 cinquecentisti and whether Gian Gobbo della 
 Scala had left a greater name than Can Grande 
 della Spiggiola. But such talk as that was nat- 
 78 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 urally only for women. Business men are much 
 too shrewd for that kind of thing; in fact, so 
 shrewd are they, as President Boomer had long 
 since discovered, that nothing pleases them so 
 much as the quiet, firm assumption that they 
 know Latin. It is like writing them up an asset. 
 So it was that Dr. Boomer would greet a busi- 
 ness acquaintance with a roaring salutation of, 
 "Terque quaterque heatus\ or stand wringing 
 his hand off to the tune of ^'Oh et presidium et 
 dulce deciis meiim." 
 
 This caught them every time. 
 
 "You don't," said Tomlinson the Wizard in 
 a hesitating tone as he looked at the smooth 
 grass of the campus, "I suppose, raise anything 
 on it?" 
 
 "No, no; this Is only for field sports," said 
 the president; "sunt quos curricula " 
 
 To which Dr. Boyster on the other side 
 added, like a chorus, " pulverem Olympicum." 
 
 This was their favourite quotation. It al- 
 ways gave President Boomer a chance to speak 
 of the final letter " m " in Latin poetry, and 
 to say that in his opinion the so-called elision of 
 the final " m " was more properly a dropping 
 of the vowel with a repercussion of the two 
 last consonants. He supported this by quoting 
 Ammianus, at which Dr. Boyster exclaimed, 
 "Pooh! Ammianus: more dog Latin 1 " and 
 appealed to Mr. Tomlinson as to whether any 
 79 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 rational man nowadays cared what Ammlanus 
 thought? 
 
 To all of which Tomlinson answered never 
 a word, but looked steadily first at one and 
 then at the other. Dr. Boomer said afterwards 
 that the penetration of Tomlinson was won- 
 derful, and that it was excellent to see how 
 Boyster tried in vain to draw him; and Boy- 
 ster said afterwards that the way in which 
 Tomlinson quietly refused to be led on by 
 Boomer was delicious, and that it was a pity 
 that Aristophanes was not there to do it justice. 
 
 All of which was happening as they went in 
 at the iron gates and up the elm avenue of 
 Plutoria University. 
 
 The university, as everyone knows, stands 
 with its great gates on Plutoria Avenue^^ahd 
 with its largest buildings, those of the facul- 
 ties of industrial and mechanical science, front- 
 ing full upon the street. 
 
 These buildings are exceptionally fine, stand- 
 ing fifteen stories high and comparing favour- 
 ably with the best departmental stores or fac- 
 tories in the City. Indeed, after nightfall, 
 when they are all lighted up for the evening 
 technical classes and when their testing ma- 
 chinery is in full swing and there are students 
 going in and out in overall suits, people have 
 often mistaken the university, or this newer 
 part of it, for a factory. A foreign visitor 
 80 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 once said that the students looked like plumb- 
 ers, and President Boomer was so proud of 
 it that he put the phrase into his next Com- 
 mencement address; and from there the news- 
 papers got it and the Associated Press took it 
 up and sent it all over the United States with 
 the heading, " Have Appearance of Plumbers-; 
 Plutoria University Congratulated on Char- 
 acter of Students," and it was a proud day 
 indeed for the heads of the Industrial Science 
 faculty. 
 
 But the older part of the university stands 
 so quietly and modestly at the top end of the 
 elm avenue, so hidden by the leaves of it, that 
 no one could mistake it for a factory. This 
 indeed was once the whole university, and had 
 stood there since colonial days under the name 
 Concordia College. It had been filled with 
 generations of presidents and professors of the 
 older type with long white beards and rusty 
 black clothes, and salaries of fifteen hundred 
 dollars. 
 
 But the change both of name and of char- 
 acter from Concordia College to Plutoria Uni- 
 versity was the work of President Boomer. 
 He had changed it from an old-fashioned col- 
 lege of the by-gone type to a university in the 
 true modern sense. At Plutoria they now 
 taught everything. Concordia College, for 
 example, had no teaching of religion except 
 8i 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 lectures on the Bible. Now they had lectures 
 also on Confucianism, Mohammedanism, Bud- 
 dhism, with an optional course on atheism for 
 students in the final year. 
 
 And, of course, they had long since admitted 
 women, and there were now beautiful creatures 
 with Cleo de Merode hair studying astronomy 
 at oaken desks and looking up at the teacher 
 with eyes like comets. The university taught 
 everything and did everything. It had whirl- 
 ing machines on the top of it that measured 
 the speed of the wind, and deep in its base- 
 ments it measured earthquakes with a seismo- 
 graph; it held classes on forestry and dentistry 
 and palmistry; it sent life classes into the slums, 
 and death classes to the cit)^ morgue. It offered 
 such a vast variety of themes, topics, and sub- 
 jects to the students, that there was nothing 
 that a student was compelled to learn, while 
 from its own presses in Its own press-building 
 It sent out a shower of bulletins and mono- 
 graphs like driven snow from a rotary plough. 
 
 In fact, It had become, as President Boomer 
 told all the business men In town, not merely 
 a university, but a universitas in the true sense, 
 and every one of its faculties was now a facultas 
 In the real acceptance of the word, and Its 
 studies properly and truly stiidia; indeed, if the 
 business men would only build a few more 
 dormitories and put up enough money to form 
 82 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 an adequate fondatum or fundum then the good 
 work might be looked upon as complete. 
 
 As the three walked up the elm avenue there 
 met them a httle stream of students with college 
 books, and female students with winged-victory 
 hats, and professors with last year's overcoats. 
 And some went past with a smile and others 
 with a shiver. 
 
 "That's Professor Withers," said the presi- 
 dent in a sympathetic voice as one of the shiv- 
 ering figures went past; "poor Withers," and 
 he sighed. 
 
 "What's wrong with him?" said the Wiz- 
 ard; "is he sick?" 
 
 "No, not sick," said the president quietly 
 and sadly, "merely inefficient." 
 
 "Inefficient?" 
 
 "Unfortunately so. Mind you, I don't mean 
 'inefficient' in every sense. By no means. If 
 anyone were to come to me and say, 'Boomer, 
 can you put your hand for me on a first-class 
 botanist?' I'd say, 'Take Withers.' I'd say 
 it in a minute." 
 
 This was true. He would have. In fact, 
 if anyone had made this kind of rash speech, 
 Dr. Boomer would have given away half the 
 professoriate. 
 
 "Well, what's wrong with him?" repeated 
 Tomlinson. "I suppose he ain't quite up to 
 the mark in some ways, eh?" 
 83 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 "Precisely," said the president, "not quite 
 up to the mark — a very happy way of putting 
 it. Capax imperii nisi imperasset, as no doubt 
 you are thinking to yourself. The fact is that 
 Withers, though an excellent fellow, can't man- 
 age large classes. With small classes he is all 
 right, but with large classes the man is lost. 
 He can't handle them." 
 
 "He can't, eh?" said the Wizard. 
 
 "No. But what can I do? There he is. 
 I can't dismiss him, I can't pension him. I've 
 no money for it." 
 
 Here the president slackened a little in his 
 walk and looked sideways at the prospective 
 benefactor. But Tomlinson gave no sign. 
 
 A second professorial figure passed them on 
 the other side. 
 
 "There again," said the president, "that's 
 another case of inefficiency — Professor Shottat, 
 our senior professor of English." 
 
 "What's wrong with him?'' asked the 
 Wizard. 
 
 "He can't handle small classes," said the 
 president. "With large classes he is really 
 excellent, but with small ones the man is simply 
 hopeless." 
 
 In this fashion, before Mr. Tomlinson had 
 
 measured the length of the avenue, he had had 
 
 ample opportunity to judge of the crying need 
 
 of money at Plutoria University, and of the 
 
 84 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 perplexity of its president. He was shown 
 professors who could handle the first year, but 
 were powerless with the second; others who 
 were all right with the second but broke down 
 with the third, while others could handle the 
 third but collapsed with the fourth. There 
 were professors who were all right in their own 
 subject, but perfectly impossible outside of it; 
 others who were so occupied outside of their 
 own subject that they were useless inside of 
 it; others who knew their subject, but couldn't 
 lecture; and others again who lectured admir- 
 ably, but didn't know their subject. 
 
 In short it was clear — as it was meant to 
 be — that the need of the moment was a sum 
 of money sufficient to enable the president to 
 dismiss everybody but himself and Dr. Boy- 
 ster. The latter stood in a class all by him- 
 self. He had known the president for forty- 
 five years, ever since he was a fat little boy 
 with spectacles in a classical academy, stuffing 
 himself on irregular Greek verbs as readily 
 as if on oysters. 
 
 But it soon appeared that the need for dis- 
 missing the professors was only part of the 
 trouble. There were the buildings to consider. 
 
 "This, I am ashamed to say," said Dr. 
 Boomer, as they passed the Imitation Greek 
 portico of the old Concordia College building, 
 85 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Eich 
 
 "is our original home, the fons et origo of our 
 studies, our faculty of arts." 
 
 It was indeed a dilapidated building, yet 
 there was a certain majesty about it, too, espe- 
 cially when one reflected that it had been stand- 
 ing there looking much the same at the time 
 when its students had trooped off in a flock to 
 join the army of the Potomac, and much the 
 same indeed three generations before that, 
 when the classes were closed and the students 
 clapped three-cornered hats on their heads and 
 were off to enlist as minute men with flintlock 
 muskets under General Washington. 
 
 But Dr. Boomer's one idea was to knock the 
 building down and to build on its site a real 
 facultas ten stories high, with elevators in it. 
 
 Tomlinson looked about him humbly as he 
 stood in the main hall. The atmosphere of the 
 place awed him. There were bulletins and 
 time-tables and notices stuck on the walls that 
 gave evidence of the activity of the place. 
 "Professor Slithers will be unable to meet his 
 classes to-day," ran one of them, and another, 
 "Professor Withers will not meet his classes 
 this week," and another, "Owing to illness, 
 Professor Shottat will not lecture this month," 
 while still another announced, " Owing to the 
 indisposition of Professor Podge, all botanical 
 classes are suspended, but Professor Podge 
 hopes to be able to join in the Botanical Picnic 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 Excursion to Loon Lake on Saturday after- 
 noon." You could judge of the grinding rou- 
 tine of the work from the nature of these 
 notices. Anyone familiar with the work of 
 colleges would not heed it, but it shocked Tom- 
 linson to think how often the professors of the 
 college were stricken down by overwork. 
 
 Here and there in the hall, set into niches, 
 were bronze busts of men with Roman faces 
 and bare necks, and .the edge of a toga cast 
 over each shoulder. 
 
 "Who would these be?" asked Tomlinson, 
 pointing at them. 
 
 "Some of the chief founders and benefactors 
 of the faculty," answered the president, and 
 at this the hopes of Tomlinson sank In his 
 heart. For he realised the class of man one 
 had to belong to in order to be accepted as a 
 university benefactor. 
 
 "A splendid group of men, are they not?" 
 said the president. "We owe them much. This 
 Is the late Mr. Hogworth, a man of singularly 
 large heart." Here he pointed to a bronze 
 figure wearing a wreath of laurel and inscribed 
 "Gullelmus Hogworth, Litt. Doc." "He had 
 made a great fortune In the produce business, 
 and wishing to mark his gratitude to the com- 
 munity, he erected the anemometer, the wind- 
 measure, on the roof of the building, attaching 
 to It no other condition than that his name 
 87 
 
Arcadian Adventures tvith the Idle Rich 
 
 should be printed In the weekly reports imme- 
 diately beside the velocity of the wind. The 
 figure beside him Is the late Mr. Underbugg, 
 who founded our lectures on the Four Gospels 
 on the sole stipulation that henceforth any refer- 
 ence of ours to the four gospels should be 
 coupled with his name." 
 
 "What's that after his name?" asked Tom- 
 Hnson. 
 
 "Litt. Doc?" said the president. "Doctor 
 of Letters, our honorary degree. We are al- 
 ways happy to grant it to our benefactors by 
 a vote of the faculty." 
 
 Here Dr. Boomer and Dr. Boyster wheeled 
 half round and looked quietly and steadily at 
 the Wizard of Finance. To both their minds 
 it was perfectly plain that an honourable bar- 
 gain was being struck. 
 
 "Yes, Mr, Tomllnson," said the president, 
 as they emerged from the building, "no doubt 
 you begin to realise our unhappy position. 
 Money, money, money," he repeated half 
 musingly. "If I had the money I'd have that 
 whole building down and dismantled in a fort- 
 night." 
 
 From the central building the three passed 
 to the museum building, where Tomllnson was 
 shown a vast skeleton cf a DIplodocus Maxl- 
 mus, and was specially warned not to confuse 
 it with the Dinosaurus Perfectus, whose bones, 
 88 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 however, could be bought If anyone, any man 
 of large heart, would come to the university 
 and say straight out, "Gentlemen, what can I 
 do for you?" Better still. It appeared the 
 whole museum, which was hopelessly anti- 
 quated, being twenty-five years old, could be 
 entirely knocked down If a sufficient sum was 
 forthcoming; and its curator, who was as 
 ancient as the DInosaurus itself, could be dis- 
 missed on half-pay If any man had a heart large 
 enough for the dismissal. 
 
 From the museum they passed to the library, 
 v/here there were full-length portraits of more 
 founders and benefactors in long red robes, 
 holding scrolls of paper, and others sitting hold- 
 ing pens and writing on parchment, with a 
 Greek temple and a thunderstorm in the back- 
 ground. 
 
 And here again It appeared that the crying 
 need of the moment was for someone to come 
 to the university and say, "Gentlemen, what 
 can I do for you?" On which the whole li- 
 brary, for It was twenty years old and out of 
 date, might be blown up with dynamite and 
 carted away. 
 
 But at all this the hopes of Tomllnson sank 
 lower and lower. The red robes and the scrolls 
 were too much for him. 
 
 From the library they passed to the tall build- 
 ings that housed the faculty of Industrial and 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 mechanical science. And here again the same 
 pitiful lack of money was everywhere appar- 
 ent. For example, in the physical science de- 
 partment there was a mass of apparatus for 
 which the university was unable to afford suit- 
 able premises, and in the chemical department 
 there were vast premises for which the uni- 
 versity was unable to buy apparatus, and so on. 
 Indeed, it was part of Dr. Boomer's method to 
 get himself endowed first with premises too big 
 for the apparatus, and then by appealing to 
 public spirit to call for enough apparatus to 
 more than fill the premises, by means of which 
 system industrial science at Plutoria University 
 advanced with increasing and gigantic strides. 
 
 But most of all the electric department inter- 
 ested the Wizard of Finance. And this time 
 his voice lost its hesitating tone and he looked 
 straight at Dr. Boomer as he began, 
 
 "I have a boy " 
 
 "Ah!" said Dr. Boomer, with a huge ejacu- 
 lation of surprise and relief; "you have a boy!" 
 
 There were volumes in his tone. What it 
 meant was, " Now, indeed, we have got you 
 where we want you," and he exchanged a mean- 
 ing look with the professor of Greek. 
 
 Within five minutes the president and Tom- 
 linson and Dr. Boyster were gravely discuss- 
 ing on what terms and in what way Fred might 
 be admitted to study in the faculty of indus- 
 90 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 trial science. The president, on learning that 
 Fred had put in four years in Cahoga County 
 Section No. 3 School, and had been head of 
 his class in ciphering, nodded his head gravely 
 and said it would simply be a matter of a 
 pro tanto; that, in fact, he felt sure that Fred 
 might be admitted ad eundem. But the real 
 condition on which they meant to admit him 
 was, of course, not mentioned. 
 
 One door only In the faculty of industrial 
 and mechanical science they did not pass, a 
 heavy oak door at the end of a corridor bear- 
 ing the painted inscription, "Geological and 
 Metallurgical Laboratories." Stuck in the 
 door was a card with the words (they were con- 
 ceived in the courteous phrases of mechanical 
 science, which is almost a branch of business 
 in the real sense), "Busy — keep out." 
 
 Dr. Boomer looked at the card. "Ah, yes," 
 he said, "Gildas Is no doubt busy with his tests. 
 We won't disturb him." The president was 
 always proud to find a professor busy; it looked 
 well. 
 
 But if Dr. Boomer had known what was 
 going on behind the oaken door of the Depart- 
 ment of Geology and Metallurgy, he would 
 have felt considerably disturbed himself. 
 
 For here again Gildas, senior professor of 
 geology, was working among his blue flames at 
 a final test on which depended the fate of the 
 91 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 Erie Auriferous Consolidated and all connected 
 with it. 
 
 Before him there were some twenty or thirty 
 packets of crumpled dust and splintered ore 
 that glittered on the testing table. It had been 
 taken up from the creek along Its whole length, 
 at even spaces twenty yards apart, by an expert 
 sent down in haste by the directorate, after 
 Gildas's second report, and heavily bribed to 
 keep his mouth shut. 
 
 And as Professor Gildas stood and worked 
 at the samples and tied them up after analysis 
 in little white cardboard boxes, he marked each 
 one very carefully and neatly with the words, 
 "Pyrites: worthless." 
 
 Beside the professor worked a young demon- 
 strator of last year's graduation class. It was 
 he, in fact, who had written the polite notice 
 on the card. 
 
 "What is the stuff, anyway?" he asked. 
 
 "A sulphuret of iron," said the professor, 
 "or iron pyrites. In colour and appearance 
 it is practically identical with gold. Indeed, 
 in all ages," he went on, dropping at once into 
 the class-room tone and adopting the profes- 
 sorial habit of jumping backwards twenty cen- 
 turies in order to explain anything properly, 
 "it has been readily mistaken for the precious 
 metal. The ancients called it 'fool's gold.' 
 Martin Frobisher brought back four shiploads 
 92 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 of it from Baffin Land thinking that he had 
 discovered an Eldorado. There are large de- 
 posits of it in the mines of Cornwall, and it 
 is just possible," here the professor measured 
 his words as if speaking of something that he 
 wouldn't promise, "that the Cassiterides of the 
 Phoenicians contained deposits of the same sul- 
 phuret. Indeed, I defy anyone," he continued, 
 for he was piqued in his scientific pride, "to 
 distinguish it from gold without a laboratory 
 test. In large quantities, I concede, its lack of 
 weight would betray it to a trained hand, but 
 without testing its solubility in nitric acid, or the 
 fact of its burning with a blue flame under the 
 blow-pipe, it cannot be detected. In short, when 
 crystallised in dodecahedrons " 
 
 "Is it any good?" broke in the demonstrator. 
 
 "Good?" said the professor. "Oh, you 
 mean commercially? Not in the slightest. 
 Much less valuable than, let us say, ordinary 
 mud or clay. In fact, it is absolutely good 
 for nothing." 
 
 They were silent for a moment, watching the 
 blue flames above the brazier. 
 
 Then Gildas spoke again. "Oddly enough," 
 he said, "the first set of samples were undoubt- 
 edly pure gold — not the faintest doubt of that. 
 That is the really interesting part of the mat- 
 ter. These gentlemen concerned in the enter- 
 prise will, of course, lose their money, and I 
 93 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 shall therefore decline to accept the very hand- 
 some fee which they had offered me for my 
 services. But the main feature, the real point 
 of interest in this matter remains. Here we 
 have undoubtedly a sporadic deposit, — what 
 miners call a pocket, — of pure gold in a De- 
 vonian formation of the post-tertiary period. 
 This once established, we must revise our en- 
 tire theory of the distribution of igneous and 
 aqueous rocks. In fact, I am already getting 
 notes together for a paper for the Pan-Geo- 
 logical under the heading, 'Auriferous Excre- 
 tions in the Devonian Strata: a Working Hy- 
 pothesis.' I hope to read it at the next 
 meeting." 
 
 The young demonstrator looked at the pro- 
 fessor with one eye half closed. 
 
 "I don't think I would if I were you," he 
 said. 
 
 Now this young demonstrator knew nothing, 
 or practically nothing, of geology, because he 
 came of one of the richest and best families 
 In town and didn't need to. But he was a smart 
 young man, dressed in the latest fashion, with 
 brown boots and a crosswise tie, and he knew 
 more about money and business and the stock 
 exchange in five minutes than Professor Gildas 
 In his whole existence. 
 
 "Why not?" said the professor. 
 
 "Why, don't you see what's happened?" 
 94 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 "Eh?" saldGildas. 
 
 "What happened to those first samples? 
 When that bunch got interested and planned to 
 float the company? Don't you see? Somebody 
 salted them on you." 
 
 "Salted them on me?" repeated the pro- 
 fessor, mystified. 
 
 "Yes, salted them. Somebody got wise to 
 what they were and swopped them on you for 
 the real thing, so as to get your certified re- 
 port that the stuff was gold." 
 
 "I begin to see," muttered the professor. 
 "Somebody exchanged the samples, some per- 
 son no doubt desirous of establishing the theory 
 that a sporadic outcropping of the sort might 
 be found in a post-tertiary formation. I see, 
 I see. No doubt he intended to prepare a 
 paper on it, and prove his thesis by these tests. 
 I see it all!" 
 
 The demonstrator looked at the professor 
 with a sort of pity. 
 
 "You're on!" he said, and he laughed softly 
 to himself. 
 
 "Well," said Dr. Boomer, after Tomlinson 
 had left the university, "what do you make 
 of him?" The president had taken Dr. Boy- 
 ster 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 
 95 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 was a sign that Dr. Boomer wanted Dr. Boy- 
 ster'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 w '. admit his son, who is quite 
 unqualified, to tne senior studies in electrical 
 science, and second that we grant him the de- 
 gree 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." 
 
 Vote it 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 which from time to time shake a unlver- 
 96 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 sity 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 Foible, the head of the faculty, 
 said, the motion that they had before them 
 amounted practically to a revolution. The pro- 
 posal 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 hfe of a 
 college will realise that to many of the pro- 
 fessoriate 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 demo- 
 cratic 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 
 Foible, his fluffed white hair almost on end, beat 
 in vain with his gavel for order. Finally, 
 Chang of Physiology, who was a perfect dyna- 
 mo of energy and was known frequently to 
 work for three or four hours at a stretch, pro- 
 posed that the faculty should adjourn the ques- 
 tion and meet for its further discussion on 
 the following Saturday morning. This revolu- 
 tionary suggestion, involving work on Saturday, 
 97 
 
Arcadian Adventures with, the Idle Bich 
 
 reduced the meeting to a mere turmoil, in the 
 midst of which Elderberry Foible 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 
 ah 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 Demosthenes, and pro- 
 posed the vote of a degree of Doctor of Letters 
 for Edward Tomlinson. He said that there 
 was no need to remind the faculty of Tom- 
 linson'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 
 98 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 any case, they voted the degree without a word, 
 still faint with exhaustion. 
 
 But while the university was conferring on 
 Tomllnson the degree of Doctor of Letters, all 
 over the City in business circles they were con- 
 ferring on him far other titles. " Idiot," 
 "Scoundrel," "Swindler," v/ere 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. Lucullus Fyshe, sit- 
 ting in the Mausoleum Club and breathing 
 freely at last after having disposed of all his 
 holdings In the Erie Auriferous, "Is an Ignora- 
 mus. I asked him only the other day, quite 
 casually, a perfectly simple business question. 
 I said to him. 'T.C. 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 par dividend. Now,' I said, for 
 I wanted to test the fellow, 'tell me what that 
 means?' Would you believe me, he looked 
 99 
 
Arcadian Adventures "with the Idle Rich 
 
 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 Erie Auriferous. And the directors and 
 chief shareholders were busily performing the 
 interesting process called unloading. Nor did 
 ever a farmer of Cahoga County in haying 
 time, with a thunderstorm threatening, unload 
 with greater rapidity than did the major share- 
 holders of the Auriferous. Mr. Lucullus Fyshe 
 traded off a quarter of his stock to an unwary 
 member of the Mausoleum Club at a drop of 
 thirty per cent., and being too prudent to hold 
 the rest on any terms he conveyed it at once 
 as a benefaction in trust to the Plutorian Or- 
 phans' and Foundlings' Home; while the pur- 
 chaser of Mr. Fyshe'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 en- 
 tire holdings to the Imbeciles' Relief Society, 
 and Mr. Furlong, senior, passed his over to a 
 Chinese mission as fast as pen could traverse 
 paper. 
 
 100 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 Down at the office of Skinyer and Beatem, 
 the lawyers of the company, they were work- 
 ing overtime drawing 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, Protest- 
 ants, Foundlings, Imbeciles, Missionaries, Chin- 
 ese, and other unfinanclal people, with Tom- 
 linson the Wizard of Finance as the senior 
 shareholder and majority control. iVnd 
 whether the gentle Wizard, as he sat with 
 mother planning his vast benefaction to Plu- 
 toria University, would have felt more at home 
 with his new group of fellow-shareholders than 
 his old, it were hard Indeed to say. 
 
 But meantime at the office of Skinyer and 
 Beatem 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 distraint and Injunctions 
 against disposal of assets and the whole battery 
 of artillery which might open on them at any 
 moment. And they worked Hke a corps of 
 military engineers fortifying an escarpment, 
 with the joy of battle In their faces. 
 
 The storm might break at any moment. 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 Already at the office of the Financial Undertone 
 the type was set for a special extra with a head- 
 ing three inches high: 
 
 COLLAPSE 
 
 OF THE ERIE CONSOLIDATED 
 
 ARREST OF THE MAN TOMLINSON 
 
 EXPECTED THIS AFTERNOON 
 
 Skinyer and Beatem 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 Erie Auriferous 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, and till 
 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- 
 
 102 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 mutes, and the impassive Chinese held tight to 
 what they had. So gathered the storm, till all 
 the town, like the great rotunda of the Grand 
 Palaver, was filled with a silent "call for Mr. 
 Tomlinson," voiceless and ominous. 
 
 And while all this was happening, and while 
 at Skinyer and Beatem's 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 ' him- 
 self. 
 
 And Skinyer, 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: 
 
 "Beatem, Beatem, 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 Beatem. 
 
 "Why, he's giving his entire fortune to the 
 university." 
 
 "By Gadl" ejaculated Beatem, and the two 
 lawyers looked at one another, lost in admira- 
 tion of the marvellous genius and assurance 
 of Tomlinson. 
 
 103 
 
Arcadian Adventures tcith the Idle Rich 
 
 Yet what had happened was very simple. 
 
 Tomhnson had come back from the univer- 
 sity 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 de- 
 stroy the whole place. But, Hl^e many a mod- 
 est 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, Tomhnson had turned up at the 
 door of the Skinyer and Beatem office. 
 
 "Quite so, Mr. Tomlinson," said Skinyer, 
 with his pen already dipped in the ink, "a per- 
 fectly 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 
 104 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 dollars right here and now while you have the 
 money to pay me." 
 
 "Now then," 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 in the company 
 to the university." 
 
 "All of it?" said Skinyer, with a quiet smile 
 to Beatem. 
 
 "Every cent of it, sir," said Tomlinson; 
 "just write down that I give all of it to the 
 college." 
 
 "Very good," said Skinyer, 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, assign, devise, transfer, 
 and the transfer is hereby given, devised and 
 assigned, all those stocks, shares, hereditaments, 
 etc., which I hold in the etc., etc., all, several 
 and whatever — you will observe, Mr. Tomlin- 
 son, I am expressing myself with as great brev- 
 ity as possible — to that institution, academy, 
 college, school, university, now known and re- 
 puted 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. 
 105 
 
Arcadian Adventures tcith the Idle Rich 
 
 Whereupon Tomlinson explained as best he 
 could, and Sklnyer, working with great rapidity, 
 indicated that the benefaction was to include 
 a Demolition Fund for the removal of build- 
 ings, a Retirement Fund for the removal of 
 professors, an Apparatus Fund for the destruc- 
 tion 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 Beatem, 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. Skinyer. 
 
 And within a few minutes the whole tran- 
 saction was done, and Tomlinson, filled with 
 joy, was wringing the hands of Skinyer and 
 Beatem, and telling them to name their own 
 fee. 
 
 They had meant to, anyway. 
 
 "Is that legal, do you suppose?" said 
 Beatem to Skinyer, after the Wizard had gone. 
 "Will it hold water?" 
 
 "Oh, I don't think so," said Skinyer, "not 
 for a minute. In fact, rather the other way. 
 If they make an arrest for fraudulent flota- 
 io6 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 tlon, 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 flota- 
 tion with a full knowledge of the fraud. You 
 and / know it — very good — but we know It 
 more from our trained instinct In 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 It will be deuced 
 hard to get at him." 
 
 "What will he do now?" said Beatem. 
 
 "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 Sklnyer and Beatem, his face 
 Irradiated v/ith 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 
 107 
 
Arcadian Adventures icitli the Idle Rich 
 
 money when I tried to. You see, mother, what 
 I hadn't realised 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 sud- 
 den and awful catastrophe. For with Tomlin- 
 son's first descent to the rotunda it broke. The 
 whole great space seemed filled with the bulle- 
 tins and the broadside sheets of the morning 
 papers, the crowd 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 ERIE AURIFEROUS 
 
 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 
 io8 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 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 thou- 
 sand-dollar suite, — Tomlinson, his wife, and 
 Fred, — the boy learnt more than all the teach- 
 ing of the industrial faculty of Plutoria Uni- 
 versity could have taught him in a decade. Ad- 
 versity laid its hand upon him, and at its touch 
 his adolescent heart turned to finer stuff than 
 the salted gold of the Erie Auriferous. As 
 he looked upon his father's broken figure wait- 
 ing meekly for arrest, and his mother's blub- 
 bered face, a great wrath burned itself into his 
 soul. 
 
 109 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 "When the sheriff comes " said Tomlin- 
 
 son, 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, I'll " and his voice broke and stopped 
 
 upon a sob, and his hands clenched in passion. 
 
 "You stay here, you and mother. I'll 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 unmo- 
 lested, save 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 cor- 
 ridor, their hands burdened with their satchels. 
 A waiter, with something between a sneer and 
 an obsequious smile upon his face, reached out 
 for the valises, wondering if It was still worth 
 while. 
 
 "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 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 shoulders and his set jaw. And the waiter 
 slunk back. 
 
 So did they pass, unarrested and unhindered, 
 through corridor and rotunda to the outer por- 
 tals of the great hotel. 
 
 Beside the door of the Palaver as they passed 
 out was a tall official with a uniform and a 
 round hat. He was called by the authorities a 
 chasseur 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 cent, father," said Fred, as 
 he shouldered past the magnificent chasseur; 
 "let him work." 
 
 With which admirable doctrine the Wizard 
 and his son passed from the portals of the 
 Grand Palaver. 
 
 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 Tomllnson " was not arrested, neither 
 as he left the Grand Palaver 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 
 
Arcadian Adventures tcith the Idle Rich 
 
 was not the least strange part of the career of 
 the Wizard of Finance, For when all the 
 affairs of the Erie Auriferous Consolidated 
 were presently calculated up by the labours of 
 Skinyer and Beatem and the legal representa- 
 tives of the Orphans and the Idiots and the 
 Deaf-mutes, they resolved themselves into the 
 most beautiful and complete cipher conceiv- 
 able. The salted gold about paid for the cost 
 of the incorporation certificate: the develop- 
 ment capital had disappeared, and those who 
 lost most preferred to say the least about it; 
 and as for Tomlinson, if one added up his gains 
 on the stock market before the fall and sub- 
 tracted his bill at the Grand Palaver and the 
 thousand dollars which he gave to Skinyer and 
 Beatem 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 
 Erie Auriferous that the university conferred 
 upon Tomlinson the degree of Doctor of Let- 
 ters in absentia. A university must keep Its 
 
 112 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 word, and Dean Elderberry Foible, 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 irrefrag- 
 able as the Devonian rock Itself. 
 
