CHAPTER IV.

By a chance discovery, I am induced to devote my life to the pursuit of evil.

On my return to the store, I suffered a reverse so severe that I hesitate even to narrate it. It gives me no pleasure to do so, except insofar as I recall that my tri­umph will be so much more complete for my having overcome an adversity that, in the end, changed the course of my life in a way that brought unfathomable benefit to me.

In short, because I do not wish to be long, my father utterly repudiated my negotiation with the firm of Cargill Bros. All my explanations, calculations, demonstrations, and remonstrations were in vain: he could not bring himself to spend that amount of money, and nothing would persuade him to do so. He insisted that I must wire Cargill Bros. in the morning and cancel the order, and in this ridiculous intransigence he persisted adamantly, finally telling me in so many words, “I forbid you to spend that much money.”

My sisters were simply delighted at my reversal. My father, who could never bring himself to be really angry with me, attempted to be pleasant through sup­per; I picked morosely at whatever Viola had boiled for the evening, and Viola and Camellia chattered incessantly and with uncontrollable glee.

“Really, Father,” Viola said with her mouth full of boiled something-or-other, “what can you expect? You knew he was a noodle when you sent him out there.”

This was a remark of unprecedented wit, to judge by its effect on Camellia, who spewed potatoes all over the table in front of her.

“You might as well have sent the cat,” Viola continued.

“Or the goldfish,” Camellia added helpfully, spew­ing more potatoes.

“Could you please pass the butter, Galahad?” my father inquired politely, as if he had not heard my sisters at all,—which probably was the case, his little mind being unable even to ac­knowledge the existence of whatever it could not comprehend, and my sisters’ antipathy toward me being foremost among the things my father’s mind could not comprehend. And this was how the rest of supper went: my sisters unrelenting in their attacks, and my father even more unrelenting in his pleasantness, which I honestly do believe was worse than the attacks of my sisters. I excused myself as early as I could, and retired to my attic.

Here again I sank into the profoundest depths of despair. At every turn my best plans were frustrated by the ignorance and folly of those around me. Must it not always be thus? My father was an oaf who did not understand the scale of modern business—but that was not a new discovery. To-morrow I should have to humiliate myself by sending a cable to Cargill Bros. canceling the order I had made, and then I should never again be taken seriously at that plant. Again I asked myself, what did I have to live for? It was not the particular reversal that was impossible, but rather the certainty that it would not be the last. There was a great world that lay beyond the little store on Wood-street, but my father could not see it, because he did not understand it. If my every attempt to break out into that world must be thwarted by my father’s ignorance and timidity, then how could I grasp that imperial destiny that surely awaited me? And without the anticipation of that destiny, how was my life toler­able? But the result of my considerations was again the same: no matter how many different methods of ending my life occurred to me, each one was either impossible in my circumstances or too unpleasant to consider for more than a moment.

I felt a maddening impotence; there was simply nothing I could do. So I picked up a magazine and began to read.

The Gentleman’s Cabinet! Dear reader, the time has come when that humble publication must take its place on our stage—must stand before the footlights, speak its lines, and advance our plot. How patiently it has been waiting on my little table, the one in the dormer with the old Windsor chair beside it—waiting to grant me its great revelation!

Yes, I took up the magazine, and, having exhausted the major articles, turned to the “literary” section in the back, where lesser hacks reviewed the works of greater hacks. Here I read a review of “Emmett Palgrave,” the most recent novel by Mrs. Burton, who was then in great esteem, though I doubt whether a single one of her works is still in print to-day. I had intended to retire after that, but my melancholy state of mind was likely to prevent me from sleeping, and the title of the next review caught my eye:

THE WICKEDEST MAN IN FRANCE.

Well! That indeed was a distinction. I knew nothing of France, of course, beyond what I had read; but all sources seemed to concur in describing France as a country of extraordinary wickedness. I believe my school geography, in the map of Europe, had simply engraved the word “WICKED” across the northwestern corner of the continent. In popular literature, France was not merely wicked: it was the source and wellspring of wickedness, a sun of wickedness from which rays of wickedness shone on an otherwise virtuous world. And, of course, like every good American boy, I had in unguarded moments wished that I could be in France, where the women were so unspeakably wicked that their most characteristic acts always took place between the end of one chapter and the beginning of another:—although, of course, I immediately repudiated that desire as unbecoming a virtuous young man. Now, if a man could be the wickedest man in France, then he must be very wicked indeed; and he must be a great deal more interesting to read about than the insipidly virtuous hero of Mrs. Burton’s novel, which the reviewer had praised as tending to the improvement of youth—a reviewer’s kind way of saying that it was the sort of book no one would willingly pick up. I began to read this new review, which was not at all favorable, with sleepy and half-closed eyes; but I was soon wide awake. But why tell you, dear reader, about the review, when I can reproduce the review itself? I have preserved the magazine with as much care as a Mahometan might use in preserving his Alcoran:—for it is my holy text, and the foundation of my religion, though it has not the spare elegance of other holy texts. I copy it here and relish every word, although the reviewer plainly had no notion of the import of the work he undertook to review. Here it is, then, or at least the salient parts of it—for I shall copy while it is yet a joy, but cease when it becomes a labor.

THE WICKEDEST MAN IN FRANCE.

For all of history, men have questioned whether it is better to prohibit books that tend toward evil, or to suffer them to remain, and refute them. We speak not of books of obvious depravity, whose only aim is to excite concupiscence; but rather of those works which present an argument, the tendency of which, if it is followed to its conclusion, is to entice men to wicked­ness, and in a word to make wrong seem right. The general consensus of American and English thought has been that such books are to be allowed, on the grounds that their refutation will surely be forth­coming, if liberty of thought is granted equally to the wicked and the virtuous. It thus becomes the duty of good Christian writers to expose the specious and faulty reasoning by which wrong is made to seem right. Whatever moralists may say of the state of literature in our own era, it is at least beyond question that virtue never lacks defenders; and, if their works are sometimes less read than the works they refute, that is perhaps a fault to be laid at the feet of the readers, rather than charged to the writers’ account.

Dear reader, I must break in here for a moment. If the works of the moralists are less read than the moralists themselves would desire, what right have they to complain of their readers? Write a book worth reading, and it will be read; but you give people stale bread to eat, and wonder that they prefer cake!

When we come to the work of the Comte de Baucher, however, the ordinary Christian writer finds himself at a loss. His business hitherto has been to make it plain where arguments go astray: to show how that which was presented as tending toward the good tends rather toward evil. Since it is acknowl­edged that good is to be sought and evil shunned, the debate is thus won, and the moral writer emerges crowned with the laurels of victory.

But there can be no such victory against the Comte. That his philosophy tends toward evil is not an accusation in his eyes. He has called his book A la Recherche du mal—The Pursuit of Evil—and in it he argues, not that evil is good, but that the superior man chooses evil, in accordance with the dictates of nature.

Here again I break in for a moment to point out how wonderfully this paragraph is calculated to make me prick up my ears. One thing I had grown to regard as certain was that I was, in the words attributed to the Comte de Baucher, a superior man. My difficulties were not in any lack of intellect or natural ability; they all came from the inferiority and stupidity of the obstacles that stood in my way—among which the fore­most was my father, whose tiny mind was in­capable of comprehending a great opportunity, simply because it was great, and there was no room in his mind for great things. The words “superior man,” therefore, caught my attention, and, as the arguments in the first lines of the review had predisposed me to think of the reviewer as a man of no very keen intellect, I began to take the side of the Comte, as one who had something to say to the superior man. Ye simpering moralists, and ye pandering preachers who speak to us in apostrophe as “ye,” see how quickly you mine your own lines, and destroy the virtue you would build up!

This is plainly not a proposition that can be refuted merely by saying that it tends toward evil: for if we said so, the Comte would be justified in replying, “Et alors?” Indeed, if evil is not to be shunned, it is dif­fi­cult to see on what grounds the Comte can be refuted at all.

Our noble author begins with Creation; or, rather, he begins by denying Creation, which he dismisses at once as a superfluous hypothesis. The universe, he says, came to be through collision and accretion of primordial matter according to natural laws. The primary law of nature in this universe is not one of Newton’s famous discoveries, but rather what the Comte calls the Law of Relative Strength, which may be briefly stated thus: The stronger invariably de­stroys or subsumes the weaker. Such is the law among stars and planets; such is the law in the mineral kingdom; such, most notably, is the law among living creatures. The Comte gives two chapters to the operation of this law in nature, but such profligacy is hardly necessary. Big rocks crush little rocks to atoms, and larger creatures eat smaller ones; there you have his observations in epitome.

When the Comte comes to consider human history, he finds the same principle at work everywhere. A chapter on human origins is of the most speculative turn imaginable, and yet the Comte presents his specu­lations as established truths. The wild surmises of Darwin, which many of our most eminent authors have entirely refuted, are here accepted as un­ques­tioned facts of science. In the time before recorded history (for it is hardly necessary to say that the Comte does not accept the inspired works of Moses as genuine history), the Comte imagines the Law of Relative Strength operating in such a way that the stronger man compels the weaker to do his bidding; and, having thus subsumed, so to speak, the strength of the weaker man in his own, employs this combined strength to subsume the strength of another man, and so on, until he has formed a tribe of men who act under his authority, and whose combined strength he calls upon to carry out his will. Thus he sees the beginning of human society, not as an association for mutual advantage, but simply as the result of one man’s pride.

Here it seems clear to me that the reviewer misunderstands the argument. It is not pride that is at work, but necessity. If the world is so ordered that the law of relative strength obtains—a proposition that struck me as undeniable from the moment I heard it—then it is as inevitable that men should collide as that any other form of matter must collide; and then the stronger must either destroy or subsume the weaker. There are degrees of strength in any group of men, and the strongest, by repeated clashes with rivals, must at last take his place. It is not a question of justice so much as a certainty of physics.

But what of that moral sense which distinguishes men from beasts? Whence did that arise, and does it not refute the Comte’s assertion that all human relations are merely the result of many collisions between stronger and weaker?

This brings us to what appears to be the core of the Comte’s new system of philosophy. Moral pre­cepts, he would have us understand, are not eternal truths of nature; nor are they laws given to us by a higher and wiser power. They are tools or weapons by which the strong control the weak, and the greater the lesser. There is more than one sort of strength: intellectual vigor often prevails over mere physical power. The strong-minded have devised moral principles in order to enslave the weak-minded, even when the latter are men of great bodily strength. One may be pardoned for surmising that the Comte de Baucher is not a very healthy physical specimen.

This feeble attempt at a sly dig in no way under­mines the argument, which is well-nigh unassailable.—I really had no intention of interrupting so often, but I can hardly be expected to hold back the thoughts I have kept to myself for thirty years as I ruminated on these things. The indulgent reader will forgive me—or, if he will not, then he may find himself a dime novel that will hold his attention.

