thority on sealskins. When any member of the town nobility had a
new sealskin, she took it humbly to Priscilla Winthrop to pass judgment
upon it. If Priscilla said it was London-dyed, its owner pranced away on
clouds of glory; but if she said it was American-dyed, its owner crawled
away in shame, and when one admired the disgraced garment, the martyred
owner smiled with resigned sweetness and said humbly: "Yes--but it's
only American-dyed, you know."

No dervish ever questioned the curse of the priestess. The only time a
revolt was imminent was in the autumn of 1884 when the Conklins
returned from their season at Duxbury, Massachusetts, and Mrs. Conklin
took up the carpets in her house, heroically sold all of them at the
second-hand store, put in new waxed floors and spread down rugs. The
town uprose and hooted; the outcasts and barbarians in the Methodists
and Baptist Missionary Societies rocked the Conklin home with their
merriment, and ten dervishes with set faces bravely met the onslaughts
of the savages; but among themselves in hushed whispers, behind locked
doors, the faithful wondered if there was not a mistake some place.
However, when Priscilla Winthrop assured them that in all the best homes
in Boston rugs were replacing carpets, their souls were at peace.

All this time we at the office knew nothing of what was going on. We
knew that the Conklins devoted considerable time to society; but
Alphabetical Morrison explained that by calling attention to the fact
that Mrs. Conklin had prematurely gray hair. He said a woman with
prematurely gray hair was as sure to be a social leader as a spotted
horse is to join a circus. But now we know that Colonel Morrison's view
was a superficial one, for he was probably deterred from going deeper
into the subject by his dislike for Mortimer Conklin, who invested a
quarter of a million dollars of the Winthrop fortune in the Wichita
boom, and lost it. Colonel Morrison naturally thought as long as Conklin
was going to lose that money he could have lost it just as well at home
in the "Queen City of the Prairies," giving the Colonel a chance to win.
And when Conklin, protecting his equities in Wichita, sent a hundred
thousand dollars of good money after the quarter million of bad money,
Colonel Morrison's grief could find no words; though he did find
language for his wrath. When the Conklins draped their Oriental rugs for
airing every Saturday over the veranda and portico railings o