it, until one evening young
Haskins came into the club "a little flushed with wine." (The "wine" was
brandy.) It seems that young Haskins had found at home an ivory rattle
which had belonged to Eustace twenty years before, and which Mrs. Dolph
had given to Mrs. Haskins when Eustace enlarged his horizon in the
matter of toys.

Haskins, being, as I have said, somewhat flushed with brandy, came up to
young Dolph, who was smoking in the window, and meditating with frowning
brows, and said to him:

"Here, Dolph, I've done with this. You'd better take it back--it may be
wanted down your way."

There was a scene. Fortunately, two men were standing just behind Dolph,
who were able to throw their arms about him, and hold him back for a few
seconds. There would have been further consequences, however, if it had
not been that Eustace was in the act of throwing the rattle back at
Haskins when the two men caught him. Thus the toy went wide of its mark,
and fell in the lap of Philip Waters, who, old as he was, generally
chose to be in the company of the young men at the club; and then
Philip Waters did something that almost atones, I think, for the
epigram.

He looked at the date on the rattle, and then he rose up and went
between the two young men, and spoke to Haskins.

"Young man," he said, "when Mrs. Jacob Dolph gave your mother this
thing, your father had just failed for the second time in three years.
He had come to New York about five years before from Hartford, or
Providence, or--Succotash, or whatever his confounded town was. Mr.
Jacob Dolph got Mr. Van Riper to give your father an extension on his
note, or he would have gone to the debtors' prison down by the City
Hall. As it was, he had to sell his house, and the coat off his back,
for all I know. If it hadn't been for the Dolphs, devil the rattle you'd
have had, and you wouldn't have been living in Bond Street to-day."

[Illustration: "If it hadn't been for the Dolphs, devil the rattle you'd
have had."]

After which Mr. Philip Waters sat down and read the evening paper; and
when young Haskins was able to speak he asked young Dolph's pardon, and
got it--at least, a formal assurance that he had it.

The baby was born in the spring, and everybody said she was the image of
her mother.

* * * * *

There will come a day, it may be, when advancing civilization will
civilize sleighing out of existence, as far as New York is concerned.