e he bucked an office boy. His college friends kept
inviting him out and he went until they began offering him help. Then he
cut the whole bunch. He didn't care to have them watch the struggle.
He'd been in New York two years when he met us, he said, and he hadn't
earned enough money to pay his room-rent in that time. There were times
when he might have got a decent little job at twelve dollars per, or so,
but he would have had to meet the boys who had looked up to him as a
world-beater and somehow he just couldn't tackle it. When we had come
over and paid homage to him he saw we had taken him for a successful man
of the world, as well as a member of the All-America team, and he hadn't
been able to resist the desire to let two human beings look up to him
again. He hadn't invited us to his room, he said, because part of the
time he didn't have a room; and he even confessed that once or twice
he'd walked up to our rooms from downtown because he was crazy for a
smoke and didn't have the price.

I guess there never was a more peculiar dinner party in New York. Part
of the time I sniveled and part of the time Allie sniveled, and once or
twice we were all three all balled up in our throats. But after a while
we braced up and I told Jarvis what the Boss had told me, and we drank a
toast to the glad new days, and another to success, and another to
Jarvis, the coming business pillar, and some more to our private yachts
and country homes, and to Commencement reunions, and this and that. Then
we chartered a sea-going cab and took Jarvis home with us. We made him
sleep in the bed while we slept on the floor, and the next morning we
loaned him a pair of overalls that we had honorably retired and we all
went down to work together.

The next three months were perfectly ridiculous. We simply couldn't
order Jarvis around. Suppose you had to ask the Statue of Liberty to get
a move on and scrub the floors? We couldn't get our ingrained awe of
that freight hustler out of our systems. Of course when any one was
around we had to keep up appearances, but when I was alone and I had
something for Jarvis to do I'd call him in and get at it about this way:
"Er--say, Jarvis, could you help me out on a little matter, if you have
the time? You know there's a shipment for Pittsburgh that's got to go
out by noon. I think the car is at door 6. Those barrels ought to be put
into the car right away, and if you'd see that they get in there I'd be
very mu