As an example of the way in which those of strong mind make use of moral precepts in order to bend the weak-minded to their will, the Comte devotes an entire chapter to the Mosaic law. This he finds riddled with absurdities and extravagances that can have no other purpose, so he says, than to keep the great mass of the Israelites in subjection to Moses, Aaron, and their successors. The Decalogue, which philosophers have often praised as the sublimest expression of the universal moral law, becomes, on the Comte’s reading, an arbitrary catalogue of offenses against the authority of the superior men who have subjected Israel to their rule. Thus the first commandments enjoin exclusive worship of the God of Israel, and obedience to him, not because such a being exists and is good, but because religion was the source of Moses and Aaron’s power over the tribes, and any admixture of foreign religions must weaken that power. The Comte praises the wisdom and rhetorical skill of Moses: “for,” he says, “the man who can slaughter thousands of his own people, and teach them ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ must be extra­ordinarily persuasive.” He devotes most of the rest of this chapter to the provisions of the law that seem most absurd to him, and delights in counting up the number of occasions on which a sacrifice will be required—a sacrifice that the priest shall eat, so that Moses was able to assure perpetual abundance, not merely for himself, but for his entire tribe, at the expense of the others.

In short, without giving any compelling reason for doing so, the Comte rejects divine revelation as a myth, and not merely a myth but a deliberate fabrication, by which the superior man—in this case Moses—assured himself of a full stomach.

The rest of the Hebrew Scriptures are treated in a separate chapter, which is not worth summarizing here, except to say that the kings and prophets whom the sacred authors regard as virtuous seem to come out as the villains of the piece: men who, when the people had tasted liberty, enslaved them again, and drove the inferior rabble back to that worship on which the power of the superior men rested.

Once again, our reviewer has mistaken the argument. It is perfectly true that the “good” kings of the Old Testament forced the people back into servitude; but that makes them the heroes of the tale, not the villains. To one who has correctly understood the philosophy of Baucher—as I seemed to do the moment I heard his ideas—a hero is a man who bends other men to his will.

What, then, of the New Testament? Does not the figure of Christ, the meek and mild Savior who went to the Cross without offering the feeblest resistance to his persecutors, amply refute the proposition that the Christian religion is merely an imposition of the will of the strong upon the weak?

Here our noble author rather disappoints us.

He did not disappoint me! I clearly remember reading the lines that follow with a beating heart and an inescapable sense that hidden truths were being opened up to me. But let the reviewer carry on, and I shall interrupt him again if it amuses me to do so.

Instead of dealing squarely with the historical fact of the Incarnation, the Comte dismisses the entire life of Jesus as a fiction. Making that assumption—which we hope we may be permitted to doubt—the Comte proceeds to show how excellently the Christian religion is contrived for the purpose of keeping the powerful secure in their privileges. The poor are encouraged to believe that their poverty carries with it a special blessedness, that he who desires riches courts eternal damnation in the life to come, when the first shall be last and the last first. It goes without saying, of course, that the Comte admits no such futurity; he admires, however, what he calls “the audacity of the deception,” by which not only are the poor induced to bear their lot with contentment, but also many accidentally wealthy men of inferior intellect are persuaded to sell all they have and seek poverty—leaving, of course, the superior men in possession of the good things of this life.

Now supposing all this to be true, would it not be the greatest folly for the Comte—who plainly believes himself one of these superior men who alone know the truth—to reveal these things to all and sundry? Here the Comte makes a most ingenious argument. It is no risk to the superior man, says he, to publish such a book as this, because it will reveal nothing to inferior minds. They will not see what they do not understand.

Is it necessary for me to mention that I thought of my father here?

Doubtless the book will come to the notice of a few inferior men, but few of them will read it, and of those few none will accept its truths. Such is the weakness of the inferior mind that, even when facing the undeniable truth, it prefers to retreat to its comfortable falsehoods. Only the superior mind will grasp the truth of what the Comte has written; the others will employ all their feeble powers to refute these truths; and will believe themselves to have done so, though all reason and logic be against them, because to admit that they have not succeeded would be to admit that every belief which they had been taught since early childhood to regard as inviolable, is false. This is an admission a man can make only at a point of crisis, when the beliefs by which he has regulated his life have brought him to an impasse.

Since the Comte himself has brought up the subject, and since we are at a natural division in his book, we may take this opportunity to inquire——

No, I shall not copy this next page or two. Our reviewer indulges in more sarcasm than I can stomach in narrating the life of the Comte—which, briefly, runs thus: he had an imbecile for a father, was miserable in school, and very early displayed all the signs of a superior intellect, which found no encouragement in his circle of acquaintances. I do not believe it is necessary for me to remark how closely the Comte’s early life seemed to resemble my own life up to this point.

For the Comte, his “point of crisis” came when he was rejected by a woman. Our reviewer amuses himself, if not his readers, with remarks on the character of a Frenchman, and how different the philosophy of Baucher might have been had the woman been of that yielding character supposed to be so common in France. But is there any passion stronger than love, or lust if you prefer? and is there anything other than strong disappointment that can bring a man to the point of psychological crisis? It is, at any rate, sufficient to say that, whatever the opinion of the reviewer, I felt drawn to this Comte de Baucher as to a kindred spirit.

Let us resume the review two pages later.

Leaving the historical section behind, we come now to the second, and mercifully final, portion of the book, which the author facetiously labels “The Ethics of the Superior Man,” but which may more accurately be called a frontal attack on ethics.

We are first taken through the many different ethical systems, philosophical and religious, by which men have regulated their conduct, and shown their fundamental identity. This is not a new observation: many other writers have pointed out the similarities in the ethical content of various religious and philo­sophical systems, and have found in that similarity evidence of an objective moral truth. This is not, however, the conclusion our present author draws. His survey of ethical systems consumes no fewer than three chapters, and takes him as far as China in his search for corroborative material; but, in the end, we are prepared for his great conclusion, which is that the similarity of all the ethical systems derives, not from natural moral law, but from the operation of the Law of Relative Strength in the human sphere. In short, all ethical systems are imposed by the strong upon the weak, and their purpose is to keep the weak in subjection to the strong—the inferior to the superior. How this subjection is variously accom­plished the Comte describes in two more chapters; but we may summarize them by saying that prophets and philosophers have taught honesty and gentleness the world over, not because those things are good in themselves, but because it is convenient for the superior man that his inferiors should be honest and gentle. That is a truth of nature: since even the inferior man is, to some extent, an intellectual being, the dominance of the strong over the weak must take an intellectual form as well as a physical form. The superior man, in other words, must control the beliefs of his inferiors, as the surest means of controlling their actions.

But if ethical systems have no purpose but to keep the inferior man subject to the superior, then what are the ethics of the superior man? He has none. This is the conclusion to which the whole work has been tending, and therefore it can in no wise be called unexpected. Yet it is still something of a surprise to see it stated so baldly. The inferior man must attempt to weigh his actions against any number of ethical standards; the superior man, on the other hand, asks himself one question only: Will this tend to my advantage? No crime is beyond him, if he can but persuade himself that it will make him happier, or wealthier, or more powerful. The good of inferior men does not enter into the question, because they are inferior: they are materials, which he uses for his benefit or his pleasure, as he would use any other material. The superior man owes allegiance to no one: the state exists because it is useful that his inferiors should be governed, but the state no more governs the superior man than a fence governs the wind. He does what he pleases and takes what he desires;—and this sort of behavior, which we should not tolerate in a child three years old, is the very mark of his superiority! Obedience to the law, or to the precepts of religion, is, on the other hand, the badge of inferiority. The inferior man shows his inferiority in his obedience, for by obeying he acknowledges a power superior to himself.

In short, the conclusion, not only of this chapter but of the entire work, is that the superior man proves his superiority by choosing what is commonly called evil. He rejects the religion and the ethics of the inferior men who surround him. He takes the course of action best calculated to lead to his own advantage, and if that choice demands that he rob or kill his inferior neighbors, he does not hesitate to carry it out. It is the mark of his superiority that he refuses to acknowledge any law or principle as standing above him.

As I read these lines, I was keenly aware that the scales were falling from my eyes. I was not converted all at once, but for the first time I began to understand my own life. All my existence had been bound by rules and laws which I had done my utmost to obey; yet at school (by instructors and older boys) and at home (by sisters) I had been subjected to all the most degrading punishments, no matter how scrupulously obedient I was. For what reason? I had always thought that, if I could somehow be even more obedient, more perfectly virtuous, I might have avoided the unjust punishments; yet, at the same time, I always felt all too sharply the injustice of them. Now, at last, I was free from the whims of instructors, but I had my father’s ignorant intransi­gence to plague me instead—which was more of a burden, because there was no set end to it. Plainly I had the advantage in education, as well as natural intellect;—yet I must submit to the unfounded whims of an ignorant oaf, merely because he was my father.—But why? Because law and tradition said that I must. Should I submit to law and tradition? Or was not that certainty I felt deep in my soul—the irre­pres­sible knowledge of my own superiority—was it not, I say, the signal that such things as law and tra­dition existed far below me?

These things are called evil, not because they are so in any absolute sense, but because it is convenient for great men that lesser men should be kept in check by their own consciences, leaving the great man, who has no conscience and does not acknowledge the existence of such a thing, in control of the power and possessions of this world.

The Comte gives us a number of examples of great men who (he says) had chosen evil and prospered. Not all are men commonly held up for admiration. Alexander was, perhaps, a great man, and not with­out admirable qualities. The same may be said of Augustus. But when our noble author points out Nero, whose reign makes such a vivid impression in the pages of Gibbon, as an object of admiration, and indeed of emulation, we are compelled to acknowl­edge that the argument is at least novel, if not altogether convincing. In the Comte’s view of Roman history, which differs in certain essential particulars from that of Gibbon, Nero was a capable emperor under whose rule the Empire prospered, and whose notorious excesses are pardonable because they did not tend to his own disadvantage. Even Nero’s suicide, in our noble author’s view, is not a failure. Having lived for many years with “unlimited liberty of action,” as our author calls it, he foresaw the restriction of that liberty, and therefore took it upon himself to end a life that was no longer worth living—for the superior man, who in everything chooses is own way, does not hesitate to choose death when he cannot have the life of his own choosing as he would choose to live it.

This, then, is the essence of the Comte’s philoso­phy: that morals and ethics are matters for the small and weak; that the great and strong wilfully choose evil, obeying the fundamental law of the universe; and that this deliberate choice of evil is the mark by which we recognize the superior man.

It is hardly necessary to say that the reception of A la Recherche du mal was not uniformly favorable. In France,——

Here the reviewer relates how the book was received in France, where the government of the hour quickly banned it; and in England, where the anonymous translation was greeted with derision, but nevertheless sold out its first run in just a few months. The book had not yet been printed in the United States, and as far as I know still has not been printed here. I took no interest in the reviewer’s patriotic pride in the relative virtue of American publishers. To me, the philosophy of Baucher is not something that needs the approval of the American publishers in order to be true. Baucher’s propositions are self-evidently correct. One has only to hear them stated to know that they are true—if, of course, one has a superior mind. This was the overwhelming sense I felt on hearing them: there was nothing, it seemed, that could refute them. I leap over the account of various small-minded attempts to prohibit the book, and the various equally small-minded attempts by imbecilic divines to refute it, and we come to the conclusion of the review.

