ce of perusing the criminal
calendar, but after the appearance of that disagreeable item in print I
began to get letters from old acquaintances condoling with me and
asking whether they could be of any service to me in my trouble. Some
of these letters must have been dispatched in a spirit of humor, but I
see nothing mirthfull in the association of an honest man's name with
crime, and the people who have sought to poke fun at me in this
unpleasant affair need not be at all surprised if I do not bow to them
the next time we meet.

Another class of people I have no sympathy with are those who do not
recognize in our purchase of a home a cause for general joy and
congratulation. You may not believe it, but it is nevertheless a fact
that within the last two months I have met people and apprised them of
our purchase and they have never so much as expressed even the least
bit of delight. My old friend Slashon Tomsing, who makes considerable
pretense to being interested in the public welfare--why, when I met him
at the Civic Federation rooms not long ago and began to tell him of our
new home, instead of being swept away (as it were) upon a tidal wave of
rapture, he immediately changed the theme of conversation and asked my
opinion of bimetallism. I gave him to understand very distinctly that
the public was in very poor business if it suffered itself to become
interested in bimetallism or in any other ism so long as it had an
opportunity to discuss "our new house" as a living, absorbing, and
burning theme.

Another friend, my old and particularly valued friend, Professor Sniff,
curator of Mahon's Museum of Marvels--but I'll let that affair pass;
for Professor Sniff certainly did not intend to wound my feelings by
his apparent indifference; moreover, he has promised to send me for my
private collection all the duplicates that occur in section E of his
museum, which section is devoted exclusively to dried centipedes,
tarantulas, and beetles and to Mexican lizards in bottles of alcohol.

All who have ever engaged in the enterprise of a new house will agree
with me when I say that nothing else wounds one more deeply than the
indifference of the rest of humanity to what is nearest and dearest to
his heart. When I walk the street nowadays I actually pity the crowds
of people I see, because, forsooth, they know nothing of the great joy
I have acquired in that blessed house. Alice made me take her to hear
a Mme. Melba in Itali