sometimes seemed at first
glance the wrong direction often did more good--made more for real
happiness--than the most efficient organized charity. He spoke of the
loneliness of age--the inevitable loneliness of the human soul,--the
thirst for daily affection. And then they drifted off to college, and
Mr. Tutt inquired casually if Payson had seen much of his father, who,
he took occasion to remark, had been a good type of straightforward,
honest, hard-working business man.

Payson, smoking his third cigar, and taking now and then a dash of
cognac, began to think better of his old dad. He really hadn't paid him
quite the proper attention. He admitted it to Mr. Tutt--with the first
genuine tears in his eyes since he had left Cambridge;--perhaps, if he
had been more to him--. But Mr. Tutt veered off again--this time on
university education; the invaluable function of the university being,
he said, to preserve intact and untarnished in a materialistic age the
spiritual ideals inherited from the past.

In this rather commonplace sentiment Payson agreed with him
passionately. He further agreed with equal enthusiasm when his host
advanced the doctrine that after all to preserve one's honor stainless
was the only thing that much mattered. Absolutely! declared Payson, as
he allowed Mr. Tutt to press another glass of port upon him.

Payson, in spite of the slight beading of his forehead and the blurr
about the gas jets, began to feel very much the man of the world,--not a
"six bottle man" perhaps, but--and he laughed complacently--a "two
bottle man." If he'd lived back in the good old sporting days very
likely he could have done better. But he's taken care of two full
bottles, hadn't he? Mr. Tutt replied that he'd taken care of them very
well indeed. And with this opening the old lawyer launched into his
favorite topic,--to wit, that there were only two sorts of men in the
world--gentlemen, and those who were not. What made a man a gentleman
was gallantry and loyalty,--the readiness to sacrifice everything--even
life--to an ideal. The hero was the chap who never counted the cost to
himself. That was why people revered the saints, acclaimed the cavalier,
and admired the big-hearted gambler who was ready to stake his fortune
on the turn of a card. There was even, he averred, an element of
spirituality in the gambler's carelessness about money.

This theory greatly interested Payson, who held strongly with it, having
always had