Perhaps, however, each one of us is more capable of refuting the arguments of the Comte than the ablest divines. For they must prove by reason what is proved already in our own hearts. Each of us is born with a conscience, and that inner voice, if we will but listen, tells us that the Comte is wrong. Virtue is not merely for the weak; on the contrary, vice is a weakness, which only strength can overcome. Conscience tells us that the great man is great precisely to the degree that he is virtuous: that to be honest and obedient is an unfailing mark of strong character. Our strength is given to those of us who are strong so that we may render assistance to the weak, not so that we may destroy or “subsume” them. The way that our Savior has shown us is the truly superior way—a way that requires strength, but strength “made perfect” in weakness. This is what we know to be true, because conscience, implanted in us by our Creator to be our infallible guide, speaks the truth to us in the inner recesses of our souls.——

And so on: it blethers on for a page and a half more, but without adding to the argument. I can say only that I listened attentively and assiduously, and I heard no voice of conscience telling me that tra­ditional Christian ethical doctrines were objec­tively true. All I heard was the complaint of my own soul, which told me that I was enslaving myself to the folly and stupidity of an ignorant oaf, and demanded to know why I allowed myself to be treated in that manner. I could not formulate a satisfactory answer. I knew, in this case, what was the reasonable course; I knew also that my father’s objections were un­founded; yet I had been prepared to allow my father to blight our joint prospects forever, and to prevent me from realizing my quite reasonable ambitions.

Now, however, I had a different way of looking at things. I had been prepared to obey my father, because I had been taught that I must obey my father. But if it were true that I was the superior being I had always known myself to be, then what business had I obeying my father, when I knew him to be wrong? There was, I said to myself, much thought ahead of me.

In fact I was completely incorrect in that prognosti­cation. I woke in the middle of the night to hear the bells of St. Peter’s striking two, and I understood, having somehow worked it out in my sleep, that I must take my place as a superior being. I was ready to be a great man, and to embrace the doctrines of Baucher. I was ready to give myself wholly to evil.

CHAPTER III.

Bousted’s Famous Graded Stationery grows to be a “sensation,” and I travel to the mythical land of Altoona.

On Monday, just as the clock at St. Peter’s was striking three, Mrs. Rockland appeared, picked up her card-stock stationery, and left us six dollars, which my father declared the most satisfactory payment he had ever earned. It had cost me some little trouble at the printer’s, which I cleared up only by undertaking to absolve him of all responsibility for his complicity in the thoroughly ridiculous notion of house stationery on card stock; but Mrs. Rockland displayed every indication of complete satisfaction with her purchase. That evening I retired to my attic with a profound sense of accomplishment, and with last month’s copy of the Gentleman’s Cabinet, a magazine my father took, though I am not certain that he ever read so much as a page of it. I mention the magazine now because it will soon have a prominent role to play in my story, and it must be in place, ready to perform, when the proper moment arrives. I read the first article—I have the very magazine before me here, so I can report that it described a journey up the Ocklawaha through the jungles of Florida, illustrated with engravings of monstrous alligators that seemed ready to devour the little sternwheeler as it passed through their domain. Then I turned down the gas and went to bed.

The next morning, a small and timorous woman of about fifty entered the store and approached me cautiously, as if I might secretly harbor a strong desire to beat timorous middle-aged ladies senseless with a blotter. When I asked how I might help her, it seemed to require all her courage just to form a few words.

“Yes,” she said, “I— I wonder if you might be able to help me.”

That was as far as she could go without prompting, so I reiterated that I was ready to render whatever as­sistance she required.

“You see,” she explained, “my neighbor—I believe she was here just yesterday—her name is Mrs. Rockland—and Mrs. Rockland told me that you, or some­one in your shop, might be able to recommend, or to help me decide on, some kind of stationery that would fit my—my writing.”

Now, this was, on the face of it, a singular victory. Not only had we satisfied the impossible Mrs. Rock­land, but we had even obtained a recommendation from her.

And then, all at once, I understood what was really happening. Our timid visitor was probably unaware of it, but Mrs. Rockland had devised a test for me. If I succeeded, I might look forward to more recom­men­dations from her; if I failed, not only would I lose her custom, but she might very well decide that she was dissatisfied with her own purchase. The task at hand, therefore, was not so much to satisfy Mrs. Rockland’s neighbor as to satisfy Mrs. Rockland’s expecta­tion of what would satisfy her neighbor.

“Certainly, madam,” I responded with a great show of easy confidence. Then I began to repeat, in an ab­breviated form, the patter I had given Mrs. Rockland, all about the marvelous science (apparently my own discovery) of matching the paper to the writer. We came soon enough to the practical demonstration, in which I discovered that she wrote timidly, as if she were afraid of offending the paper by too much pres­sing. The inevitable result was a good deal of skipping, which at times made her writing nearly illegible.

I shall not weary myself, or any indulgent reader who might happen upon this manuscript in the distant future, with a complete transcription of my dealings, whatever interest they might have held at the time, with the timorous neighbor of Mrs. Rockland, whose name I have entirely forgotten. I selected a good rag paper for her, reasoning that the texture of it might be more likely to keep the ink flowing, and she was greatly pleased to discover that her writing was indeed much more visible on the paper I had selected. Perhaps I had stumbled on something really useful. Perhaps there was in fact a science to matching the paper to the writer, and I was the Newton who would give laws to that science. She placed a large order; and since the paper was exceptionally expensive, my father was ecstatic. He could not contain himself for the rest of the day, much to the annoyance of my sisters, whose displeasure with me was always propor­tional to my father’s pleasure. Viola could not even spare a smile for the timid clerk across the street, who was far too diffident to speak to her, but who was nevertheless the closest thing she had to an admirer.

The day following was a slow one for the store: I spent most of the day cleaning up a bottle of Carey’s Indelible Writing Fluid that Camellia had broken on the floor but was somehow too busy to attend to herself. The day after that, however, no fewer than three women came to have me examine their writing and select their stationery for them. On Friday two more came in; on Saturday, five. My father was simply astonished. The ledger showed that fully three-quarters of our sales for the week, in terms of profit, had been in stationery.

I find it difficult now to imagine that I was ever such a fool, but I allowed this success to disturb my tranquility to a great extent. I could not divest myself of the notion that I had obtained my success by means of some fraud or deception. Saturday evening I had more than a little trouble getting to sleep. Sunday morning—it fills me with shame to admit it even to myself, but the light of my future triumphs will shine all the brighter against the darkness here at the beginning—I recall praying for guidance in church, and being absurdly disappointed when none came to me; as if the Supreme Power of the Universe, whom I imagined as a being of awful and unlimited might, had useful advice to give a shopkeeper on matters of stationery, and ought to make himself available to me personally whenever I found myself harboring doubts about some transaction with an inconsequential middle-aged woman from the merchant classes.

I did, however, come to a conclusion on my own, with no obvious help from any omnipotent and om­niscient beings. It would not be deception, I reasoned, if there were some science to my method. After Sunday dinner, I spent the rest of the afternoon down in the store with various pens and inks and every sort of paper commonly used for stationery, as well as a few not commonly used. Each paper I rated by its surface and its opacity, making notes on several other properties as well. By the end of the afternoon, I had a system worked out that seemed logical, and I felt confident that I might be able to find something to suit even the most difficult middle-class matron;—or at least the second-most-difficult, since in Mrs. Rock­land I had undoubtedly faced a superlative whose difficulty no other woman would ever match. I made some attempt to explain what I had done to my father, but it was not immediately clear that he had understood any of it: he only repeated, over and over, how clever I was; and, as much as I might be inclined to agree, I gained little from that information. I had hoped that I might show it to him, see that he understood it at once, and then be able to trust that he could perform the diagnosis and select the paper if I happened not to be in the shop. Now I feared it might be forever beyond his comprehension.

Monday four more women, and for the first time one man, came in to have their writing rated. Tuesday we had three; Wednesday we had eight. We were beginning to run seriously short on paper: we had sold three months’ worth in a week and a half. It was time to restock, which meant that I had the opportunity to place my system on an even more scientific basis by a careful choice of which papers we should stock for it.

Here my father absolutely shocked me, and very probably himself, by coming up with a useful idea. Since we had such a large quantity of paper to order, he said, might it not be useful to go to the mill directly, rather than through our usual wholesaler? We might be able to negotiate a good price, which would increase our profit without increasing the cost to our patrons. This was such a sensible notion that I was ashamed of not having thought of it myself. I made the preliminary inquiries by wire, and within two days had procured an appointment with a large manufacturer of paper goods just outside Altoona.

The evening before I went, I spent three hours or more making careful notes of my system. I rather pompously headed my first page “Bousted’s Famous Graded Stationery,” and below that heading outlined a series of twelve different sorts of paper, based on thickness and texture. I had twelve samples to go with my outline, and on each of them I had written a letter and a number, so that the sheets could be arranged in rows of three thicknesses and columns of four roughnesses. My arrangement looked so scientific that I had convinced myself of its merit. I was sure now that I was the Newton of the stationery trade: paper and paper’s laws lay hid in night until the Bousted system came to illuminate them.

Absurd as it may seem, the two-hour journey to Altoona would be the farthest I had ever traveled in my life. The trains ran very frequently, Altoona being on the main line to Philadelphia and New York, so there was no need for me to make an overnight stay; but, nevertheless, the trip in my mind took on the aspect of a gay adventure. I looked forward to seeing Altoona, a grubby industrial town that had hardly existed a few years before, with the same fervor that a more seasoned traveler might reserve for Florence or Paris.

I remember vividly how crowded and stifling the Pennsylvania station was the day I left. This was the old station, the one that burned in the riots a few years later. It deserved that fate: it was too small and too dark, and it seemed as though the architect, having conceived a complete and implacable hatred for all travelers, had very cleverly designed every passage in such a way that it would carry the smoke from the engines directly into our faces. The whole place was covered in a layer of soot and grime that no amount of scrubbing could ever efface, assuming, of course, that any cleaning was ever attempted, which was doubtful. And for all that I was happy. For the first time a train would be carrying me somewhere I had chosen to go, and not merely from home to school and back again. At that moment I loved the trains, and I loved the bleak and crowded station where they waited for me, a stable filled with magically swift iron horses ready to do the bidding of any traveler who could put down the money for the fare.

As the car I would be boarding came into view, I felt a strange hollowness in my stomach. This was an expedition that would change my life. I felt certain that I was taking my first steps toward the conquest of that business empire which was my destiny. I had as yet formed no clear notion of how I might take that empire beyond the walls of the store, but I was certain that it would happen, and that my voyage to the fabled land of Altoona would set that expansion in motion.

The coach was filled nearly to capacity, and the seats were uncomfortably hard; but I had a seat by a window, where I could direct my gaze outward, away from the filthy screaming children who seemed to make up half the passengers. I had some dreadful yellow-backed novel with me, but I did not read a word of it, caught up in the marvels passing by my window. I remember the feeling of wonder that passed over me as the train eased away from the platform, shrouding the station in smoke and steam. And then we were clear of the station, and I could see the mills and warehouses along the Alle­gheny; then, farther along, the land turned greener, and we passed into a winding hollow, the near vegetation blackened with the soot belched out by a hundred locomotives a day, but the upper hillsides covered with rich green forests. And then the open country, with the manor houses of the great men who had made their fortunes in the city. How long until I joined their ranks? A town or village here or there, with a stop to discharge a farmer returning from his business in the city, and then we were in the mountains, with their green hillsides, rushing brooks, and mysterious tunnels that plunged us into sudden darkness. The very approach to Altoona was full of marvels; surely the city of Altoona itself must be a place where miracles occur daily.

