development of his really fine intellect. It is also easy
to see why such a man would lack the patience to learn a trade even if he
had had the manual skill to carry on any trade successfully--which he had
not. For the same reasons he would not take pains to qualify himself for
any occupation, although he might have made a fair success in retail
salesmanship perhaps, notwithstanding his far greater fitness for
educational, ministerial, or platform work. On the contrary, he roamed
about the country occupying himself at odd times with such bits of light
mental or physical work as came his way. Being without training and taking
no real interest in his work, he never retained any job long. Sometimes,
lured by the will-o'-the-wisp of some fancied opportunity to make a
million, he gave up his work. Sometimes he merely got tired of working and
quit. But most often he was discharged for his incompetence. It is
difficult indeed for any man to attend properly to the cent-a-piece
details of an ordinary job when he is dreaming of the easy thousands he is
going to make next week.

This charming gentleman was always out of funds. Although he carefully
tonsured the ends of his trouser legs, inked the cuffs of his coat,
blackened and polished his hose and even his own, fine, fair skin where it
showed through the holes of his shoes, and turned his collars and ties
again and again, he was nearly always shabby. On rare and ever rarer
occasions he would do some relative or friend the inestimable favor and
honor of accepting a small loan, "to be repaid in a few days, as soon as a
big deal I now have under way is consummated." These loans were his only
successes in the realm of practical finance. Inasmuch as the repayment of
them was contingent upon the closing of an ever-imminent, but never
consummated, "big deal," they cost him nothing for either principal or
interest. For a few weeks after the successful negotiation of one of these
loans, he would be resplendent, opulent, fastidious, even generous. All
too soon the last dollar would slip through his unheeding fingers. If
during a period of affluence he had succeeded in establishing a little
semblance of credit, he would maintain his regal style of living as long
as it lasted. Then he would come down to the hall bedroom or even the
ten-cent lodging house, the lunch wagon, and the pawn shop. But even at
the lowest ebb of his fortunes, he never seemed to lose his cheerfulness,
his good nature