 So the degree was conferred. And Dean 
 Elderberry Foible, 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, "Eduardus Tomlinsonius, 
 vir clarisslmus, doctlsslmus, prsestlssimus," and 
 a great many other things all ending in issimus. 
 
 But the recipient was not there to receive. 
 He stood at that moment with his boy Fred 
 on a windy hill-side beside Lake Erie, where 
 Tomlinson's Creek ran again untrammelled 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 pickaxe and 
 crowbar, and day by day the angry water car- 
 ried 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 Auriferous 
 workers had been torn down and split Into fire- 
 wood; and where they had stood, the burdocks 
 and the thistles of the luxuriant summer con- 
 spired to hide the traces of their shame. Nature 
 
 113 
 
Arcadian Adventures "with the Idle Rich 
 
 reached out its hand and drew Its coverlet of 
 green over the grave of the vanished Eldorado. 
 And as the Wizard and his son stood upon 
 the hill-side, they saw nothing but the land 
 sloping to the lake and the creek murmuring 
 again to the willows, while the off-shore wind 
 rippled the rushes of the shallow water. 
 
 "4 
 
Chapter IV.— The Yahi-Bahi Oriental 
 Society of Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown 
 
 MRS. RASSELYER-BROWN lived 
 t)n Plutoria Avenue in a vast 
 sandstone palace, in which she 
 held those fashionable entertain- 
 ments which have made the name of Rasselyer- 
 Brown what it is. Mr. Rasselyer-Brown lived 
 there also. 
 
 The exterior of the house was more or less 
 a model of the facade of an Italian palazzo of 
 the sixteenth century. If one questioned Mrs. 
 Rasselyer-Brown at dinner in regard to this 
 (which was only a fair return for drinking 
 five-dollar champagne) she answered that the 
 facade was cinquecentisti, but that it reproduced 
 also the Saracenic mullioned window of the 
 Siennese School. But if the guest said later in 
 the evening to Mr. Rasselyer-Brown that he 
 understood that his house was cinquecentisti, 
 he answered that he guessed it was. After 
 which remark and an interval of silence Mr. 
 Rasselyer-Brown would probably ask the guest 
 if he was dry. 
 
 So from that one can tell exactly the sort of 
 people the Rasselyer-Browns were. 
 IIS 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 In other words, Mr, Rasselyer-Brown was 
 a severe handicap to Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown. 
 He was more than that; the word isn't strong 
 enough. He was, as Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown 
 herself confessed to her confidential circle of 
 three hundred friends, a drag. He was also 
 a tie, and a weight, and a burden, and in Mrs. 
 Rasselyer-Brown's religious moments a cruci- 
 fix. 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 realise 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. Rasselyer- 
 Brown's own thoughts as expressed to her three 
 hundred friends — is room to expand, to grow. 
 The hardest thing in the word is to be stifled: 
 and there is nothing more stifling than a hus- 
 band who doesn't know a Giotto 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 
 ii6 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 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 illumi- 
 nated missals of the twelfth century. A coal 
 mine is a dreadful thing at a dinner-table. It 
 humbles one so before one's guests. 
 
 It wouldn't have been so bad — this Mrs. 
 Rasselyer-Brown herself admitted — if Mr. 
 Rasselyer-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 Fyshe, who made soda-water, 
 but at the same time everybody knew that he 
 had the best collection of broken Italian furni- 
 ture 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 wont 
 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. 
 Rasselyer-Brown would never put his foot out- 
 side 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 
 "7 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 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. Rasselyer- 
 Brown would feel faint with despair at the 
 nonentity of her husband. 
 
 So one can understand how heavy her bur- 
 den 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. Rasselyer-Brown, were 
 buying that year) "if Mr. Rasselyer-Brown 
 did anything. But he does tiothing. 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. Rasselyer-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 
 discussed them at lunch), Mrs. Rasselyer- 
 Brown had to carry the whole burden of it — 
 ii8 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 her very phrase, " the whole burden " — alone. 
 Anyone who has carried four lines of Dante 
 through a Moselle 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. 
 Rasselyer-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. Sikleigh 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. Rassel- 
 yer-Brown would be skulking in a corner in his 
 ill-fitting dress-suit. His wife would often catch 
 with an agonised ear such scraps of talk as, 
 "When I was first in the coal and wood busi- 
 ness," or, "It's a coal that burns quicker than 
 egg, but It hasn't the heating 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. 
 119 
 
Arcadian Adventures ivith the Idle Rich 
 
 Rasselyer-Brown. There was another part of 
 it which was perhaps more real, though Mrs. 
 Rasselyer-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 After- 
 noon 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. Rassel- 
 yer-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. Rassel- 
 yer-Brown, of course, began the day with an 
 eye-opener — and after all, what 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 business man take than to brace his break- 
 fast? On his way to business he generally had 
 his motor stopped at the Grand Palaver 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 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 out the cold, and if it was one of those clear, 
 sunny days that are so dangerous to the sys- 
 tem he took whatever the bar-tender (a recog- 
 nised health expert) suggested to tone the sys- 
 tem 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. Nat- 
 urally so. For he was braced, and propped, 
 and toned up, and his eyes had been opened, 
 and his brain cleared, till outside of very big 
 business indeed few men were on a footing 
 with him. 
 
 In fact, it was business itself which had com- 
 pelled Mr. Rasselyer-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. Rassel- 
 yer-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 
 
Arcadian Adventures 'with the Idle Rich 
 
 partially drunk. This is what is called the per- 
 sonal element in business. And, beside it, 
 plodding 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 under- 
 stood, — there was no excess about Mr. Rassel- 
 yer-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. Rasselyer- 
 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 sideboard. 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. Rassel- 
 yer-Brown called it a nip; and of course any 
 man may need a uip at a time when he would 
 scorn a drink. 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 But after all, a woman may find herself 
 again in her daughter. There, at least, is con- 
 solation. For, as Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown her- 
 self admitted, her daughter Dulphemia was 
 herself again. There were, of course, differ- 
 ences, certain differences of face and appear- 
 ance. Mr. Snoop had expressed this fact ex- 
 quisitely when he said that it was the differ- 
 ence between a Burne- Jones and a Dante Ga- 
 briel Rossetti. But even at that the mother 
 and daughter were so alike that people, cer- 
 tain 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 Dulphemia Rassel- 
 yer-Brown was a girl of remarkable character 
 and intellect. So is any girl who has beautiful 
 golden hair parted In thick bands on her fore- 
 head, 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 sur- 
 prised them. Thus old Judge Longerstill, who 
 talked to her at dinner for an hour on the 
 jurisdiction of the Interstate Commerce Com- 
 mission, felt sure from the way in which she 
 looked up in his face at intervals and said, 
 "How interesting!" that she had the mind 
 123 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 of a lawyer. And Mr. Brace, the consulting 
 engineer, who showed her on the table-cloth 
 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. Viscount FitzThistle, 
 who explained to Dulphemia for half an hour 
 the intricacies of the Irish situation, was cap- 
 tivated at the quick grasp she showed by ask- 
 ing him at the end, without a second's hesita- 
 tion, "And which are the Nationalists?" 
 
 This kind of thing represents female intel- 
 lect In Its best form. Every man that is really 
 a man Is willing to recognise It at once. 
 
 As to the young men, of course they flocked 
 to the Rasselyer-Brown residence in shoals. 
 There were batches of them every Sunday aft- 
 ernoon at five o'clock, encased in long black 
 frockcoats, 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, 
 124 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 and young clergymen talking about business. 
 Because, of course, the Rasselyer-Brown resi- 
 dence 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 boom- 
 ing into the room, that the whole conversation 
 was pulverised into dust under the hammer of 
 accurate knowledge. 
 
 This whole process was what was called, by 
 those who understood such things, a salon. 
 Many people said that Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown's 
 afternoons at home were exactly like the de- 
 lightful salons of the eighteenth century: and 
 whether the gatherings were or were not salons 
 of the eighteenth century, there is no doubt 
 that Mr. Rasselyer-Brown, under whose care 
 certain favoured 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 Sig- 
 ner Puffi to leave town, and the generous at- 
 125 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Bich 
 
 tempt of another committee to gather funds 
 in order to keep Signor Past! in the City. Be- 
 yond 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, and 
 yet still too cold to go north. In fact, one was 
 almost compelled to stay at home — which was 
 dreadful. 
 
 As a result Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown and her 
 three hundred friends moved backward and 
 forward on Plutoria Avenue, seeking novelty 
 In vain. They washed In waves of silk from 
 tango teas to bridge afternoons. They poured 
 in liquid avalanches of colour into crowded re- 
 ceptions, 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 
 ennui Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown and her three 
 hundred friends first heard of the presence in 
 the city of Mr. Yahl-Bahi, the celebrated Ori- 
 ental mystic. He was so celebrated that no- 
 body even thought of asking who he was or 
 where he came from. They merely told one 
 126 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 another, and repeated it, that he was the cele- 
 brated Yahi-Bahi. They added for those who 
 needed the knowledge that the name was pro- 
 nounced Yahhy-Bahhy, and that the doctrine 
 taught by Mr. Yahi-Bahi was Boohooism. This 
 latter, if anyone inquired further, was explained 
 to be a form of Shoodooism, 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. Rasselyer-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. Yahi-Bahi. 
 
 "My dear," she said, in describing after- 
 wards her experience to her bosom friend. Miss 
 Snagg, " it was most interesting. We drove 
 away down to the queerest part of the City, 
 and went to the strangest little house imagin- 
 able, up the narrowest stairs one ever saw — 
 quite Eastern, in fact, just like a scene out of 
 the Koran." 
 
 "How fascinating!" said Miss Snagg. But 
 as a matter of fact, if Mr. Yahi-Bahi's house 
 had been inhabited, as it might have been, by 
 a street-car conductor or a railway brakesman, 
 Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown wouldn't have thought 
 it in any way peculiar or fascinating. 
 
 "It was all hung with curtains inside," she 
 127 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 went on, "with figures of snakes and Indian 
 gods, perfectly weird." 
 
 "And did you see Mr. Yahi-Bahi?" asked 
 Miss Snagg. 
 
 "Oh no, my dear. I only saw his assistant, 
 Mr. Ram Spudd; such a queer little round man, 
 a Bengalee, 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. Yahi- 
 Bahi was in meditation and musn't be dis- 
 turbed." 
 
 "How delightful!" echoed Miss Snagg. 
 
 But in reality Mr. Yahi-Bahi was sitting be- 
 hind the curtain eating a ten-cent can of pork 
 and beans. 
 
 "What I like most about eastern people," 
 went on Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown, "is their won- 
 derful delicacy of feeling. After I had ex- 
 plained about my invitation to Mr. Yahi-Bahi 
 to come and speak to us on Boohooism, 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 Spudd took it. 
 He made the deepest salaam and said, 'Isis 
 guard you, beautiful lady.' Such perfect cour- 
 tesy, and yet with the air of scorning the money. 
 As I passed out I couldn't help slipping an- 
 other dollar into his hand, and he took it as 
 if utterly unaware of It, and muttered, 'Osiris 
 keep you, O flower of women 1' And as I 
 128 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 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 had said it he stood beside the door 
 of the motor and waited without moving till 
 I left. He had such a strange, rapt 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. Rasselyer-Brown. On 
 the whole, reckoning Grand Opera tickets and 
 dinners, she did very well out of it. 
 
 "Is it .not?" said Mrs. Rasselyer-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 Spudd. The 
 rude way in which he opened the door, and the 
 rude way in which he climbed on to 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 pur- 
 pose — that the car splashed a lot of mud over 
 Mr. Spudd as it started." 
 
 Yet, oddly enough, the opinion of other peo- 
 ple on this new chauffeur, that of Miss Dul- 
 phemia Rasselyer-Brown herself, for example, 
 to whose service he was specially attached, was 
 very different. 
 
 The great recommendation of him In the 
 eyes of Miss -Dulphemla and her friends, and 
 129 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 the thing that gave him a touch of mystery was 
 — and what higher qualification can a chauffeur 
 want? — that he didn't look like a chauffeur at 
 all. 
 
 "My dear Dulphle," whispered Miss Phil- 
 ippa Furlong, the rector's sister (who was at 
 that moment Dulphemia'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 
 chauffe, 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 straightway into a military 
 shako. And by Miss Dulphemia and her 
 friends It was presently reported — or was in- 
 vented? — that he had served in the Philippines; 
 which .explained at once the scar upon his fore- 
 head, which must have been received at Iloilo, 
 or Huila-Huila, or some other suitable place. 
 
 But what affected Miss Dulphemia Brown 
 herself was the splendid rudeness of the chauf- 
 feur's manner. It was so different from that 
 of the young men of the salon. Thus, when 
 Mr. Sikleigh Snoop handed her into the car at 
 any time he would dance about saying, "Allow 
 me," and, "Permit me," and would dive for- 
 ward to arrange the robes. But the Philippine 
 130 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 chauffeur merely swung the door open and said 
 to Dulphemia, "Get in," and then slammed it. 
 This, of course, sent a thrill up tHe spine and 
 through the imagination of Miss Dulphemia 
 Rasselyer-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 Rasselyer- 
 Browns. To be quite candid about it, she ex- 
 pected that the Philippine chauffeur meant to 
 elope with her, and every time he drove her 
 from a dinner or a dance she sat back luxuri- 
 ously, wishing and expecting the elopement to 
 begin. 
 
 But for the time being the interest of Dul- 
 phemia, as of everybody else that was anybody 
 at all, centred round Mr. Yahi-Bahi and the 
 new cult of Boohooism. 
 
 After the visit of Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown a 
 great number of ladies, also in motors, drove 
 down to the house of Mr. Yahi-Bahi. And all 
 of them, whether they saw Mr. Yahi-Bahi him- 
 self or his Bengalee assistant, Mr. Ram Spudd, 
 came back delighted. 
 
 "Such exquisite tact!" said one. "Such deli- 
 cacy! As I was about to go I laid a five-dollar 
 gold piece on the edge of the little table. 
 131 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 Mr. Spudd scarcely seemed to see It. He mur- 
 mured, 'Osiris help you!' and pointed to the 
 ceiling. I raised my eyes instinctively, and 
 when I lowered them the money had disap- 
 peared. 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. Yahi-Bahi's occult powers, especially his 
 marvellous gift of reading the future. 
 
 Mrs. Buncomhearst, who had just lost her 
 third husband — by divorce — had received from 
 Mr. Yahi-Bahi a glimpse Into the future that 
 was almost uncanny in its exactness. She had 
 asked for a divination, and Mr. Yahi-Bahi had 
 effected 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 be- 
 fore others begin." 
 
 "How does he do it?" asked everybody. 
 
 As a result of all this it naturally came about 
 that Mr. Yahi-Bahi and Mr. Ram Spudd were 
 Invited to appear at the residence of Mrs. Ras- 
 selyer-Brown; and it was understood that steps 
 would be taken to form a special society, to be 
 known as the Yahi-Bahi Oriental Society. 
 132 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 Mr. SIkleigh Snoop, the sex-poet, was the 
 leading spirit in the organisation. He had a 
 special fitness for the task: he had actually re- 
 sided in India. In fact, he had spent six weeks 
 there on a stop-over ticket of a round-the-world 
 635 dollar steamship pilgrimage; and he knew 
 the whole country from Jehumbapore in Bhoo- 
 tal 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. Buncomhearst, 
 who became later, by a perfectly natural proc- 
 ess, the president of the society. She was al- 
 ready president of the Daughters of the Revo- 
 lution, a society confined exclusively to the de- 
 scendants of Washington's officers and others; 
 she was also president of the Sisters of Eng- 
 land, an organisation limited exclusively to 
 women born in England and elsewhere; of the 
 Daughters of Kossuth, made up solely of Hun- 
 garians and friends of Hungary and other na- 
 tions; and of the Circle of Franz Joseph, which 
 was composed exclusively of the partisans, and 
 others, of Austria. In fact, ever since she had 
 lost her third husband, Mrs. Buncomhearst had 
 thrown herself — that was her phrase — into out- 
 side activities. Her one wish was, on her own 
 statement, to lose herself. So very naturally 
 Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown looked at once to Mrs. 
 133 
 
Arcadian Adventures -with the Idle liich 
 
 Buncomhearst to preside over the meetings of 
 the new society. 
 
 The large dining-room at the Rasselyer- 
 Browns' had been cleared out as a sort of audi- 
 torium, and in it some fifty or sixty of Mrs. 
 Rasselyer-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, httle Mr. Spillikins, with his vacuous 
 face and football hair, who was there, as every- 
 body knew, on account of Dulphemia; and 
 there was old Judge Longerstill, who sat lean- 
 ing on a gold-headed stick with his head side- 
 ways, 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 sec- 
 onding a vote of thanks and saying a few words 
 — half an hour's talk, perhaps — on the consti- 
 tution 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. Yahi- 
 Bahi. 
 
 "I wonder," called Mrs. Buncomhearst from 
 the chair, "if some lady would be good enough 
 134 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 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," chorussed 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 
 eye-glass. 
 
 "Is that carried?" said Mrs. Buncomhearst. 
 "All those in favour please signify." 
 
 Nobody stirred. 
 
 "Carried," said the president. "And per- 
 haps you would be good enough, Mrs. Fyshe," 
 she said, turning towards the stout lady, "to 
 write the constitution." 
 
 "Do you think it necessary to write it?" said 
 Mrs. Fyshe. "I should like to move, if I may, 
 that I almost wonder whether it is necessary to 
 write the constitution — unless, of course, any- 
 body 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. 
 135 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 "Lost," she said. 
 
 Then, looking across at the clock on the 
 mantel-piece, 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 Long- 
 erstill, but as fortune had it at this very mo- 
 ment Mr. Sikleigh Snoop entered, followed by 
 Mr. Yahi-Bahi and Mr. Ram Spudd. 
 
 Mr. Yahi-Bahi was tall. His drooping Ori- 
 ental costume made him taller still. He had a 
 long brown face and liquid brown eyes of such 
 depth that v^hen he turned them full upon the 
 ladies before him a shiver of interest and ap- 
 prehension followed in the track of his glance. 
 
 "My dear," said Miss Snagg afterwards, "he 
 seemed simply to see right through us." 
 
 This was correct. He did. 
 
 Mr. Ram Spudd 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 Swathed 
 in so many bands and sashes that he looked 
 almost circular. The. clothes of both Mr. Yahi- 
 Bahi and Ram Spudd were covered with the 
 136 
 
^Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 mystic signs of Buddha and the seven serpents 
 of Vishnu. 
 
 It was impossible, of course, for Mr. Yahi- 
 Bahi or Mr. Ram Spudd to address the audi- 
 ence. Their knowledge of English was known 
 to be too slight for that. Their communica- 
 tions were expressed entirely through the me- 
 dium of Mr. Snoop, and even he explained af- 
 terwards 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 dia- 
 lects 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 open- 
 ing speech which he proceeded to make. And 
 after this he went on to disclose, amid deep 
 interest, the general nature of the cult of Boo- 
 hooism. He said that they could best under- 
 stand it if he told them that its central doc- 
 trine was that of Bahee. Indeed, the first aim 
 of all followers of the cult was to attain to 
 Bahee. Anybody who could spend a certain 
 number of hours each day, say sixteen, in silent 
 meditation on Boohooism would find his mind 
 137 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 gradually reaching a condition of Bahee. The 
 chief aim of Bahee 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 Bahee. In this way one was 
 able fully to realise 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 Empti- 
 ness, the supreme goal of Boohooism. 
 
 As a first step to all this, Mr. Snoop ex- 
 plained, each neophyte or candidate for holi- 
 ness must, after searching his own heart, send 
 ten dollars to Mr. Yahi-Bahi. Gold, it ap- 
 peared, was recognised in the cult of Boohoo- 
 ism as typifying the three chief virtues, whereas 
 silver or paper money did not; even national 
 bank-notes were only regarded as do or, a half- 
 way palliation; and outside currencies such as 
 Canadian or Mexican bills were looked upon as 
 entirely boo, or contemptible. The Oriental 
 view of money, said Mr. Snoop, was far su- 
 perior to our own, but it also might be attained 
 by deep thought, and, as a beginning, by send- 
 ing ten dollars to Mr. Yahi-Bahi. 
 
 After this Mr. Snoop, in conclusion, read a 
 very beautiful Hindu poem, translating it as he 
 138 
 
Arcadian Adventure'^ with the Idle Rich 
 
 went along. It began, "O cow, standing be- 
 side 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 be- 
 yond anything reached as yet by Occidental 
 culture. 
 
 When Mr. Snoop had concluded the presi- 
 dent called upon Judge Longerstill 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 consti- 
 tuted, Mr. Yahi-Bahi made four salaams, one 
 to each point of the compass, and the meeting 
 dispersed. 
 
 And that evening, over fifty dinner tables, 
 everybody discussed the nature of Bahee, and 
 tried in vain to explain it to men too stupid to 
 understand. 
 
 Now it so happened that on the very after- 
 noon of this meeting at Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown's, 
 the Philippine chauffeur did a strange and pe- 
 cuhar thing. He first asked Mr. Rasselyer- 
 Brown for a few hours' leave of absence to at- 
 tend the funeral of his mother-in-law. This 
 was a request which Mr. Rasselyer-Brown, on 
 principle, never refused to a man-servant. 
 
 Whereupon, the Philippine chauffeur, no 
 139 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 longer attired as one, visited the residence of 
 Mr. Yahi-Bahi. He let himself in with a mar- 
 vellous 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 notebook 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 Ori- 
 ental mysticism than even Mr. Yahi-Bahi had 
 given to the world. So strange were they that 
 before the Philippine chauffeur returned to the 
 Rasselyer-Brown residence he telegraphed cer- 
 tain 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 col- 
 lege of Oriental research it passes the imagina- 
 tion to conceive. But as the chauffeur duly re- 
 appeared at motor-time In the evening the inci- 
 dent passed unnoticed. 
 
 It is beyond the scope of the present narra- 
 tive to trace the progress of Boohooism 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 some- 
 thing in the Oriental mysticism of its doctrines 
 which rendered previous belief stale and puerile. 
 The practice of the sacred rites began at once. 
 140 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 The ladies' counters of the Plutorian banks 
 were Inundated with requests for ten-dollar 
 pieces in exchange for bank-notes. At dinner 
 In the best houses nothing was eaten except a 
 thin soup (or bru), 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 prin- 
 ciple 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 Stoj, 
 or Negation of Thought. 
 
 By this means the general doctrine of Boo- 
 hooism spread rapidly. Indeed, a great many 
 of the members of the society soon attained to 
 a stage of Bahee, or the Higher Indifference, 
 that it would have been hard to equal outside 
 of Juggapore or Jumbumbabad. For example, 
 when Mrs. Buncomhearst learned of the re- 
 marriage of her second husband — she had lost 
 him three years before, owing to a difference 
 of opinion on the emancipation of women — she 
 shewed the most complete Bahee possible. And 
 when Miss Snagg 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 
 141 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 Bahee which she exhibited almost amounted to 
 Nirvana. 
 
 In fact, the very general dissemination of the 
 Oriental idea became more and more notice- 
 able with each week that passed. Some mem- 
 bers attained to so complete a Bahee, 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 fa- 
 miliar wherever a successful occult creed makes 
 its way against the prejudices of the multitude. 
 
 The really notable part of the whole experi- 
 ence was the marvellous demonstration of oc- 
 cult 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 rumoured 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 Nir- 
 vana among the members rendered such a feat 
 highly desirable. Just what form the demon- 
 stration would take was for some time a matter 
 of doubt. It was whispered at first that Mr. 
 Yahi-Bahi would attempt the mysterious east- 
 142 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 ern rite of burying Ram Spudd alive in the 
 garden of the Rasselyer-Brown residence and 
 leaving him there in a state of Stoj, or Sus- 
 pended Inanition, for eight days. But this pro- 
 ject was abandoned, owing to some doubt, ap- 
 parently, in the mind of Mr. Ram Spudd as to 
 his astral fitness for the high state of Stoj 
 necessitated by the experiment. 
 
 At last it became known to the members of 
 the Poosh, 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 
 reastralisation 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 be- 
 lieve, by Jam-bum, the famous Yogi of the 
 Carnatic; once, perhaps twice, by Boohoo, 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 at- 
 tempting the astralisation is swallowed up into 
 nothingness. However, he declares himself 
 willing to try." 
 
 143 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 The seance was to take place at Mrs. Ras- 
 selyer-Brown's residence, and was to be at mid- 
 night. 
 
 "At midnight I" said each member in surprise. 
 And the answer was, "Yes, at midnight. You 
 see, midnight here is exactly midday in Allah- 
 abad 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 mid- 
 night had been midday in Timbuctoo 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 Boohooism, gold, plain gold, is the seat 
 of the three virtues — beauty, wisdom, and 
 grace. Therefore, according to the creed of 
 Boohooism, 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 excep- 
 tion of rubles, 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 ^ 
 144 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 number of ladies had nothing but gold orna- 
 ments set with diamonds, a second exception 
 was made; especially as Mr. Yahi-Bahi, on ap- 
 peal, decided that diamonds, though less pleas- 
 ing to Buddha than rubies, possessed the 
 secondary Hindu virtues of divisibility, mova- 
 bility, and disposability. 
 
 On the evening in question the residence of 
 Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown might have been ob- 
 served at midnight wrapped in utter darkness. 
 No hghts were shown. A single taper, brought 
 by Ram Spudd from the Taj Mohal, and resem- 
 bling in its outer texture those sold at the five- 
 and-ten store near Mr. Spudd's residence, 
 burned on a small table in the vast dining-room. 
 The servants had been sent upstairs and ex- 
 pressly enjoined to retire at half past ten. 
 Moreover, Mr. Rasselyer-Brown had had to 
 attend that evening, at the Mausoleum Club, a 
 meeting of the trustees of the Church of St. 
 Asaph, 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 work 
 that, as far as any interest in what might be 
 going on in his own residence, he had attained 
 to a state of Bahee, or Higher Indifference^ 
 that even Buddha might have envied. 
 145 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 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. Yahi-Bahi and 
 Mr. Ram Spudd, who had arrived on foot car- 
 rying 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 hght 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 "Ksvoo." This means, 
 "O Buddha, I herewith lay my unworthy offer- 
 ing 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 assem- 
 bled guests as they saw Mr. Yahi-Bahi pass 
 across the darkened room and stand in front of 
 the sideboard. 
 
 "Hush!" said Mr. Snoop; "he's laying the 
 propitiatory offering for Buddha." 
 146 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 "It's an Indian rite," whispered Mrs. Ras- 
 selyer-Brown. 
 
 Mr. Yahi-Bahl could be seen dimly moving 
 to and fro in front of the sideboard. 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. Rasselyer-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 in- 
 voked with Burmese brandy, or, failing that, 
 Hennessy's with three stars, which Is not en- 
 tirely 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-Buddayat." 
 
 Mr. Yahi-Bahl, his preparations completed, 
 was nov/ seen to stand in front of the sideboard 
 'bowing deeply four times In an Oriental salaam. 
 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 wahl 
 wah ! could be distinguished. 
 
 The excitement was intense. 
 147 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 "What does 'wah' mean?" whispered Mr. 
 Spillikins. 
 
 "Hush!" said Mr. Snoop; "it means, *0 
 Buddha, wherever thou art in thy lofty Nir- 
 vana, descend yet once in astral form before our 
 eyesl' " 
 
 Mr. Yahi-Bahi 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. Ram Spudd 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 side- 
 board. 
 
 The minutes passed. No one moved. All 
 were spellbound in expectancy. 
 
 Still the minutes passed. The taper had flick- 
 ered down till the great room was almost in 
 darkness. 
 
 Could it be that by some neglect in the prepa- 
 rations, the substitution perhaps of the wrong 
 brandy, the astralisation could not be effected? 
 
 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 hun- 
 148 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 dred 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, deliber- 
 ately astralising itself as it passed through the 
 bricks. Others seemed to have seen it pass In 
 at the further door of the room, as If It had 
 astralised 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 astralised 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. Rasselyer-Brown. From her there 
 came no sound. 
 
 The figure as afterwards described was at- 
 tired In a long shirdk, such as Is worn by the 
 Grand Llama of Tibet, and resembling. If the 
 comparison were not profane, a modern dress- 
 ing-gown. The legs, If one might so call them, 
 of the apparition were enwrapped in loose pun- 
 jahamas, a word which Is said to be the origin 
 of the modern pyjamas; while the feet, If they 
 were feet, were encased In loose slippers. 
 
 Buddha moved slowly across the room. Ar- 
 rived at the sideboard the astral figure paused, 
 and even in the uncertain light Buddha was 
 149 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 seen to raise and drink the propitiatory offer- 
 ing. That much was perfectly clear. Whether 
 Buddha spoke or not is doubtful. Certain of 
 the spectators thought that he said, "Must a 
 fagotnit," which is Hindustanee for "Blessings 
 on this house." To Mrs. Rasselyer-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 of farewell. 
 
 For perhaps a full minute after the disap- 
 pearance of Buddha not a soul moved. Then 
 quite suddenly Mrs. Rasselyer-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 centre stood empty — not a 
 single gem, not a fraction of the gold that had 
 lain upon it was left. All had disappeared. 
 
 The truth seemed to burst upon everyone at 
 once. There was no doubt of what had hap- 
 pened. 
 
 The gold and the jewels had been deastral- 
 Ised. Under the occult power of the vision 
 150 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 they had been demonetised, engulfed into the 
 astral plane 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 the lifeless bodies of Mr. 
 Yahi-Bahi and the faithful Ram Spudd. What 
 they saw before them was more dreadful still. 
 The outer Oriental garments of the two de- 
 votees lay strewn upon the floor. The long 
 sash of Yahi-Bahi and the thick turban of Ram 
 Spudd were side by side near them; almost sick- 
 ening in its repulsive realism was the thick 
 black head of hair of the junior devotee, ap- 
 parently 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 realised in a flash that Yahi-Bahi and 
 Ram Spudd had paid the penalty of their dar- 
 ing with their Hves. Through some fatal neg- 
 lect, against which they had fairly warned the 
 participants of the seance, the two Orientals 
 had been carried bodily in the astral plane. 
 
 "How dreadful!" murmured Mr. Snoop. 
 "We must have made some awful error," 
 
 "Are they deastralised?" murmured Mrs. 
 Buncomhearst. 
 
 "Not a doubt of it," said Mr. Snoop. 
 151 
 
Arcadian Adventures tvith the Idle Rich 
 
 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, every- 
 body urging that it must be hushed up. 
 
 "Couldn't you try to reastralise them?" said 
 somebody to Mr. Snoop. 
 
 "No, no," said Mr. Snoop, still shaking. 
 "Better not try to. We must hush it up if we 
 can." 
 
 And the general assent to this sentiment 
 shewed that after all the principles of Bahee, 
 or Indifference to Others, had taken a real root 
 in the society. 
 
 "Hush it up," cried everybody, and there 
 was a general move rowards the hall. 
 