Altoona did not disappoint me. It was a grubby place, still only half-built, and occupied mostly with the business of keeping up the railroad. But it was the most delightful place I had ever visited, because there was a carriage waiting for me at the station. For me! In my entire life I had never been a person of such importance that a carriage met me at the station. There was one wretched wagon that conveyed me, and twenty or more other boys, from the station to the school,—but this was a carriage with a canopy and an upholstered seat, sent from the mill office solely for the purpose of collecting me and taking me the few miles remaining to the paper mill.

It was a delightful half-hour in the carriage, winding out of the town and over leafy hills, past pleasant little farms, until, as we began to descend into a little valley, the strong stench of sulphur struck my nostrils, and there below me, in the middle of a little town, was the Cargill Bros. paper mill, spewing odoriferous prosperity into the sky.

I was greeted by a gentleman who identified himself as an Accounts Manager. I liked him immediately: he did not seem at all surprised or disappointed by my youth, but merely inquired whether my journey had been a pleasant one, and then proceeded at once to the business at hand.

In my preliminary communication with the compa­ny, I had indicated the size of the order we intended to place; but I had suggested that considerably larger orders might follow if we were satisfied with the first order. I now explained my system in some detail, and showed him the examples I had brought. I also told him—perhaps with some exaggeration, but not stray­ing too far from the bounds of truth—what a “sensation,” as the businessmen would call it, our system was making among the fashionable ladies of Pittsburgh. Having heard all this, he seemed very favorably impressed, and he brought out a number of samples of the mill’s own production, matching them as well as he could to the examples I had brought. He invited me to test each with pen and ink, which I did, rejecting two or three as not meeting my standard (which I did to make him think I knew what I was doing). Finally, he calculated a total for the order I had intended to place, and I was pleased to see that it was indeed a good bit less than what we would have paid through the wholesaler. And then he mentioned one thing that I had not considered.

“Of course,” he said, “this will all be with our stan­dard Cargill Brothers watermark. With a larger order, we can have it watermarked to your specifications.”

“Really?” I responded, and I am sure that he could tell at once that he had hit a weak point.

“We can do any mark you like on a minimum order of twenty reams. Some of our larger customers find it very useful in building up their reputations.”

I did some very quick thinking. Twenty reams of each of a dozen different grades of paper was quite a large order for our little store. It was exactly four times what I had intended to order, and it would cost us nearly every penny we had to spend on stock for the season. On the other hand, if we continued to sell my Graded Stationery at the current rate, we might make that back in a month.

For me, however, the question was answered, not by arithmetic, but by vanity. I wanted every middle-aged matron in Pittsburgh and Allegheny to be writing her vapid little notes on Bousted’s Famous Graded Stationery. I made some show of considering the matter, but I had already decided.

Vanity! How we malign the passion that has accomplished more in the service of Progress than any other human feeling! I might have bristled then at the suggestion that vanity had aught to do with my decision; now I recognize the passion and applaud it as the engine of all improvement.

Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention. But is it necessary that we should write by gaslight (as I am doing now), or that we should fly across the country in trains that cover a thousand miles in a day, or that news from Europe should reach us by cable at the speed of thought? No, these are not necessities; they are vanities. The world went on for aeons before they were even thought of, and untold generations of men simply went to bed with the sun, or lit a dim candle, because illumination by coal-gas was in no wise necessary for their continued existence. But we have coal-gas, and locomotives, and telegraphs, because one man longed to shine out among his brethren, and to say “I made that,” and earn universal applause. If I owe some of my success to vanity, and to a desire to rise above my station, I am not ashamed to own it: on the contrary, I rejoice in a distinction that makes me brother to every man who ever made something of himself.

Enough of vanity: I need only say (again) that I made some show of considering the question, but soon agreed to quadruple my order. Laying down a bank note for the deposit, I undertook to pay the remainder on delivery.

The carriage-ride back to the station was enlivened by conversation with another young man, a few years older than I, who was working in a department store in Allegheny, one of the leading establishments of that city. He had been sent to negotiate a purchase for their stationery department. My father seldom had any thoughts that went beyond the daily life of his store, and though he went to church regularly and dutifully, showed very little indication of any religious opinions; but he was certain that whatever eternal dam­nation he believed in had an especially unpleasant corner reserved for anyone associated with depart­ment-store stationery counters, which he regarded as dens of thieves intent upon putting honest men out of business. I, however, was willing to risk my immortal soul for a few moments of pleasant conversation with Satan’s minion. Such a reprobate I had become already! If honoring my father was the foundation of ethical living, then I was certainly lost. At any rate, this other fellow—he has since risen to a rather high position in the department store, and he might be terribly em­bar­rassed if I mentioned that his name was Snyder, and the store was Boggs & Buhl—was a pleasant com­panion. At least so I thought at the time; I believe most of my pleasure was in the fact that he treated me as a fellow man, not as a grown child.

“You get out to Altoona much?” he asked me as we rode back up the green hill away from the sulphur-belching mill below.

“This is my first time out here,” I answered.

“Well, I’m not surprised. Nothing here but railroad shops, and the Cargill Brothers mill, of course. Still, a man can have a swell time here if he wants it.”

“A swell time?”

“That’s what I’d call it, and no lie. There’s a saloon around the corner from the station where you can always find a few of the local ‘heir­esses’—that’s what they like you to think they are, at any rate. Last time I was here I got such a soak on I can’t remember half of what I did, but I’ll tell you what, Bousted, I know it involved two of those girls. See, Altoona girls all come from railroading families that move around a lot and don’t settle in one place, and I think they have a wider view of the world.”

“Do they?” I had never really had a conversation with another man on a subject like this before. It was appallingly sinful, and I knew I ought to put a stop to it right away; but I wanted to hear more about Snyder’s wicked experiences.

“Yes, I can show you the very saloon when we get there, if you’d like. Altoona girls are the best, Bousted. I’ve had a real heiress or two in my time, but nothing beats those Altoona girls. —But here I am talking about my­self, and I haven’t let you get a word in. What brings you up here?”

“Oh,” I told him with an air of nonchalance, “I came up to arrange with the Cargill plant to manu­facture Bousted’s Famous Graded Stationery to my exact specifications.”

“That Bousted?” he asked, as if the revelation had made a real impression on him. “Why, I’ve had three ladies in just this week asking if we carried something like Bousted’s. My sister uses the Number Six. Says it’s the best thing she’s ever written on. You’ve got a thing going there, Bousted. How did you come up with it?”

“It’s in the process of being patented,” I said—a statement I privately justified because I had just con­ceived the notion that it ought to be patented so that people like Snyder could not steal the idea and take away my profits, and to conceive the notion must certainly be the first step in the process. “Naturally, the exact details are a trade secret, but I can tell you that the method of matching the paper to the writer took a bit of hard study. We find, however, that our customers in­variably obtain better results when their stationery is matched properly to their penmanship.”

“Well, I don’t know anything about it—I’ve got the most infernally awful penmanship—but you must have something people think they want, and that’s the main thing.”

“Yes, I think it’s made what they call a sensation in Pittsburgh society.” I felt a little guilty about such shameless boasting, but it was delicious to be taken as a man of consequence; and I also, I believe, had conceived the notion that this Snyder might be useful to me, although as yet I had no good reason to suppose so. “We have multiplied our stationery sales several times over. I believe the other stationers in town are already con­scious of being left behind in the inevitable march of progress.”

Mr. Snyder continued to express a keen interest in the Bousted Method, and I was more than willing to expostulate upon that subject; and by the time we reached the station we were fast friends. It happened that the train for Pittsburgh was arriving just as we got there, and we agreed to put off the adventure of the saloon for another time—a good thing, too, as I should have had to decline his invitation otherwise. It would cause me no end of trouble, with my sisters at any rate, to arrive home late and reeking of alcohol; but I did not wish my new companion to know that I labored under such childish restrictions. We continued our conversation in the train for the two hours it took to get back to Pitts­burgh, and we exchanged addresses. I was not aware at the time how significant that exchange would be a little later on.

Dear reader, does my little hint of future events fill you with a desire to read on? It amuses me to think so—to imagine a reader in the distant future panting to know more, to discover why my possession of Snyder’s address, or his possession of mine, will take on such significance. Shall I find him and murder him when I become wicked?—for you already know, dear reader, that at some point in this narrative I must become wicked, and adopt as my creed that very evil I had so scrupulously avoided hitherto. Or will he prove to be a long-lost relative, a brother perhaps, who will reveal to me the mystery of my true parentage? Such things happen every day in novels; perhaps they have happened in my life as well. Will he bring me news of a legacy that will make me rich beyond the dreams of avarice (an expression that seems to presuppose a very unimaginative sort of ava­rice)? O reader, how you must thirst for the an­swers to these questions—answers that I alone possess, and can grant or withhold at my pleasure! My power is gratifyingly absolute. Had I not made up my mind to be a merchant prince, perhaps I should have been an author.

CHAPTER II.

Owing to the miraculous intervention of a certain tooth-powder, I do not kill myself.

—

“Galahad!”

My father’s voice rose sufficiently to break through my own thoughts and impress itself on my mind. I looked up at him as if he were some hitherto unknown species of creature.

“You’re hardly eating at all,” my father continued. “Viola boiled that beef all afternoon for us.”

Viola rushed to my defense in her usual way. “Now, Father, you can’t expect Galahad to be paying atten­tion to what he’s doing. You know he’s a noodle.”

Camellia cackled in a manner that I was sure accounted for her not having found a husband yet. The girls had certain innate abilities to discern my thoughts, or at least my feelings; they knew that I was not as happy as I ought to be about the sign and my supposed new position as part-owner of the store, and they were relishing my distress, though they could form no notion of the reason for it.

My father ignored my sisters, as he always did when they attempted to insult me. That they should not share his oafish pride in me was simply beyond his comprehension; and what he could not understand, he ignored, which I be­lieve was the very foundation of his happiness.

“Now, Galahad, you must eat.” he told me, smiling outrageously. “We have a big day to-morrow, getting you situated as a real businessman.”

“What Galahad wants is more mustard,” Camellia said, as her arm, with a simply obscene reach, shot in front of my face, retrieved the mustard from the other end of the table, and drowned my beef in the stuff. I have always despised mustard.

“I think,” I said, forcing myself to smile,—“I think I may be a little fatigued from my expedition to-day. There was a considerable distance to cover on foot.”

“Although,” Viola hastened to add, “with your ex­cep­tionally large feet, it must have been a great deal shorter for you than it would be for most people.”

“Yes, it’s no wonder you’re tired, my boy,” my father replied, as if Viola had not spoken at all—and indeed, according to his usual rule of ignoring what he could not understand, he probably had not even heard her. “You can eat a little more, then off to bed.”

As discreetly as I could, I scraped the mustard off my beef and cut a few more bites. The flavor of Vi­ola’s boiled beef (her method has not changed in all the years since) is what I would imagine one of those penmanship exercise-books we used to stock in great numbers would taste like; mustard did not improve it, any more than mustard would improve the flavor of an exercise-book. I excused myself after a few more minutes, having spent that time assiduously maintaining a cheerful countenance; and I went up to my tiny chamber on the fourth floor, as my father called it, over the store: really an attic with a narrow dormer projecting from it. That we had one more “floor” than most other oafish shopkeepers’ families was a point of intense pride for my father, who frequently remarked on the distinction without the slightest provocation.

