ll have an
orgy. I'll order larks' tongues and convolvulus salad. I didn't know you
knew him."

"I don't--yet," said Stockton. "I'm going down to meet his steamer this
afternoon."

"Well, that's great news," said the volatile humourist. And he ran
downstairs to buy the book of which he had so often heard but had never
read.

The sight of Bolles' well-cut suit of tweeds had reminded Stockton that
he was still wearing the threadbare serge that had done duty for three
winters, and would hardly suffice for the honours to come. Hastily he
blue-pencilled his proofs, threw them into the wire basket, and hurried
outdoors to seek the nearest tailor. He stopped at the bank first, to
draw out fifty dollars for emergencies. Then he entered the first
clothier's shop he encountered on Nassau Street.

Mr. Stockton was a nervous man, especially so in the crises when he was
compelled to buy anything so important as a suit, for usually Mrs.
Stockton supervised the selection. To-day his Unlucky star was in the
zenith. His watch pointed to close on two o'clock, and he was afraid he
might be late for the steamer, which docked far uptown. In his haste,
and governed perhaps by some subconscious recollection of the
humourist's attractive shaggy tweeds, he allowed himself to be fitted
with an ochre-coloured suit of some fleecy checked material grotesquely
improper for his unassuming figure. It was the kind of cloth and cut
that one sees only in the windows of Nassau Street. Happily he was
unaware of the enormity of his offence against society, and rapidly
transferring his belongings to the new pockets, he paid down the
purchase price and fled to the subway.

When he reached the pier at the foot of Fourteenth Street he saw that
the steamer was still in midstream and it would be several minutes
before she warped in to the dock. He had no pass from the steamship
office, but on showing his newspaperman's card the official admitted him
to the pier, and he took his stand at the first cabin gangway, trembling
a little with nervousness, but with a pleasant feeling of excitement no
less. He gazed at the others waiting for arriving travellers and
wondered whether any of the peers of American letters had come to meet
the poet. A stoutish, neatly dressed gentleman with a gray moustache
looked like Mr. Howells, and he thrilled again. It was hardly possible
that he, the obscure reviewer, was the only one who had been notified of
Verne's arrival. That