 "Good Heavens!" exclaimed Mrs. Buncom- 
 hearst; "our wraps!" 
 
 "Deastralised!" said the guests. 
 
 There was a moment of further consterna- 
 tion as everybody gazed at the spot where the 
 ill-fated pile of furs and wraps 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 waggon. 
 
 152 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 "The police!" cried everybody. "Hush it 
 up! Hush it up!" 
 
 For of course the principles of Bahee are not 
 known to the police. 
 
 In another moment the door bell of the house 
 rang with a long and violent peal, and In a sec- 
 ond as it seemed, the whole hall was filled with 
 bulky figures uniformed in blue. 
 
 "It's all right, Mrs. Rasselyer-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 uni- 
 form 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 deastralised forms of Yahl- 
 Bahi and Ram Spudd. They wore long over- 
 coats, doubtless the contents of the magic par- 
 cels, and the Philippine chauffeur had a grip of 
 iron on the neck of each as they stood. Mr. 
 Spudd had lost his Oriental hair, and the face 
 of Mr. Yahi-Bahi, perhaps In the struggle 
 which had taken place, had been scraped white 
 in patches. 
 
 They were making no attempt to break away. 
 153 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle liich 
 
 Indeed, Mr. Spudd, with that complete Bahee, 
 or Submission to Fate, which is attained only 
 by long services in 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 cour- 
 age. "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 up the steps. 
 
 Somehow many of the ladies realised at the 
 moment what cheery, safe, reliable people po- 
 licemen in blue are, and what a friendly, fa- 
 miliar shelter they offer against the wiles of 
 Oriental occultism. 
 
 "Are they old criminals?" someone asked. 
 
 "Yes, ma'am. They've worked this 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 parcelled out among the owners, and 
 in due course Mr. Yahi-Bahi and Mr. Ram 
 Spudd were lifted up into the patrol waggon, 
 where they seated themselves with a composure 
 IS4 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 worthy of the best traditions of Jehumbabah 
 and Bahoolapore. In fact, Mr. Spudd 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 Yahi-Bahi Society terminated Itself 
 without even a vote of dissolution. 
 
 And in all the later confidential discussions 
 of the episode only one point of mysticism re- 
 mained. After they had time really to reflect 
 on it, free from all danger of arrest, the mem- 
 bers of the society realised that on one point 
 the police were entirely off the truth of things. 
 For Mr. Yahi-Bahi, whether a thief or not, and 
 whether he came from the Orient, or, as the 
 police said, from Missouri, had actually suc- 
 ceeded in reastralising Buddha. 
 
 Nor was anyone more emphatic on this point 
 than Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown herself. 
 
 "For after all," she said, "If it was not Bud- 
 dha, who was it?" 
 
 And the question was never answered. 
 
 iSS 
 
Chapter V. — The Love Story of Mr. Peter 
 Spillikins 
 
 ALMOST any day, on Plutoria Avenue 
 or thereabouts, you may see little 
 Mr. Spillikins out walking with his 
 four tall sons, who are practically as 
 old as himself. 
 
 To be exact, Mr. Spillikins is twenty-four, 
 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. Wackem's Academy for Excep- 
 tional Youths In the foothills of Tennessee, and 
 while their mother, Mrs. Everleigh, was spend- 
 ing 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. Everleigh has 
 remarried and become Mrs. Everleigh-Spillikins 
 there is no need to keep them at Mr. Wackem's 
 any longer. Mr. Spillikins is able to look after 
 them. 
 
 Mr. Spillikins generally wears a little top hat 
 and an English morning coat. The boys are in 
 Eton jackets and black trousers, which, at their 
 is6 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 mother's wish, are kept just a little too short for 
 them. This is because Mrs. Everleigh-Spilli- 
 kins 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 
 eldest, but Sib the youngest is the tallest, where- 
 as Willie the third boy is the dullest, although 
 this has often been denied by those who claim 
 that Gib the second boy is just a trifle duller. 
 Thus at any rate there is a certain equality and 
 good fellowship all round. 
 
 Mrs. Everleigh-Spillikins is not to be seen 
 walking with them. She is probably at the race- 
 meet, being taken there by Captain Cormorant 
 of the United States navy, which Mr. Spillikins 
 considers very handsome of him. Every now 
 and then the captain, being in the navy, is com- 
 pelled to be at sea for perhaps a whole after- 
 noon or even several days; in which case Mrs. 
 Everleigh-Spillikins is very g^erally taken to 
 the Hunt Club or the Country Club by Lieu- 
 tenant Hawk, which Mr. Spillikins regards as 
 awfully thoughtful of him. Or if Lieutenant 
 Hawk is also out of town for the day, as he 
 sometimes has to be, because he is in the United 
 States army, Mrs. Everleigh-Spillikins 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 Plutoria Avenue one 
 157 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 may hear the four boys addressing Mr. Spilli- 
 kins as "father" and "dad" in deep bull-frog 
 voices. 
 
 "Say, dad," drawls Bob, "couldn't we all go 
 to the ball game?" 
 
 "No, say, dad," says Gib, "let's all go back 
 to the house and play five-cent pool In the bil- 
 liard-room?" 
 
 "All right, boys," says Mr. Spillikins. And a 
 few minutes later one may see them all hustling 
 up the steps of the Everleigh-SpUllklns's man- 
 sion, 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. Spillikins, which 
 culminated during the summer house-party at 
 Castel Castegglo, the woodland retreat of Mr. 
 and Mrs. Newberry. 
 
 But to understand the story one must turn 
 back a year or so to the time when Mr. Peter 
 Spillikins used to walk on Plutoria 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 SpiHIklns was his exalted view 
 of the other sex. Every time he passed a beau- 
 is8 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 tiful woman in the street he said to himself, "I 
 say!" Even when he met a moderately beauti- 
 ful one he murmured, "By Jove!" When an 
 Easter hat went sailing past, or a group of sum- 
 mer parasols stood talking on a leafy corner, 
 Mr. Spillikins ejaculated, "My word!" At the 
 opera and at tango teas 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 you looking, but do you 
 see that lovely girl in the box opposite?" 
 
 One must add to this that Mr. Spillikins, in 
 spite of his large and bulging blue eyes, enjoyed 
 the heavenly gift of short sight. As a conse- 
 quence he lived in a world of amazingly beauti- 
 ful women. And as his mind was focussed 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 cerise parasols 
 with ivory handles. 
 
 Nor, to do him justice, did Mr. Spillikins 
 confine this attitude to his view of women alone. 
 He brought is 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 appre- 
 159 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 date it — I'm not musical, you know — but even 
 with the little that I know, it's great; it abso- 
 lutely 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've no eye for pic- 
 tures, and I couldn't see anything in it, but it's 
 wonderful !" 
 
 The career of Mr. Spillikins 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. Boulder, who was his uncle and 
 trustee. Mr. Boulder's first idea had been to 
 have Mr. Spillikins attend the university. Dr. 
 Boomer, the president, had done his best to 
 spread abroad the idea that a university educa- 
 tion 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 pur- 
 sue his studies any further; that what the uni- 
 versity 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, 
 i6o 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 were beginning to attend college. "It marked," 
 said Dr. Boomer, "a revolution." 
 
 Mr. Spillikins himself was fascinated with 
 his studies. The professors seemed to him liv- 
 ing wonders. 
 
 "By Jove !" he said, "the professor of mathe- 
 matics is a marvel. You ought to see him ex- 
 plaining 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 per cent, in it. But, by Jove ! I had 
 to work for it. I'd go in for it altogether if 
 they'd let me." 
 
 But that was just the trouble — they wouldn't. 
 And so in course of time Mr. Spillikins was com- 
 pelled, for academic reasons, to abandon his 
 life-work. His last words about it were, "Gad ! 
 I nearly passed in trigonometry I" and he al- 
 ways said afterwards that he had got a tre- 
 mendous lot out of the university. 
 
 After that, as he had to leave the university, 
 his trustee, Mr. Boulder, put Mr. Spillikins into 
 business. It was, of course, his own business, 
 one of the many enterprises for which Mr. Spil- 
 likins, ever since he was twenty-one, had already 
 been signing documents and countersigning 
 cheques. So Mr. Spillikins found himself in a 
 mahogany office selling wholesale oil. And he 
 i6i 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 liked it. He said that business sharpened one 
 up tremendously. 
 
 "I'm afraid, Mr. Spillikins," 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 on the present market." 
 r' "My dear chap," said Mr. Spillikins, "that's 
 all right. After all, thirty cents isn't much, eh 
 what? Dash it, old man, we won't fight about 
 thirty cents. How much do you want?" 
 
 "Well, at four seventy we'll take twenty 
 thousand barrels." 
 
 "By Jove!" said Mr. Spillikins; "twenty 
 thousand barrels. Gad! you want a lot, don't 
 you? Pretty big sale, eh, for a beginner like 
 me? I guess uncle'U be tickled to death." 
 
 So tickled was he that after a few weeks of 
 oil selling Mr. Boulder urged Mr. Spillikins 
 to retire, and wrote off many thousand dollars 
 from the capital value of his estate. 
 
 So after this there was only one thing for 
 Mr. Spillikins to do, and everybody told him so 
 — namely, to get married. 
 
 "Spillikins," 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. Spillikins. 
 
 Goodness knows he was willing enough. In 
 fact, up to this point Mr. Spillikins's whole 
 162 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 existence had been one long aspiring sigh di- 
 rected 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 class- 
 room, where the girls of the first year sat, with 
 golden pigtails down their backs, doing trigo- 
 nometry. 
 
 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. Spillikins 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. Spil- 
 likins realised that it was only because the man 
 was, undeniably, a demonstrator and knew 
 things. 
 
 Later on, when Spillikins went into business 
 and into society, the same fate pursued him. 
 He loved, for at least six months, Georgiana 
 McTeague, the niece of the presbyterian min- 
 ister of St. Osoph's. He loved her so well that 
 for her sake he temporarily abandoned his pew 
 at St. Asaph's, which was episcopalian, and lis- 
 tened to fourteen consecutive sermons on hell. 
 But the affair got no further than that. Once 
 or twice, indeed, SpiUikins walked home with 
 Georgiana from church and talked about hell 
 with her; and once her uncle asked him into the 
 163 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 manse for cold supper after evening service, 
 and they had a long talk about hell all through 
 the meal and upstairs in the sitting-room after- 
 wards. But somehow Spillikins 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. Osoph's 
 six special sermons on the absolute certainty of 
 eternal punishment, and he married Miss Mc- 
 Teague as a result of it. 
 
 And meantime Mr. Spillikins had got en- 
 gaged, or practically so, to Adelina Lightleigh; 
 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 auction 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 Spillikins was very 
 proud, up to the Lightleighs' residence. He 
 specially 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 Spillikins used to 
 be invited up to the house by Edward and 
 Adelina. They both used to tell him how much 
 164 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 they owed him ; and they too used to join In the 
 chorus and say, "You know, Peter, you're aw- 
 fully 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. Spillikins 
 had met Dulphemia Rasselyer-Brown. At the 
 very sight of her he began reading up the life 
 of Buddha and a translation of the Upanishads 
 so as to fit himself to aspire to live with her. 
 Even when the society ended in disaster Mr. 
 Spillikins's love only burned the stronger. Con- 
 sequently, as soon as he knew that Mr. and 
 Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown were going away for 
 the summer, and that Dulphemia was to go to 
 stay with the Newberrys at Castel Casteggio, 
 this latter place, the summer retreat of the 
 Newberrys, became the one spot on earth for 
 Mr. Peter Spillikins. 
 
 Naturally, therefore, Mr. Spillikins 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. Dulphemia Is with us, but 
 we are quite a small party." 
 165 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 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 Newberrys, like everybody else, went 
 away from town in the summer-time. Mr. 
 Newberry being still in business, after a fash- 
 ion, it would not have looked well for him to 
 remain in town throughout the year. It 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, where nature 
 had thrown out her broad plank walks and her 
 long piers and her vaudeville shows. Others 
 sought it in the heart of the country, where 
 nature had spread her oiled motor roads and 
 her wayside inns. Others, like the Newberrys, 
 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 hav- 
 ing to work all the year round. Others went 
 to Europe to avoid the reproach of living al- 
 i66 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 ways 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 Plutoria Avenue, such as Doctor 
 Slyder, always preferred to send all their pa- 
 tients 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 ac- 
 count, much prefer to be sent there by their 
 doctor. 
 
 "My dear madam," Dr. Slyder 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 f 
 (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 Can- 
 ada? — perfectly quiet, not a soul there, and, I 
 believe, nowadays quite fashionable." 
 
 Thus, after all the patients had been sent 
 away. Dr. Slyder and his colleagues of Plu- 
 toria Avenue managed to slip away themselves 
 167 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 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 Dulphemia Rasselyer-Brown had been 
 sent out of town in this fashion. Mrs. Rassel- 
 yer-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 eighty other 
 people also fit for nothing. 
 
 Mr. Rasselyer-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. Slyder's hands. The doc- 
 tor had examined him, questioned him search- 
 ingly as to what he drank, and ended by pre- 
 scribing port wine to be taken firmly and 
 unflinchingly during the evening, and for the 
 daytime, at any moment of exhaustion, a light 
 cordial such as rye whiskey, or rum and Vichy 
 water. In addition to which Dr. Slyder had 
 recommended Mr. Rasselyer-Brown to leave 
 town. 
 
 "Why don't you go down to Nagahakett on 
 the Atlantic?" he said. 
 
 "Is that in Maine?" said Mr. Rasselyer- 
 Brown in horror. 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 "Oh, dear me, no !" answered the doctor 
 reassuringly. "It's in New Brunswick, Can- 
 ada; excellent place, most liberal license laws; 
 first class cuisine and bar In the hotel. No 
 tourists, no golf, too cold to swim — just the 
 place to enjoy oneself." 
 
 So Mr. Rasselyer-Brown had gone away also, 
 and as a result Dulphemia Rasselyer-Brown, at 
 the particular moment of which we speak, was 
 declared by the Boudoir and Society column of 
 the Plutorian Daily Dollar to be staying with 
 Mr. and Mrs. Newberry at their charming re- 
 treat, Castel Casteggio. 
 
 The Newberrys belonged to the class of peo- 
 ple whose one aim in the summer is to lead the 
 simple life. Mr. Newberry 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 Casteggio. 
 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 resi- 
 dences 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 fif- 
 teen miles away. Every foot of the road was 
 private property, as all nature ought to be. 
 The whole country about Castel Casteggio was 
 169 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 absolutely primeval, or at any rate as primeval 
 as Scotch gardeners and French landscape art- 
 ists could make it. The lake itself lay like a 
 sparkling gem from nature's workshop — ex- 
 cept that they had raised the level of it ten feet, 
 stone-banked the sides, cleared out the brush, 
 and put a motor road round it. Beyond that 
 it was pure nature. 
 
 Castel Casteggio itself, a beautiful house of 
 white brick with sweeping piazzas and glitter- 
 ing 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 7.30) and, except for tennis parties, 
 motor boat parties, lawn teas, and golf, to live 
 absolutely to oneself. 
 
 It should be explained that the house was not 
 called Castel Casteggio because the Newberrys 
 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 
 residence of the Asterisk-Thomsons that stood 
 close by in the same primeval country was al- 
 ready called Pennygw-rydd, and the woodland 
 retreat of the Hyphen-Joneses just across the 
 little lake was called Strathythan-na-Clee, and 
 170 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 the charming chalet of the Wilson-Smiths was 
 called Yodel-Dudel; 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 ex- 
 cept out into the primeval wilderness — had 
 drawn up at the diminutive roadside station. 
 Mr. Spillikins had alighted, and there was Miss 
 Phllippa Furlong sitting behind the chauffeur 
 in the Newberrys' 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 beauti- 
 ful morning in July. 
 
 There was no doubt about Phllippa Furlong. 
 Her beauty was of that peculiar and almost 
 sacred kind found only in the immediate neigh- 
 bourhood 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 Plutoria Avenue. 
 
 Mr. Spillikins, as he gazed at her in her white 
 
 summer dress and wide picture hat, with her 
 
 parasol nodding above her head, reahsed that 
 
 after all, rehglon, as embodied In the younger 
 
 171 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 sisters of the High Church clergy, fills a great 
 place in the world. 
 
 "By Jove!" he repeated, "how awfully good 
 of youl" 
 
 "Not a bit," said Philippa. "Hop in. Dul- 
 phemia 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. Spilli- 
 kins that were being loaded, together with his 
 suit-case, tennis racket, and golf kit, on to the 
 fore part of the motor. Mr. Spillikins, 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 swished in their faces, and round- 
 ing and twisting among curves of the hills as it 
 carried Spillikins 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 Casteggio and Penny- 
 gw-rydd. 
 
 Mr. Spillikins 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 
 172 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 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 lis- 
 tener, it was not long before Mr. Spillikins had 
 begun to talk of Dulphemia and his hopes. 
 
 "I don't know whether she really cares for 
 me or not," said Mr. Spillikins, "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 Spudd. I liked him. I sent him two 
 pounds of tobacco to the penitentiary last week; 
 you can get it in to them, you know, if you know 
 how." 
 
 "But what were you going to say?" asked 
 Philippa. 
 
 "Oh yes," said Mr. Spillikins. And he re- 
 alised that he had actually drifted off the topic 
 of Dulphemia, a thing that had never happened 
 to him before. "I was going to say that at one 
 of the meetings, you know, I asked her if I 
 might call her Dulphemia." 
 173 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 "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?" 
 
 "Awfully good," said Philippa. 
 
 "And a little after that I took her slippers 
 home from the Charity Ball at the Grand Pala- 
 ver. Archie Jones took her home herself in 
 his car, but I took her slippers. She'd forgot- 
 ten them. I thought that a pretty good sign, 
 wasn't it? You wouldn't let a chap carry round 
 your slippers unless you knew him pretty well, 
 would you. Miss Philippa?" 
 
 "Oh no, nobody would," said Philippa. This, 
 of course, was a standing principle of the Angli- 
 can Church. 
 
 "And a little after that Dulphemia and 
 Charlie Mostyn and I were walking to Mrs. 
 Buncomhearst'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. SpiUikins. "You 
 don't mind my telling you all about this, Miss 
 Philippa?" he added. 
 
 Incidentally Mr. Spillikins felt that it was all 
 
 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. Spilli- 
 
 174 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 kins realised, 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. Spillikins, "you're so 
 awfully sympathetic. It makes it so easy to talk 
 to you. With other girls, especially with clever 
 ones, even with Dulphemia, I often feel a per- 
 fect 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. SpiUikins's protruding 
 blue eyes forbade a sarcastic answer. 
 
 "By Jove!" said Mr. SpiUikins 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 
 affianced, or practically so, was allowed the 
 smaller liberty of paying honest compliments. 
 
 "Oh, this old thing," laughed Philippa, with 
 a contemptuous shake of her dress. "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. 
 Asaph's for six months. 
 
 And after that they had only time, so It 
 175 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 seemed to Mr. Spillikins, for two or three re- 
 marks, and he had scarcely had leisure to re- 
 flect 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 con- 
 servatories of Castel Casteggio right in front 
 of them. 
 
 "Here we are," said Philippa, "and there's 
 Mr. Newberry out on the lawn." 
 
 "Now, here," Mr. Newberry was saying a 
 little later, waving his hand, "is where you get 
 what I think the finest view of the place." 
 
 He was standing at the corner of the lawn 
 where it sloped, dotted with great trees, to the 
 banks of the little lake, and was showing Mr. 
 Spillikins the beauties of Castel Casteggio. 
 
 Mr. Newberry wore on his short circular 
 person the summer costume of a man taking 
 his ease and careless of dress: plain white flan- 
 nel trousers, not worth more than six dollars a 
 leg, an ordinary white silk shirt with a rolled 
 collar, that couldn't have cost more than fifteen 
 dollars, and on his head an ordinary Panama 
 hat, say forty dollars. 
 
 "By Jove!" said Mr. Spillikins, as he looked 
 176 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 about him at the house and the beautiful lawn 
 with its great trees, "it's a lovely place." 
 
 "Isn't It?" said Mr. Newberry. "But you 
 ought to have seen It when I took hold of it. 
 To make the motor road alone I had to dyna- 
 mite out about a hundred yards of rock, and 
 then I fetched up cement, tons and tons of It, 
 and boulders to buttress the embankment." 
 
 "Did you really!" said Mr. Spillikins, look- 
 ing at Mr. Newberry with great respect. 
 
 "Yes, and even that was nothing to the house 
 itself. Do you know, I had to go at least forty 
 feet for the foundations. First I went through 
 about twenty feet of loose clay, after that I 
 struck sand, and I'd no sooner got through that 
 than, by George! I landed in eight feet of 
 water. I had to pump it out; I think I took out 
 a thousand gallons before I got clear down to 
 the rock. Then I took my solid steel beams in 
 fifty-foot lengths," here Mr. Newberry Imi- 
 tated with his arms the action of a man setting 
 up a steel beam, "and set them upright and 
 bolted them on the rock. After that I threw my 
 steel girders across, clapped on my roof rafters, 
 all steel, in sixty-foot pieces, and then just held 
 it easily, just supported it a bit, and let it sink 
 gradually to Its place." 
 
 Mr. Newberry illustrated with his two arms 
 the action of a huge house being allowed to sink 
 slowly to a firm rest. 
 
 177 
 
Arcadian Adventures tcith the Idle Rich 
 
 "You don't say so I" said Mr. Spillikins, lost 
 in amazement at the wonderful physical 
 strength that Mr. Newberry must have. 
 
 "Excuse me just a minute," broke off Mr. 
 Newberry, "while I smooth out the gravel 
 where you're standing. You've rather dis- 
 turbed it, I'm afraid." 
 
 "Oh, I'm awfully sorry," said Mr. Spillikins. 
 
 "Oh, not at all, not at all," said his host. "I 
 don't mind in the least. It's only on account of 
 McAllster:" 
 
 "Who?" asked Mr. Spillikins. 
 
 "My gardener. He doesn't care to have us 
 walk on the gravel paths. It scuffs up the 
 gravel so. But sometimes one forgets." 
 
 It should be said here, for the sake of clear- 
 ness, that one of the chief glories of Castel 
 Casteggio lay in its servants. All of them, it 
 goes without saying, had been brought from 
 Great Britain. The comfort they gave to Mr. 
 and Mrs. Newberry was unspeakable. In fact, 
 as they themselves admitted, servants of the 
 kind are simply not to be found in America. 
 
 "Our Scotch gardener," Mrs. Newberry al- 
 ways explained, "is a perfect character. I don't 
 know how we could get another like him. Do 
 you know, my dear, he simply won't allow us 
 to pick the roses; and if any of us walk across 
 the grass he is furious. And he positively re- 
 fuses to let us use the vegetables. He told me 
 178 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 quite plainly that if we took any of his young 
 peas or his early cucumbers he would leave. 
 We are to have them later on when he's finished 
 growing them." 
 
 "How delightful it is to have servants of that 
 sort," the lady addressed would murmur; "so 
 devoted and so different from servants on this 
 side of the water. Just imagine, my dear, my 
 chauffeur, when I was in Colorado, actually 
 threatened to leave me merely because I wanted 
 to reduce his wages. I think it's these wretched 
 labour unions." 
 
 "I'm sure it is. Of course we have trouble 
 with McAlister at times, but he's always very 
 reasonable when we put things in the right light. 
 Last week, for example, I was afraid that we 
 had gone too far with him. He is always ac- 
 customed to have a quart of beer every morn- 
 ing at half-past ten — the maids are told to 
 bring It out to him, and after that he goes to 
 sleep in the little arbour beside the tulip bed. 
 And the other day when he went there he 
 found that one of our guests who hadn't been 
 told, was actually sitting in there reading. Of 
 course he was furious. I was afraid for the 
 moment that he would give notice on the spot." 
 
 "What would you have done?" 
 
 "Positively, my dear, I don't know. But we 
 explained to him at once that It was only an 
 accident and that the person hadn't known and 
 179 
 
Arcadian Adventures tvith the Idle Rich 
 
 that of course It wouldn't occur again. After 
 that he was softened a little, but he went off 
 muttering to himself, and that evening he dug 
 up all the new tulips and threw them over the 
 fence. We saw him do It, but we didn't dare 
 say anything." 
 
 "Oh no," echoed the other lady; "If you had 
 you might have lost him." 
 
 "Exactly. And I don't think we could pos- 
 sibly get another man like him; at least, not on 
 this side of the water." 
 
 "But come," said Mr. Newberry, after he 
 had finished adjusting the gravel with his foot, 
 "there are Mrs. Newberry and the girls on the 
 verandah. Let's go and join them." 
 
 A few minutes later Mr. Spillikins was talk- 
 ing with Mrs. Newberry and Dulphemla Ras- 
 selyer-Brown, and telling Mrs. Newberry what 
 a beautiful house she had. Beside them stood 
 Philippa Furlong, and she had her arm around 
 Dulphemia's waist; and the picture that they 
 thus made, with their heads close together, 
 Dulphemia's hair being golden and Phillppa's 
 chestnut-brown, was such that Mr. Spillikins 
 had no eyes for Mrs. Newberry nor for Castel 
 Casteggio nor for anything. So much so that 
 he practically didn't see at all the little girl in 
 green that stood unobtrusively on the further 
 side of Mrs. Newberry. Indeed, though some- 
 i8o 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 body had murmured her name in Introduction, 
 he couldn't have repeated It If asked two min- 
 utes afterwards. His eyes and his mind were 
 elsewhere. 
 
 But hers were not. 
 
 For the Little Girl in Green looked at Mr. 
 Spillikins with wide eyes, and when she looked 
 at him she saw all at once such wonderful 
 things about him as nobody had ever seen be- 
 fore. 
 
 For she could see from the poise of his head 
 how awfully clever he was; and from the way 
 he stood with his hands in his side pockets she 
 could see how manly and brave he must be; and 
 of course there was firmness and strength writ- 
 ten all over him. In short, she saw as she 
 looked such a Peter Spillikins as truly never 
 existed, or could exist — or at least such a Peter 
 Spillikins as no one else in the world had ever 
 suspected before. 
 
 AH In a moment she was ever so glad that 
 she accepted Mrs. Newberry's invitation to 
 Castel Castegglo and hadn't been afraid to 
 come. For the Little Girl in Green, whose 
 Christian name was Norah, was only what is 
 called a poor relation of Mrs. Newberry, and 
 her father was a person of no account what- 
 ever, who didn't belong to the Mausoleum Club 
 or to any other club, and who lived, with Norah, 
 on a street that nobody who was anybody lived 
 i8i 
 
Arcadian Adventures 'with the Idle liich 
 
 upon. Norah had been asked up a few days 
 before out of the City to give her air — which 
 is the only thing that can be safely and freely 
 given to poor relations. Thus she had arrived 
 at Castel Casteggio with one diminutive trunk, 
 so small and shabby that even the servants who 
 carried it upstairs were ashamed of it. In it 
 were a pair of brand new tennis shoes (at 
 ninety cents reduced to seventy-five, and a white 
 dress of the kind that is called "almost even- 
 ing," and such few other things as poor rela- 
 tions might bring with fear and trembling to 
 join in the simple rusticity of the rich. 
 
 Thus stood Norah looking at Mr. Spillikins. 
 
 As for him, such is the contrariety of human 
 things, he had no eyes for her at all. 
 
 "What a perfectly charming house this Is," 
 Mr. Spillikins was saying. He always said 
 this on such occasions, but it seemed to the 
 Little Girl In Green that he spoke with wonder- 
 ful social ease. 
 
 "I am so glad you think so," said Mrs. New- 
 berry (this was what she always answered) ; 
 "you've no Idea what work it has been. This 
 year we put in all this new glass in the east con- 
 servatory, over a thousand panes. Such a tre- 
 mendous business!" 
 
 "I was just telling Mr. Spillikins," said Mr. 
 Newberry, "about the work we had blasting 
 out the motor road. You can see the gap where 
 182 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 it lies better from here, I think, Spillikins. I 
 must have exploded a ton and a half of dyna- 
 mite on it." 
 
 "By Jove!" said Mr. Spillikins; "It must be 
 dangerous work, eh? I wonder you aren't 
 afraid of It." 
 
 "One simply gets used to It, that's all," said 
 Newberry, shrugging his shoulders; "but of 
 course It is dangerous. I blew up two Italians 
 on the last job." He paused a minute and 
 added musingly, "Hardy fellows, the Italians. 
 I prefer them to any other people for blasting.'^ 
 
 "Did you blow them up yourself?" asked 
 Mr. Spillikins. 
 
 "I wasn't here," answered Mr. Newberry. 
 "In fact, I never care to be here when I'm blast- 
 ing. We go to town. But I had to foot the 
 bill for them all the same. Quite right, too. 
 The risk, of course, was mine, not theirs; that's 
 the law, you know. They cost me two thou- 
 sand each." 
 
 "But come," said Mrs. Newberry, "I think 
 we must go and dress for dinner. Franklin 
 will be frightfully put out if we're late. Frank- 
 lin is our butler," she went on, seeing that Mr. 
 Spillikins didn't understand the reference, "and 
 as we brought him out from England we have 
 to be rather careful. With a good man like 
 Franklin one is always so afraid of losing him 
 183 
 
Arcadian Adve7itures with the Idle Rich 
 
 — and after last night we have to be doubly 
 careful." 
 
 "Why last night?" asked Mr. Spillikins. 
 
 "Oh, it wasn't much," said Mrs. Newberry. 
 "In fact, it was merely an accident. Only it 
 just chanced that at dinner, quite late in the 
 meal, when we had had nearly everything (we 
 dine very simply here, Mr. Spillikins), Mr. 
 Newberry, who was thirsty and who wasn't 
 really thinking what he was saying, asked 
 Franklin to give him a glass of hock. Franklin 
 said at once, Tm very sorry, sir, I don't care to 
 serve my hock after the entree!" 
 
 "And of course he was right," said Dul- 
 phemia with emphasis. 
 
 "Exactly; he was perfectly right. They 
 know, you know. We were afraid that there 
 might be trouble, but Mr. Newberry went and 
 saw Franklin afterwards and he behaved very 
 well over it. But suppose we go and dress? 
 It's half-past six already and we've only an 
 hour." 
 
 In this congenial company Mr. Spillikins 
 spent the next three days. 
 
 Life at Castel Casteggio, as the Newberrys 
 loved to explain, was conducted on the very 
 simplest plan. Early breakfast, country fash- 
 ion, at nine o'clock; after that nothing to eat 
 till lunch, unless one cared to have lemonade 
 184 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 or bottled ale sent out with a biscuit or a mac- 
 aroon to the tennis court. Lunch" Itself was a 
 perfectly plain midday meal, lasting till about 
 1.30, and consisting simply of cold meats (say 
 four kinds) and salads, with perhaps a made 
 dish or two, and, for anybody who cared for 
 it, a hot steak or a chop, or both. After that 
 one had coffee and cigarettes In the shade of 
 the piazza and waited for afternoon tea. This 
 latter was served at a wicker table In any part 
 of the grounds that the gardener was not at that 
 moment clipping, trimming, or otherwise using. 
 Afternoon tea being over, one rested or walked 
 on the lawn till It was time to dress for dinner. 
 
 This simple routine was broken only by ir- 
 ruptions of people In motors or motor boats 
 from Penny-gw-rydd or Yodel-Dudel Chalet. 
 