Here at least I was alone. My father had the large front room on the third floor, and Viola and Camellia each one of the tiny rooms in the back; the attic, though I could not stand upright in it, at least was my own domain. From my dormer I could look out on Wood-street, a bright hollow of gas-light in the encroaching night, and over the three-storey shop-front of the inferior oaf across the street I could see eastward as the streets climbed the Hump, which had not yet been reduced to its present more manageable dimensions. The last evening light was deserting the sky; a few late clerks were hurrying up the street toward whatever they called home; behind me, in the warren of old houses and warehouses that began a block west of us, ruffians were beginning their nightly round of debaucheries and petty crimes—how the thought disgusted me! And indeed it does now, but for other reasons: I object not to the crimes, but to the pettiness. Over all hung that pall of foul-smelling smoke that descended upon us whenever the air was still, wrapping the darkening city in a mystery that familiarity could not disperse. Horses and wheels clattered on cobblestones somewhere in the near distance; some family well above the humble station we occupied was off to the theater, or returning from a supper with other leading families, where doubtless they all found time to laugh at oafish tradesmen like my father.

—Or like me: once again this reflection smote me like a slap across the face. I was a shopkeeper myself; it was my destiny to be one—not a philosopher, not a general, not a captain of industry, not a gentleman, not anything admirable or worthy, but a shopkeeper. Nor would I really be as much as that: for most of my negligible existence I was damned to be the son of a shopkeeper. My name on the sign was “& Son,” and the sign spoke the truth of my position in the world.

But if I had already reached the summit of my existence, then what reason had I for continuing to exist? To what hope could I look as my guide? My present life was an unremitting annoyance to me, which nothing could alleviate but the hope of a brighter future. Remove that hope, and what reason remained to prolong my misery? At that moment, the obvious answer struck me with dreadful force: I had no reason to live. Suicide appeared, not as a possi­bility, but as a logical necessity. I was resolved: I would not live till morning.

How to accomplish the deed? Here I ran against what at the time I called cowardice, although I now see it as the very reasonable impulse to seek comfort and avoid pain, the foundation of all civilization and improvement. A pistol might do the job at once, with admirable efficiency; but there was no pistol in the house. I must therefore find an alternative, but each method I considered had its flaws.

At first I thought I might simply leap from my window. A fall from that height, however, though dan­gerous, might not necessarily prove fatal: I would run the serious risk of adding to my pain without ending it. The simple plummet, therefore, had to be rejected.

Hanging might be more certain, but was still open to numerous objections. First, I have always detested tight collars. Second, the deed would have to be done elsewhere, since even in the tallest part of my attic room I could barely stand straight; but attempting the deed anywhere else invited detection and interrup­tion. Hanging must be rejected as well.

Poison, carefully chosen and properly administered, might be painless and effective; but it required a certain knowledge that I did not possess.

How I wished that I could simply sleep and never wake! But the body would not obey the mind’s instructions; I could sleep, but I should wake whether I wished it or no.

As I looked here and there around the room, my eyes lit on the ivory-handled razor which my father had given me for my eighteenth birthday. For a moment I thought how completely satisfactory it would be if my father’s gift could be the instrument of my demise. But it would be a more painful means of accomplishing my objective than I desired: for what, after all, could be the use of ending a life of pain if the end itself should be painful?

And then, just beside the razor, I saw the thing that effected the first great change in my life.

To this day I cannot give an account of how such a humble object set such a long and mighty train of thought in motion. My analytical facul­ties must have been aroused to a heightened state by my long con­sidera­tion of the various means of doing away with myself.

The object was a can of tooth-powder, bearing these words, which I still recall as accurately as you might recall a favorite poem:

DR. BRENNEMAN’S FAMOUS TOOTH-POWDER.

“The Favorite of Five Continents.”

ASK FOR IT BY NAME AT YOUR DRUGGIST’S.

I had certainly seen this can dozens of times: every night when I brushed my teeth, in fact. But until this very moment I had never understood the meaning of it.

This was the meaning. I had bought this can of tooth-powder from a druggist on Smithfield-street, an oafish shopkeeper like my father. That druggist, how­ever, was not the source of Dr. Bren­neman’s Famous Tooth-Powder. He was merely one of the thousands of oafish shop­keepers who stocked the stuff. He was a foot-soldier in an army of which Dr. Brenneman was the general. Though this Brenneman doubtless began as a shopkeeper like my father, he had risen far above that humble estate, building an empire of tooth-powder on the backs of the oafs he had left behind.

Suddenly—because of one can of tooth powder—the world was different, altogether transformed. The store was, in effect, half mine. What had been a prison sentence a quarter-hour before was now an opportunity. I had looked today and seen only a store, as one who looked at the Rome of Numa might have seen only a squalid village. But now I saw an imperial capital of the future—and myself, of course, as the emperor. In that brief moment, through that can of Dr. Brenneman’s Famous Tooth Powder, I had a glimpse of a future, not as a shopkeeper, but as a merchant prince.

And so, instead of killing myself, I brushed my teeth and went to bed.

I woke early, wonderfully refreshed, with the cer­tain knowledge that I stood at the beginning of a new era. I suppose Alexander must have felt much the same way the day it first occurred to him that Greece was too small for his ambition. I dressed quickly and—for the first time—was down in the store before my father.

Here I surveyed my domain. It was not a great empire—not yet—but it was my Macedon. I saw boxes of pencils, pens, pen-handles, bundles of paper, clips, bottles of ink, exercise-books—but I perceived infantry and cavalry, soldiers and officers, with which I might conquer the world, or at least the world of com­merce. When my father came down, I had al­ready sorted the pencils by the grade of the lead (they had, I thought, been left in an appalling state of disorganization).

“Well, Galahad,” my father greeted me, “you certainly are at it early this morning! Very good—first-rate—the early bird gets the worm! Early to bed and early to rise, right, my boy?”

It is a measure of my contentment—no, my near-euphoria—that even my father’s oafishness could not puncture it. “I was up early, and I thought I might use the time to advantage. The readier we are, the quicker we serve our patrons, and the more satisfac­tory that service is to them.”

“That’s thinking like a businessman, Galahad! I have every confidence in you, my boy—every confidence.”

I am certain my father must have continued in that manner for some considerable length of time: it would have been entirely uncharacteristic of him to keep silent. I cannot recall anything more, however, since I had stopped listening to his oafish prattle. I was busy reorganizing the pens according to a scheme that seemed rather clever to me, so that they were ar­ranged vertically according to manufacturer, but hori­zontally by type. If a patron asked for a stub point, we could show him the range offered by different makers; if a patron asked for an Esterbrook Jackson Stub, we could find it instantly. Though years have passed since then, it still gives me great satis­fac­tion to think how logical and practical this arrange­ment was. Even my father, oaf though he was, found it commendable, although I suspect he was at least as much pleased by the interest I was taking in the shop as by the particular form in which that interest mani­fested itself.

By the time we opened the doors that morning, I had made a similar arrangement of the ink—columns by manufacturer, rows by color—and I was contem­plating something like it for the draughting tools. I thought of it as something like drilling my recruits, turning a rabble of bumpkins into a disciplined army.

The moment we unlocked the doors, Mrs. Rockland stormed into the store. She was what businessmen might call a difficult customer, and even my father, whose obsequiousness ordinarily knew no bounds, had come very close to losing patience with her on more than one occasion.

“This paper,” she announced in her booming bari­tone, “is entirely inadequate.” She waved a handful of half-crumpled sheets in the air as she thundered across the floor to the counter, where she emphat­ically slapped them down. My father stepped behind the counter to face her and made a show of examining the sheets. I joined him as Mrs. Rockland began her complaint.

“The ink came right through the page,” she declared, pointing at the sheet in front of her.

My father and I looked down at the page under her finger, and I know we both reached the same conclu­sion. Her penmanship was atrocious. The page was full of blots, and even holes where the pen had torn the paper. She obviously wrote the way she spoke, pressing down mercilessly upon the pen as if it must be subdued and bent to her will. Doubtless her pens gave out after a page or two, but it was the paper—a fine linen stationery that never did anyone any harm—that suffered the most from her assault.

“You can see how entirely unacceptable it is. It is utterly impossible to write on the back of a sheet. At the simply outrageous prices you charge for it, I should be able to write on the back. I’m surprised this sort of fraud is tolerated in a civilized country. If I had my way, the law would certainly not be so lax.”

My father was still gazing down at the wreckage Mrs. Rockland had deposited on the counter, but he spoke clearly and distinctly.

“The paper is not at fault, Mrs. Rockland.”

“I beg your pardon—!” Mrs. Rockland’s eyes grew to the dimensions of soup plates: she was not accus­tomed to hearing anyone contradict her.

I realized at that moment that, after countless years of spineless obsequiousness, my father had finally had enough of Mrs. Rockland. He was about to tell her to her face what he thought of her writing, and probably of her manners as well. I knew at the same moment that I could not allow that to happen. My mind, still in its heightened state, quickly added up the business we might lose if Mrs. Rockland persuaded all her wretched­ly pretentious friends to abandon us: it would at the very least retard my progress toward my first goal, which was to make Bousted & Son the leading stationer in the city. Just as my father was inhaling to begin Mrs. Rockland’s richly deserved telling-off, I took hold of the conversation.

“Certainly the paper is not at fault,” I said quickly before my father could begin. “It is we who were at fault for attempting to sell you that stationery without inquiring into your writing.”

My father and Mrs. Rockland both looked puzzled beyond words, although for entirely different reasons.

“The paper, you see, must be matched to the writer,” I continued, as if it were a well-known fact, and not a strange notion that had suddenly sprung up from pure desperation. “Now, this paper here is very well suited to a diffident and uncertain hand, such as we often see in younger ladies who have not yet found their place in society. Yours, however, is clearly a hand of weight and authority. You write with confi­dence. An insubstantial paper is clearly not suited for a person of substance, and it was our error to recom­mend it to you.”

“I see.” Mrs. Rockland was a bit mollified, al­though she still sounded wary. It was imper­a­tive that I carry on, even if my plan was still only half-formed.

“The irregular surface of the paper will also tend to catch your pen, which is what causes the blotting and tearing you see here. Again, for a writer who makes tentative and uncertain strokes, that texture is positively necessary to catch the ink at all; but it stands in the way of someone who is accustomed to writing with—with determination.”

Here my rambling about the texture suggested something to me, and I cheerfully continued without giving Mrs. Rockland an opportunity to speak, or perhaps even (however unlikely it might be that she would do so) to think. “What you need, then, I would suggest if I may, is a paper with more weight, and with a smooth surface that will not interrupt the motion of the pen. I think we have something over here that will answer the purpose.” I stepped back to the shelves behind me and found a stack of card stock, of the sort we usually cut down into visiting cards or place cards. Glancing behind me, I saw that I had succeeded in engaging Mrs. Rockland’s attention completely—which was just as well, since, if she had turned to look at my father, she would have seen him gawking at me like a West Virginia bumpkin gawking at the dome of the courthouse, as if I were something wonderful and unaccountable, and more than a little frightening.

