n as feminine. What good do they do us?"

"They gratify your sense of the beautiful," suggested I.

"You know, Mr. Barslow," said she, "that it's not our own sense of the
beautiful, mainly, that we seek to gratify; and if the eyes for which
they are intended are looking into ledgers and blind to everything
except dollar-signs, what's the use?"

"Go down to the seashore," said I, "where the people congregate who have
nothing to do."

"Not I," said she; "I'll go into real estate, and become as blind as the
rest!"

Jim paid no attention to my chaffing when I spoke of his conquest, as I
called Antonia. In fact, he seemed annoyed, and for a long time said
nothing.

"You can see how the Allen estate proposition stands," said he, at last.
"To let that sell for less than twenty thousand might cost us ten times
that amount in lowering the prevailing standard of values. The old rule
that we should buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest is
suspended. Base is the slave who pays--less than the necessary and
proper increase."

CHAPTER X.

We Dedicate Lynhurst Park.

The Hindu adept sometimes suspends before the eyes of his subject a
bright ball of carnelian or crystal, in the steady contemplation of
which the sensitive swims off into the realms of subjectivity--that
mysterious bourn from whence no traveler brings anything back. J.
Bedford Cornish was Mr. Elkins's glittering ball; his psychic subject
was the world in general and Lattimore in particular. Scientific
principles, confirmed by experience, led us to the conclusion that the
attitude of fixed contemplation carried with it some nervous strain,
ought to be of limited duration, and hence that Mr. Cornish should
remove from our midst the glittering mystery of his presence, lest
familiarity should breed contempt. So in about ten days he went away,
giving to the _Herald_ a parting interview, in which he expressed
unbounded delight with Lattimore, and hinted that he might return for a
longer stay. Editorially, the _Herald_ expressed the hope that this
characteristically veiled allusion to a longer sojourn might mean that
Mr. Cornish had some idea of becoming a citizen of Lattimore. This would
denote, the editorial continued, that men like Mr. Cornish, accustomed
to the mighty world-pulse of New York, could find objects of pursuit
equally worthy in Lattimore.

"Which is mixed metaphor," Mr. Giddings admitted in confidence; "but,"
he continued, "if me