 The whole thing, from the point of view of 
 Mr. Spillikins or Dulphemla or Phllippa, repre- 
 sented rusticity Itself. 
 
 To the Little Girl in Green it seemed as bril- 
 liant as the Court of Versailles; especially even- 
 ing dinner — a plain home meal as the others 
 thought it — -when she had four glasses to drink 
 out of and used to wonder over such problems 
 as whether you were supposed, when Franklin 
 poured out wine, to tell him to stop or to wait 
 till he stopped without being told to stop; and 
 other similar mysteries, such as many people 
 before and after have meditated upon. 
 185 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 During all this time Mr. Spillikins was nerv- 
 ing himself to propose to Dulphemia Rassel- 
 yer-Brown. In fact, he spent part of his time 
 walking up and down under the trees with 
 Philippa Furlong and discussing with her the 
 proposal that he meant to make, together with 
 such topics as marriage in general and his own 
 unworthiness. 
 
 He might have waited indefinitely had he not 
 learned, on the third day of his visit, that Dul- 
 phemia was to go away in the morning to join 
 her father at Nagahakett. 
 
 That evening he found the necessary nerve to 
 speak, and the proposal in almost every aspect 
 of it was most successful. 
 
 "By Jove!" Spillikins said to Philippa Fur- 
 long next morning, in explaining what had hap- 
 pened, "she was awfully nice about it. I think 
 she must have guessed, in a way, don't you, 
 what I was going to say? But at any rate she 
 was awfully nice — let me say everything I 
 wanted, and when I explained what a fool I 
 was, she said she didn't think I was half such 
 a fool as people thought me. But it's all right. 
 It turns out that she isn't thinking of getting 
 married. I asked her if I might always go on 
 thinking of her, and she said I might." 
 
 And that morning when Dulphemia was car- 
 ried off in the motor to the station, Mr. Spilli- 
 kins, without exactly being aware how he had 
 i86 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 done it, had somehow transferred himself to 
 Philippa. 
 
 "Isn't she a splendid girl!" he said at least 
 itn times a day to Norah, the Little Girl in 
 Green. And Norah always agreed, because 
 she really thought Philippa a perfectly wonder- 
 ful creature. 
 
 There is no doubt that, but for a slight shift 
 of circumstances, Mr. Spillikins would have 
 proposed to Miss Furlong. Indeed, he spent 
 a good part of his time rehearsing little speeches 
 that began, "Of course I know I'm an awful ass 
 in a way," or, "Of course I know that I'm not 
 at all the sort of fellow," and so on. 
 
 But not one of them ever was delivered. 
 
 For it so happened that on the Thursday, one 
 week after Mr. Spillikins's arrival, Philippa 
 went again to the station in the motor. And 
 when she came back there was another pas- 
 senger with her, a tall young man in tweed, 
 and they both began calling out to the New- 
 berrys from a distance of at least a hundred 
 yards. 
 
 And both the Newberrys suddenly exclaimed, 
 "Why, it's Tom!" and rushed off to meet the 
 motor. And there was such a laughing and 
 jubilation as the two descended and carried 
 Tom's valises to the verandah, that Mr. Spilli- 
 kins felt as suddenly and completely out of it 
 as the Little Girl In Green herself — especially 
 187 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 as his ear had caught, among the first things 
 said, the words, "Congratulate us, Mrs. New- 
 berry, we're engaged." 
 
 After which Mr. Spillikins had the pleasure 
 of sitting and listening while it was explained, 
 in wicker chairs on the verandah, that Philippa 
 and Tom had been engaged already for ever so 
 long — in fact, nearly two weeks, only they had 
 agreed not to say a word to anybody till Tom 
 had gone to North Carolina and back, to see 
 his people. 
 
 And as to who Tom was, or what was the 
 relation between Tom and the Newberrys, Mr. 
 Spillikins neither knew nor cared; nor did it 
 interest him in the least that Philippa had met 
 Tom in Bermuda, and that she hadn't known 
 that he even knew the Newberrys, nor any 
 other of the exuberant disclosures of the mo- 
 ment. In fact, if there was any one period 
 rather than another when Mr. Spillikins felt 
 corroborated in his private view of himself, 
 It was at this moment. 
 
 So the next day Tom and Philippa vanished 
 together. 
 
 "We shall be quite a small party now," said 
 Mrs. Newberry; "in fact, quite by ourselves 
 till Mrs. Everleigh comes, and she won't be 
 here for a fortnight." 
 
 At which the heart of the Little Girl in 
 Green was glad, because she had been afraid 
 i88 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 that other girls might be coming, whereas she 
 knew that Mrs. Everleigh was a widow with 
 four sons and must be ever so old, past forty. 
 
 The next few days were spent by Mr. Spilli- 
 kins almost entirely in the society of Norah. 
 He thought them on the whole rather pleasant 
 days, but slow. To her they were an uninter- 
 rupted dream of happiness never to be forgot- 
 ten. 
 
 The Newberrys left them to themselves; not 
 with any intent; it was merely that they were 
 perpetually busy walking about the grounds of 
 Castel Casteggio, blowing up things with dyna- 
 mite, throwing steel bridges over gullies, and 
 hoisting heavy timber with derricks. Nor were 
 they to blame for it. For it had not always 
 been theirs to command dynamite and control 
 the forces of nature. There had been a time, 
 now long ago, when the two Newberrys had 
 lived, both of them, on twenty dollars a week, 
 and Mrs. Newberry had made her own dresses, 
 and Mr. Newberry had spent vigorous evenings 
 In making hand-made shelves for their sitting- 
 room. That was long ago, and since then Mr. 
 Newberry, like many other people of those 
 earlier days, had risen to wealth and Castel 
 Casteggio, while others, like Norah's father, 
 had stayed just where they were. 
 
 So the Newberrys left Peter and Norah to 
 themselves all day. Even after dinner, in the 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 evening, Mr. Newberry was very apt to call to 
 his wife in the dusk from some distant corner 
 of the lawn : 
 
 "Margaret, come over here and tell me if 
 you don't think we might cut down this elm, 
 tear the stump out by the roots, and throw it 
 into the ravine." 
 
 And the answer was, "One minute, Edward; 
 just wait till I get a wrap." 
 
 Before they came back the dusk had grown 
 to darkness, and they had redynamited half the 
 estate. 
 
 During all of which time Mr. Spillikins sat 
 with Norah on the piazza. He talked and she 
 listened. He told her, for instance, all about 
 his terrific experiences in the oil business, and 
 about his exciting career at college; or pres- 
 ently they went indoors and Norah played the 
 piano and Mr. Spillikins sat and smoked and 
 listened. In such a house as the Newberrys', 
 where dynamite and the greater explosives were 
 everyday matters, a little thing lilce the use of 
 tobacco in the drawing-room didn't count. As 
 for the music, "Go right ahead," said Mr. 
 Spillikins; "I'm not musical, but I don't mind 
 music a bit." 
 
 In the daytime they played tennis. There 
 
 was a court at one end of the lawn beneath the 
 
 trees, all chequered with sunlight and mingled 
 
 shadow; very beautiful, Norah thought, though 
 
 190 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 Mr. Spillikins explained that the spotted light 
 put him off his game. In fact, It was owing 
 entirely to this bad light that Mr. Spilliklns's 
 fast drives, wonderful though they were, some- 
 how never got Inside the service court. 
 
 Norah, of course, thought Mr. Spillikins a 
 wonderful player. She was glad — In fact, it 
 suited them both — when he beat her six to 
 nothing. She didn't know and didn't care that 
 there was no one else in the world that Mr. 
 Spillikins could beat like that. Once he even 
 said to her, 
 
 "By Gad! you don't play half a bad game, 
 you know. I think, you know, with practice 
 you'd come on quite a lot." 
 
 After that the games were understood to be 
 more or less In the form of lessons, which put 
 Mr. Spillikins on a pedestal of superiority, and 
 allowed any bad strokes on his part to be viewed 
 as a form of indulgence. 
 
 Also, as the tennis was viewed in this light, 
 it was Norah's part to pick up the balls at the 
 net and throw them back to Mr. Spillikins. He 
 let her do this, not from rudeness, for it wasn't 
 in him, but because In such a primeval place as 
 Castel Castegglo the natural primitive relation 
 of the sexes is bound to reassert itself. 
 
 But of love Mr. Spillikins never thought. 
 He had viewed it so eagerly and so often from 
 a distance that when it stood here modestly at 
 191 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 his very elbow he did not recognise Its presence. 
 His mind had been fashioned, as It were, to 
 connect love with something stunning and sen- 
 sational, with Easter hats and harem skirts and 
 the luxurious consciousness of the unattainable. 
 
 Even at that, there Is no knowing what might 
 have happened. Tennis, In the chequered light 
 of sun and shadow cast by summer leaves. Is a 
 dangerous game. There came a day when they 
 were standing one each side of the net and Mr. 
 Spillikins was explaining to Norah the proper 
 way to hold a racquet so as to be able to give 
 those miagnificent backhand sweeps of his, by 
 which he generally drove the ball half-way to 
 the lake; and explaining this Involved putting 
 his hand right over Norah's on the handle of 
 the racquet, so that for just half a second her 
 hand was clasped tight in his; and If that half- 
 second had been lengthened out Into a whole 
 second It Is quite possible that what was already 
 subconscious in his mind would have broken Its 
 way triumphantly to the surface, and Norah's 
 hand would have stayed In his — how willing- 
 ly — ! for the rest of their two lives. 
 
 But just at that moment Mr. SpIHIklns looked 
 up, and he said in quite an altered tone, 
 
 "By Jove! who's that awfully good-looking 
 woman getting out of the motor?" 
 
 And their hands unclasped. Norah looked 
 over towards the house and said, 
 192 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 "Why, It's Mrs. Everleigh. I thought she 
 wasn't coming for another week." 
 
 *'I say," said Mr. Spillikins, straining his 
 short sight to the uttermost, "what perfectly 
 wonderful golden hair, eh?" 
 
 "Why, it's " Norah began, and then she 
 
 stopped. It didn't seem right to explain that 
 Mrs. Everleigh's hair was dyed. 
 
 "And who's that tall chap standing beside 
 her?" said Mr. Spillikins. 
 
 "I think it's Captain Cormorant, but I don't 
 think he's going to stay. He's only brought 
 her up in the motor from town." 
 
 "By Jove, how good of him!" said Spilli- 
 kins; and this sentiment in regard to Captain 
 Cormorant, though he didn't know it, was to 
 become a keynote of his existence. 
 
 "I didn't know she was coming so soon," 
 said Norah, and there was weariness already in 
 her heart. Certainly she didn't know it; still 
 less did she know, or anyone else, that the rea- 
 son of Mrs. Everleigh's coming was because 
 Mr. Spillikins was there. She came with a 
 set purpose, and she sent Captain Cormorant 
 directly back in the motor because she didn't 
 want him on the premises. 
 
 "Oughtn't we to go up to the house?" said 
 Norah. 
 
 "All right," said Mr. SpiUikins with great 
 alacrity, "let's go." 
 
 193 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 Now as this story began with the informa- 
 tion that Mrs. Everleigh is at present Mrs. 
 Everleigh-SpIUikins, there is no need to pur- 
 sue in detail the stages of Mr. Spillikins's woo- 
 ing. Its course was swift and happy. Mr. 
 SpiUikins, having seen the back of Mrs. Ever- 
 leigh's head, had decided instanter that she was 
 the most beautiful woman in the world; and 
 that impression is not easily corrected in the 
 half-light of a shaded drawing-room; nor 
 across a dinner-table lighted only with candles 
 with deep red shades; nor even in the daytime 
 through a veil. In any case, it is only fair to 
 state that if Mrs. Everleigh was not and is not 
 a singularly beautiful woman, Mr. Spillikins 
 still doesn't know it. And in point of attrac- 
 tion the homage of such experts as Captain Cor- 
 morant and Lieutenant Hawk speaks for itself. 
 
 So the course of Mr. Spillikins's love, for 
 love it must have been, ran swiftly to its goal. 
 Each stage of it was duly marked by his com- 
 ments to Norah. 
 
 "She is 2i splendid woman," he said, "so 
 sympathetic. She always seems to know just 
 what one's going to say." 
 
 So she did, for she was making him say it. 
 
 "By Jove!" he said a day later, "Mrs. 
 
 Everleigh's an awfully ifine woman, isn't she? 
 
 I was telling her about my having been in the 
 
 oil business for a little while, and she thinks 
 
 194 
 
Arcadian Adve7itures with the Idle Rich 
 
 that I'd really be awfully good in money things. 
 She said she wished she had me to manage her 
 money for her." 
 
 This also was quite true, except that Mrs. 
 Everleigh had not made it quite clear that the 
 management of her money was of the form gen- 
 erally known as deficit financing. In fact, her 
 money was, very crudely stated, non-existent, 
 and it needed a lot of management. 
 
 A day or two later Mr. Spillikins was say- 
 ing, *'I think Mrs. Everleigh must have had 
 great sorrow, don't you? Yesterday she was 
 showing me a photograph of her little boy — 
 she has a little boy, you know " 
 
 "Yes, I know," said Norah. She didn't add 
 that she knew that Mrs. Everleigh had four. 
 
 " — and she was saying how awfully rough 
 it is having to have him always away from 
 her at Dr. Something's academy where he is." 
 
 And very soon after that Mr. Spillikins was 
 saying, with quite a quaver in his voice, 
 
 "By Jove! yes, I'm awfully lucky; I never 
 thought for a moment that she'd have me, you 
 know — a woman like her, with so much atten- 
 tion and everything. I can't imagine what she 
 sees in me." 
 
 Which was just as well. 
 
 And then Mr. Spillikins checked himself, for 
 he noticed — this was on the verandah in the 
 morning — that Norah had a hat and jacket on 
 195 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 and that the motor was rolling towards the 
 door. 
 
 "I say," he said, "are you going away?" 
 
 "Yes, didn't you know?" Norah said. "I 
 thought you heard them speaking of it at dinner 
 last night. I have to go home; father's alone, 
 you know." 
 
 "Oh, I'm awfully sorry," said Mr. Spilli- 
 kins; "we shan't have any more tennis." 
 
 "Good-bye," said Norah, and as she said it 
 and put out her hand there were tears brimming 
 up into her eyes. But Mr. Spillikins, being 
 short of sight, didn't see them. 
 
 "Good-bye," he said. 
 
 Then as the motor carried her away he stood 
 for a moment in a sort of reverie. Perhaps 
 certain things that might have been rose un- 
 formed and inarticulate before his mind. And 
 then a voice called from the drawing-room 
 within, in a measured and assured tone, 
 
 "Peter, darling, where are you?" 
 
 "Coming," cried Mr. Spillikins, and he came. 
 
 On the second day of the engagement Mrs. 
 Everleigh showed to Peter a little photograph 
 in a brooch. 
 
 "This is Gib, my second little boy," she 
 said. 
 
 Mr. Spillikins started to say, "I didn't 
 
 know " and then checked himself and said, 
 
 196 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 "By Gad! what a fine-looking little chap, eh? 
 I'm awfully fond of boys." 
 
 "Dear little fellow, isn't he?" said Mrs. 
 Everlelgh. "He's really rather taller than 
 that now, because this picture was taken a little 
 while ago." 
 
 And the next day she said, "This is Willie, 
 my third boy," and on the day after that she 
 said, "This is Sib, my youngest boy; I'm sure 
 you'll love him." 
 
 "I'm sure I shall," said Mr. Spillikins. He 
 loved him already for being the youngest. 
 
 And so in the fulness of time — nor was it 
 so very full either, in fact, only about five 
 weeks — Peter Spillikins and Mrs. Everleigh 
 were married in St. Asaph's Church on Plutoria 
 Avenue. And the wedding was one of the most 
 beautiful and sumptuous of the weddings of 
 the September season. There were flowers, and 
 bridesmaids In long veils, and tall ushers in 
 frock-coats, and awnings at the church door, 
 and strings of motors with wedding-favours on 
 imported chauffeurs, and all that goes to invest 
 marriage on Plutoria Avenue with its peculiar 
 sacredness. The face of the young rector, Mr. 
 Fareforth Furlong, wore the added salntllness 
 that springs from a five-hundred dollar fee. 
 The whole town was there, or at least every- 
 body that was anybody; and if there was one 
 197 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 person absent, one who sat by herself In the 
 darkened drawing-room of a dull little house 
 on a shabby street, who knew or cared? 
 
 So after the ceremony the happy couple — for 
 were they not so? — left for New York. There 
 they spent their honeymoon. They had thought 
 of going, — it was Mr. Spilllkins's idea, — to the 
 coast of Maine. But Mrs. Everleigh-Spillikins 
 said that New York was much nicer, so restful, 
 whereas, as everyone knows, the coast of Maine 
 Is frightfully noisy. 
 
 Moreover, It so happened that before the 
 Everleigh-Spillikinses had been more than four 
 or five days in New York the ship of Captain 
 Cormorant dropped anchor in the Hudson; 
 and when the anchor of that ship was once 
 down it generally stayed there. So the captain 
 was able to take the Everleigh-Spillikinses about 
 In New York, and to give a tea for Mrs. Ever- 
 leigh-Spillikins on the deck of his vessel so that 
 she might meet the officers, and another tea 
 In a private room of a restaurant on Fifth Ave- 
 nue so that she might meet no one but himself. 
 
 And at this tea Captain Cormorant said, 
 among other things, "Did he kick up rough 
 at all when you told him about the money?" 
 
 And Mrs. Everleigh, now Mrs. Everleigh- 
 Spillikins, said, "Not hel I think he is actu- 
 ally pleased to know that I haven't any. Do 
 you know, Arthur, he's really an awfully good 
 198 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 fellow," and as she said it she moved her hand 
 away from under Captain Cormorant's on the 
 tea-table. 
 
 "I say," said the Captain, "don't get senti- 
 mental over him." 
 
 So that is how it is that the Everleigh-Spilli- 
 kinses came to reside on Plutoria Avenue in a 
 beautiful stone house, with the billiard-room in 
 an extension on the second floor. Through the 
 windows of it one can almost hear the click of 
 the billiard balls, and a voice saying, " Hold on, 
 father, you had your shot." 
 
 199 
 
Chapter VI. — The Rival Churches of St. 
 Asaph and St. Osoph 
 
 THE church of St. Asaph, more prop- 
 erly called St. Asaph's in the Fields, 
 stands among the elm trees of Plu- 
 toria Avenue opposite the university, 
 its tall spire pointing to the blue sky. Its rector 
 is fond of saying that it seems to him to point, 
 as it were, a warning against the sins of a 
 commercial age. More particularly does he 
 say this in his Lenten services at noonday, when 
 the business men sit in front of him in rows, 
 their bald heads uncovered and their faces 
 stamped with contrition as they think of mer- 
 gers that they should have made, and real 
 estate that they failed to buy for lack of faith. 
 The ground on which St. Asaph's stands is 
 worth seven dollars and a half a foot. The 
 mortgagees, as they kneel in prayer in their 
 long frock-coats, feel that they have built upon 
 a rock. It is a beautifully appointed church. 
 There are windows with priceless stained glass 
 that were imported from Normandy, the rector 
 himself swearing out the invoices to save the 
 congregation the grievous burden of the cus- 
 toms duty. There is a pipe organ in the tran- 
 200 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 sept that cost ten thousand dollars to Instal. 
 The debenture-holders, as they join in the morn- 
 ing anthem, love to hear the dulcet notes of the 
 great organ and to reflect that it is as good 
 as new. Just behind the church is St. Asaph's 
 Sunday School, with a ten-thousand dollar mort- 
 gage of its own. And below that again, on the 
 side street, is the building of the Young Men's 
 Guild, with a bowling-alley and a swimming- 
 bath deep enough to drown two young men at 
 a time, and a billiard-room with seven tables. 
 It is the rector's boast that with a Guild House 
 such as that there is no need for any young 
 man of the congregation to frequent a saloon. 
 Nor is there. 
 
 And on Sunday mornings, when the great 
 organ plays, and the mortgagees and the bond- 
 holders and the debenture-holders and the Sun- 
 day school teachers and the billiard-markers 
 all lift up their voices together, there is emitted 
 from St. Asaph's a volume of praise that is 
 practically as fine and effective as paid profes- 
 sional work. 
 
 St. Asaph's is episcopal. As a consequence 
 it has In it and about It all those things which 
 go to make up the episcopal church — brass tab- 
 lets let into Its walls, blackbirds singing In its 
 elm trees, parishioners who dine at eight o'clock, 
 and a rector who wears a little crucifix and 
 dances the tango. 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 On the other hand, there stands upon the 
 same street, not a hundred yards away, the rival 
 church of St. Osoph — presbyterian down to its 
 very foundations in bed-rock, thirty feet below 
 the level of the avenue. It has a short, squat 
 tower — and a low roof, and its narrow windows 
 are glazed with frosted glass. It has dark 
 spruce trees instead of elms, crows instead of 
 blackbirds, and a gloomy minister with a shovel 
 hat who lectures on philosophy on week-days 
 at the university. He loves to think that his 
 congregation are made of the lowly and the 
 meek in spirit, and to reflect that, lowly and 
 meek as they are, there are men among them 
 that could buy out half the congregation of 
 St. Asaph's. 
 
 St. Osoph's is only presbyterian In a special 
 sense. It is, in fact, too presbyterian to be any 
 longer connected with any other body whatso- 
 ever. It seceded some forty years ago from 
 the original body to which it belonged, and 
 later on, with three other churches, it seceded 
 from the group of seceding congregations. Still 
 later it fell into a difference with the three other 
 churches on the question of eternal punishment, 
 the word "eternal" not appearing to the elders 
 of St. Osoph's to designate a sufficiently long 
 period. The dispute ended in a secession which 
 left the church of St. Osoph practically isolated 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 in a world of sin whose approaching fate it 
 neither denied nor deplored. 
 
 In one respect the rival churches of Plutoria 
 Avenue had had a similar history. Each of 
 them had moved up by successive stages from 
 the lower and poorer parts of the city. Forty 
 years ago St. Asaph's had been nothing more 
 than a little frame church with a tin spire, away 
 in the west of the slums, and St. Osoph's a 
 square, diminutive building away In the east. 
 But 'the site of St. Asaph's had been bought 
 by a brewing company, and the trustees, shrewd 
 men of business, themselves rising Into wealth, 
 had rebuilt It right In the track of the advanc- 
 ing tide of a real estate boom. The elders of 
 St. Osoph, quiet men, but Illumined by an Inner 
 light, had followed suit and moved their church 
 right against the side of an expanding dis- 
 tillery. Thus both the churches, as decade fol- 
 lowed decade, made their v/ay up the slope of 
 the City till St. Asaph's was presently glori- 
 ously expropriated by the street railway com- 
 pany, and planted Its spire In triumph on Plu- 
 toria Avenue Itself. But St. Osoph's followed. 
 With each change of site It moved nearer and 
 nearer to St. Asaph's. Its elders were shrewd 
 men. With each move of their church they 
 took careful thought In the rebuilding. In the 
 manufacturing district it was built with sixteen 
 windows on each side and was converted at a 
 203 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 huge profit into a bicycle factory. On the resi- 
 dential street it was made long and deep and 
 was sold to a moving picture company without 
 the alteration of so much as a pew. As a last 
 step a syndicate, formed among the members 
 of the congregation themselves, bought ground 
 on Plutoria Avenue, and sublet it to themselves 
 as a site for the church, at a nominal interest 
 of five per cent, per annum, payable nominally 
 every three months and secured by a nominal 
 mortgage. 
 
 As the two churches moved, their congrega- 
 tions, or at least all that was best of them — 
 such members as were sharing in the rising 
 fortunes of the City — moved also, and now for 
 some six or seven years the two churches and 
 the two congregations had confronted one an- 
 other among the elm trees of the Avenue oppo- 
 site to the university. 
 
 But at this point the fortunes of the churches 
 had diverged. St. Asaph's was a brilliant suc- 
 cess; St. Osoph's was a failure. Even its own 
 trustees couldn't deny it. At a time when St. 
 Asaph's was not only paying its interest but 
 showing a handsome surplus on everything it 
 undertook, the church of St. Osoph was moving 
 steadily backwards. 
 
 There was no doubt, of course, as to the 
 cause. Everybody knew it. It was simply a 
 question of men, and, as everybody said, one 
 204 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 had only to compare the two men conducting 
 the churches to see why one succeeded and the 
 other failed. 
 
 The Reverend Edward Fareforth Furlong of 
 St. Asaph's was a man who threw his whole 
 energy into his parish work. The subtleties of 
 theological controversy he left to minds less 
 active than his own. His creed was one of 
 works rather than of words, and whatever he 
 was doing he did it with his whole heart. 
 Whether he was lunching at the Mausoleum 
 Club with one of his churchwardens, or play- 
 ing the flute, — which he played as only the epis- 
 copal clergy can play it — accompanied on the 
 harp by one of the fairest of the ladies of his 
 choir, or whether he was dancing the new epis- 
 copal tango with the younger daughters of the 
 elder parishioners, he threw himself into it with 
 all his might. He could drink tea more grace- 
 fully and play tennis better than any clergy- 
 man on this side of the Atlantic. He could 
 stand beside the white stone font of St. Asaph's 
 in his long white surplice holding a white-robed 
 infant, worth half a million dollars, looking as 
 beautifully innocent as the child itself, and 
 drawing from every matron of the congrega- 
 tion with unmarried daughters the despairing 
 cry, " What a pity that he has no children of 
 his own ! " 
 
 Equally sound was his theology. No man 
 
 205 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 was known to preach shorter sermons or to 
 explain away the book of Genesis more agree- 
 ably than the rector of St. Asaph's; and if he 
 found it necessary to refer to the Deity he did 
 so under the name of Jehovah or Jah, or even 
 Yaweh, in a manner calculated not to hurt the 
 sensitiveness of any of the parishioners. Peo- 
 ple who would shudder at brutal talk of the 
 older fashion about the wrath of God listened 
 with well-bred interest to a sermon on the per- 
 sonal characteristics of Jah. In the same Way 
 Mr. Furlong always referred to the devil, not 
 as Satan but as Su or Swa, which took all the 
 sting out of him. Beelzebub he spoke of as 
 Behel-Zawbab, which rendered him perfectly 
 harmless. The Garden of Eden he spoke of 
 as the Paradeisos, which explained it entirely; 
 the flood as the Diluvium, which cleared it up 
 completely; and Jonah he named, after the cor- 
 rect fashion. Job Nah, which put the whole 
 situation (his being swallowed by Baloo, or the 
 Great Lizard) on a perfectly satisfactory foot- 
 ing. Hell itself was spoken of as She-ol, and 
 it appeared that it was not a place of burning, 
 but rather of what one might describe as moral 
 torment. This settled She-ol once and for all: 
 nobody minds moral torment. In short, there 
 was nothing in the theological system of Mr. 
 Furlong that need have occasioned in any of 
 his congregation a moment's discomfort. 
 206 
 
Something in the quiet dignity of the young man held me. 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 There could be no greater contrast with Mr. 
 Fareforth Furlong than the minister of St. 
 Osoph's, the Rev. Dr. McTeague, who was also 
 honorary professor of philosophy at the uni- 
 versity. The one was young, the other was old; 
 the one could dance, the other could not; the 
 one moved about at church picnics and lawn 
 teas among a bevy of disciples in pink and 
 blue sashes; the other moped around under the 
 trees of the university campus, with blinking 
 eyes that saw nothing and an abstracted mind 
 that had spent fifty years in trying to reconcile 
 Hegel with St. Paul, and was still busy with it. 
 Mr. Furlong went forward with the times; 
 Dr. McTeague shd quietly backwards with the 
 centuries. '"^ 
 
 Dr. McTeague was a failure, and all his con- 
 gregation knew it. "He is not up to date," 
 they said. That was his crowning sin. "He 
 don't go forward any," said the business mem- 
 bers of the congregation. "That old man be- 
 lieves just exactly the same sort of stuff now 
 that he did forty years ago. What's more, he 
 preaches it. You can't run a church that way, 
 can you? " 
 
 His trustees had done their best to meet the 
 difficulty. They had offered Dr. McTeague a 
 two-years' vacation to go and see the Holy 
 Land. He refused; he said he could picture 
 it. They reduced his salary by fifty per cent. ; 
 207 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 he never noticed it. They offered him an as- 
 sistant; but he shook his head, saying that he 
 didn't know where he could find a man to do 
 just the work that he was doing. Meantime he 
 mooned about among the trees concocting a 
 mixture of St. Paul with Hegel, three parts 
 to one, for his Sunday sermon, and one part 
 to three for his Monday lecture. 
 
 No doubt it was his dual function that was 
 to blame for his failure. And this, perhaps, 
 was the fault of Dr. Boomer, the president of 
 the university. Dr. Boomer, like all university 
 presidents of to-day, belonged to the presb}^- 
 terian church; or rather, to state it more cor- 
 rectly, he included presbyterianism within him- 
 self. He was, of course, a member of the board 
 of management of St. Osoph's, and it was he 
 who had urged, very strongly, the appoint- 
 ment of Dr. McTeague, then senior professor 
 of philosophy, as minister. 
 
 "A saintly man," he said, "the very man 
 for the post. If you should ask me whether 
 he is entirely at home as a professor of philoso- 
 phy on our staff at the university, I should be 
 compelled to say no. We are forced to admit 
 that as a lecturer he does not meet our views. 
 He appears to find it difl^cult to keep religion 
 out of his teaching. In fact, his lectures are 
 suffused with a rather dangerous attempt at 
 moral teaching which is apt to contaminate our 
 208 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 students. But in the Church I should imagine 
 that would be, if anything, an advantage. In- 
 deed, if you were to come to me and say, 
 'Boomer, we wish to appoint Dr. McTeague 
 as our minister,' I should say, quite frankly. 
 Take him.' " 
 
 So Dr. McTeague had been appointed. 
 Then, to the surprise of everybody, he refused 
 to give up his lectures in philosophy. He said 
 he felt a call to give them. The salary, he said, 
 was of no consequence. He wrote to Mr. Fur- 
 long senior (the father of the episcopal rector, 
 and honorary treasurer of the Plutoria Uni- 
 versity), and stated that he proposed to give 
 his lectures for nothing. The trustees of the 
 college protested; they urged that the case 
 might set a dangerous precedent which other 
 professors might follow. While fully admit- 
 ting that Dr. McTeague's lectures were well 
 worth giving for nothing, they begged him to 
 reconsider his offer. But he refused; and from 
 that day on, in spite of all offers that he should 
 retire on double his salary, that he should visit 
 the Holy Land, or Syria, or Armenia, where 
 the dreadful massacres of Christians were tak- 
 ing place, Dr. McTeague clung to his post with 
 a tenacity worthy of the best traditions of Scot- 
 land. His only internal perplexity was that 
 he didn't see how, when the time came for him 
 209 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 to die, twenty or thirty years hence, they would 
 ever be able to replace him. 
 
 Such was the situation of the two churches 
 on a certain beautiful morning in June, when an 
 unforeseen event altered entirely the current of 
 their fortunes. 
 
