ress," done in blue immortelles on the cover,
as their "tribute."

I put on a plug hat and attended the service out of respect for his
father. But I had hardly got back to the office before I received a wire
from Jamaica, reading: "Cable your correspondent here let me have
hundred. Notify father all hunk. Keep it dark from others. Simpkins."

I kept it dark and Ezra came back to life by easy stages and in such a
way as not to attract any special attention to himself. He managed to
get the impression around that he'd been snatched from the jaws of death
by a rescue party at the last moment. The last I heard of him he was in
New York and drawing ten thousand a year, which was more than he could
have worked up to in the leather business in a century.

Fifty or a hundred years ago, when there was good money in poetry, a man
with Simpkins' imagination would naturally have been a bard, as I
believe they used to call the top-notchers; and, once he was turned
loose to root for himself, he instinctively smelled out the business
where he could use a little poetic license and made a hit in it.

When a pup has been born to point partridges there's no use trying to
run a fox with him. I was a little uncertain about you at first, but I
guess the Lord intended you to hunt with the pack. Get the scent in your
nostrils and keep your nose to the ground, and don't worry too much
about the end of the chase. The fun of the thing's in the run and not in
the finish.

Your affectionate father,
JOHN GRAHAM.

+-----------------------------+
| No. 9 |
+-----------------------------+
| From John Graham, at Hot |
| Springs, Arkansas, to his |
| son, Pierrepont, at the |
| Union Stock Yards in |
| Chicago. Mr. Pierrepont |
| has been investing more |
| heavily in roses than his |
| father thinks his means |
| warrant, and he tries to |
| turn his thoughts to |
| staple groceries. |
+-----------------------------+

IX

HOT SPRINGS, Janu