lacked the courage to reply.

Nearly three months after time, and when my economies were beginning
to run low, I received at last a letter with the customary bills of
exchange.

"My dearest boy," it ran, "I believe, in the press of anxious business,
your letters and even your allowance have been somewhile neglected. You
must try to forgive your poor old dad, for he has had a trying time; and
now when it is over, the doctor wants me to take my shotgun and go
to the Adirondacks for a change. You must not fancy I am sick, only
over-driven and under the weather. Many of our foremost operators have
gone down: John T. M'Brady skipped to Canada with a trunkful of boodle;
Billy Sandwith, Charlie Downs, Joe Kaiser, and many others of our
leading men in this city bit the dust. But Big-Head Dodd has again
weathered the blizzard, and I think I have fixed things so that we may
be richer than ever before autumn.

"Now I will tell you, my dear, what I propose. You say you are well
advanced with your first statue; start in manfully and finish it, and if
your teacher--I can never remember how to spell his name--will send me
a certificate that it is up to market standard, you shall have ten
thousand dollars to do what you like with, either at home or in Paris.
I suggest, since you say the facilities for work are so much greater
in that city, you would do well to buy or build a little home; and
the first thing you know, your dad will be dropping in for a luncheon.
Indeed, I would come now, for I am beginning to grow old, and I long to
see my dear boy; but there are still some operations that want watching
and nursing. Tell your friend, Mr. Pinkerton, that I read his letters
every week; and though I have looked in vain lately for my Loudon's
name, still I learn something of the life he is leading in that strange,
old world, depicted by an able pen."

Here was a letter that no young man could possibly digest in solitude.
It marked one of those junctures when the confidant is necessary; and
the confidant selected was none other than Jim Pinkerton. My father's
message may have had an influence in this decision; but I scarce suppose
so, for the intimacy was already far advanced. I had a genuine and
lively taste for my compatriot; I laughed at, I scolded, and I loved
him. He, upon his side, paid me a kind of doglike service of admiration,
gazing at me from afar off as at one who had liberally enjoyed those
"advantages" which he envied for h