 "No, thank you, Juliana," said the young 
 rector to his sister across the breakfast table, — 
 and there was something as near to bitterness 
 in his look as his saintly, smooth-shaven face 
 was capable of reflecting, — "no, thank you, 
 no more porridge. Prunes? no, no, thank you; 
 I don't think I care for any. And, by the 
 way," he added, "don't bother to keep any 
 lunch for me. I have a great deal of busi- 
 ness — that is, of work in the parish, — to see 
 to, and I must just find time to get a bite of 
 something to eat when and where I can." 
 
 In his own mind he was resolving that the 
 place should be the Mausoleum Club and the 
 time just as soon as the head waiter would 
 serve him. 
 
 After which the Reverend Edward Fareforth 
 Furlong bowed his head for a moment in a 
 short, silent blessing, — the one prescribed by 
 the episcopal church in America for a break- 
 fast of porridge and prunes. 
 
 It was their first breakfast together, and it 
 spoke volumes to the rector. He knew what 
 
 210 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 it implied. It stood for his elder sister Juli- 
 ana's views on the need of personal sacrifice 
 as a means of grace. The rector sighed as he 
 rose. He had never missed his younger sister 
 Philippa, now married and departed, so keenly. 
 Philippa had had opinions of her own on bacon 
 and eggs and on lamb chops with watercress as 
 a means of stimulating the soul. But Juliana 
 was different. The rector understood now ex- 
 actly why it was that his father had exclaimed, 
 on the news of Philippa's engagement, with- 
 out a second's hesitation, "Then, of course, 
 Juliana must live with you ! Nonsense, my 
 dear boy, nonsense! It's my duty to spare 
 her to you. After all, I can always eat at the 
 club; they can give me a bite of something or 
 other, surely. To a man of my age, Edward, 
 food is really of no consequence. No, no; 
 Juliana must move into the rectory at once." 
 
 The rector's elder sister rose. She looked 
 tall and sallow and forbidding in the plain black 
 dress that contrasted sadly with the charming 
 clerical costumes of white and pink and the 
 broad episcopal hats with flowers in them that 
 Philippa used to wear for morning work in 
 the parish. 
 
 "For what time shall I order dinner?" she 
 asked. "You and Philippa used to have it at 
 half-past seven, did you not? Don't you think, 
 that rather too late?" 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 "A trifle, perhaps," said the rector uneasily. 
 He didn't care to explain to Juliana that it 
 was impossible to get home any earlier from 
 the kind of the dansant that everybody was 
 giving just now. "But don't trouble about 
 dinner. I may be working very late. If I 
 need anything to eat I shall get a biscuit and 
 some tea at the Guild Rooms, or " 
 
 He didn't finish the sentence, but in his mind 
 he added, " or else a really first-class dinner at 
 the Mausoleum Club, or at the Newberrys' or 
 the Rasselyer-Browns' — anywhere except here." 
 
 "If you are going, then," said Juliana, "may 
 I have the key of the church." 
 
 A look of pain passed over the rector's face. 
 He knew perfectly well what Juliana wanted 
 the key for. She meant to go into his church 
 and pray in it. 
 
 The rector of St Asaph's was, he trusted, 
 as broad-minded a man as an Anglican clergy- 
 man ought to be. He had no objection to any 
 reasonable use of his church — for a thanksgiv- 
 ing festival or for musical recitals, for example 
 — but when it came to opening up the church 
 and using it to pray in, the thing was going 
 a little too far. What was more, he had an 
 idea from the look on Juliana's face that she 
 meant to pray for him. This, for a clergy- 
 man, was hard to bear. Philippa, like the good 
 girl that she was, had prayed only for herself, 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 and then only at the proper times and places, 
 and in a proper praying costume. The rector 
 began to realise what difficulties it might make 
 for a clergyman to have a religious sister as 
 his house-mate. 
 
 But he was never a man for unseemly argu- 
 ment. "It is hanging in my study," he said. 
 
 And with that the Rev. Fareforth Furlong 
 passed into the hall, took up the simple silk hat, 
 the stick and gloves of the working clergyman, 
 and walked out on to the avenue to begin his 
 day's work in the parish. 
 
 The rector's parish, viewed in its earthly 
 aspect, was a singularly beautiful place. For 
 it extended all along Plutoria Avenue, where 
 the street is widest and the elm trees are at 
 their leafiest and the motors at their very 
 drowsiest. It lay up and down the shaded side 
 streets of the residential district, darkened with 
 great chestnuts and hushed in a stillness that 
 was almost religion itself. There was not a 
 house in the parish assessed at less than twenty- 
 five thousand, and in the very heart of it the 
 Mausoleum Club, with its smooth white stone 
 and its Grecian architecture, carried one back 
 to the ancient world and made one think of 
 Athens and of Paul preaching on Mars Hill. 
 It was, all considered, a splendid thing to fight 
 sin in such a parish and to keep it out of it. 
 For kept out it was. One might look the length 
 213 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 and breadth of the broad avenue and see no 
 sign of sin all along it. There was certainly 
 none in the smooth faces of the chauffeurs 
 trundling their drowsy motors; no sign of it in 
 the expensive children paraded by imported 
 nursemaids in the chequered light of the shaded 
 street; least of all was there any sign of it in 
 the Stock Exchange members of the congrega- 
 tion as they walked along side by side to their 
 lunch at the Mausoleum Club, their silk hats 
 nodding together in earnest colloquy on Shares 
 Preferred, and Profits Undivided. So might 
 have walked, so must have walked, the very 
 Fathers of the Church themselves. 
 
 Whatever sin there was in the City was 
 shoved sideways into the roaring streets of com- 
 merce where the elevated railway ran, and be- 
 low that again into the slums. Here there 
 must have been any quantity of sin. The rector 
 of St. Asaph's was certain of it. Many of the 
 richer of his parishioners had been down in 
 parties late at night to look at it, and the ladies 
 of his congregation were joined together Into 
 all sorts of guilds and societies and bands of 
 endeavour for stamping it out and driving it 
 under or putting it into jail till it surrendered. 
 
 But the slums lay outside the rector's parish. 
 He had no right to Interfere. They were under 
 the charge of a special mission or auxiliary, 
 a remnant of the St. Asaph's of the past, placed 
 
 214 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 under the care of a divinity student, at four 
 hundred dollars per annum. His charge in- 
 cluded all the slums and three police-courts and 
 two music-halls and the City jail. One Sun- 
 day afternoon in every three months the rector 
 and several ladies went down and sang hymns 
 for him in his mission-house. But his work 
 was really very easy. A funeral, for example, 
 at the mission, was a simple affair, meaning 
 nothing more than the preparation of a plain 
 coffin and a glassless hearse and the distribu- 
 tion of a few artificial everlasting flowers to 
 women crying in their aprons; a thing easily 
 done: whereas In St. Asaph's parish, where 
 all the really important souls were, a funeral 
 was a large event, requiring taste and tact, 
 and a nice shading of delicacy in distinguishing 
 mourners from beneficiaries, and private grief 
 from business representation at the ceremony. 
 A funeral with a plain coffin and a hearse was 
 as nothing beside an interment, with a casket 
 smothered in hot-house syringas, borne in a 
 coach and followed by special reporters from 
 the financial papers. 
 
 It appeared to the rector afterwards as 
 almost a shocking coincidence that the first per- 
 son whom he met upon the avenue should have 
 been the Rev. Dr. McTeague himself. Mr. 
 Furlong gave him the form of amiable "good 
 215 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 morning " that the episcopal church always ex- 
 tends to those in error. But he did not hear 
 it. The minister's head was bent low, his eyes 
 gazed into vacancy, and from the movements 
 of his lips and from the fact that he carried a 
 leather case of notes, he was plainly on his way 
 to his philosophical lecture. But the rector had 
 no time to muse upon the abstracted appear- 
 ance of his rival. For, as always happened to 
 him, he was no sooner upon the street than his 
 parish work of the day began. In fact, he had 
 hardly taken a dozen steps after passing Dr. 
 McTeague when he was brought up standing 
 by two beautiful parishioners with pink para- 
 sols. 
 
 "Oh, Mr. Furlong," exclaimed one of them, 
 "so fortunate to happen to catch you ; we were 
 just going into the rectory to consult you. 
 Should the girls — for the lawn tea for the Guild 
 on Friday, you know — wear white dresses with 
 light blue sashes all the same, or do you think 
 we might allow them to wear any coloured 
 sashes that they like? What do you think?" 
 
 This was an important problem. In fact, 
 there was a piece of parish work here that it 
 took the Reverend Fareforth half an hour to 
 attend to, standing the while In earnest collo- 
 quy with the two ladies under the shadow of 
 the elm trees. But a clergyman must never be 
 grudging of his time. 
 
 216 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 "Good-bye, then," they said at last. "Are 
 you coming to the Browning Club this morn- 
 ing? Oh, so sorry! but we shall see you at 
 the musicale this afternoon, shall we not?" 
 
 "Oh, I trust so," said the rector. 
 
 "How dreadfully hard he works," said the 
 ladies to one another as they moved away. 
 
 Thus slowly and with many interruptions 
 the rector made his progress along the avenue. 
 At times he stopped to permit a pink-cheeked 
 infant in a perambulator to beat him with a 
 rattle while he inquired its age of an episcopal 
 nurse, gay with flowing ribbons. He lifted his 
 hat to the bright parasols of his parishioners 
 passing in glistening motors, bowed to episcopa- 
 lians, nodded amiably to presbyterians, and even 
 acknowledged with his lifted hat the passing of 
 persons of graver forms of error. 
 
 Thus he took his way along the avenue and 
 down a side street towards the business dis- 
 trict of the City, until just at the edge of it, 
 where the trees were about to stop and the 
 shops were about to begin, he found himself at 
 the door of the Hymnal Supply Corporation, 
 Limited. The premises as seen from the out- 
 side combined the idea of an office with an 
 ecclesiastical appearance. The door was as 
 that of a chancel or vestry; there was a large 
 plate-glass window filled with Bibles and Testa- 
 ments, all spread open and shewing every va- 
 217 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 riety of language in their pages. These 
 were marked, "Arabic," "Syriac," "Coptic," 
 "Ojibway," "Irish" and so forth. On the 
 window in small white lettering were the words, 
 "Hymnal Supply Corporation," and below 
 that "Hosanna Pipe and Steam Organ In- 
 corporated," and still lower the legend, "Bible 
 Society of the Good Shepherd Limited." 
 
 There was no doubt of the sacred character 
 of the place. 
 
 Here laboured Mr. Furlong senior, the 
 father of the Rev. Edward Fareforth. He was 
 a man of many activities, president and man- 
 aging director of the companies just mentioned, 
 trustee and secretary of St. Asaph's, honorary 
 treasurer of the university, etc.; and each of 
 his occupations and offices was marked by some- 
 thing of a supramundane character, something 
 higher than ordinary business. His different 
 official positions naturally overlapped and 
 brought him into contact with himself from 
 a variety of angles. Thus he sold himself 
 hymn-books at a price per thousand, made as 
 a business favour to himself, negotiated with 
 himself the purchase of the ten thousand dollar 
 organ (making a price on it to himself that 
 he begged himself to regard as confidential), 
 and as treasurer of the college he sent himself 
 an informal note of enquiry asking If he knew 
 of any sound investment for the annual deficit 
 218 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 of the college funds, a matter of some sixty 
 thousand dollars a year, which needed very 
 careful handling. Any man — and there are 
 many such — who has been concerned with busi- 
 ness dealings of this sort with himself realises 
 that they are more satisfactory than any other 
 kind. 
 
 To what better person then could the rector 
 of St. Asaph's bring the quarterly accounts and 
 statements of his church than to Mr. Furlong 
 senior. 
 
 The outer door was opened to the rector by 
 a sanctified boy with such a face as is only 
 found In the choirs of the episcopal church. 
 In an outer office through which the rector 
 passed were two sacred stenographers with 
 hair as golden as the daffodils of Sheba, copy- 
 ing confidential letters on absolutely noiseless 
 typewriters. They were making offers of Bibles 
 In half-car-load lots at two and a half per cent, 
 reduction, offering to reduce St. Mark by two 
 cents on condition of immediate export, and 
 to lay down St. John F.O.B. San Francisco for 
 seven cents, while regretting that they could 
 deliver fifteen thousand Rock of Ages In Mis- 
 souri on no other terms than cash. 
 
 The sacred character of their work lent them 
 a preoccupation beautiful to behold. 
 
 In the room beyond them was a white-haired 
 confidential clerk, venerable as the Song of 
 219 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 Solomon, and by him Mr. Fareforth Furlong 
 was duly shown Into the office of his father. 
 
 "Good-morning, Edward," said Mr. Furlong 
 senior, as he shook hands. "I was expecting 
 you. And while I think of It, I have just had 
 a letter from Phlllppa. She and Tom will 
 be home In two or three weeks. She writes 
 from Egypt. She wishes me to tell you, as no 
 doubt you have already anticipated, that she 
 thinks she can hardly continue to be a member 
 of the congregation when they come back. No 
 doubt you felt this yourself?" 
 
 "Oh, entirely," said the rector. "Surely 
 In matters of belief a wife must follow her hus- 
 band." 
 
 "Exactly; especially as Tom's uncles occupy 
 
 the position they do with regard to " Mr. 
 
 Furlong jerked his head backwards and pointed 
 with his thumb over his shoulder in a way that 
 his son knew was meant to Indicate St. Osoph's 
 Church. 
 
 The Overend brothers, who were Tom's 
 uncles (his name being Tom Overend) were, as 
 everybody knew, among the principal support- 
 ers of St. Osoph's. Not that they were, by 
 origin, presbyterians. But they were self-made 
 men, which put them once and for all out of 
 sympathy with such a place as St. Asaph's. 
 "We made ourselves," the two brothers used 
 to repeat. In defiance of the catechism of the 
 
 220 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 Anglican Church. They never wearied of ex- 
 plaining how Mr. Dick, the senior brother, 
 had worked overtime by day to send Mr. 
 George, the junior brother, to school by night, 
 and how Mr. George had then worked over- 
 time by night to send Mr. Dick to school by 
 day. Thus they had come up the business 
 ladder hand over hand, landing later on in life 
 on the platform of success Hke two corpulent 
 acrobats, panting with the strain of it. "For 
 years," Mr. George would explain, "we had 
 father and mother to keep as well; then they 
 died, and Dick and me saw daylight." By 
 which he meant no harm at all, but only stated 
 a fact, and concealed the virtue of it. 
 
 And being self-made men they made It a 
 point to do what they could to lessen the im- 
 portance of such an institution as St. Asaph's 
 Church. By the same contrariety of nature the 
 two Overend brothers (their business name 
 was Overend Brothers, Limited) were support- 
 ers of the dissentient Young Men's Guild, and 
 the second or rival University Settlement, and 
 of anything or everything that showed a likeli- 
 hood of making trouble. On this principle they 
 were warm supporters and friends of the Rev. 
 Dr. McTeague. The minister had even gone 
 so far as to present to the brothers a copy 
 of his philosophical work, " McTeague's Expo- 
 sition of the Kantian Hypothesis," and the two 
 
 221 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 brothers had read it through in the office, de- 
 voting each of them a whole morning to it. 
 Mr. Dick, the senior brother, had said that he 
 had never seen anything Hke it, and Mr. 
 George, the junior, had declared that a man 
 who could write that was capable of anything. 
 
 On the whole it was evident that the rela- 
 tions between the Overend family and the pres- 
 byterian religion were too intimate to allow 
 Mrs. Tom Overend, formerly Miss Philippa 
 Furlong, to sit anywhere else of a Sunday than 
 under Dr. McTeague. 
 
 "Philippa writes," continued Mr. Furlong, 
 "that under the circumstances she and Tom 
 would like to do something for your church. 
 She would like — yes, I have the letter here — to 
 give you, as a surprise, of course, either a new 
 font or a carved pulpit; or perhaps a cheque; 
 she wishes me on no account to mention it to 
 you directly, but to ascertain indirectly from 
 you, what would be the better surprise." 
 
 "Oh, a cheque, I think," said the rector; 
 "one can do so much more with it, after all." 
 
 "Precisely," said his father; he was well 
 aware of many things that can be done with a 
 cheque that cannot possibly be done with a 
 font. 
 
 "That's settled then," resumed Mr. Fur- 
 long; "and now I suppose you want me to run 
 my eye over your quarterly statements, do 
 
 222 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 you not, before we send them in to the trus- 
 tees? That Is what you've come for, is It 
 not?" 
 
 "Yes," said the rector, drawing a bundle of 
 blue and white papers from his pocket. "I 
 have everything with me. Our shewing Is, I 
 believe, excellent, though I fear I fail to present 
 it as clearly as It might be done." 
 
 Mr. Furlong senior spread the papers on 
 the table before him and adjusted his spec- 
 tacles to a more convenient angle. He smiled 
 indulgently as he looked at the documents be- 
 fore him. 
 
 "I am afraid you would never make an ac- 
 countant, Edward," he said. 
 
 "I fear not," said the rector. 
 
 "Your items," said his father, "are entered 
 wrongly. Here, for example. In the general 
 statement, you put down Distribution of Coals 
 to the Poor to your credit. In the same way, 
 Bibles and Prizes to the Sunday School you 
 again mark to your credit. Why? Don't you 
 see, my boy, that these things are debits? When 
 you give out Bibles or distribute fuel to the 
 poor you give out something for which you get 
 no return. It is a debit. On the other hand, 
 such Items as Church Offertory, Scholars' Pen- 
 nies, etc., are pure profit. Surely the principle 
 is clear." 
 
 223 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 "I think I see it better now," said the Rev. 
 Edward. 
 
 "Perfectly plain, isn't it?" his father went 
 on. "And here again. Paupers' Burial Fund, 
 a loss; enter it as such. Christmas Gift to 
 Verger and Sexton, an absolute loss — you get 
 nothing in return. Widow's Mite, Fines in- 
 flicted in Sunday School, etc., these are profit; 
 write them down as such. By this method, you 
 see, in ordinary business we can tell exactly 
 where we stand: anything which we give out 
 without return or reward we count as a debit; 
 all that we take from others without giving in 
 return we count as so much to our credit." 
 
 "Ah, yes," murmured the rector. "I begin 
 to understand." 
 
 "Very good. But after all, Edward, I 
 mustn't quarrel with the mere form of your 
 accounts; the statement is really a splendid 
 shewing. I see that not only is our mortgage 
 and debenture interest all paid to date, but that 
 a number of our enterprises are making a hand- 
 some return. I notice, for example, that the 
 Girls' Friendly Society of the church not only 
 pays for itself, but that you are able to take 
 something out of its funds and transfer it to 
 the Men's Book Club. Excellent! And I ob- 
 serve that you have been able to take a large 
 portion of the Soup Kitchen Fund and put it 
 into the Rector's Picnic Account. Very good 
 224 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 indeed. In this respect your figures are a model 
 for church accounts anywhere." 
 
 Mr. Furlong continued his scrutiny of the 
 accounts. "Excellent," he murmured, "and 
 on the whole an annual surplus, I see, of sev- 
 eral thousands. But stop a bit," he continued, 
 checking himself; "what's this? Are you 
 aware, Edward, that you are losing money on. 
 your Foreign Missions Account?" 
 
 "I feared as much," said Edward. 
 
 "It's incontestable. Look at the figures for 
 yourself: missionary's salary so much, clothes 
 and books to converts so much, voluntary and 
 other offerings of converts so much — why, 
 you're losing on it, Edward!" exclaimed Mr. 
 Furlong, and he shook his head dubiously at 
 the accounts before him. 
 
 "I thought," protested his son, "that in view 
 of the character of the work itself " 
 
 "Quite so," answered his father, "quite so. 
 I fully admit the force of that. I am only 
 asking you, is it worth it? Mind you, I am 
 not speaking now as a Christian, but as a 
 business man. Is it worth it?" 
 
 "I thought that perhaps, in view of the fact 
 of our large surplus in other directions " 
 
 "Exactly," said his father, "a heavy sur- 
 plus. It is precisely on that point that I wished 
 to speak to you this morning. You have at 
 present a large annual surplus, and there is 
 
 225 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 every prospect under Providence — In fact, I 
 think In any case — of It continuing for years to 
 come. If I may speak very frankly I should 
 say that as long as our reverend friend Dr. 
 McTeague continues In his charge of St. 
 Osoph's — and I trust that he may be spared 
 for many years to come — you are likely to en- 
 joy the present prosperity of your church. Very 
 good. The question arises, what disposition 
 are we to make of our accumulating funds?" 
 
 "Yes," said the rector, hesitating. 
 
 "I am speaking to you now," said his father, 
 "not as the secretary of your church, but as 
 president of the Hymnal Supply Company 
 which I represent here. Now please under- 
 stand, Edward, I don't want in any way to 
 force or control your judgment. I merely wish 
 to shew you certain — shall I say certain oppor- 
 tunities that present themselves for the dis- 
 posal of our funds? The matter can be taken 
 up later, formally, by yourself and the trus- 
 tees of the church. As a matter of fact, I have 
 already written to myself as secretary in the 
 matter, and I have received what I consider a 
 quite encouraging answer. Let me explain what 
 I propose." 
 
 Mr. Furlong senior rose, and opening the 
 door of the office, 
 
 "Everett," he said to the ancient clerk, 
 "kindly give me a Bible." 
 226 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 It was given to him. 
 
 Mr. Furlong stood with the Bible poised In. 
 his hand. 
 
 "Now we," he went on, "I mean the Hym- 
 nal Supply Corporation, have an idea for bring- 
 ing out an entirely new Bible." 
 
 A look of dismay appeared on the saintly 
 face of the rector. 
 
 "A new Bible!" he gasped. 
 
 "Precisely!" said his father, "a new Bible! 
 This one — and we find it every day in our busi- 
 ness — is all wrong." 
 
 "All wrong!" said the rector with horror 
 in his face. 
 
 "My dear boy," exclaimed his father, "pray, 
 pray, do not misunderstand me. Don't 
 imagine for a moment that I mean wrong In 
 a religious sense. Such a thought could never, 
 I hope, enter my mind. All that I mean is 
 that this Bible is badly made up." 
 
 "Badly made up!" repeated his son, as 
 mystified as ever. 
 
 "I see that you do not understand me. What 
 I mean is this. Let me try to make myself 
 quite clear. For the market of to-day this 
 Bible" — and he poised it again on his hand, 
 as if to test its weight, "is too hea\7. The 
 people of to-day want something lighter, some- 
 thing easier to get hold of. Now if " 
 
 227 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 But what Mr. Furlong was about to say 
 was lost forever to the world. 
 
 For just at this juncture something occurred 
 calculated to divert not only Mr. Furlong's 
 sentence, but the fortunes and the surplus of 
 St. Asaph's itself. At the very moment when 
 Mr. Furlong was speaking a newspaper de- 
 livery man in the street outside handed to the 
 sanctified boy the office copy of the noonday 
 paper. And the boy had no sooner looked at 
 its headlines than he said, "How dreadful!" 
 Being sanctified, he had no stronger form of 
 speech than that. But he handed the paper 
 forthwith to one of the stenographers with 
 hair like the daffodils of Sheba, and when she 
 looked at it she exclaimed, "How awful!" 
 And she knocked at once at the door of the 
 ancient clerk and gave the paper to him; and 
 when he looked at it and saw the headline the 
 ancient clerk murmured, "Ah!" in the gentle 
 tone in which very old people greet the news 
 of catastrophe or sudden death. 
 
 But in his turn he opened Mr. Furlong's door 
 and put down the paper, laying his finger on 
 the column for a moment without a word. 
 
 Mr. Furlong stopped short in his sentence. 
 "Dear me!" he said as his eyes caught the 
 item of news. "How very dreadful!" 
 
 "What is it?" said the rector. 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 "Dr. McTeague," answered his father. "He 
 has been stricken with paralysis!" 
 
 "How shocking!" said the rector, aghast. 
 "But when? I saw him only this morning." 
 
 "It has just happened," said his father, fol- 
 lowing down the column of the newspaper as 
 he spoke, "this morning, at the university, in 
 his classroom, at a lecture. Dear me, how 
 dreadful! I must go and see the president at 
 once." 
 
 Mr. Furlong was about to reach for his hat 
 and stick when at that moment the aged clerk 
 knocked at the door. 
 
 "Dr. Boomer," he announced in a tone of 
 solemnity suited to the occasion. 
 
 Dr. Boomer entered, shook hands In silence 
 and sat down. 
 
 "You have heard our sad news, I suppose?" 
 he said. He used the word "our" as between 
 the university president and his honorary 
 treasurer. 
 
 "How did it happen?" asked Mr. Furlong. 
 
 "Most distressing, "said the president. "Dr. 
 McTeague, it seems, had just entered his 
 ten o'clock class (the hour was about ten- 
 twenty) and was about to open his lecture, when 
 one of his students rose In his seat and asked 
 a question. It Is a practice," continued Dr. 
 Boomer, " which, I need hardly say, we do not 
 encourage; the young man, I believe, was a 
 229 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 new-comer in the philosophy class. At any 
 rate, he asked Dr. McTeague, quite suddenly 
 it appears, how he could reconcile his theory 
 of transcendental Immaterialism with a scheme 
 of rigid moral determinism. Dr. McTeague 
 stared for a moment, his mouth, so the class 
 assert, painfully open. The student repeated 
 the question, and poor McTeague fell forward 
 over his desk, paralysed." 
 
 "Is he dead?" gasped Mr. Furlong. 
 
 "No," said the president. "But we expect 
 his death at any moment. Dr. Slyder, I may 
 say, is with him now and is doing all he can." 
 
 "In any case, I suppose, he could hardly 
 recover enough to continue his college duties," 
 said the young rector. 
 
 "Out of the question," said the president. 
 "I should not like to state that of itself mere 
 paralysis need incapacitate a professor. Dr. 
 Thrum, our professor of the theory of music, 
 is, as you know, paralysed in his ears, and Mr. 
 Slant, our professor of optics, is paralysed in 
 his right eye. But this is a case of paralysis of 
 the brain. I fear it is incompatible with pro- 
 fessorial work." 
 
 "Then, I suppose," said Mr. Furlong senior, 
 "we shall have to think of the question of a 
 successor." 
 
 They had both been thinking of it for at 
 least three minutes. 
 
 230 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 "We must," said the president. "For the 
 moment I feel too stunned by the sad news to 
 act. I have merely telegraphed to two or three 
 leading colleges for a locum tenens and sent out 
 a few advertisements announcing the chair as 
 vacant. But it will be difficult to replace Mc- 
 Teague. He was a man," added Dr. Boomer,^ 
 rehearsing in advance, unconsciously, no doubt, 
 his forthcoming oration over Dr. McTeague's 
 death, "of a singular grasp, a breadth of cul- 
 ture, and he was able, as few men are, to instil 
 what I might call a spirit of religion into his 
 teaching. His lectures, indeed, were suffused 
 with moral instruction, and exercised over his 
 students an influence second only to that of the 
 pulpit itself." 
 
 He paused. 
 
 "Ah yes, the pulpit," said Mr. Furlong, 
 "there indeed you will miss him." 
 
 "That," said Dr. Boomer very reverently, 
 "Is our real loss, deep, irreparable. I sup- 
 pose, indeed I am certain, we shall never again 
 see such a man in the pulpit of St. Osoph's. 
 Which reminds me," he added more briskly, 
 "I must ask the newspaper people to let it be 
 known that there will be service as usual the 
 day after to-morrow, and that Dr. McTeague's 
 death will, of course, make no difference — that 
 is to say — I must see the newspaper people at 
 once." 
 
 231 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 That afternoon all the newspaper editors in 
 the City were busy getting their obituary notices 
 ready for the demise of Dr. McTeague. 
 
 "The death of Dr. McTeague," wrote the 
 editor of the Commercial and Financial Under- 
 tone, a paper which had almost openly advo- 
 cated the minister's dismissal for five years 
 back, "comes upon us as an irreparable loss. 
 His place will be difficult, nay, impossible, to 
 fill. Whether as a philosopher or a divine he 
 cannot be replaced." 
 
 "We have no hesitation in saying," so wrote 
 the editor of the Plntorian Times, a three-cent 
 morning paper, which was able to take a broad 
 or three-cent point of view of men and things, 
 "that the loss of Dr. McTeague will be just as 
 much felt in Europe as in America. To Ger- 
 many the news that the hand that penned 'Mc- 
 Teague's Shorter Exposition of the Kantian 
 Hypothesis' has ceased to write will come with 
 the shock of poignant anguish; while to 
 France " 
 
 The editor left the article unfinished at that 
 point. After all, he was a ready writer, and 
 he reflected that there would be time enough 
 before actually going to press to consider from 
 what particular angle the blow of McTeague's 
 death would strike down the people of France. 
 
 So ran in speech and in writing, during two 
 or three days, the requiem of Dr. McTeague. 
 232 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 Altogether there were more kind things said 
 of him in the three days during which he was 
 taken for dead, than in thirty years of his life 
 — which seemed a pity. 
 
 And after it all, at the close of the third day, 
 Dr. McTeague feebly opened his eyes. 
 
 But when he opened them the world had 
 already passed on, and left him behind. 
 
 233 
 
Chapter VII. — The Ministrations of the 
 Rev. Uttermust Dumfarthin^ 
 
 WELL then, gentlemen, I think we 
 have all agreed upon our man?" 
 Mr. Dick Overend looked 
 around the table as he spoke at 
 the managing trustees of St. Osoph's church. 
 They were assembled in an upper committee 
 room of the Mausoleum Club. Their official 
 place of meeting was in a board room off the 
 vestry of the church. But they had felt a 
 draught in it, some four years ago, which had 
 wafted them over to the club as their place of 
 assembly. In the club there were no draughts. 
 
 Mr. Dick Overend sat at the head of the 
 table, his brother George beside him, and Dr. 
 Boomer at the foot. Beside them were Mr. 
 Boulder, Mr. Skinyer (of Skinyer and Beatem) 
 and the rest of the trustees. 
 
 "You are agreed, then, on the Reverend 
 Uttermust Dumfarthing?" 
 
 "Quite agreed," murmured several trustees 
 together. 
 
 "A most remarkable man," said Dr. Boomer. 
 "I heard him preach in his present church. He 
 gave utterance to thoughts that I have myself 
 234 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 been thinking for years. I never listened to any- 
 thing so sound or so scholarly." 
 
 "I heard him the night he preached in New 
 York," said Mr. Boulder. "He preached a 
 sermon to the poor. He told them they were 
 no good. I never heard, outside of a Scotch 
 pulpit, such splendid Invective." 
 
 "Is he Scotch?" said one of the trustees. 
 
 "Of Scotch parentage," said the university 
 president. "I believe he is one of the Dum- 
 farthings of Dumferline, Dumfries." 
 
 Everybody said "Oh," and there was a pause. 
 
 "Is he married?" asked one of the trustees. 
 "I understand," answered Dr. Boomer, "that 
 he is a widower with one child, a little girl." 
 
 "Does he make any conditions?" 
 
 "None whatever," said the chairman, con- 
 sulting a letter before him, "except that he is 
 to have absolute control, and in, regard to sal- 
 ary. These two points settled, he says, he 
 places himself entirely In our hands." 
 
 "And the salary?" asked someone. 
 
 "Ten thousand dollars," said the chairman, 
 "payable quarterly In advance." 
 
 A chorus of approval went round the table. 
 "Good," "Excellent," "A first-class man," mut- 
 tered the trustees, "just what we want." 
 
