“Pessimist as he is”—­Flummers was holding forth among the night reporters at the central station—­“Pessimist as he is, and a skeptic though he may be, papa goes through this life with his eyes open.  Idle suggestion says, ‘Shut your eyes, papa, and be happy,’ but shrewdness says, ‘Watch that fellow going along there.’  I don’t claim any particular credit for this; we are not to be vain of what nature has done for us, nor censured for what she has denied.  We are all children, toddling about as an experiment, and wondering what we are going to be.  Some of us fall and weep over our bruises, and some of us—­some of us get there.  He, he, he.”

“Flummers, have they raised your salary yet?” some one asked.

“Oh, no, and that’s why I am disgusted with the newspaper profession.  The country cries out, ‘Who is the man?’ There is a deep silence.  The country cries again, ‘Does any one know this man?’ And then papa speaks.  But what does he get?  The razzle.  A great scoop rewarded with a razzle.  My achievements are taken too much us a matter of course.  I don’t assert myself enough.  I am too modest.  Say, I smell liquor.  Who’s got a bottle?  Somebody took a cork out of a bottle.  Who was it?  Say, Will, have you got a bottle?”

“Thought you said that your doctor told you not to drink.”

“He did; he said that I had intercostal rheumatism.  He examined me carefully, and when I asked him what he thought, he replied, ’Mr. Flummers, you can’t afford to drink.’”

“And did you tell him that you could afford it—­that it didn’t cost you anything?”

“Oh, ho, ho, no!  Say, send out and get a bottle.  What are you fellows playing there?  Ten cents ante, all jack pots?  It’s a robbers’ game.”

* * * * *

In every community a stranger wearing black whiskers was under suspicion.  A detective shrewdly suggested that the murderer might have shaved, and he claimed great credit for this timely hint; but no matter, the search for the black-whiskered man was continued.  Dave Kittymunks was arrested in all parts of the country, and the head-line writer, whose humor could not long be held in subjection, began to express himself thus:  “Dave Kittymunks captured in St. Paul, also seized in New Orleans, and is hotly pursued in the neighborhood of Kansas City.”

Witherspoon, sitting by his library fire at night, would say over and over again:  “I told him never to keep any money in the house.  He was so close, so suspicious; and then to put his money in a safe that a boy might have knocked to pieces!” And it became Mrs. Witherspoon’s habit to declare:  “I just know that somebody will break into our house next.”  Then the merchant’s impatience would express itself with a grunt.  “Oh, it has given you and Ellen a rare chance for speculation.  We’d better wall ourselves in a cave and die there waiting for robbers to drill their way in.  It does seem to me that they ought to catch that fellow, I told Brooks that he’d better increase the reward to fifty thousand.”