e seems to
have tried to catch up with us fellows of his age, and he began to
plunge. He got in debt, and, when the boom broke, he was still living in
a rented house with the rent ten months behind; his partnership was gone
and his practice was cut down to joint-keepers, gamblers, and the
farmers who hadn't heard the stories of his financial irregularities
that were floating around town.

"Yet his wife stuck to him, forever explaining to my wife that he would
be all right when he settled down. But he continued to soak up a
little--not much, but a little. He never was drunk in the daytime, but I
remember there used to be mornings when his office smelled pretty sour.
I had an office next to his for a while and he used to come in and talk
to me a good deal. The young fellows around town whom he would like to
run with were beginning to find him stupid, and the old fellows--except
me--were busy and he had no one to loaf with. He decided, I remember,
several times to brace up, and once he kept white shirts, cuffs and
collars on for nearly a year. But when Harrison was elected, he filled
up from his shoes to his hat and didn't go home for three days. One day
after that, when he had gone back to his flannel shirts and dirty
collars, he was sitting in my office looking at the fire in the big box
stove when he broke out with:

"'Alphabetical--what's the matter with me, anyway? This town sends men
to Congress; it makes Supreme Court judges of others. It sends fellows
to Kansas City as rich bankers. It makes big merchants out of grocery
clerks. Fortune just naturally flirts with everyone in town--but never a
wink do I get. I know and you know I'm smarter than those jays. I can
teach your Congressman economics, and your Supreme judge law. I can
think up more schemes than the banker, and can beat the merchant in any
kind of a game he'll name. I don't lie and I don't steal and I ain't
stuck up. What's the matter with me, anyway?'

"And of course," mused Colonel Morrison as he relighted the butt of his
cigar, "of course I had to lie to him and say I didn't know. But I did.
We all knew. He was too much of a good fellow. His failure to get on
bothered him a good deal, and one day he got roaring full and went up
and down town telling people how smart he was. Then his pride left him,
and he let his whiskers grow frowsy and used his vest for a spittoon,
and his eyes watered too easily for a man still in his forties.

"He went West a doz