 "I am sure, gentlemen," said Mr. Dick Over- 
 end, voicing the sentiments of everybody, "we 
 do not want a cheap man. Several of the can- 
 235 
 
Arcadian Adventures "with the Idle Rich 
 
 didates whose names have been under consider- 
 ation here have been in many respects — in point 
 of religious quahfication, let us say — most de- 
 sirable men. The name of Dr. McSkwirt, for 
 example, has been mentioned with great favour 
 by several of the trustees. But he's a cheap 
 man. I feel we don't want him." 
 
 "What is Mr. Dumfarthing getting where 
 he is?" asked Mr. Boulder. 
 
 "Nine thousand nine hundred," said the 
 chairman. 
 
 "And Dr. McSkwirt?" 
 
 "Fourteen hundred dollars." 
 
 "Well, that settles it!" exclaimed everybody 
 with a burst of enlightenment. 
 
 And so it was settled. 
 
 In fact, nothing could have been plainer. 
 
 "I suppose," said Mr. George Overend as 
 they were about to rise, "that we are quite 
 justified in taking it for granted that Dr. Mc- 
 Teague will never be able to resume work?" 
 
 "Oh, absolutely for granted," said Dr. 
 Boomer. "Poor McTeague ! I hear from 
 Slyder that he was making desperate efforts this 
 morning to sit up in bed. His nurse with diffi- 
 culty prevented him." 
 
 "Is his power of speech gone?" asked Mr. 
 Boulder. 
 
 "Practically so; in any case, Dr. Slyder in- 
 sists on his not using It. In fact, poor Mc- 
 236 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 Teague's mind Is a wreck. His nurse was tell- 
 ing me that this morning he was reaching out 
 his hand for the newspaper, and seemed to 
 want to read one of the editorials. It was 
 quite pathetic," concluded Dr. Boomer, shak- 
 ing his head. 
 
 So the whole matter was settled, and next 
 day all the town knew that St. Osoph's Church 
 had extended a call to the Rev. Uttermust Dum- 
 farthing, and that he had accepted it. 
 
 Within a few weeks of this date the Rever- 
 end Uttermust Dumfarthing moved into the 
 manse of St. Osoph's and assumed his charge. 
 And forthwith he became the sole topic of 
 conversation on Plutoria Avenue. "Have you 
 seen the new minister of St. Osoph's?" every- 
 body asked. "Have you been to hear Dr. Dum- 
 farthing?" "Were you at St. Osoph's Church 
 on Sunday morning? Ah, you really should 
 go! most striking sermon I ever listened to." 
 
 The effect of him was absolute and instan- 
 taneous; there was no doubt of it. 
 
 "My dear," said Mrs. Buncomhearst to one 
 of her friends, in describing how she had met 
 him, "I never saw a more striking man. Such 
 power in his face! Mr. Boulder introduced 
 him to me on the avenue, and he hardly seemed 
 to see me at all, simply scowled ! I was never 
 so favourably impressed with any man." 
 237 
 
Arcadian Adventures tvith the Idle Rich 
 
 On his very first Sunday he preached to his 
 congregation on eternal punishment, leaning 
 forward In his black gown and shaking his fist 
 at them. Dr. McTeague had never shaken his 
 fist in thirty years, and as for the Rev. Fare- 
 forth Furlong, he was incapable of it. 
 
 But the Rev. Uttermust Dumfarthing told his 
 congregation that he was convinced that at least 
 seventy per cent, of them were destined for 
 eternal punishment; and he didn't call it by 
 that name, but labelled it simply and forcibly 
 "hell." The word had not been heard in any 
 church in the better part of the City for a gen- 
 eration. The congregation was so swelled next 
 Sunday that the minister raised the percentage 
 to eighty-five, and everybody went away de- 
 lighted. Young and old flocked to St. Osoph's. 
 Before a month had passed the congregation 
 at the evening service at St. Asaph's Church 
 was so slender that the offertory, as Mr. 
 Furlong senior himself calculated, was scarcely 
 sufficient to pay the overhead charge of collect- 
 ing it. 
 
 The presence of so many young men sitting 
 in serried files close to the front was the only 
 feature of his congregation that extorted from 
 the Rev. Mr. Dumfarthing something like ap- 
 proval. 
 
 "It is joy to me to see," he remarked to sev- 
 eral of his trustees, "that there are in the City 
 238 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 so many godly young men, whatever the elders 
 may be." 
 
 But there may have been a secondary cause 
 at work, for among the godly young men of 
 Plutoria Avenue the topic of conversation had 
 not been, "Have you heard the new presby- 
 terian minister?" but, "Have you seen his 
 daughter? You haven't? Well, say!" 
 
 For it turned out that the "child" of Dr. 
 Uttermust Dumfarthing, so-called by the trus- 
 tees, was the kind of child that wears a little 
 round hat, straight from Paris, with an upright 
 feather in it, and a silk dress in four sections, 
 and shoes with high heels that would have 
 broken the heart of John Calvin. Moreover, 
 she had the distinction of being the only person 
 on Plutoria Avenue who was not one whit 
 afraid of the Reverend Uttermust Dumfarth- 
 ing. She even amused herself, in violation 
 of all rules, by attending evening service 
 at St. Asaph's, where she sat listening to 
 the Reverend Edward, and feeling that she 
 had never heard anything so sensible in her 
 life. 
 
 "I'm simply dying to meet your brother," she 
 said to Mrs. Tom Overend, otherwise Philippa; 
 "he's such a complete contrast with father." 
 She knew no higher form of praise. "Father's 
 sermons are always so frightfully full of re- 
 ligion." 
 
 239 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 And Philippa promised that meet him she 
 should. 
 
 But whatever may have been the effect of the 
 presence of Catherine Dumfarthing, there is no 
 doubt the greater part of the changed situation 
 was due to Dr. Dumfarthing himself. 
 
 Everything he did was calculated to please. 
 He preached sermons to the rich and told them 
 they were mere cobwebs, and they liked it; he 
 preached a special sermon to the poor and 
 warned them to be mighty careful ; he gave a 
 series of weekly talks to working men, and 
 knocked them sideways; and in the Sunday 
 School he gave the children so fierce a talk on 
 charity and the need of giving freely and 
 quickly, that such a stream of pennies and 
 nickels poured into Catherine Dumfarthing's 
 Sunday School Fund as hadn't been seen in the 
 church in fifty years. 
 
 Nor was Mr. Dumfarthing different in his 
 private walk of life. He was heard to speak 
 openly of the Overend brothers as "men of 
 wrath," and they were so pleased that they 
 repeated it to half the town. It was the best 
 business advertisement they had had for years. 
 
 Dr. Boomer was captivated with the man. 
 "True scholarship," he murmured, as Dr. Dum- 
 farthing poured undiluted Greek and Hebrew 
 from the pulpit, scorning to translate a word 
 of it. Under Dr. Boomer's charge the min- 
 240 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 ister was taken over the length and breadth 
 of Plutoria University, and reviled it from the 
 foundations up. 
 
 "Our library," said the president, "two hun- 
 dred thousand volumes!" 
 
 "Aye," said the minister, "a powerful heap 
 of rubbish, I'll be bound!" 
 
 "The photograph of our last year's gradu- 
 ating class," said the president. 
 
 "A poor lot, to judge by the faces of them," 
 said the minister. 
 
 "This, Dr. Dumfarthing, is our new radio- 
 graphic laboratory; Mr. Spiff, our demon- 
 strator, is preparing slides which, I believe, ac- 
 tually show the movements of the atom itself, 
 do they not, Mr. Spiff?" 
 
 "Ah," said the minister, piercing Mr. SpifF 
 from beneath his dark brows, "it will not avail 
 you, young man." 
 
 Dr. Boomer was delighted. "Poor Mc- 
 Teague," he said — ^"and by the way, Boyster, I 
 hear that McTeague is trying to walk again; 
 a great error, it shouldn't be allowed! — poor 
 McTeague knew nothing of science." 
 
 The students themselves shared in the en- 
 thusiasm, especially after Dr. Dumfarthing had 
 given them a Sunday afternoon talk in which 
 he shewed that their studies were absolutely 
 futile. As soon as they knew this they went 
 241 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 to work with a vigour that put new life into 
 the college. 
 
 Meantime the handsome face of the Rever- 
 end Edward Fareforth Furlong began to wear 
 a sad and weary look that had never been seen 
 on it before. He watched his congregation 
 drifting from St. Asaph's to St. Osoph's and 
 was powerless to prevent it. His sadness 
 reached its climax one bright afternoon in the 
 late summer, when he noticed that even his 
 episcopal blackbirds were leaving his elms and 
 moving westward to the spruce trees of the 
 manse. 
 
 He stood looking at them with melancholy 
 on his face. 
 
 "Why, Edward," cried his sister Philippa, as 
 her motor stopped beside him, "how doleful 
 you look! Get into the car and come out into 
 the country for a ride. Let the parish teas look 
 after themselves for to-day." 
 
 Tom, Philippa's husband, was driving his 
 own car — he was rich enough to be able to — 
 and seated with Philippa in the car was an 
 unknown person, as prettily dressed as Philippa 
 herself. To the rector she was presently intro- 
 duced as Miss Catherine Something — he didn't 
 hear the rest of it. Nor did he need to. It 
 was quite plain that her surname, whatever it 
 242 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 was, was a very temporary and transitory 
 affair. 
 
 So they sped rapidly out of the City and 
 away out into the country, mile after mile, 
 through cool, crisp air, and among woods with 
 the touch of autumn bright already upon them, 
 and with blue sky and great still clouds white 
 overhead. And the afternoon was so beautiful 
 and so bright that as they went along there 
 was no talk about religion at all ! nor was there 
 any mention of Mothers' Auxiliaries, or Girls' 
 Friendly Societies, nor any discussion of the 
 poor. It was too glorious a day. But they 
 spoke instead of the new dances, and whether 
 they had come to stay, and of such sensible 
 topics as that. Then presently, as they went 
 on still further, Phillppa leaned forward and 
 talked to Tom over his shoulder and reminded 
 him that this was the very road to Castel Cas- 
 teggio, and asked him if he remembered com- 
 ing up It with her to join the Newberrys ever 
 so long ago. Whatever it was that Tom an- 
 swered it is not recorded, but it Is certain that 
 it took so long In the saying that the Reverend 
 Edward talked in tete-a-tete with Catherine for 
 fifteen measured miles, and was unaware that 
 It was more than five minutes. Among other 
 things he said, and she agreed — or she said 
 and he agreed — that for the new dances it was 
 necessary to have always one and the same 
 243 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 partner, and to keep that partner all the time. 
 And somehow simple sentiments of that sort, 
 when said direct into a pair of listening blue 
 eyes behind a purple motor veil, acquire an 
 infinite significance. 
 
 Then, not much after that, say three or four 
 minutes, they were all of a sudden back in 
 town again, running along Plutoria Avenue, 
 and to the rector's surprise the motor was 
 stopping outside the manse, and Catherine was 
 saying, "Oh, thank you ever so much, Philippa; 
 it was just heavenly!" which showed that the 
 afternoon had had its religious features after 
 all. 
 
 "What!" said the rector's sister, as they 
 moved off again, "didn't you know? That's 
 Catherine Dumfarthingl" 
 
 When the Rev. Fareforth Furlong arrived 
 home at the rectory he spent an hour or so in 
 the deepest of deep thought in an arm-chair 
 in his study. Nor was it any ordinary parish 
 problem that he was revolving in his mind. 
 He was trying to think out some means by 
 which his sister Juliana might be induced to 
 commit the sin of calling on the daughter of a 
 presbyterian minister. 
 
 The thing had to be represented as in some 
 fashion or other an act of self-denial, a form of 
 mortification of the flesh. Otherwise he knew 
 244 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 Juliana would never do It. But to call on Miss 
 Catherine Dumfarthing seemed to him such an 
 altogether delightful and unspeakably blissful 
 process that he hardly knew how to approach 
 the topic. So when Juliana presently came home 
 the rector could find no better way of Intro- 
 ducing the subject than by putting It on the 
 ground of Phlllppa's marriage to Miss Dum- 
 farthlng's father's trustee's nephew. 
 
 "Juliana," he said, "don't you think that per- 
 haps, on account of Phllippa and Tom, you 
 ought — or at least It might be best — for you to 
 call on Miss Dumfarthing?" 
 
 Juliana turned to her brother as she laid 
 aside her bonnet and her black gloves. 
 
 "I've just been there this afternoon," she 
 said. 
 
 There was something as near to a blush on 
 her face as her brother had ever seen. 
 
 "But she was not there!" he said. 
 
 "No," answered Juliana, "but Mr. Dum- 
 farthing was. I stayed and talked some time 
 with him, waiting for her." 
 
 The rector gave a sort of whistle, or rather 
 that blowing out of air which Is the episcopal 
 symbol for It. 
 
 "Didn't you find him pretty solemn?" he said. 
 
 "Solemn 1" answered his sister. "Surely, 
 Edward, a man in such a calling as his ought 
 to be solemn." 
 
 245 
 
Arcadian Adventures tcith the Idle Rich 
 
 "I don't mean that exactly," said the rector; 
 "I mean — er — hard, bitter, so to speak." 
 
 "Edward!" exclaimed Juliana, "how can you 
 speak so. Mr. Dumfarthing hard ! Mr. Dum- 
 farthlng bitter! Why, Edward, the man is 
 gentleness and kindness Itself. I don't think I 
 ever met anyone so full of sympathy, of com- 
 passion with suffering." 
 
 Juliana's face had flushed. It was quite plain 
 that she saw things In the Reverend Uttermust 
 Dumfarthing — as some one woman does In 
 every man — that no one else could see. 
 
 The Reverend Edward was abashed. "I 
 wasn't thinking of his character," he said. "I 
 was thinking rather of his doctrines. Wait till 
 you have heard him preach." 
 
 Juliana flushed more deeply still. "I heard 
 him last Sunday evening," she said. 
 
 The rector was silent, and his sister, as If 
 impelled to speak, went on, 
 
 "And I don't see, Edward, how anyone could 
 think him a hard or bigoted man In his creed. 
 He walked home with me to the gate just now, 
 and he was speaking of all the sin In the world, 
 and of how few, how very few people, can be 
 saved, and how many will have to be burned 
 as worthless; and he spoke so beautifully. He 
 regrets it, Edward, regrets It deeply. It Is a 
 real grief to him." 
 
 On which Juliana, half In anger, withdrew, 
 246 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 and her brother the rector sat back In his chair 
 with smiles rippling all over his saintly face. 
 For he had been wondering whether it would 
 be possible, even remotely possible, to get his 
 sister to invite the Dumfarthings to high tea 
 at the rectory some day at six o'clock (evening 
 dinner was out of the question), and now he 
 knew within himself that the thing was as good 
 as done. 
 
 While such things as these were happening 
 and about to happen, there were many others 
 of the congregation of St. Asaph's beside the 
 rector to whom the growing situation gave cause 
 for serious perplexities. Indeed, all who were 
 interested in the church, the trustees and the 
 mortgagees and the underlying debenture-hold- 
 ers, were feeling anxious. For some of them 
 underlay the Sunday School, whose scholars' 
 offerings had declined forty per cent, and others 
 underlay the new organ, not yet paid for, while 
 others were lying deeper still beneath the 
 ground site of the church with seven dollars 
 and a half a square foot resting on them. 
 
 "I don't like it," said Mr. Lucullus Fyshe 
 to Mr. Newberry (they were both prominent 
 members of the congregation). "I don't like 
 the look of things. I took up a block of Fur- 
 long's bonds on his Guild building from what 
 seemed at the time the best of motives. The 
 247 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 interest appeared absolutely certain. Now it's 
 a month overdue on the last quarter. I feel 
 alarmed." 
 
 "Neither do I like it," said Mr. Newberry, 
 shaking his head; "and I'm sorry for Fareforth 
 Furlong. An excellent fellow, Fyshc, excellent. 
 I keep wondering, Sunday after Sunday, if there 
 isn't something I can do to help him out. One 
 might do something further perhaps in the way 
 of new buildings or alterations. I have, in fact, 
 offered — by myself, I mean, and without other 
 aid — to dynamite out the front of his church, 
 underpin it, and put him in a Norman gateway; 
 either that, or blast out the back of it where 
 the choir sit, just as he likes. I was thinking 
 about it last Sunday as they were singing the 
 anthem, and realising what a lot one might do 
 there with a few sticks of dynamite." 
 
 "I doubt it," said Mr. Fyshe. "In fact, New- 
 berry, to speak very frankly, I begin to ask 
 myself. Is Furlong, the man for the post?" 
 
 "Oh, surely," said Mr. Newberry in protest. 
 
 "Personally a charming fellow," went on Mr. 
 Fyshe; "but is he, all said and done, quite the 
 man to conduct a church? In the first place, he 
 is not a business man." 
 
 "No," said Mr. Newberry reluctantly, "that 
 I admit." 
 
 "Very good. And, secondly, even in the mat- 
 ter of his religion itself, one always feels as if 
 248 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 he were too little fixed, too unstable. He simply 
 moves with the times. That, at least, is what 
 people are beginning to say of him, that he is 
 perpetually moving with the times. It doesn't 
 do, Xewberry, it doesn't do." 
 
 Whereupon Mr. Newberry went away trou- 
 bled and wrote to Fareforth Furlong a confi- 
 dential letter with a signed cheque in it for the 
 amount of Mr. Fyshe's interest, and with such 
 further offerings of dynamite, of underpinning 
 and blasting as his conscience prompted. 
 
 When the rector received and read the note 
 and saw the figures of the cheque, there arose 
 such a thankfulness in his spirit as he hadn't 
 felt for months, and he may well have mur- 
 mured, for the repose of Mr. Newberry's soul, 
 a prayer not found in the rubric of King James. 
 
 All the more cause had he to feel light at 
 heart, for as it chanced it was on that same 
 evening that the Dumfarthings, father and 
 daughter, were to take tea at the rectory. In- 
 deed, a few minutes before six o'clock they 
 might have been seen making their way from 
 the manse to the rectory. 
 
 On their way along the avenue the minister 
 took occasion to reprove his daughter for the 
 worldliness of her hat fit was a little trifle from 
 New York that she had bought out of the Sun- 
 day School money, — a temporary loan) ; and a 
 little further on he spoke to her severely about 
 249 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 the parasol she carried; and further yet about 
 the strange fashion, specially condemned by the 
 Old Testament, in which she wore her hair. 
 So Catherine knew in her heart from this that 
 she must be looking her very prettiest, and went 
 into the rectory radiant. 
 
 The tea was, of course, an awkward meal at 
 the best. There was an initial difficulty about 
 grace, not easily surmounted. And when the 
 Rev. Mr. Dumfarthing sternly refused tea as a 
 pernicious drink weakening to the system, the 
 Anglican rector was too ignorant of the pres- 
 byterian system to know enough to give him 
 Scotch whiskey. 
 
 But there were bright spots in the meal as 
 well. The rector was even able to ask Cath- 
 erine, sideways as a personal question, if she 
 played tennis; and she was able to whisper be- 
 hind her hand, "Not allowed," and to make a 
 face in the direction of her father, who was 
 absorbed for the moment in a theological ques- 
 tion with Juliana. Indeed, before the conver- 
 sation became general again the rector had 
 contrived to make a rapid arrangement with 
 Catherine whereby she was to come with him 
 to the Newberrys' tennis court the day follow- 
 ing and learn the game, with or without per- 
 mission. 
 
 So the tea was perhaps a success in its way. 
 And it is noteworthy that Juliana spent the 
 250 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 days that followed it in reading Calvin's "Insti- 
 tutes" (specially loaned to her) and "Dum- 
 farthing on the Certainty of Damnation" (a 
 gift), and in praying for her brother — a task 
 practically without hope. During which same 
 time the rector in white flannels, and Catherine 
 in a white duck skirt and blouse, were flying 
 about on the green grass of the Newberrys' 
 court, and calling, "love," "love all," to one 
 another so gayly and so brazenly that even Mr. 
 Newberry felt that there must be something 
 in it. 
 
 But all these things came merely as inter- 
 ludes in the moving currents of greater events; 
 for as the summer faded into autumn and 
 autumn into winter the anxieties of the trus- 
 tees of St. Asaph's began to call for action 
 of some sort. 
 
 "Edward," said the rector's father on the 
 occasion of their next quarterly discussion, "I 
 cannot conceal from you that the position of 
 things is very serious. Your statements show a 
 falling off in every direction. Your interest is 
 everywhere in arrears; your current account 
 overdrawn to the limit. At this rate, you know, 
 the end is inevitable. Your debenture and 
 bondholders will decide to foreclose; and if 
 they do, you know, there is no power that can 
 stop them. Even with your limited knowledge 
 
 251 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 of business you are probably aware that there 
 is no higher power that can influence or con- 
 trol the holder of a first mortgage." 
 
 "I fear so," said the Rev. Edward very sadly. 
 
 "Do you not think perhaps that some of the 
 shortcoming lies with yourself?" continued Mr. 
 Furlong. "Is it not possible that as a preacher 
 you fail somewhat, do not, as it were, deal 
 sufficiently with fundamental things as others 
 do? You leave untouched the truly vital issues, 
 such things as the creation, death, and, if I may 
 refer to it, the life beyond the grave." 
 
 As a result of which the Reverend Edward 
 preached a series of special sermons on the 
 creation, for which he made a special and ardu- 
 ous preparation in the library of Plutoria Uni- 
 versity. He said that it had taken a million, 
 possibly a hundred million, years of quite diffi- 
 cult work to accomplish, and that though when 
 we looked at it all was darkness still we could 
 not be far astray if we accepted and held fast 
 to the teachings of Sir Charles Lyell. The 
 book of Genesis, he said, was not to be taken 
 as meaning a day when it said a day, but rather 
 something other than a mere day; and the word 
 "light" meant not exactly light, but possibly 
 some sort of phosphorescence, and that the use 
 of the word "darkness" was to be understood 
 not as meaning darkness, but to be taken as 
 simply indicating obscurity. And when he had 
 252 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 quite finished, tiie congregation declared the 
 whole sermon to be mere milk and water. It 
 Insulted their intelligence, they said. After 
 which, a week later, the Rev. Dr. Dumfarthing 
 took up the same subject, and with the aid of 
 seven plain texts pulverised the rector into frag- 
 ments. 
 
 One notable result of the controversy was 
 that Juliana Furlong refused henceforth to at- 
 tend her brother's church and sat, even at morn- 
 ing service, under the minister of St. Osoph's. 
 
 "The sermon was, I fear, a mistake," said 
 Mr. Furlong senior; "perhaps you had better 
 not dwell too much on such topics. We must 
 look for aid in another direction. In fact, Ed- 
 ward, I may mention to you in confidence that 
 certain of your trustees are already devising 
 ways and means that may help us out of our 
 dilemma." 
 
 Indeed, although the Reverend Edward did 
 not know It, a certain idea, or plan, was already 
 germinating in the minds of the most influential 
 supporters of St. Asaph's. 
 
 Such was the situation of the rival churches 
 of St. Asaph and St. Osoph as the autumn 
 slowly faded into winter: during which time 
 the elm trees on Plutoria Avenue shivered and 
 dropped their leaves and the chauffeurs of the 
 motors first turned blue in their faces and then, 
 when the great snows came, were suddenly con- 
 253 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 verted into liveried coachmen with tall bear- 
 skins and whiskers like Russian horseguards, 
 changing back again to blue-nosed chauffeurs 
 the very moment of a thaw. During this time 
 also the congregation of the Reverend Fare- 
 forth Furlong was diminishing month by 
 month, and that of the Reverend Uttermust 
 Dumfarthing was so numerous that they filled 
 up the aisles at the back of the church. Here 
 the worshippers stood and froze, for the minis- 
 ter had abandoned the use of steam heat in St. 
 Osoph's on the ground that he could find no 
 warrant for it. 
 
 During this same period other momentous 
 things were happening, such as that Juliana 
 Furlong was reading, under the immediate 
 guidance of Dr. Dumfarthing, the History of 
 the Progress of Disruption in the Churches of 
 Scotland in ten volumes; such also as that 
 Catherine Dumfarthing was wearing a green 
 and gold winter suit with Russian furs and a 
 Balkan hat and a Circassian feather, which cut 
 a wide swath of destruction among the young 
 men on Plutoria Avenue every afternoon as she 
 passed. Moreover by the strangest of coin- 
 cidences she scarcely ever seemed to come along 
 the snow-covered avenue without meeting the 
 Reverend Edward, — a fact which elicited new 
 exclamations of surprise from them both every 
 day: and by an equally strange coincidence they 
 254 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 generally seemed, although coming In different 
 directions, to be bound for the same place; to- 
 wards which they wandered together with such 
 slow steps and in such oblivion of the passers-by 
 that even the children on the avenue knew by 
 Instinct whither they were wandering. 
 
 It was noted also that the broken figure of 
 Dr. McTeague had reappeared upon the 
 street, leaning heavily upon a stick and greeting 
 those he met with such a meek and willing 
 affability, as If In apology for his stroke of 
 paralysis, that all who talked with him agreed 
 that McTeague's mind was a wreck. 
 
 "He stood and spoke to me about the chil- 
 dren for at least a quarter of an hour," related 
 one of his former parishioners, "asking after 
 them by name, and whether they were going to 
 school yet and a lot of questions like that. He 
 never used to speak of such things. Poor old 
 McTeague, I'm afraid he is getting soft In the 
 head." "I know," said the person addressed. 
 "His mind Is no good. He stopped me the 
 other day to say how sorry he was to hear about 
 my brother's Illness. I could see from the way 
 he spoke that his brain Is getting feeble. He's 
 losing his grip. He was speaking of how kind 
 people had been to him after his accident and 
 there were tears In his eyes. I think he's get- 
 ting batty." 
 
 Nor were even these things the most mo- 
 255 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 mentous happenings of the period. For as win- 
 ter slowly changed to early spring it became 
 known that something of great portent was 
 under way. It was rumoured that the trus- 
 tees of St. Asaph's Church were putting their 
 heads together. This was striking news. The 
 last time that the head of Mr. Lucullus Fyshe, 
 for example, had been placed side by side with 
 that of Mr. Newberry, there had resulted a 
 merger of four soda-water companies, bring- 
 ing w^hat was called industrial peace over an 
 area as big as Texas and raising the price of 
 soda by three peaceful cents per bottle. And 
 the last time that Mr. Furlong senior's head 
 had been laid side by side with those of Mr. 
 Rasselyer-Brown and Mr. Skinyer, they had 
 practically saved the country from the horrors 
 of a coal famine by the simple process of rais- 
 ing the price of nut coal seventy-five cents a ton 
 and thus guaranteeing its abundance. 
 
 Naturally, therefore, when it became known 
 that such redoubtable heads as those of the 
 trustees and the underlying mortgagees of St. 
 Asaph's were being put together, it was fully 
 expected that some important development 
 would follow. It was not accurately known 
 from which of the assembled heads first pro- 
 ceeded the great idea which was presently to 
 solve the difficulties of the church. It may well 
 have come from that of Mr. Lucullus Fyshe. 
 256 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 Certainly a head which had brought peace out 
 of civil war in the hardware business by amal- 
 gamating ten rival stores and had saved the 
 very lives of five hundred employees by reduc- 
 ing their wages fourteen per cent, was capable 
 of it. 
 
 At any rate it was Mr. Fyshe who first gave 
 the idea a definite utterance. 
 
 "It's the only thing, Furlong," he said, across 
 the lunch table at the Mausoleum Club. "It's 
 the one solution. The two churches can't live 
 under the present conditions of competition. 
 We have here practically the same situation as 
 we had with the two rum distilleries, — the out- 
 put is too large for the demand. One or both 
 of the two concerns must go under. It's their 
 turn just now, but these fellows are business 
 men enough to know that it may be ours to- 
 morrow. We'll offer them a business solu- 
 tion. We'll propose a merger." 
 
 "I've been thinking of it," said Mr. Furlong 
 senior, "I suppose it's feasible?" 
 
 "Feasible!" exclaimed Mr. Fyshe. "Why 
 look what's being done every day everywhere, 
 from the Standard Oil Company downwards." 
 
 "You would hardly, I think," said Mr. Fur- 
 long, with a quiet smile, "compare the Standard 
 Oil Company to a church?" 
 
 "Well, no, I suppose not," said Mr. Fyshe, 
 and he too smiled, — In fact he almost laughed. 
 257 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 The notion was cOo ridiculous. One could 
 hardly compare a mere church to a thing of 
 the magnitude and importance of the Standard 
 Oil Company. 
 
 "But on a lesser scale," continued Mr. Fyshe, 
 "it's the same sort of thing. As for the diffi- 
 culties of it, I needn't remind you of the much 
 greater difficulties we had to grapple with in 
 the rum merger. There, you remember, a num- 
 ber of the women held out as a matter of prin- 
 ciple. It was not mere business with them. 
 Church union is different. In fact it is one of 
 the ideas of the day and everyone admits that 
 what is needed is the application of the ordi- 
 nary business principles of harmonious com- 
 bination, with a proper — er — restriction of out- 
 put and general economy of operation." 
 
 "Very good," said Mr. Furlong, "I'm sure 
 If you're willing to try, the rest of us are." 
 
 "All right," said Mr. Fyshe. "I thought of 
 setting Skinyer, of Skinyer and Beatem, to work 
 on the form of the organisation. As you know 
 he is not only a deeply religious man but he 
 has already handled the Tin Pot Combina- 
 tion and the United Hardware and the Asso- 
 ciated Tanneries. He ought to find this quite 
 simple." 
 
 Within a day or two Mr. Skinyer had a-lready 
 commenced his labours. "I must first," he said, 
 258 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 "get an accurate idea of the existing legal or- 
 ganisation of the two churches." 
 
 For which purpose he approached the rector 
 of St. Asaph's. 
 
 "I just want to ask you, Mr. Furlong," said 
 the lawyer, "a question or two as to the exact 
 constitution, the form so to speak, of your 
 church. What is it? Is it a single corporate 
 body?" 
 
 "I suppose," said the rector thoughtfully, 
 "one would define it as an indivisible spiritual 
 unit manifesting itself on earth." 
 
 "Quite so," interrupted Mr. Skinyer, "but I 
 don't mean what it is in the religious sense: 
 I mean, in the real sense." "I fail to under- 
 stand," said Mr. Furlong. 
 
 "Let me put it very clearly," said the law- 
 yer. "Where does it get its authority?" 
 
 "From above," said the rector reverently. 
 
 "Precisely," said Mr. Skinyer, "no doubt, but 
 I mean its authority in the exact sense of the 
 term." 
 
 "It was enjoined on St. Peter," began the 
 rector, but Mr. Skinyer interrupted him. 
 
 "That I am aware of," he said, "but what 
 I mean is, — where does your church get its 
 power, for example, to hold property, to col- 
 lect debts, to use distraint against the prop- 
 erty of others, to foreclose its mortgages and 
 to cause judgment to be executed against those 
 259 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 who fail to pay their debts to it? You will 
 say at once that it has these powers direct 
 from Heaven. No doubt that is true and no 
 religious person v/ould deny it. But we law- 
 yers are compelled to take a narrower, a less 
 elevating point of view. Are these powers 
 conferred on you by the state legislature or 
 by some higher authority?" 
 
