selves lolling in a rubber-tired vehicle while the
vulgar populace on the curb identified them by pointing with their grimy
fingers. Each guest looked forward to the fulfilment of some cherished
dream and Dr. Emma Harpe saw a picture, too, as she gazed at Symes with
speculative, contemplative eyes.

He looked the embodiment of prosperity and success, did Symes, and if he
subtly intimated that the road to prosperity lay through loyalty to him,
that his friendship, support and approval were the steps by which they
could best climb, they were willing to give it without quibbling. They
were content to shine in his reflected glory, and they dispersed at a
late hour feeling that they had been tacitly set apart--a chosen people.

The next issue of the Crowheart _Courier_ referred to the dinner as a
three-course banquet, and published the menu. If the description of the
guests' costumes made Crowheart's eyes pop and none more than the
wearers, the latter did not mention it.

Pleased but bewildered, Mrs. Terriberry read of herself as "queenly in
gray satin and diamonds," being unable to place the diamonds until she
recalled the rhinestone comb in her back hair which sparkled with the
doubtful brilliancy of a row of alum cubes.

Mrs. Percy Parrott had some difficulty in recognizing herself as
"ravishing in shot silk garnished with pearls," since the plaid taffeta
which had come in a barrel from home with the collar tab pinned flat
with a moonstone pin bore little resemblance to the elegance suggested
in the paragraph.

And if the editor chose to refer to the pineapple pattern, No. 60
cotton, collarette which Mrs. Jackson had crocheted between beers in
the good old Dance Hall days as an "exquisite effect in point lace,"
certainly Mrs. Jackson was not the lady to contradict him.

But this was merely the warming up exercise of the editor's vocabulary.
When he really cut loose on Andy P. Symes the graves of dead and buried
adjectives opened to do him honor. In the lurid lexicon of his eloquence
there was no such word as obsolete and no known synonym failed to pay
tribute to this "mental and physical colossus." In his shirt sleeves,
minus his cuffs, with his brain in a lather, one might say, Sylvanus
Starr painted a picture of the coming Utopia, experiencing in so doing
such joys of creation as he had not known since his removal from the
obituary department.

And reading, the citizens of Crowheart rejoiced or envied according t