“Now this paper,” I said, setting a few sheets of the card stock in front of her, “would probably suit your style of writing much better. You can feel how smooth it is, and the extra thickness prevents your writing from showing through, so that you may write on the back as easily as on the front.”

Mrs. Rockland’s fingers were examining the surface of the card stock, and I was beginning to think I might succeed.

“If you like,” I suggested, “you can try it with the counter pen and see whether this paper suits your writing better than the other. The ink is right here. A sample of your writing will give us both a better notion of what you need from us.”

Mrs. Rockland appeared to be pleased that we were taking her seriously: she took up the pen at once and scratched out the first two verses of the twenty-third Psalm. I was privately amused by her choice. If I had been asked to assign her a place in the animal king­dom, I should have been more likely to think of her as a wolf than as a sheep. She used the pen as a weapon with which to attack and conquer the paper, and it was immediately clear that ordinary paper would have given way with the first letter. The card stock, however, held up under her merciless assault. When she had finished writing and made use of the blotter, I picked up the sheet, turned it over, and pointed to the perfectly blank expanse of white that greeted our eyes.

“As you can see,” I said, carefully refraining from sounding triumphant, “none of the ink has bled through, and none of the writing from the other side is visible at all. It is simply a matter of matching the paper to the writer.”

Mrs. Rockland picked up the sheet herself and carefully examined it. When she did speak, her tone was almost pleasant.

“And how much would you charge for this grade of paper, with my monogram and letterhead, in the same quantity as before?”

“Well, now,” I said, once more thinking very quickly, “this is, of course, a more expensive grade of paper, since—as you can see—more material goes into it, and the surface must be carefully polished for the requisite smoothness. However, we would, of course, deduct the price you paid for your previous order. It was the wrong paper for you, and you should not pay for our mistakes. So—” here I picked up a bill of sale and wrote “$10.50” on it. Then I made a great show of subtracting $4.50 from it, and wrote “$6.00” in the total. “That would leave only six dollars,” I told her.

“That is satisfactory,” she replied. “How soon can it be ready?”

“Give us three days for the printing,” I said, “which would mean Monday afternoon.”

“Very well, then. I shall return Monday at precisely three.” She turned to my father, who had been staring at the whole proceeding slack-jawed, but at least had the presence of mind to close his mouth when she looked his way.

“Mr. Bousted, your son is a valuable addition to your establishment. I commend you for rearing an intelligent and capable young man. I hope to see him on Monday at three.”

She turned and left, thundering across the floor­boards like a herd of buffalo. My father just barely contained himself until the door closed; then he burst into appallingly undignified laughter.

“You sold her card stock!” he managed to croak out between paroxysms.

“It was the only thing that would stand up under her scrawl,” I said quite calmly. “You saw how she wrote. This pen is done for.” I plucked the pen out of the holder, replacing it with another Turner & Harrison ball-pointed pen and tossing the mangled wreck of the old pen in the rubbish.

“Galahad,” my father said, “that was a fine piece of work. I don’t even mind giving her the money back if it’s the price I pay for seeing a performance like that.”

“She didn’t get her money back.” I was surprised that my father had forgotten his own business that way. “Her first order was the best linen wove. Her second order is cheap card stock. A dollar for the card stock, two dollars for the printing. She’s giving us six, so we make three in profit.”

My father’s face went completely blank for a moment; then an enormous smile suddenly exploded across it.

“You’re absolutely right!” he exclaimed with un­controlled glee. “Dear boy, you even had me fooled!”

Here, I am ashamed to confess, I felt myself begin to blush. Today I look back on this accomplishment as my first truly wicked deed, but at that moment, I had not yet embraced evil as my calling. On the contrary, I abhorred the very name of evil.

“There was nothing dishonest about it,” I insisted. “I simply took into consideration a fair profit for us, and presented it in a way Mrs. Rockland found ac­ceptable. I expect her to be very happy with what she ordered. It may be that she will find herself able to write legibly for the first time in her life. I see nothing dishonest in serving a customer well, and at the same time assuring us of a sufficient profit.”

“Exactly,” my father agreed. “Nothing dis­honest in that.” Then, once again, the most un­dig­ni­fied laugh­ter burst forth from him, making me blush even deeper.

The rest of that day was for me a curious alter­nation between satisfaction and shame. I was aware that I had accomplished something rare and unique: Mrs. Rockland was a terror to every shopkeeper on Wood-street, and I had not merely succeeded in mollifying her, but had done so with a profit that was not negligible. It was not terribly rare for a whole day to go by without our making three dollars in clear profit. Yet, on the other hand, I could not dismiss the nagging sense that I had won that profit dis­honestly. Of course it was dishonest: I revel in that declaration now. If ever there was a woman who deserved, nay demanded, to be cheated, it was Mrs. Rockland. At that time, however, I still believed that evil was to be avoided, and good cultivated.

When my sisters came down to the store later in the morning, my father of course related the story to them. If something had made him happy, no con­sideration could persuade him to keep silent: he must publish his joy to the masses. My sisters ex­pressed the appropriate approval, and privately stored up my supposed triumph as one more grievance for which they must eventually exact revenge.

It was, nevertheless, a good day for me on the whole. My business (as I called it) had been successful to-day, and Mrs. Rockland, dreadful though she was, would certainly prove a valuable ally if she believed she had received good service from Bousted’s. It seemed to me that I was well on my way to that prosperity which had always been my fondest dream.

To be continued. Impatient? Get the whole book right now.

Why not start your summer reading in the fall? Here is The Crimes of Galahad, in weekly serial installments. Of course, if you grow impatient, you could always get the whole book right now.

CHAPTER I.

I am born, and grow to manhood, in such circum­stances as would hardly seem conducive to evil.

Evil has been very good to me. I have wealth and social position, and moreover the nearly universal esteem of all men, who seem to regard me as a prodigy of virtue. All this has come to me through relentless devotion to the principles of evil. Indeed, I believe that the benefits of a course of evil, con­scientiously pursued with unflag­ging vigor, have not been adequately im­pressed upon the minds of our young people.

I write, however, not to effect any improvement in our scheme of education, nor indeed necessarily to be read at all. If you, dear reader, have these words be­fore you, then I must be dead and buried; for until the melancholy but inevitable event of my death, I shall take great care to keep this manuscript concealed. I write, therefore, mostly to amuse myself, and to have the satisfaction of living over in memory that brief period of my youth when I first understood and adopted the principles of evil. Nevertheless, the idea of future readers is not entirely absent from my mind as I write. If I occasionally address you, dear reader of the distant and unknown future, in a manner that seems quaint or antiquated to you, I trust you will be indulgent. I have every reason to believe that a great many years will pass between my writing and your reading. I have as yet reached only what I may reason­ably expect to be the middle point of my life; I am in excellent health; I have no remaining enemies. That demise which is a necessary precondition of your reading these words seems a long way off.

It occurs to me that you, my distant reader, may wish to ask whether I recommend my own example, as you see it portrayed in these pages. It is not an easy question to answer. To persist in evil requires dedica­tion and perseverance. At every step, the temptations to do good are numerous, and at times nearly over­whelming. Nevertheless, if you, dear reader, have the strength of character to resist such temptations, you may well profit by my example. The rewards of evil are many; it is a plant worth cultivating assiduously.

Now, I suppose, I must begin. I was born in the year 18— in the city of Allegheny, Penn­sylvania. My mother did not survive my birth, which doubtless spared us both a great deal of trouble in the long run. My father, in a fit of fashionable medievalism, named me Galahad; but I have always hated that ridiculous name. Since I reached my majority I have gone by my middle name, Newman, which was my mother’s maiden name, and so I sign my name G. Newman Bousted—“Bousted” being pro­nounced as if it were spelt “Boasted.”

Shortly after my birth, my father removed the family—my older sisters Viola and Camellia and myself—across the river to Pittsburgh, where he opened a small stationery shop on Wood-street. Having thus reached the summit of his ambition, he was content to spend the rest of his life as an oafish tradesman, providing ink-pots and blank books to schoolmarms and junior clerks. That there was a world above this exalted station seemed to have es­caped his notice; or, if he did take notice of it, it was only as one might take notice of the moon or the stars, without ever supposing that one might eventu­ally inhabit those aethereal regions.

For the first few years, it was all my father could do to keep the store going and my sisters and me fed; but by the time I was eight years old, business had picked up to the extent that my father felt himself able to send me off to a cheap boarding-school, which he seemed to think would provide me with a “first-rate” education,—“first-rate” being his favorite term for anything that met with his approval. I suppose I was successfully educated, in that I can read, write, and cipher well enough. Whether the other stated objective of the school—viz., to inculcate in me a lively sense of Christian virtue—was duly accom­plished, I leave for any future readers to determine. Certainly it would be difficult to find any evidence of Christian principles in the running of the place. Aside from the daily Bible readings, I saw little that would indicate any acquaintance with Christian doctrine either among the instructors, who administered the severest beatings for the most trivial offenses, or among the older boys, who administered even more severe beatings for no offense whatsoever: so that I sometimes thought the founders of the place had intended to make boys virtuous by giving them a foretaste of the torments prepared for the damned. I am sure that I never did anything to deserve such treatment, except on a few occasions when another boy had dared me to do something that was perhaps not in strict conformity with the rules; for if I had a single failing, it was that I could never refuse a dare. In the eyes of the other boys, of course, I had every other failing as well; but the chief among them was that I was two years older than anyone else in my class, owing to my father’s insistence that I must start my schooling at the beginning, and his inability to pay for it any sooner than he did. For some reason, this difference of age was enough to make me a universal object of scorn and contempt. Though I was always conscious of my own superior ability, I could not succeed in conveying a proper sense of that superiority to the boys around me.

In those months when school was not in session, I was given certain duties in the store, in preparation, as my father often told me, for my taking his place one day as proprietor. He was so certain that this prospect must be as pleasing to me as it was to him, that it never once registered on his mind how my shoulders slumped and my brow clouded over every time he mentioned it. For from the very earliest age, I could not view with equanimity, or indeed with any other feeling than horror, the prospect of a life like my father’s. It was apparent to me that my father had dedicated himself to the pursuit of oafish mediocrity with an almost religious zeal. The contempt with which he was regarded even by the junior clerks who stopped in to buy a gross of pens was never visible to him, but it was quite obvious to me. Was it my destiny to be lower than secretaries and schoolmarms, bowing obsequiously to men who lived in terror of assistant directors? The very children sent in to buy themselves exercise-books—children of other shop­keepers, equally oafish—felt no obligation to treat my father with even rudimentary politeness. Why was I suffering all the indignities of education, so called, if my lot was to perform such duties as an organ-grinder’s monkey might well consider beneath him? If this was my station in life, far better to have remained ignorant. Far better never to have learned to read.

For it was through reading that I learned of another world:—a world in which men thought thoughts beyond foolscap and writing-fluid—a world in which a conversation might touch on more than blank books and ruling-pens—a world in which men lived, and did not merely exist. This reading, I acknowledge freely, was not always in the best literature; but even the worst novels—and I have read, if not the worst novels, then at least some very indifferent ones—depict a world in which things are done, and men and women do them. I do not recall a single novel in which the action was confined to repeated sales of identical commercial goods.