 "Oh by a higher authority, I hope," said 
 the rector very fervently. Whereupon Mr. 
 Skinyer left him without further questioning, 
 the rector's brain being evidently unfit for the 
 subject of corporation law. 
 
 On the other hand he got satisfaction from 
 the Rev. Dr. Dumfarthing at once. 
 
 "The church of St. Osoph," said the min- 
 ister, "is a perpetual trust, holding property 
 as such under a general law of the state and 
 able as such to be made the object of suit or 
 distraint. I speak with some assurance as I 
 had occasion to enquire into the matter at 
 the time when I was looking for guidance in 
 regard to the call I had received to come 
 here." 
 
 "It's a quite simple matter," Mr. Skinyer 
 presently reported to Mr. Fyshe. "One of the 
 churches is a perpetual trust, the other prac- 
 tically a state corporation. Each has full con- 
 trol over its property provided nothing is done 
 260 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 by either to infringe the purity of its doc- 
 trine." 
 
 "Just what does that mean?" asked Mr. 
 Fyshe. 
 
 "It must maintain its doctrine absolutely 
 pure. Otherwise if certain of its trustees re- 
 main pure and the rest do not, those who stay 
 pure are entitled to take the whole of the prop- 
 erty. This, I believe, happens every day in, 
 Scotland where, of course, there is great 
 eagerness to remain pure in doctrine." 
 
 "And what do you define as pure doctrine?'* 
 asked Mr. Fyshe. 
 
 "If the trustees are in dispute," said Mr. 
 Skinyer, "the courts decide, but any doctrine 
 is held to be a pure doctrine if all the trustees 
 regard it as a pure doctrine." 
 
 "I see," said Mr. Fyshe thoughtfully, "it's 
 the same thing as what we called 'permissible 
 policy' on the part of directors in the Tin Pot 
 Combination." 
 
 "Exactly," assented Mr. Skinyer, "and it 
 means that for the merger we need nothing, — I 
 state it very frankly, — except general consent. 
 
 The preliminary stages of the making of 
 the merger followed along familiar business 
 lines. The trustees of St. Asaph's went 
 through the process known as 'approaching' 
 the trustees of St. Osoph's. First of all, for 
 261 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 example, Mr. Lucullus Fyshe invited Mr. As- 
 modeus Boulder of St. Osoph's to lunch with 
 him at the Mausoleum Club; the cost of the 
 lunch, as is usual in such cases, was charged 
 to the general expense account of the church. 
 Of course nothing whatever was said during the 
 lunch about the churches or their finances or 
 anything concerning them. Such discussion 
 would have been a gross business impropriety. 
 A few days later the two brothers Overend 
 dined with Mr. Furlong senior, the dinner 
 being charged directly to the contingencies 
 account of St. Asaph's. After which Mr. 
 Skinyer and his' partner, Mr. Beatem, went to 
 the spring races together on the Profit and Loss 
 account of St. Osoph's, and Philippa Overend 
 and Catherine Dumfarthing were taken (by 
 the Unforeseen Disbursements Account) to the 
 grand opera, followed by a midnight supper. 
 All of these things constituted what was 
 called the promotion of the merger and were 
 almost exactly identical with the successive 
 stages of the making of the Amalgamated Dis- 
 tilleries and the Associated Tin Pot Corpora- 
 tion; which was considered a most hopeful 
 sign. 
 
 "Do you think they'll go into it?" asked Mr. 
 Newberry of Mr. Furlong senior, anxiously. 
 *'After all, what inducement have they?" 
 262 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 "Every inducement," said Mr. Furlong. "All 
 said and done they've only one large asset, — 
 Dr. Dumfarthing. We're really offering to 
 buy up Dr. Dumfarthing by pooling our assets 
 with theirs." 
 
 "And what does Dr. Dumfarthing himself 
 say to it?" 
 
 "Ah, there I am not so sure," said Mr. Fur- 
 long; "that may be a difficulty. So far there 
 hasn't been a word from him, and his trus- 
 tees are absolutely silent about his views. How- 
 ever, we shall soon know all about it. Skin- 
 yer is asking us all to come together one even- 
 ing next week to draw up the articles of agree- 
 ment." 
 
 "Has he got the financial basis arranged 
 then?" 
 
 "I believe so," said Mr. Furlong. "His idea 
 is to form a new corporation to be known as 
 the United Church Limited or by some simi- 
 lar name. All the present mortgagees will be 
 converted into unified bondholders, the pew 
 rents will be capitalised into preferred stock 
 and the common stock, drawing its dividend 
 from the offertory, will be distributed among 
 all members in standing. Skinyer says that 
 it is really an ideal form of church union, 
 one that he thinks is likely to be widely adopted. 
 It has the advantages of removing all ques- 
 tions of religion, which he says are practically 
 263 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 the only remaining obstacle to a union of all 
 the churches. In fact it puts the churches once 
 and for all on a business basis." 
 
 "But what about the question of doctrine, of 
 belief?" asked Mr. Newberry. 
 
 "Skinyer says he can settle it," answered 
 Mr. Furlong. 
 
 About a week after the above conversation 
 the united trustees of St. Asaph's and St. 
 Osoph's were gathered about a huge egg-shaped 
 table in the board room of the Mausoleum 
 Club. They were seated in intermingled fashion 
 after the precedent of the recent Tin Pot Amal- 
 gamation and were smoking huge black cigars 
 specially kept by the club for the promotion of 
 companies and chargeable to expenses of or- 
 ganisation at fifty cents a cigar. There was an 
 air of deep peace brooding over the assembly, 
 as among men who have accomplished a diffi- 
 cult and meritorious task. 
 
 "Well, then," said Mr. Skinyer, who was in 
 the chair, with a pile of documents in front 
 of him, "I think that our general basis of 
 financial union may be viewed as settled." 
 
 A murmur of assent went round the meeting. 
 
 "The terms are set forth in the memorandum 
 
 before us, which you have already signed. Only 
 
 one other point, — a minor one, — remains to be 
 
 264 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 considered. I refer to the doctrines or the 
 religious belief of the new amalgamation." 
 
 "Is it necessary to go Into that?" asked Mr. 
 Boulder. 
 
 "Not entirely, perhaps," said Mr. Skinyer. 
 "Still there have been, as you all know, cer- 
 tain points, — I won't say of disagreement, — 
 but let us say of friendly argument, — between 
 the members of the different churches, — such 
 things, for example," here he consulted his 
 papers, "as the theory of the creation, the sal- 
 vation of the soul, and so forth, have been 
 mentioned in this connection. I have a memo- 
 randum of them here, though the points escape 
 me for the moment. These, you may say, are 
 not matters of first Importance, especially as 
 compared with the Intricate financial questions 
 which we have already settled in a satisfactory 
 manner. Still I think It might be well if I 
 were permitted with your unanimous approval 
 to jot down a memorandum or two to be after- 
 wards embodied In our articles." 
 
 There was a general murmur of approval. 
 
 "Very good," said Mr. Skinyer, settling him- 
 self back In his chair. "Now, first, in regard 
 to the creation," here he looked all round the 
 meeting in a way to command attention, — "Is 
 it your wish that we should leave that merely 
 to a gentlemen's agreement or do you want 
 an explicit clause?" 
 
 265 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 "I think it might be well," said Mr. Dick 
 Overend, "to leave no doubt about the theory 
 of the creation." 
 
 "Good," said Mr. Skinyer. "I am going 
 to put it down then something after this fashion : 
 'On and after, let us say, August ist proximo, 
 the process of the creation shall be held, and 
 is hereby held, to be such and such only as 
 is acceptable to a majority of the holders of 
 common and preferred stock voting pro rata. 
 Is that agreed?" 
 
 "Carried," cried several at once. 
 
 "Carried," repeated Mr. Skinyer. "Now let 
 us pass on," — here he consulted his notes, — "to 
 item two, eternal punishment. I have made a 
 memorandum as follows, 'Should any doubts 
 arise, on or after August first proximo, as to 
 the existence of eternal punishment they shall 
 be settled absolutely and finally by a pro rata 
 vote of all the holders of common and pre- 
 ferred stock.' Is that agreed?" 
 
 "One moment!" said Mr. Fyshe, "do you 
 think that quite fair to the bondholders ? After 
 all, as the virtual holders of the property, they 
 are the persons most interested. I should like 
 to amend your clause and make it read, — I am 
 not phrasing it exactly but merely giving the 
 sense of it, — that eternal punishment should 
 be reserved for the mortgagees and bond- 
 holders." 
 
 266 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 At this there was an outbreak of mingled 
 approval and dissent, several persons speaking 
 at once. In the opinion of some, the stock- 
 holders of the company, especially the pre- 
 ferred stockholders, had as good a right to 
 eternal punishment as the bondholders. Pres- 
 ently Mr. Skinyer, who had been busily writing 
 notes, held up his hand for silence. 
 
 "Gentlemen," he said, "will you accept this 
 as a compromise? We will keep the original 
 clause but merely add to it the words, 'but no 
 form of eternal punishment shall be declared 
 valid if displeasing to a three-fifths majority 
 of the holders of bonds.' " 
 
 "Carried, carried," cried everybody. 
 
 "To which I think we need only add," said 
 Mr. Skinyer, "a clause to the effect that all 
 other points of doctrine, belief or religious 
 principle may be freely altered, amended, re- 
 versed or entirely aboHshed at any general 
 annual meeting!" 
 
 There was a renewed chorus of "Carried, 
 carried," and the trustees rose from the table 
 shaking hands with one another, and lighting 
 fresh cigars as they passed out of the club into 
 the night air. 
 
 "The only thing that I don't understand," 
 
 said Mr. Newberry to Dr. Boomer as they 
 
 went out from the club arm in arm (for they 
 
 might now walk in that fashion with the same 
 
 267 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 propriety as two of the principals in a distillery 
 merger), "the only thing that I don't under- 
 stand is why the Reverend Mr. Dumfarthing 
 should be willing to consent to the amalga- 
 mation." 
 
 "Do you really not know?" said Dr. Boomer. 
 
 "No." 
 
 "You have heard nothing?" 
 
 "Not a word," said Mr. Newberry. 
 
 "Ah," rejoined the president, "I see that our 
 men have kept it very quiet, — naturally so. In 
 view of the circumstances. The truth is that 
 the Reverend Mr. Dumfarthing is leaving us." 
 
 "Leaving St. Osoph'sl" exclaimed Mr. New- 
 berry in utter astonishment. 
 
 "To our great regret. He has had a call, — 
 a most inviting field of work, he says, a splen- 
 did opportunity. They offered him ten thou- 
 sand one hundred; we were only giving him 
 ten thousand here, though of course that fea- 
 ture of the situation would not weigh at all 
 with a man like Dumfarthing." 
 
 "Oh no, of course not," said Mr. New- 
 berry. 
 
 "As soon as we heard of the call we offered 
 him ten thousand three hundred, — not that that 
 would make any difference to a man of his 
 character. Indeed Dumfarthing was still wait- 
 ing and looking for guidance when they offered 
 him eleven thousand. We couldn't meet it. 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 It was beyond us, though we had the consola- 
 tion of knowing that with such a man as Dum- 
 farthing the money made no difference." 
 
 "And he has accepted the call?" 
 
 "Yes. He accepted it to-day. He sent word 
 to Mr. Dick Overend, our chairman, that 
 he would remain in his manse, looking for 
 light, until two thirty, after which, if we had 
 not communicated with him by that hour, he 
 would cease to look for it." 
 
 "Dear me," said Mr. Newberry, deep In 
 reflection, "so that when your trustees came 
 to the meeting " 
 
 "Exactly," said Dr. Boomer, — and some- 
 thing like a smile passed across his features for 
 a moment, — "Dr. Dumfarthing had already 
 sent away his telegram of acceptance." 
 
 "Why, then," said Mr. Newberry, "at the 
 time of our discussion to-night, you were in the 
 position of having no minister." 
 
 "Not at all. We had already appointed a 
 successor." 
 
 "A successor?" 
 
 "Certainly. It will be In to-morrow morn- 
 ing's papers. The fact Is that we decided to 
 ask Dr. McTeague to resume his charge. 
 
 "Dr. McTeague!" repeated Mr. Newberry 
 In amazement. "But surely his mind is under- 
 stood to be " 
 
 "Oh, not at all," Interrupted Dr. Boomer. 
 269 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle liich 
 
 "His mind appears, if anything, to be clearer 
 and stronger than ever. Dr. Slyder tells us 
 that paralysis of the brain very frequently has 
 this effect; It soothes the brain, — clears it, as 
 it were, so that very often intellectual prob- 
 lems which occasioned the greatest perplexity 
 before present no difficulty whatever after- 
 ward. Dr. McTeague, I believe, finds no 
 trouble now in reconciling St. Paul's dialectic 
 with Hegel as he used to. He saysi that so 
 far as he can see they both mean the same 
 thing." 
 
 "Well, well," said Mr. Newberry, "and will 
 Dr. McTeague also resume his philosophical 
 lectures at the university?" 
 
 "We think it wiser not," said the president. 
 "While we feel that Dr. McTeague's mind 
 is in admirable condition for clerical work we 
 fear that professorial duties might strain it. 
 In order to get the full value of his remark- 
 able intelligence, we propose to elect him to 
 the governing body of the university. There 
 his brain will be safe from any shock. As a 
 professor there would always be the fear that 
 one of his students might raise a question in 
 his class. This of course is not a difficulty that 
 arises in the pulpit or among the governors of 
 the university." 
 
 "Of course not," said Mr. Newberry. 
 
 270 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 Thus was constituted the famous union or 
 merger of the churches of St. Asaph and St. 
 Osoph, viewed by many of those who made it 
 as the beginning of a new era in the history 
 of the modern church. 
 
 There is no doubt that it has been in every 
 way an eminent success. 
 
 Rivalry, competition and controversies over 
 points of dogma have become unknown on Plu- 
 toria Avenue. The parishioners of the two 
 churches may now attend either of them just as 
 they Hke. As the trustees are fond of explaining 
 it doesn't make the slightest difference. The en- 
 tire receipts of the churches being now pooled 
 are divided without reference to individual at- 
 tendance. At each half year there is issued a 
 printed statement which is addressed to the 
 shareholders of the United Churches Limited 
 and is hardly to be distinguished in style or 
 material from the annual and semi-annual re- 
 ports of the Tin Pot Amalgamation and the 
 United Hardware and other quasi-religious 
 bodies of the sort. "Your directors," the last 
 of these documents states, "are happy to in- 
 form you that in spite of the prevailing indus- 
 trial depression the gross receipts of the cor- 
 poration have shown such an increase as to 
 justify the distribution of a stock dividend of 
 special Offertory Stock Cumulative, which will 
 be offered at par to all holders of common or 
 271 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 preferred shares. You will also be gratified 
 to learn that the directors have voted unani- 
 mously in favour of a special presentation to 
 the Rev. Uttermust Dumfarthing on the occa- 
 sion of his approaching marriage. It was 
 earnestly debated whether this gift should take 
 the form, as at first suggested, of a cash pre- 
 sentation, or, as afterwards suggested, of a 
 written testimonial in the form of an address. 
 The latter course was finally adopted as being 
 more fitting to the circumstances and the ad- 
 dress has accordingly been prepared, setting 
 forth to the Rev. Dr. Dumfarthing, in old 
 English lettering and wording, the opinion 
 which is held of him by his former parish- 
 ioners." 
 
 The "approaching marriage" referred of 
 course to Dr. Dumfarthing's betrothal to 
 Juliana Furlong. It was not known that he 
 had ever exactly proposed to her. But it was 
 understood that before giving up his charge 
 he drew her attention, in very severe terms, 
 to the fact that, as his daughter was now leav- 
 ing him, he must either have someone else to 
 look after his manse or else be compelled to 
 incur the expense of a paid housekeeper. This 
 latter alternative, he said, was not one that he 
 cared to contemplate. He also reminded her 
 that she was now at a time of life when she 
 could hardly expect to pick and choose and 
 272 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 that her spiritual condition was one of at least 
 great uncertainty. These combined statements 
 are held, under the law of Scotland at any rate, 
 to be equivalent to an offer of marriage. 
 
 Catherine Dumfarthing did not join her 
 father in his new manse. She first remained 
 behind him, as the guest of Philippa Overend 
 for a few weeks while she was occupied in 
 packing up her things. After that she stayed 
 for another two or three weeks to unpack them. 
 This had been rendered necessary by a con- 
 versation held with the Reverend Edward 
 Fareforth Furlong, in a shaded corner of the 
 Overends' garden. After which, in due course 
 of time, Catherine and Edward were married, 
 the ceremony being performed by the Reverend 
 Dr. McTeague, whose eyes filled with philo- 
 sophical tears as he gave them his blessing. 
 
 So the two churches of St. Asaph and St. 
 Osoph stand side by side united and at peace. 
 Their bells call softly back and forward to 
 one another on Sunday mornings and such is 
 the harmony between them that even the epis- 
 copal rooks in the elm trees of St. Asaph's and 
 the presbyterian crows in the spruce trees of 
 St. Osoph's are known to exchange perches on 
 alternate Sundays. 
 
 273 
 
Chapter VIII.— The Great Fight for Clean 
 Government 
 
 AS to the government of this city," said 
 Mr. Newberry, leaning back in a 
 leather arm-chair at the Mausoleum 
 Club and lighting a second cigar, "it's 
 rotten, that's all." 
 
 "Absolutely rotten," assented Mr. Dick 
 Overend, ringing the bell for a second whiskey 
 and soda. 
 
 "Corrupt," said Mr. Newberry, between two 
 puffs of his cigar. 
 
 "Full of graft," said Mr. Overend, flicking 
 his ashes into the grate. 
 
 "Crooked aldermen," said Mr. Newberry. 
 
 "A bum city solicitor," said Mr. Overend, 
 "and an infernal grafter for treasurer." 
 
 "Yes," assented Mr. Newberry, and then, 
 leaning forward In his chair and looking care- 
 fully about the corridors of the club, he spoke 
 behind his hand and said, "And the mayor's 
 the biggest grafter of the lot. And what's 
 more," he added, sinking his voice to a whisper, 
 "the time has come to speak out about it fear- 
 lessly." 
 
 Mr. Overend nodded. "It's a tyranny," he 
 said. 
 
 274 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 "Worse than Russia," rejoined Mr. New- 
 berry. 
 
 They had been sitting in a quiet corner of 
 the club — it was on a Sunday evening — and 
 had fallen into talking, first of all, of the pres- 
 ent rottenness of the federal politics of the 
 United States, — not argumentatively or with 
 any heat, but with the reflective sadness that 
 steals over an elderly man when he sits In the 
 leather arm-chair of a comfortable club smoking 
 a good cigar and musing on the decadence of 
 the present day. The rottenness of the federal 
 government didn't anger them. It merely 
 grieved them. 
 
 They could remember, — both of them, — how 
 different everything was when they were young 
 men just entering on life. When Mr. New- 
 berry and Mr. Dick Overend were young, men 
 went Into congress from pure patriotism; there 
 was no such thing as graft or crookedness, as 
 they both admitted, in those days; and as for 
 the United States Senate — here their voices 
 were almost hushed in awe — why, when they 
 were young, the United States Senate, 
 
 But no, neither of them could find a phrase 
 big enough for their meaning. 
 
 They merely repeated "as for the United 
 States Senate" — and then shook their heads and 
 took long drinks of whiskey and soda. 
 275 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 Then, naturally, speaking of the rottenness 
 of the federal government had led them to 
 talk of the rottenness of the state legislature. 
 How different from the state legislatures that 
 they remembered as young men 1 Not merely 
 different in the matter of graft, but different, 
 so Mr. Newberry said, in the calibre of the 
 men. He recalled how he had been taken as 
 a boy of twelve by his father to hear a debate. 
 He would never forget it. Giants! he said, 
 that was what they were. In fact, the thing was 
 more like a Witenagemot than a legislature. 
 He said he distinctly recalled a man, whose 
 name he didn't recollect, speaking on a ques- 
 tion, he didn't just remember what, either for 
 or against he couldn't just recall which; it 
 thrilled him. He would never forget it. It 
 stayed in his memory as if it were yesterday. 
 
 But as for the present legislature, — here Mr. 
 Dick Overend sadly nodded assent in advance 
 to what he knew was coming — as for the pres- 
 ent legislature — well, — Mr. Newberry had had, 
 he said, occasion to visit the state capital a 
 week before in connection with a railway bill 
 that he was trying to, — that is, that he was 
 anxious to, — in short in connection with a rail- 
 way bill, and when he looked about him at the 
 men in the legislature, — positively he felt 
 ashamed; he could put it no other way than 
 that, — ashamed. 
 
 276 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 After which, from speaking of the crooked- 
 ness of the state government Mr. Newberry 
 and Mr. Dick Overend were led to talk of the 
 crookedness of the city government! And they 
 both agreed, as above, that things were worse 
 than in Russia. What secretly irritated them 
 both most was that they had lived and done 
 business under this infernal corruption for 
 thirty or forty years and hadn't noticed it. They 
 had been too busy. 
 
 The fact was that their conversation re- 
 flected not so much their own original ideas 
 as a general wave of feeling that was passing 
 over the whole community. 
 
 There had come a moment, — quite suddenly 
 it seemed, — when it occurred to everybody at 
 the same time that the whole government of 
 the city was rotten. The word is a strong one. 
 But it is the one that was used. Look at the 
 aldermen, they said, — rotten ! Look at the city 
 solicitor, rotten! And as for the mayor him- 
 self, — phew ! 
 
 The thing came like a wave. Everybody felt 
 it at once. People wondered how any sane, 
 intelligent community could tolerate the pres- 
 ence of a set of corrupt scoundrels like the 
 twenty aldermen of the city. Their names, it 
 was said, were simply a byword throughout 
 the United States for rank criminal corruption. 
 This was said so widely that everybody started 
 277 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 hunting through the daily papers to try to find 
 out who In blazes were aldermen, anyhow. 
 Twenty names are hard to remember, and as a 
 matter of fact, at the moment when this wave 
 of feeling struck the city, nobody knew or cared 
 who were aldermen, anyway. 
 
 To tell the truth, the aldermen had been 
 much the same persons for about fifteen or 
 twenty years. Some were In the produce busi- 
 ness, others were butchers, two were grocers, 
 and all of them wore blue checkered waist- 
 coats and red ties and got up at seven in the 
 morning to attend the vegetable and other 
 markets. Nobody had ever really thought 
 about them, — that Is to say, nobody on Plu- 
 torla Avenue. Sometimes one saw a picture 
 In the paper and wondered for a moment who 
 the person was; but on looking more closely 
 and noticing what was written under it, one 
 said, "Oh, I see, an alderman," and turned to 
 something else. 
 
 "Whose funeral is that?" a man would some- 
 times ask on Plutoria Avenue. "Oh, just one 
 of the city aldermen," a passer-by would an- 
 swer hurriedly. "Oh I see, I beg your pardon, 
 I thought It might be somebody important." 
 
 At which both laughed. 
 
 It was not just clear how and where this 
 movement of indignation had started. People 
 278 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 said that It was part of a new wave of public 
 morality that was sweeping over the entire 
 United States. Certainly it was being remarked 
 in almost every section of the country, Chicago 
 newspapers were attributing its origin to the 
 new vigour and the fresh ideals of the middle 
 west. In Boston it was said to be due to a 
 revival of the grand old New England spirit. 
 In Philadelphia they called it the spirit of 
 William Penn. In the south It was said to be 
 the reassertion of southern chivalry making 
 Itself felt against the greed and selfishness of 
 the north, while in the north they recognised 
 It at once as a protest against the sluggishness 
 and ignorance of the south. In the west they 
 spoke of it as a revolt against the spirit of 
 the east and in the east they called it a reaction 
 against the lawlessness of the west. But every- 
 where they hailed it as a new sign of the glor- 
 ious unity of the country. 
 
 If therefore Mr. Newberry and Mr. Over- 
 end were found to be discussing the corrupt 
 state of their city they only shared in the na- 
 tional sentiments of the moment. In fact in 
 the same city hundreds of other citizens, as 
 disinterested as themselves, were waking up 
 to the realisation of what was going on. As 
 soon as people began to look Into the condi- 
 tion of things In the city they were horrified 
 at what they found. It was discovered, for 
 279 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 example, that Alderman Schwefeldampf was 
 an undertaker! Think of Itl In a city with 
 a hundred and fifty deaths a week, and some- 
 times even better, an undertaker sat on the 
 council 1 A city that was about to expropriate 
 land and to spend four hundred thousand dol- 
 lars for a new cemetery, had an undertaker 
 on the expropriation committee itself ! And 
 worse than that! Alderman Undercutt was a 
 butcher! In a city that consumed a thousand 
 tons of meat every week! And Alderman 
 O'Hooligan — it leaked out — was an Irishman ! 
 Imagine it! ,An Irishman sitting on the police 
 committee of the council in a city where thirty- 
 eight and a half out of every hundred police- 
 men were Irish, either by birth or parentage! 
 The thing was monstrous. 
 
 So when Mr. Newberry said "It's worse than 
 Russia!" he meant it, every word. 
 
 Now just as Mr. Newberry and Mr. Dick 
 Overend were finishing their discussion, the 
 hugh bulky form of Mayor McGrath came 
 ponderously past them as they sat. He looked 
 at them sideways out of his eyes, — he had eyes 
 like plums in a mottled face, — and, being a 
 born politician, he knew by the very look of 
 them that they were talking of something that 
 they had no business to be talking about. But, 
 — being a politician, — he merely said, "Good 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 evening, gentlemen," without a sign of disturb- 
 ance. 
 
 "Good evening, Mr. Mayor," said Mr. 
 Newberry, rubbing his hands feebly together 
 and speaking in an ingratiating tone. There 
 is no more pitiable spectacle than an honest 
 man caught in the act of speaking boldly and 
 fearlessly of the evil-doer. 
 
 "Good evening, Mr. Mayor," echoed Mr. 
 Dick Overend, also rubbing his hands; "warm 
 evening, is it not?" 
 
 The mayor gave no other answer than that 
 deep guttural grunt which is technically known 
 in municipal interviews as refusing to commit 
 oneself. 
 
 "Did he hear?" whispered Mr. Newberry 
 as the mayor passed out of the club. 
 
 "I don't care if he did," whispered Mr. Dick 
 Overend. 
 
 Half an hour later Mayor McGrath entered 
 the premises of the Thomas Jefferson Club, 
 which were situated in the rear end of a saloon 
 and pool room far down in the town. 
 
 "Boys," he said to Alderman O'Hooligan 
 and Alderman Gorfinkel, who were playing 
 freeze-out poker in a corner behind the pool 
 tables, "you want to let the boys know to keep 
 pretty dark and go easy. There's a lot of talk 
 I don't like about the elections going round the 
 
 38X 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 town. Let the boys know that just for a while 
 the darker they keep the better." 
 
 Whereupon the word was passed from the 
 Thomas Jefferson Club to the George Wash- 
 ington Club and thence to the Eureka Club 
 (coloured), and to the Kossuth Club (Hun- 
 garian), and to various other centres of civic 
 patriotism in the lower parts of the city. And 
 forthwith such a darkness began to spread over 
 them that not even honest Diogenes with his 
 lantern could have penetrated their doings. 
 
 "If them stiffs wants to make trouble," said 
 the president of the George Washington Club 
 to Mayor McGrath a day or two later, "they 
 won't never know what they've bumped up 
 against." 
 
 "Well," said the heavy mayor, speaking 
 slowly and cautiously and eyeing his henchman 
 with quiet scrutiny, "you want to go pretty easy 
 now, I tell you." 
 
 The look which the mayor directed at his 
 satellite was much the same glance that Mor- 
 gan the buccaneer might have given to one 
 of his lieutenants before throwing him over- 
 board. 
 
 Meantime the wave of civic enthusiasm as 
 reflected in the conversations of Plutoria Ave- 
 nue grew stronger with every day. 
 
 "The thing is a scandal," said Mr. LucuUus 
 282 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 Fyshe. "Why, these fellows down at the city 
 hall are simply a pack of rogues. I had occa- 
 sion to do some business there the other day 
 (it was connected with the assessment of our 
 soda factories) and do you know, I actually 
 found that these fellows take money!" 
 
 "I say!" said Mr. Peter Spillikins, to whom 
 he spoke, "I say! You don't say!" 
 
 "It's a fact," repeated Mr. Fyshe. "They 
 take money. I took the assistant treasurer aside 
 and I said, 'I want such and such done,' and I 
 slipped a fifty dollar bill into his hand. And 
 the fellow took it, took it like a shot." 
 
 "He took it!" gasped Mr. Spillikins. 
 
 "He did," said Mr. Fyshe. "There ought 
 to be a criminal law for that sort of thing." 
 
 "I say!" exclaimed Mr. Spillikins, "they 
 ought to go to jail for a thing like that." 
 
 "And the infernal insolence of them," Mr. 
 Fyshe continued. "I went down the next day 
 to see the deputy assistant (about a thing con- 
 nected with the same matter) , told him what I 
 wanted and passed a fifty dollar bill across 
 the counter and the fellow fairly threw it back 
 at me, in a perfect rage. He refused it!" 
 
 "Refused it," gasped Mr. Spillikins, "I say!" 
 
 Conversations such as this filled up the leisure 
 and divided the business time of all the best 
 people in the city. 
 
 283 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 In the general gloomy outlook, however, one 
 bright spot was observable. The "wave" had 
 evidently come just at the opportune moment. 
 For not only were civic elections pending but 
 just at this juncture four or five questions of 
 supreme importance would have to be settled 
 by the incoming council. There was, for in- 
 stance, the question of the expropriation of the 
 Traction Company (a matter involving many 
 millions) ; there was the decision as to the re- 
 newal of the franchise of the Citizens' Light 
 Company, — a vital question; there was also 
 the four hundred thousand dollar purchase of 
 land for the new addition to the cemetery, a 
 matter that must be settled. And it was felt, 
 especially on Plutoria Avenue, to be a splendid 
 thing that the city was waking up, in the moral 
 sense, at the very time when these things were 
 under discussion. All the shareholders of the 
 Traction Company and the Citizens' Light, — 
 and they included the very best, the most high- 
 minded, people in the city, — felt that what was 
 needed now was a great moral effort, to enable 
 them to lift the city up and carry It with them, 
 or, if not all of it, at any rate as much of it 
 as they could. 
 
 "It's a splendid movement 1" said Mr. Fyshc 
 (he was a leading shareholder and director of 
 the Citizens' Light), "what a splendid thing to 
 284 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 think that we shan't have to deal for our new 
 franchise with a set of corrupt rapscallions like 
 these present aldermen. Do you know, Fur- 
 long, that when we approached them first with 
 a proposition for a renewal for a hundred and 
 fifty years they held us up! Said it was too 
 long! Imagine that! A hundred and fifty 
 years (only a century and a half) too long for 
 the franchise! They expect us to instal all 
 our poles, string our wires, set up our trans- 
 formers in their streets and then perhaps at 
 the end of a hundred years find ouselves com- 
 pelled to sell out at a beggarly valuation. Of 
 course we knew what they wanted. They meant 
 us to hand them over fifty dollars each to stuff 
 into their rascally pockets." 
 
 "Outrageous!" said Mr. Furlong. 
 
