“Tell me about him, Bryce.”

“Don’t have to.  You’ve just told me about him, However, I’ll read you his letter.  I claim there is more character in a letter than in a face.”

Here Bryce read aloud: 

Golden Gate Hotel—­Rooms fifty cents—­and up.  San Francisco,
California, August fifteenth, 1916.

My dear cardigan:  Hark to the voice of one crying in the wilderness; then picture to yourself the unlovely spectacle of a strong man crying.

Let us assume that you have duly considered.  Now wind up your wrist and send me a rectangular piece of white, blue, green, or pink paper bearing in the lower right-hand corner, in your clear, bold chirography, the magic words “Bryce Cardigan”—­with the little up-and-down hook and flourish which identifies your signature given in your serious moods and lends value to otherwise worthless paper.  Five dollars would make me chirk up; ten would start a slight smile; twenty would put a beam in mine eye; fifty would cause me to utter shrill cries of unadulterated joys and a hundred would inspire me to actions like unto those of a whirling dervish.

I am so flat busted my arches make hollow sounds as I tread the hard pavements of a great city, seeking a job.  Pausing on the brink of despair, that destiny which shapes our ends inspired me to think of old times and happier days and particularly of that pink-and-white midget of a girl who tended the soda-fountain just back of the railroad station at Princeton.  You stole that damsel from me, and I never thanked you.  Then I remembered you were a timber-king with a kind heart and that you lived somewhere in California; so I looked in the telephone book and found the address of the San Francisco office of the Cardigan Redwood Lumber Company.  You have a mean man in charge there.  I called on him, told him I was an old college pal of yours, and tried to borrow a dollar.  He spurned me with contumely—­so much of it, in fact, that I imagine you have a number of such friends.  While he was abusing me, I stole from his desk the stamped envelope which bears to you these tidings of great woe; and while awaiting your reply, be advised that I subsist on the bitter cud of reflection, fresh air, and water, all of which, thank God, cost nothing.

My tale is soon told.  When you knew me last, I was a prosperous young contractor.  Alas!  I put all my eggs in one basket and produced an omelet.  Took a contract to build a railroad in Honduras.  Honduras got to fighting with Nicaragua; the government I had done business with went out of business; and the Nicaraguan army recruited all my labourers and mounted them on my mules and horses, swiped all my grub, and told me to go home.  I went.  Why stay?  Moreover, I had an incentive consisting of about an inch of bayonet—­fortunately not applied in a vital spot—­which accelerated rather than decreased my speed.

Hurry, my dear Cardigan.  Tempest fidgets; remember Moriarity—­which, if you still remember your Latin, means:  “Time flies.  Remember to-morrow!” I finished eating my overcoat the day before yesterday.