As for my schooling, my only joy was in reading the great literature of the past. I could, when reading a play by Shakespeare, forget for a moment that I was immured in a dreadful prison, surrounded by boys who hated me and instructors who held me in contempt; when I closed the book, the walls closed in on me once more, and all my misery returned. This habit of reading has remained with me to the present, though it is now a delight for its own sake, my surroundings being such as I have chosen for myself according to my own taste, so that I no longer dread the end of the book as I did at school.

If I say little of my childhood, it is because I did not enjoy it, and it does not amuse me to dwell on it. I recall, therefore, only so much as is necessary to establish a proper foundation for the narrative that follows. I will say this much of my childhood in general: that, in spite of all that was vexing and unpleasant in my early years, I tried very hard to be good. How hard I tried! I was certain that virtue was its own reward: it must be so, since neither at home nor at school did I see any other reward for virtue. On the contrary, at school I saw clearly that cheating, pre­varication, theft, violence, and every kind of wickedness were the certain roads to success and happiness. And yet I tried to be good! By what defective reasoning was I induced to love virtue, when vice carried off every prize? I have but one defense, which is that the misconception that virtue is of all things most desirable is inculcated in us from our earliest years. Nor would I make any alteration in that education, for now I see clearly the utility of it. For one who has given his life over to wickedness, nothing is more necessary than that the great mass of mankind should believe in virtue. In any jungle there must always be many more prey than predators. Therefore I applaud virtue; I give it my highest commendation whenever I meet with it; I lend it all possible aid and encouragement; I fatten it up, so that it shall in time fatten me up.

In my pursuit of virtue it seemed that all the world was against me. My fellow pupils at school made cer­tain to take full advantage of the one boy who would not lie; and, of course, they were happy to find ways to cause trouble for me by daring me to do this or that. My instructors, though they were compelled to acknowledge my honesty, found as many reasons for punishing me as they found for punishing any other boy.

Of all my enemies, however, I had none more dedicated or implacable than my sisters Viola and Camellia. Never showing overt hostility (which my father, who doted on me, would not have tolerated), they contrived nevertheless to make every day just a little worse for me than it would have been without them. Viola, the elder, was old enough to remember our mother, and to hold me accountable for her loss; Camellia did not remember our mother, but was guided in everything by Viola.

My sisters are paragons of virtue, as I know from their having told me so on innumerable occasions. If, however, there is one virtue in particular that they possess to a pre-eminent degree, it is the gift of discerning the faults of others, and the ability to make those faults known to the possessors of them, for the sake of salutary reproof and correction.

This particular virtue they so often exercised with me, that I question whether I was more often re­proved at school or at home: for whatever my father (who was foolishly indulgent of all his children) lacked in discipline was more than made up by my sisters. As they had already become paragons of virtue at a very young age, they keenly felt the magnitude of their responsibility toward me; and I lived with contempt for my father, but in dread of Viola and Camellia.

So much for my early youth.—Now my childhood is ended: behold me a young man of twenty, returned from school for the last time, and immediately put to the most degrading work I could think of: which is to say that I stood behind the counter in the store, waiting for the next patron to come in and insult me.

Imagine me having done this for a week now; imagine the cloud of gloom darkening every day as my hope dwindles and dies, and I face the prospect of living this way for the rest of my days. Now imagine one day that is slightly different from the rest: my father (who, mis­taking my despair for diligence, is certain that I must be happy in the store, because, oaf that he is, he cannot conceive of any reason not to be happy in the store) sends me out on errands that will consume the whole day; sends me, more­over, with ready money for my lun­cheon, an ex­trav­a­gance he would not ordinarily have coun­tenanced when, as he had told me more than once, Viola or Camellia could prepare a better meal than could be had at any cafe or restaurant (and that I never dared dispute this asser­tion must be an indication of how much my sisters terrified me).

This was at least an outing. I would still be required to be obsequious to clients on my itinerary, but I could be politely demanding of suppliers, and my luncheon money would buy me an hour of being served rather than serving.

“Take your time,” my father told me cheer­fully. “We’ll manage without you for a day. No need for you to be back before dinner.” All this was, of course, in complete contradiction to his usual assertion that the store couldn’t do without me. Yet I thought nothing of it, except that my father seemed unusually cheerful. I have since learned to be more observant. Human nature is, of all studies, the one most essential for a successful life of wickedness.

But on this day I was far too eager to begin my adventure in the great world to question my father’s reasons for sending me out into it. I stepped out the front door of the store without a backward glance—quite unlike my father, whose usual practice on leaving the shop was to stare in oafish admiration at his own name spelled out in black paint over the display window. It was apparently as great a wonder to him to-day as it had been yesterday, and would doubtless be an even greater wonder to-morrow, to know that his own name, in large and ornate blackletter (which had been very fashionable nineteen years before, when it was first painted), was visible to all who passed in the street.

What I always saw on leaving the store, however, was not the name of Samuel Bousted behind me, but the enormous and inescapable name of Rohrbaugh in front of me. Rohrbaugh’s Department Store, at the corner of Diamond-street, towered over the other stores as a medieval castle towered over its client village. It occupied the better part of the next block, with five sales floors and a sixth for offices. I was certain that Mr. Rohrbaugh did not stare at his own name in oafish pride every time he passed through the door of his department store. Mr. Rohrbaugh was (to my mind) a great man; his brain must be filled with great thoughts. Every time I saw that name on his enormous building, I vowed that, some day, I should be as great a man as Mr. Rohrbaugh. In the interval before that happy destiny, I could at least refrain from such ostentatious oafishness as my father practiced daily.

My first visit was to a law office around the corner from my father’s store, where I was to deliver five gross of the No. 910 Cashier’s Pen and inquire discreetly about settling the bill.

As soon as I walked in the door, I was met by a middle-aged woman who apparently handled some of the clerical duties in the office.

“What can we do for you, young man?” she asked with a cheerful and motherly contempt. At once I felt my dignity compromised, and the thing I had known I was going to say when I walked in vanished from my mind.

“I’ve—brought—the pens, from Bousted’s,” I hesitantly told her.

“Oh, yes. Are you the new clerk? I don’t believe you’ve come around before.”

“I’m—the son.” What else could I tell her?

“You mean little Galahad? My word, how you’ve grown! Why, I didn’t recognize you at all! The last time I saw you, you were this high. Your father must be very proud of you!”

I think she babbled in this manner for about a quarter-hour, and I could only stand smiling like an imbecile while she talked, wondering whether the ordeal would ever end, and feeling as though I had been undressed and stuffed back into knee pants. When she finally ran out of breath, I set the five little boxes down on her desk and was about to mumble my farewell when I recalled that there was still the matter of the bill to settle.

“I—” I began uncertainly. I had walked in knowing exactly what I planned to say, but her incessant prattle had driven it completely from my mind. “I have brought the,— the statement of your account, and— and I was—”

“Oh, yes, of course, the bill! I suppose Papa would be very disappointed if you returned without the money, wouldn’t he? Well, we mustn’t disappoint him. Will a bank draught be acceptable as usual?”

Thus, dear reader, I departed from that first en­counter of the day having succeeded perfectly in both my tasks, but with an inescapable sense of utter failure. I had left my father’s shop feeling, for the first time perhaps, an independent man; I had been re­duced in half a minute to a boy.

Nor did the rest of my rounds lift my spirits at all. At every step, clients and suppliers treated me in the most insulting manner: a manner made all the more insulting by the absence of any intent to insult me. They did not intend to degrade me: it was quite obvious that they saw me only as the insignificant son of an insignificant shopkeeper. For them I had no in­de­pendent existence apart from my father.

Even at the Allequippa Hotel, where I took my luncheon, I was treated with obvious condescension. There was nothing I could complain about in the service; my orders were filled with alacrity—but with a knowing, superior smile, as if the adults around me were indulging a boy in a game of make-believe. How it irked me! Today, of course, I should simply find some way to turn their impression of me to my ad­vantage, for evil does not spurn any ready tool that presents itself. But then I still hoped to be a man pre-eminent in virtue!

In this morose state of mind I walked back toward the store in the late afternoon, my eyes cast down, my mind filled with despair. I should never be as great a man as Mr. Rohrbaugh (it astonishes me to think of it, but such at that time was my limited notion of greatness). I should not even be so much as an oafish shopkeeper like my father, at least not for twenty or thirty more years. No, I should always be the son of an oafish shopkeeper. I could see nothing beyond that for me: my education, which, such as it was, had taught me to look above my station in life, was of no more use than to prevent me from making gross errors in letters to junior clerks. I saw the world above me, but I could no more reach that world than I could expect to dwell in the clouds.

It was in this frame of mind, therefore, that I entered my father’s store, having seen little but cobble­stones and shoes along the way, to find my father brimming over with some fresh oafishness, a sickeningly cheerful smile on his face. I laid the pay­ments I had collected, and the receipts from the suppliers, on the shop counter; my father, instead of immediately counting the money, continued to smirk in the most revolting manner, completely ignoring the fruits of my labors. At last, unable to contain himself any longer, he spoke.

“Well, then,—what do you think of it?”

“Of what?” I asked, barely repressing my im­patience.

“Of the sign, of course!” he answered with an oafish laugh.

“He didn’t even see it!” Viola exclaimed, taking obvious delight in my stupidity.

“The goose!” Camellia added.

My father laughed even more. “Oh, Galahad, you have been diligent today! But your mind was so much on your work that you missed what was right in front of your nose. No matter—this way I shall have the joy of showing you myself. Come outside with me. I think you’ll be very pleased.”

It was something to do with the store, certainly, so how could I be pleased? Nevertheless, the irrational optimism of youth was irrepres­sible. For a fleeting moment, because my father had said I should be pleased, because even my sisters seemed to imagine that I should be pleased, I thought that, somehow, I would be pleased: that perhaps, in some mysterious and altogether un-oaflike way, my father had found something, some gift to give me, that would really increase my happiness. In spite of my certain knowledge to the contrary, for one brief moment of utter folly I allowed myself to believe that things were looking up.

We stepped out the door and, when the stream of passing pedestrians cleared, took a position in the street in front of the store. “Now turn around,” my father directed me.

I turned around.

“Look up,” he said.

I looked up.

The unfashionably medieval blackletter that had spelled my father’s name over the display window was gone. In its place were crisp modern gothic letters, very large ones, that spelled out

S. BOUSTED & SON.

“There you are, Galahad!” my father cried, gleefully slapping my back. “My son and my partner! What do you think of that?”

“It’s very large,” I said. I was holding back tears.

“Large enough for the whole world to see!” Clearly my father interpreted my remark as an expression of approval. “This is my proudest day, Galahad!”

Then, as I gazed in blank horror at the pitiless assassination of all my dreams and ambitions, I heard the sound of feminine laughter—surely of all sounds the most jarring and revolting. I let my gaze drop to behold my sisters standing in the doorway.

“Oh, Galahad!” cried Viola, still laughing her cor­rosive laugh. “If you could see the look on your face! It’s simply priceless!”

From the Department of Things We Can’t Leave Well Enough Alone.

—

CHAPTER ONE.

I was sitting up reading late one evening, at the end of what I may truly call in hindsight the last ordinary day of my existence, when my man Banks came padding into the room.

“Excuse me, sir. A gentleman to see you.”

At that moment the clock beside me struck eleven—the last hour I would ever hear it strike.

“Who would be calling at this hour?” I asked. “Well, show him in.”