 "And the same thing with the cemetery land 
 deal," went on Mr. Lucullus Fyshe. "Do you 
 realise that, if the movement hadn't come along 
 and checked them, those scoundrels would have 
 given that rogue Schwefeldampf four hundred 
 thousand dollars for his fifty acres ! Just think 
 of it!" 
 
 "I don't know," said Mr. Furlong with a 
 thoughtful look upon his face, "that four hun- 
 dred thousand dollars is an excessive price, in 
 and of itself, for that amount of land." 
 
 "Certainly not," said Mr. Fyshe, very quietly 
 and decidedly, looking at Mr. Furlong in a 
 28s 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 searching way as he spoke. "It is not a high 
 price. It seems to me, speaking purely as an 
 outsider, a very fair, reasonable price for fifty 
 acres of suburban land, if it were the right 
 land. If, for example, it were a case of making 
 an offer for that very fine stretch of land, about 
 twenty acres, is it not, which I believe your 
 Corporation owns on the other side of the 
 cemetery, I should say four hundred thousand 
 Is a most modest price." 
 
 Mr. Furlong nodded his head reflectively. 
 
 "You had thought, had you not, of offer- 
 ing it to the city?" said Mr. Fyshe. 
 
 "We did," said Mr. Furlong, "at a more 
 or less nominal sum, — four hundred thousand 
 or whatever it might be. We felt that for such 
 a purpose, almost sacred as it were, one would 
 want as little bargaining as possible." 
 
 "Oh, none at all," assented Mr. Fyshe. 
 
 "Our feeling was," went on Mr. Furlong, 
 "that if the city wanted our land for the ceme- 
 tery extension, it might have it at its own figure, 
 — four hundred thousand, half a million, in 
 fact at absolutely any price, from four hundred 
 thousand up, that they cared to put on it. We 
 didn't regard it as a commercial transaction at 
 all. Our reward lay merely In the fact of sell- 
 ing it to them." 
 
 "Exactly," said Mr. Fyshe, "and of course 
 your land was more desirable from every point 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 of view. Schwefeldampf's ground is encum- 
 bered with a growth of cypress and evergreens 
 and weeping willows which make it quite un- 
 suitable for an up-to-date cemetery; whereas 
 yours, as I remember it, is bright and open, — 
 a loose sandy soil with no trees and very little 
 grass to overcome," 
 
 "Yes," said Mr. Furlong. "We thought too, 
 that our ground, having the tanneries and the 
 chemical factory along the further side of it, 
 was an ideal place for, " he paused, seek- 
 ing a mode of expressing his thought. 
 
 "For the dead," said Mr. Fyshe, with be- 
 coming reverence. 
 
 And after this conversation Mr. Fyshe and 
 Mr. Furlong senior understood one another 
 absolutely in regard to the new movement. 
 
 It was astonishing in fact how rapidly the 
 light spread. 
 
 "Is Rasselyer-Brown with us?" asked some 
 one of Mr. Fyshe a few days later. 
 
 "Heart and soul," answered Mr. Fyshe. 
 "He's very bitter over the way these rascals 
 have been plundering the city on its coal sup- 
 ply. He says that the city has been buying coal 
 wholesale at the pit mouth at three fifty, — 
 utterly worthless stuff, he tells me. He has 
 heard it said that everyone of these scoundrels 
 has been paid from twenty-five to fifty dollars 
 a winter to connive at it." 
 287 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 "Dear me," said the listener. 
 
 "Abominable, is it not?" said Mr. Fyshe. 
 "But as I said to Rasselyer-Brown, what can 
 one do if the citizens themselves take no inter- 
 est in these things. 'Take your own case,' I 
 said to him, 'how is it that you, a coal man, are 
 not helping the city in this matter? Why don't 
 you supply the city?' He shook his head, 'I 
 wouldn't do it at three fifty,' he said. 'No,' I 
 answered, 'but will you at five?' He looked 
 at me for a moment and then he said, 'Fyshe, 
 I'll do it; at five, or at anything over that they 
 like to name. If we get a new council in they 
 may name their own figure.' 'Good,' I said. 
 'I hope all the other business men will be ani- 
 mated with the same spirit.' " 
 
 Thus it was that the light broke and spread 
 and illuminated in all directions. People began 
 to realise the needs of the city as they never 
 had before. Mr. Boulder, who owned, among 
 other things, a stone quarry and an asphalt 
 company, felt that the paving of the streets 
 was a disgrace. Mr. Skinyer, of Skinyer and 
 Beatem, shook his head and said that the whole 
 legal department of the city needed reorganisa- 
 tion; it needed, he said, new blood. But he 
 added always in a despairing tone, how could 
 one expect to run a department with the head 
 of it drawing only six thousand dollars; the 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 thing was Impossible. If, he argued, they could 
 superannuate the present chief solicitor and get 
 a man, a ^ood man (Mr. Sklnyer laid em- 
 phasis on this) at, say, fifteen thousand, there 
 might be some hope, 
 
 "Of course," said Mr. Sklnyer to Mr. New- 
 berry in discussing the topic, "one would need 
 to give him a proper staff of assistants so as 
 to take off his hands all the routine work, — the 
 mere appearance in court, the preparation of 
 briefs, the office consultation, the tax revision 
 and the purely legal work. In that case he 
 would have his hands free to devote himself en- 
 tirely to those things, which, — in fact to turn 
 his attention in whatever direction he might 
 feel it was advisable to turn it. 
 
 Within a week or two the public movement 
 had found definite expression and embodied 
 itself In the Clean Government Association. 
 This was organised by a group of leading and 
 disinterested citizens who held their first meet- 
 ing In the largest upstairs room of the Mauso- 
 leum Club. Mr. Lucullus Fyshe, Mr. Boulder, 
 and others keenly Interested In obtaining sim- 
 ply justice for the stockholders of the Traction 
 and the Citizens' Light were prominent from 
 the start. Mr. Rasselyer-Brown, Mr. Furlong 
 senior and others were there, not from special 
 interest in the light or traction questions, but^ 
 289 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 as they said themselves, from pure civic spirit. 
 Dr. Boomer was there to represent the univer- 
 sity with three of his most presentable pro- 
 fessors, cultivated men who were able to sit 
 in a first class club and drink, whiskey and soda 
 and talk as well as any business man present. 
 Mr. Skinyer, Mr. Beatem and others repre- 
 sented the bar. Dr. McTeague, blinking in the 
 blue tobacco smoke, was there to stand for the 
 church. There were all-round enthusiasts as 
 well, such as Mr. Newberry and the Overend 
 brothers and Mr. Peter Spillikins. 
 
 "Isn't it fine," whispered Mr. Spillikins to 
 Mr. Newberry, "to see a set of men like these 
 all going into a thing like this, not thinking 
 of their own interests a bit?" 
 
 Mr. Fyshe, as chairman, addressed the meet- 
 ing. He told them they were there to initiate 
 a great free voluntary movement of the people. 
 It had been thought wise, he said, to hold it 
 with closed doors and to keep it out of the 
 newspapers. This would guarantee the league 
 against the old underhand control by a clique 
 that had hitherto disgraced every part of the 
 administration of the city. He wanted, he said, 
 to see everything done henceforth in broad day 
 light: and for this purpose he had summoned 
 them there at night to discuss ways and means 
 of action. After they were once fully assured of 
 exactly what they wanted to do and how they 
 290 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 meant to do it, the league, he said, would in- 
 vite the fullest and freest advice from all classes 
 in the city. There were none, he said, amid 
 great applause, that were so lowly that they 
 would not be Invited, — once the platform of the 
 league was settled, — to advise and co-operate. 
 All might help, even the poorest. Subscrip- 
 tion lists would be prepared which would allow 
 any sum at all, from one to five dollars, to be 
 given to the treasurer. The league was to be 
 democratic or nothing. The poorest might con- 
 tribute as little as one dollar: even the richest 
 would not be allowed to give more than five. 
 Moreover he gave notice that he Intended to 
 propose that no actual official of the league 
 should be allowed under Its by-laws to give any- 
 thing. He himself, — If they did him the hon- 
 our to make him president as he had heard It 
 hinted was their Intention, — would be the first 
 to bow to this rule. He would efface himself. 
 He would obhterate himself, content In the 
 interests of all, to give nothing. He was able 
 to announce similar pledges from his friends, 
 Mr. Boulder, Mr. Furlong, Dr. Boomer and a 
 number of others. 
 
 Quite a storm of applause greeted these re- 
 marks by Mr. Fyshe, who flushed with pride 
 as he heard It. 
 
 "Now, gentlemen," he went on, "this meet- 
 ing Is open for discussion. Remember It is 
 291 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 quite informal, anyone may speak. I as chair- 
 man make no claim to control or monopolise 
 the discussion. Let everyone understand " 
 
 "Well then, Mr. Chairman," began Mr. Dick 
 Overend. 
 
 "One minute, Mr. Overend," said Mr. Fyshe. 
 "I want everyone to understand that he may 
 speak as " 
 
 "May I say then " began Mr. New- 
 berry. 
 
 "Pardon me, Mr. Newberry," said Mr. 
 Fyshe, "I was wishing first to explain that 
 not only may all participate but that we in- 
 vite " 
 
 "In that case " began Mr. Newberry. 
 
 "Before you speak, ".interrupted Mr. Fyshe, 
 "let me add one word. We must make our 
 discussion as brief and to the point as pos- 
 sible. I have a great number of things which 
 I wish to say to the meeting and it might be 
 well if all of you would speak as briefly and 
 as little as possible. Has anybody anything 
 to say?" 
 
 "Well," said Mr. Newberry, "what about 
 organisation and officers?" 
 
 "We have thought of it," said Mr. Fyshe. 
 "We were anxious above all things to avoid 
 the objectionable and corrupt methods of a 
 'slate' and a prepared list of officers which 
 have disgraced every part of our city politics 
 292 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 until the present time. Mr. Boulder, Mr. Fur- 
 long and Mr. Skinyer and myself have there- 
 fore prepared a short list of offices and officers 
 which we wish to submit to your fullest, freest 
 consideration. It runs thus: Hon. President 
 Mr. L. Fyshe, Hon. Vice-president Mr. A. 
 Boulder, Hon. Secretary Mr. Furlong, Hon. 
 Treasurer Mr. O. Skinyer, et cetera, et cetera, 
 — I needn't read it all. You'll see it posted 
 In the hall later. Is that carried? Carried I 
 Very good," said Mr. Fyshe. 
 
 There was a moment's pause while Mr. Fur- 
 long and Mr. Skinyer moved into seats beside 
 Mr. Fyshe and while Mr. Furlong drew from 
 his pocket and arranged the bundle of min- 
 utes of the meeting which he had brought 
 with him. As he himself said he was too neat 
 and methodical a writer to trust to jotting 
 them down on the spot. 
 
 "Don't you think," said Mr. Newberry, *T 
 speak as a practical man, that we ought to do 
 something to get the newspapers with us?" 
 
 "Most important," assented several mem- 
 bers. 
 
 "What do you think. Dr. Boomer?" asked 
 Mr. Fyshe of the university president, "will 
 the newspapers be with us?" 
 
 Dr. Boomer shook his head doubtfully. "It's 
 an important matter," he said. "There is no 
 doubt that we need, more than anything, the 
 293 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 support of a clean, wholesome unbiassed press 
 that can't be bribed and is not subject to money 
 influence. I think on the whole our best plan 
 would be to buy up one of the city newspapers." 
 
 "Might it not be better simply to buy up the 
 editorial staff?" said Mr. Dick Overend. 
 
 "We might do that," admitted Dr. Boomer. 
 "There is no doubt that the corruption of the 
 press is one of the worst factors that we have 
 to oppose. But whether we can best fight it 
 by buying the paper itself or buying the staff 
 is hard to say." 
 
 "Suppose we leave it to a committee with full 
 power to act," said Mr. Fyshe. "Let us direct 
 them to take whatever steps may in their opinion 
 be best calculated to elevate the tone of the 
 press, the treasurer being authorised to second 
 them in every way. I for one am heartily sick 
 of old underhand connection between* city poli- 
 tics and the city papers. If we can do any- 
 thing to alter and elevate it, it will be a fine 
 work, gentlemen, well worth whatever it costs 
 us." 
 
 Thus after an hour or two of such discussion 
 the Clean Government League found itself or- 
 ganised and equipped with a treasury and a 
 programme and a platform. The latter was 
 very simple. As Mr. Fyshe and Mr. Boulder 
 said there was no need to drag in specific ques- 
 tions or try to define the action to be taken to- 
 294 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 wards this or that particular detail, such as the 
 hundred and fifty year franchise, beforehand. 
 The platform was simply expressed as Honesty, 
 Purity, Integrity. This, as Mr. Fyshe said, 
 made a straight, flat, clean issue between the 
 league and all who opposed it. 
 
 This first meeting was of course confidential. 
 But all that it did was presently done over 
 again, with wonderful freshness and spontaneity 
 at a large public meeting open to all citizens. 
 There was a splendid impromptu air about 
 everything. For Instance when somebody away 
 back in the hall said, 'T move that Mr. Lucul- 
 lus Fyshe be president of the league," Mr. 
 Fyshe lifted his hand in unavailing protest as 
 if this were the newest idea he had ever heard 
 In his life. 
 
 After all of which the Clean Government 
 League set itself to fight the cohorts of dark- 
 ness. It was not just known where these were. 
 But it was understood that they were there all 
 right, somewhere. In the platform speeches 
 of the epoch they figured as working under- 
 ground, working in the dark, working behind 
 the scenes, and so forth. But the strange thing 
 was that nobody could state with any exacti- 
 tude just who or what it was that the league 
 was fighting. It stood for "honesty, purity, 
 and integrity." That was all you could say 
 about it. 
 
 295 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 Take for example the case of the press. At 
 the Inception of the league it has been sup- 
 posed that such was the venality and corrup- 
 tion of the city newspapers that it would be 
 necessary to buy one of them. But the word 
 "clean government" had been no sooner uttered 
 than it turned out that every one of the papers 
 in the city was in favour of it: in fact had been 
 working for it for years. 
 
 They vied with one another now in giving 
 publicity to the idea. The Plutorian Times 
 printed a dotted coupon on the corner of its 
 front sheet with the words, ''Are you in favour 
 of Clean Government? If so, send us ten cents 
 with this coupon and your name and address." 
 The Plutorian Citizen and Home Advocate, 
 went even further. It printed a coupon which 
 said, "Are you out for a clean city? If so send 
 us twenty-five cents to this office. We pledge 
 ourselves to use it." 
 
 The newspapers did more than this. They 
 printed from day to day such pictures as the 
 portrait of Mr. Fyshe with the legend below, 
 "Mr. Lucullus Fyshe, who says that govern- 
 ment ought to he by the people, from the peo- 
 ple, for the people and to the people;" and the 
 next day another labelled, "Mr. P. Spillikins, 
 who says that all men are born free and equal;" 
 and the next day a picture with the words, 
 "Tract of ground offered for cemetery by Mr. 
 296 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 Furlong, showing rear of tanneries, with head 
 of Mr. Furlong inserted." 
 
 It was of course plain enough that certain 
 of the aldermen of the old council were to be 
 reckoned as part of the cohort of darkness. 
 That at least was clear. "We want no more 
 men in control of the stamp of Alderman Gor- 
 iinkel and Alderman Schwefeldampf," so said 
 practically every paper in the city. "The pub- 
 lic sense revolts at these men. They are vul- 
 tures who have feasted too long on the pros- 
 trate corpses of our citizens," And so on. 
 The only trouble was to discover who or what 
 had ever supported Alderman Gorfinkel and 
 Alderman Schwefeldampf. The very organisa- 
 tions that might have seemed to be behind them 
 were evidently more eager for clean govern- 
 ment than the league itself. 
 
 "The Thomas Jefferson Club Out for Clean 
 Government/' so ran the newspaper headings 
 of one day; and of the next, "Will help to 
 clean up City Government. Eureka Club (Col- 
 oured) endorses the League; Is done with 
 Darkness;" and the day after that, "Sons of 
 Hungary Share in Good Work: Kossuth Club 
 will vote with the League." 
 
 So strong, indeed, was the feeling against 
 
 the iniquitous aldermen that the public demand 
 
 arose to be done with a council of aldermen 
 
 altogether and to substitute government by a 
 
 297 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 Board. The newspapers contained editorials 
 on the topic each day and it was understood 
 that one of the first efforts of the league would 
 be directed towards getting the necessary sanc- 
 tion of the legislature in this direction. To 
 help to enlighten the public on what such gov- 
 ernment meant Professor Proaser of the uni- 
 versity (he was one of the three already re- 
 ferred to) gave a public lecture on the growth 
 of Council Government. He traced it from 
 the Amphictionic Council of Greece as far down 
 as the Oligarchical Council of Venice; it was 
 thought that had the evening been longer he 
 would have traced it clean down to modern 
 times. 
 
 But most amazing of all was the announce- 
 ment that w^as presently made, and endorsed 
 by Mr. Lucullus Fyshe in an interview, that 
 Mayor McGrath himself would favour clean 
 government, and would become the official 
 nominee of the league itself. This certainly 
 was strange. But it would perhaps have been 
 less mystifying to the public at large, had 
 they been able to listen to certain of the inti- 
 mate conversations of Mr. Fyshe and Mr. 
 Boulder. 
 
 "You say then," said Mr. Boulder, "to let 
 McGrath's name stand," 
 
 "We can't do without him," said Mr. Fyshe, 
 "he has seven of the wards in the hollow of 
 298 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 his hand. If we take his offer he absolutely 
 pledges us every one of them." 
 
 "Can you rely on his word?" said Mr. 
 Boulder. 
 
 "I think he means to play fair with us," 
 answered Mr. Fyshe. "I put it to him as a 
 matter of honour, between man and man, a 
 week ago. Since then I have had him carefully 
 dictaphoned and I'm convinced he's playing 
 straight." 
 
 "How far will he go with us?" said Mr. 
 Boulder. 
 
 "He is willing to throw overboard Gor- 
 finkel, Schwefeldampf and Undercutt. He says 
 he must find a place for O'Hooligan. The 
 Irish, he says, don't care for clean government; 
 they want Irish Government." 
 
 "I see," said Mr, Boulder very thoughtfully, 
 "and in regard to the renewal of the franchise 
 and the expropriation, tell me just exactly what 
 his conditions are." 
 
 But Mr. Fyshe's answer to this was said 
 so discreetly and in such a low voice, that not 
 even the birds listening in the elm trees out- 
 side the Mausoleum Club could hear it. 
 
 No wonder then that if even the birds failed 
 to know everything about the Clean Govern- 
 ment League, there were many things which 
 such good people as Mr. Newberry and Mr. 
 299 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 Peter Spillikins never heard at all and never 
 guessed. 
 
 Each week and every day brought fresh tri- 
 umphs to the onward march of the movement. 
 
 "Yes, gentlemen," said Mr. Fyshe to the 
 assembled committee of the Clean Governm'^.nt 
 League a few days later, "I am glad to be able 
 to report our first victory. Mr. Boulder and 
 I have visited the state capital and we are 
 able to tell you definitely that the legislature 
 will consent to change our form of government 
 so as to replace our council by a Board." 
 
 "Hear, hear!" cried all the committee men 
 together. 
 
 "We saw the governor," said Mr. Fyshe. 
 "Indeed he was good enough to lunch with us 
 at the Pocahontas Club. He tells us that what 
 we are doing is being done in every city and 
 town of the state. He says that the days of 
 the old-fashioned city council are numbered. 
 They are setting up boards everywhere." 
 
 "Excellent!" said Mr. Newberry. 
 
 "The governor assures us that what we want 
 will be done. The chairman of the Demo- 
 cratic State Committee (he was good enough 
 to dine with us at the Buchanan Club) has 
 given us the same assurance. So also does the 
 chairman of the Republican State Committee, 
 who was kind enough to be our guest in a box 
 at the Lincoln Theatre. It is most gratifying," 
 300 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 concluded Mr. Fyshe, "to feel that the legis- 
 lature will give us such a hearty, such a thor- 
 oughly American support." 
 
 "You are sure of this, are you?" questioned 
 Mr. Newberry. "You have actually seen the 
 members of the legislature?" 
 
 "It was not necessary," said Mr. Fyshe. 
 *'The governor and the different chairmen have 
 them so well fixed, — that is to say, they have 
 such confidence in the governor and their politi- 
 cal organisers that they will all be prepared to 
 give us what I have described as a thoroughly 
 American support." 
 
 "You are quite sure," persisted Mr. New- 
 berry, "about the governor and the others you 
 mentioned?" 
 
 Mr. Fyshe paused a moment and then he 
 said very quietly, "We are quite sure," and he 
 exchanged a look with Mr. Boulder that meant 
 volumes to those who would read it. 
 
 "I hope you didn't mind my questioning you 
 in that fashion," said Mr. Newberry, as he 
 and Mr. Fyshe strolled home from the club. 
 "The truth is I didn't feel sure in my own 
 mind just what was meant by a 'Board,' and 
 'getting them to give us government by a 
 Board.' I know I'm speaking like an igno- 
 ramus. I've really not paid as much attention 
 in the past to civic politics as I ought to have. 
 . 301 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 But what is the difference between a council 
 and board?" 
 
 "The difference between a council and a 
 board?" repeated Mr. Fyshe. 
 
 "Yes," said Mr. Newberry, "the difference 
 between a council and a board." 
 
 "Or call It," said Mr. Fyshe reflectively, 
 "the difference between a board and a council." 
 
 "Precisely," said Mr. Newberry. 
 
 "It's not altogther easy to explain," said Mr. 
 Fyshe. "One chief difference Is that in the 
 case of a board, sometimes called a Commis- 
 sion, the salary Is higher. You see the salary 
 of an alderman or councillor in most cities Is 
 generally not more than fifteen hundred or two 
 thousand dollars. The salary of a member of 
 a board or commission Is at least ten thousand. 
 That gives you at once a very different class of 
 men. As long as you only pay fifteen hundred 
 you get your council filled up with men who 
 will do any kind of crooked work for fifteen 
 hundred dollars; as soon as you pay ten thou- 
 sand you get men with larger ideas." 
 
 "I see," said Mr. Newberry. 
 
 "If you have a fifteen hundred dollar man," 
 Mr. Fyshe went on, "you can bribe him at any 
 time with a fifty dollar bill. On the other hand 
 your ten thousand dollar man has a wider out- 
 look. If you offer him fifty dollars for his 
 vote on the board, he'd probably laugh at you." 
 302 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 "Ah, yes," said Mr. Newberry, "I see the 
 idea. A fifteen hundred dollar salary is so 
 low that it will tempt a lot of men into ofEce 
 merely for what they can get out of it." 
 
 "That's it exactly," answered Mr. Fyshe. 
 
 From all sides support came to the new 
 league. The women of the city, — there were 
 fifty thousand of them on the municipal voters 
 list, — were not behind the men. Though not 
 officials of the league they rallied to its cause. 
 
 "Mr. Fyshe," said Mrs. Buncomhearst, who 
 called at the office of the president of the league 
 with offers of support, "tell me what we can 
 do. I represent fifty thousand women voters 
 of this city, " 
 
 (This was a favourite phrase of Mrs. Bun- 
 comhearst's, though it had never been made 
 quite clear how or why she represented them.) 
 
 "We want to help, we women. You know 
 we've any amount of initiative, If you'll only 
 tell us what to do. You know, Mr. Fyshe, 
 we've just as good executive ability as you 
 men, if you'll just tell us what to do. Couldn't 
 we hold a meeting of our own, all our own, 
 to help the league along?" 
 
 "An excellent idea," said Mr. Fyshe. 
 
 "And could you not get three or four men 
 to come and address it so as to stir us up?" 
 asked Mrs. Buncomhearst anxiously. 
 303 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 "Oh, certainly," said Mr. Fyshe. 
 
 So it was known after this that the women 
 were working side by side with the men. The 
 tea rooms of the Grand Palaver and the other 
 hotels were filled with them every day, busy 
 for the cause. One of them even invented a 
 perfectly charming election scarf to be worn 
 as a sort of badge to show one's allegiance: 
 and its great merit was that it was so fashioned 
 that it would go with anything. 
 
 "Yes," said Mr. Fyshe to his committee, "one 
 of the finest signs of our movement is that the 
 women of the city are with us. Whatever we 
 may think, gentlemen, of the question of 
 woman's rights in general, — and I think we 
 know what we do think, — there is no doubt that 
 the influence of women makes for purity in civic 
 politics. I am glad to inform the committee 
 that Mrs. Buncomhearst and her friends have 
 organised all the working women of the city 
 who have votes. They tell me that they have 
 been able to do this at a cost as low as five dol- 
 lars per woman. Some of the women, — for- 
 eigners of the lower classes whose sense of po- 
 litical morality is as yet imperfectly developed, 
 — have been organised at a cost as low as one 
 dollar per vote. But of course with our native 
 American women, with a higher standard of 
 education and morality, we can hardly expect 
 to do it as low as that." 
 
 304 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 Nor were the women the only element of 
 support added to the league. 
 
 "Gentlemen," reported Dr. Boomer, the 
 president of the university, at the next com- 
 mittee meeting, "I am glad to say that the 
 spirit which animates us has spread to the 
 students of the university. They have organ- 
 ised, entirely by themselves and on their own 
 account, a Students' Fair Play League which 
 has commenced its activities. I understand 
 that they have already ducked Alderman Gor- 
 finkel in a pond near the university. I believe 
 they are looking for Alderman Schwefeldampf 
 to-night. I understand they propose to throw 
 him into the reservoir. The leaders of them, 
 — a splendid set of young fellows, — have given 
 me a pledge that they will do nothing to bring 
 discredit on the university." 
 
 "I think I heard them on the street last 
 night," said Mr. Newberry. 
 
 "I believe they had a procession," said the 
 president. 
 
 "Yes, I heard them; they were shouting 
 'Rah! rah! rah! Clean Government! Clean 
 Government ! Rah ! rah 1 It was really inspir- 
 ing to hear them." 
 
 "Yes," said the president, "they are banded 
 together to put down all the hoodlumism and 
 disturbance on the street that has hitherto dis- 
 graced our municipal elections. Last night, as 
 305 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 a demonstration, they upset two street cars and 
 a milk, waggon." 
 
 "I heard that two of them were arrested," 
 said Mr. Dick Overend. 
 
 "Only by an error," said the president. 
 "There was a mistake. It was not known that 
 they were students. The two who were arrested 
 were smashing the windows of the car, after 
 it was upset, with their hockey sticks. A squad 
 of police mistook them for rioters. As soon 
 as they were taken to the police station, the 
 mistake was cleared up at once. The chief of 
 police telephoned an apology to the university. 
 I believe the league is out again to-night look- 
 ing for Alderman Schwefeldampf. But the 
 leaders assure me there will be no breach 
 of the peace whatever. As I say, I think 
 their idea is to throw him into the reser- 
 
 In the face of such efforts as these, oppo- 
 sition itself melted rapidly away. The Phi- 
 torian Times was soon able to announce that 
 various undesirable candidates were abandon- 
 ing the field. "Alderman Gorfinkel," it said, 
 "who, it will be recalled, was thrown into a 
 pond last week by the students of the college, 
 was still confined to his bed when interviewed 
 by our representative. Mr. Gorfinkel stated 
 that he should not offer himself as a candidate 
 306 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 in the approaching election. He was, he said, 
 weary of civic honours. He had had enough. 
 He felt it incumbent on him to step out and 
 make way for others who deserved their turn 
 as well as himself: in future he proposed 
 to confine his whole attention to his Misfit 
 Semi-Ready Establishment which he was 
 happy to state was offering as nobby a line 
 of early fall suiting as was ever seen at the 
 price." 
 
 There is no need to recount here in detail 
 the glorious triumph of the election day itself. 
 It will always be remembered as the purest, 
 cleanest election ever held in the precincts of 
 the city. The citizens' organization turned out 
 in overwhelming force to guarantee that it 
 should be so. Bands of Dr. Boomer's students, 
 armed with baseball bats, surrounded the polls 
 to guarantee fair play. Any man wishing to 
 cast an unclean vote was driven from the booth : 
 all those attempting to introduce any element of 
 brute force or rowdysm into the election were 
 cracked over the head. In the lower part of 
 the town scores of willing workers, recruited 
 often from the humblest classes, kept order with 
 pickaxes. In every part of the city motor cars, 
 supplied by all the leading business men, law- 
 yers, and doctors of the city, acted as patrols 
 to see that no unfair use should be made of 
 307 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 other vehicles in carrying voters to the polls. 
 It was a foregone victory from the first, — 
 overwhelming and complete. The cohorts of 
 darkness were so completely routed that it was 
 practically impossible to find them. As it fell 
 dusk the streets were filled with roaring and 
 surging crowds celebrating the great victory for 
 clean government, while in front of every 
 newspaper oflice huge lantern pictures of 
 Mayor McGrath, the Champion of Pure Gov- 
 ernment, and O. Skinyer, the People's Solicitor, 
 and the other nominees of the league, called 
 forth cheer after cheer of frenzied enthusiasm. 
 
 They held that night In celebration a great 
 reception at the Mausoleum Club on Plutoria 
 Avenue, given at its own suggestion by the 
 city. The city indeed insisted on It. 
 
 Nor was there ever witnessed even In that 
 home of art and refinement a scene of greater 
 charm. In the spacious corridor of the club 
 a Hungarian band wafted Viennese music from 
 Tyrolese flutes through the rubber trees. There 
 was champagne bubbling at a score of side- 
 boards where noiseless waiters poured It into 
 goblets as broad and flat as floating water-lily 
 leaves. And through it all moved the shepherds 
 and shepherdesses of that beautiful Arcadia — 
 the shepherds in their Tuxedo jackets, with vast 
 white shirt-fronts broad as the map of Af- 
 308 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 rlca, with spotless white waistcoats girdling 
 their equators, wearing heavy gold watch-chains 
 and little patent shoes blacker than sin itself, 
 '■ — and the shepherdesses in foaming billows of 
 silks of every colour of the kaleidoscope, their 
 hair bound with glittering headbands or coiled 
 with white feathers, the very symbol of munici- 
 pal purity. One would search in vain the pages 
 of pastoral literature to find the equal of it. 
 
 And as they talked the good news spread 
 from group to group that it was already known 
 that the new franchise of the Citizens' Light 
 was to be made for two centuries so as to give 
 the company a fair chance to see what it could 
 do. At the word of it, the grave faces of manly 
 bondholders flushed with pride, and the soft 
 eyes of listening shareholders laughed back in 
 joy. For they had no doubt or fear, now that 
 clean government had come. They knew what 
 the company could do. 
 
 Thus all night long, outside of the club, the 
 soft note of the motor horns arriving and de- 
 parting wakened the sleeping leaves of the elm 
 trees with their message of good tidings. And 
 all night long, within its lighted corridors, the 
 bubbhng champagne whispered to the listen- 
 ing rubber trees of the new salvation of the 
 city. So the night waxed and waned till the 
 slow day broke, dimming with its cheap prosaic 
 glare the shaded beauty of the artificial light, 
 309 
 
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich 
 
 and the people of the city — the best of them, — 
 drove home to their well-earned sleep, and the 
 others, — In the lower parts of the city, — rose to 
 their dally toll. 
 
 FINIS 
 
 310 
 

 
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 Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
 Treatment Date; June 2009 
 
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