But that proved unnecessary, as the gentleman in question appeared in the doorway, pushing his way past Banks, who shrugged and padded off into the pantry. It was my old friend and former colleague Norbert Weyland—the square, resolute jaw and piercing blue eyes were unmistakable.

“Good old Peevish!” he greeted me cheerfully, turning out the overhead light. “Didn’t expect me at this hour, did you?” He yanked the desk lamp out of its socket. “In fact, didn’t expect me back from Tierra del Fuego at all, I’ll wager. How are you, old boy?” He stepped into the bathroom for a moment and flushed the night light down the toilet. “You look fit and happy, or at least you did when I could see you. Now, bolt all your doors, lock your windows, nail the cat flap shut, push heavy furniture in front of the vents, stop all your drains, stack telephone books on the toilet lid, and put child safety covers on all your electrical outlets. There. Expeditiously done, old boy, especially in the dark. Now write a note to whom it may concern saying that you’ve moved to Kansas City and taken a job selling beets from a cart with no fixed address. Splendid. I always could rely on you to take directions. And now, I expect you’re wondering what all this is about.”

“A little,” I admitted.

In the dim illumination from the streetlights outside, I could see his silhouette: he was peering intently through the window. “Fact is, I’ve come here on the trail of an archfiend.”

“A what?”

“An archfiend. It’s a bit like an archbishop, but fiendier. Anyway, that’s why I came back from Tierra del Fuego, by way of Sao Paolo, Chittagong, Lagos, Tristan da Cunha, and Monroeville, following his fiendish trail. But now it looks as though the wily devil is on my trail instead. If we’re lucky, I gave him the slip on my way here. If we’re not—well…”

“But who is this fiend? It’s not like you to be rattled like this.”

“He has many names,” Weyland said softly. “Irving Spatz, for one. Alias Manuel Ormsby, alias Rudolphus Cramm, alias Jimmy Smatter the Dancing Barber of the Boulevard of the Allies, alias President James Buchanan, alias Sir George Pickerel-Farmington, alias Blanche ‘Boom Boom’ Helmholtz, alias Weng Fao of the Sûreté, alias the Great Blando; but he is known to his legions of fanatical followers as Kun, the devil king.”

“Why would they follow someone they think of as the devil?”

“He gives them free beer. Do you see the fiendishly intricate brilliance of the man’s mind?”

He turned to face me, or at least it sounded as though he was facing me now. “Peevish, old man, you need to know the facts. I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say the future of our race depends on my success.”

“What race is that?” I asked, rather stupidly I fear.

“The African, North and South American, Asian, Australian, European, and Oceanian race. In other words, the non-Andorran race.”

“Well, that’s a strange way of putting it.”

“Not if you know Kun, the devil king. He has sworn destruction or slavery to all non-Andorrans. In his mind, he is the messiah of the Andorran race, a race peculiarly formed of two of the great conquering peoples of the world, and a race as it were distilled and epitomized in himself. His keen Andorran brain combines all the Spanish passion and Jesuitical intellectual precision with all the French dexterity with sauces. He knows that the eighty-five thousand restless Andorrans only await their leader, and he knows that they will be invincible with him at their head.”

“But what kind of name is Kun for a man from Andorra? It doesn’t sound Catalan, or French or Spanish for that matter.”

“We think it’s an acronym.”

“An acronym? But an acronym for what?”

“Ah, Peevish, old boy, if we knew that!”

“And you say this Kun means to enslave us all?” I still found it difficult to believe that such evil could exist in the world.

“Yes, and I have good reason to believe I know where he intends to start. And that’s why I have to warn the archbishop.”

“Who?”

“The archbishop. He’s like an archfiend, but on our side. And that’s where you come in, Peevish, old man. We’ll be needing your car. That, in fact, is why I came to you. No one else drives a car as blandly inconspicuous as yours. It is positively the only vehicle in which we have any chance of reaching our destination.”

“I’ll have Banks bring it round,” I told Weyland; and I immediately rang for Banks.

When I received no reply after half a minute, I rang again. There was still no reply.

I called out. “Banks! Banks, stop lallygagging about and get the car ready!”

Suddenly I felt a hand grip my arm. “Peevish!” Weyland whispered. “Where did you leave Banks?”

“Last time I saw, he was headed for the pantry.”

“Where is the pantry?”

“It’s just back there, through the library and the music room, down the hall past the conservatory and through the dining room. You can’t miss it. It’s a small apartment, after all.”

“Lead the way. I fear the worst.”

I led him through the darkened apartment until at last we reached the pantry, which I announced by saying, “This is the pantry.”

“Put on the light,” he said.

I did.

The scene of horror that met my eyes was so unexpected that at first I could not parse it at all. Banks was there on the floor; or, rather, his legs were there. The rest of him was completely obscured by a gigantic anvil that had evidently been dropped on him from the ceiling. Some of the hoisting tackle was still scattered about the pantry.

“The fiend!” Weyland whispered, with a peculiar combination of frustration and disgust. “I should have known! He got Sir Gregory Pramwheeler the same way.”

“But how did he get an anvil into my apartment? And how did he hoist it and drop it without our hearing it?”

“You see now what we’re up against,” Weyland replied grimly.

—

This story will be continued only if there is sufficient interest. By “interest,” of course, Dr. Boli means his own, not yours.

Continuing the narrative that began here.

Part 35.

—

Letter the Forty-Second:

Sir George Purvis to Miss Amelia Purvis.

My dear Amelia,

’Tis a strange Dungeon I inhabit,—not dug into the Earth, but built up on a Foundation like any other House; not shrouded in Darkness, but filled with Light from tall Windows; not barred and bolted, but open and unlocked. The Shackles that bind me here are not of Iron, but of my own Making; at any Moment I might walk out the Door, and be free;—free, and ruined. The Moment I depart, my Honor is gone: not that any such Thing as true Honor is left to me in my own Soul, but that the Appearance of it still clings to me in the World, where Appearance is more than Truth.

That Suspicion of which I wrote previously is now established Fact; Honoria has deserted me for the eminent Doctor Albertus. —Or rather, she has deserted all Principle, and believes, on the strength of the Doctor’s Arguments, that she is above Principle, and may do as she chooses. She sees no Contradiction, between her Betrothal to me, and her Relation with Doctor Albertus. That I see such a Contradiction, I need not tell you.

Now I shall relate to you, how the World has entrapped me thus, and how the House of Doctor Albertus has become my Prison. —Last Night, we had another of those Demonstrations of the Automaton, which serve as the eminent Doctor’s Mart, at which he peddles his mechanicall Toys, and solicits Orders from the Great. The Automaton gave a faultless Performance, which is not to be wondered at, as Miss Smith has perfected her Impersonation of the Machine to such a Degree that (so she tells me) she feels Clockworks in her Joints when she plays the Machine. After the noble Guests had departed, and the Time had come to retire, Honoria treated Doctor Albertus with such obvious Familiarity, that I could ignore it no longer.

“Sir, (I said,) I must ask that you restrain your Familiarity with Miss Wells, and keep within the Bounds of Propriety.”

Honoria spoke, tho’ I had not addressed her. “There can be nothing improper in the Appearance of Familiarity (quoth she) when the Appearance is the Mirror of the Fact.”

This bald Statement silenced me, and indeed the Room was silent for a few Moments; but at last Doctor Albertus laughed, and spoke thus:

“Come, Sir George, we are all Friends, and we are not Peasants; you and I are Men of the World, and Honoria knows as much of the World as we: Then let not Prejudice drive a Wedge between us.”

“Really, George,” Honoria added, “there is no need. I have learned much from Doctor Albertus, and surely you would not begrudge me the Truths I have gathered from my Congress with a great Mind.”

“Truths!” At last that Choler, which I had not been able to muster earlier, came over me, and I was not able to control my Speech. “What can a Charlatan have to do with Truth? Has this Oracle of all Wisdom told you that his wonderfull Automaton is a Cockney Seamstress named Smith? That he has been deceiving the Great with an Exhibition of—”

Here I ceased, because Honoria was smiling. When I had been silent for some Time, she spoke in calm and unperturbed Tones:

“Did you suppose (quoth she) that I was unaware of the true Nature of the Automaton? Did you suppose that Doctor Albertus had withheld aught from me—or I from him? Dear George, you are a perfect Innocent, but we are not all such perfect Innocents as you.”

This was her final Word, and my Wrath left me as suddenly as it had come. I sat in the Side-chair, and there I remained I know not how long; I am without Sensibility, and have returned to that Lassitude, in which I am wonderfully indifferent to my Plight. In this Condition I write, and send you Communication as from a Prison; or perhaps as from a Tomb, the Grave of my Honor and my Hope. Farewell; as writing to you is become my only Consolation, you may expect that I shall write again, and you shall hear from

Your lost Brother,
George.

Continuing the narrative that began here.

Part 34.

Letter the Forty-First:

Miss Honoria Wells to Miss Amelia Purvis.

Dearest Amelia,—

My Education in Matters of true Philosophy has been very deficient in the Past; but since our first Meeting, the kind and good Doctor Albertus has endeavored to make up that which was lacking. It is not too much to say, That he has completed what was incomplete, and has filled me up, and from a mere Maiden has made me a Woman of the World.

How my Eyes are opened! I know now that there is a Truth higher than the simple Aphorisms which we have been taught as Children. The Conduct which it is necessary to instil in the Rude and Ignorant, is the Object of these homely Admonitions, in which I had formerly believed all Virtue to reside; but the great and good Doctor has shewn me how the Same must be cast aside, along with all childish Things, when once one has determined no longer to be a Child. It must be done cautiously, lest the childish and ignorant quibble; but O! Amelia, the Rewards of this Form of Knowledge are such as can never be described by mere Language. Yet now I do understand some of the obscure Passages in certain Volumes of Romance, as when it is said that the beautiful Uzila, when alone in the inaccessible Red Tower with the duke Ahmad her lover, felt herself lifted as on a Rocket, and burst like the Illuminations at the Coronation of her Father:—a Description, which I own was a Puzzle to me in my former Existence, but now is plain as Day. Were you by my Side, dearest Amelia, ’twould be unnecessary for me to guard my Speech, as I do my Writing. I can only Wish, and hope, that you will soon find a Man as wise, and as condescending, as Doctor Albertus is; and, when you do so, Amelia, be ruled by your Sister,—for I do still think of us as Sisters,—and let not Prejudice or Ignorance deprive you of the Fruit of Knowledge.

It has been my great Happiness to learn some of the mechanicall Secrets as well of which Doctor Albertus is the sole Keeper: For he says I am marvellously apt, and might some day be a Master of Clockworks myself; I am, as it were, in this Way as well, an Initiate in the Science of a new Life; and I begin to understand his Notions in that Regard, and so to see into a Futurity ruled by rationall Machines.

What I speak of to you in this Letter, dearest Amelia, I would not have repeated indiscriminately: For when you have tasted that Knowledge, which I possess, you will understand the Need for Discretion.

I would fain see you, dear Sister, and if you can contrive to escape your Family, you may be sure of a hearty Welcome from the Doctor and myself. But how far soever you may be from me, you are ever near to my Heart; and I hope that you also may spare a Thought for

Your fondest Friend and Sister,
Honoria.

—

Continue to Part 35.