who is
scratching his left ear with a broad web flipper, reflects in mummied
perpetuity the gratitude hidden behind the quiet exterior of the
studious Emil Stuffer, ornithologist and mechanical engineer--but
principally the latter, when he received word from the expert that the
sale had been made.

In Hoboken they now tell of the sale of this collection as a joke, but
in Stukeville it is a serious matter. Up there it is in the domain of
natural history.

Afterward, when I started out to visit the places involved in the wages
of my unlucky interference, I ran up to Stukeville and looked over the
birds. I could see that a stretched neck or lengthened legs and fancy
tail feathers, with a few minor alterations in the bill and wings, were
all that was necessary to make a rare wild bird out of a tame duck.
Hoboken-built birds seemed to answer every purpose, however, in
Stukeville.

When it was all over except spending the money, A. Stuffer used to ask
his scholarly son:

"Say, Emil, which was the hardest to make--Jerry, or one of them
Stukeville pets?"

CHAPTER XV

A man who writes his friend's love-letters is twice a fool if he admires
his work. Burns, Byron, Morris and the others who contributed toward
these high crimes and misdemeanors were dead, and so escaped the wrath
of the angry gods, who switch triflers in Love's domain. I got all the
punishment due for the guilt of writing the compositions, and piled on
top of that came another turn on the hard road of the transgressor for
issuing them again. I did not intend to put them into general
circulation, of course; but my carelessness in leaving one of the
letters in the sun parlor really amounted to the same thing. The fellow
who carelessly hits a can of dynamite with an axe gets the same perfect
results as if he had planned to do it for several months. The worst,
however, was the swelling pride which led to the discussion of the
letters with Hygeia. It snatched her forcibly from my life at a time
when sustaining hope was most needed. The hypnotizing poets were to
blame. As I read the letters, I got the notion that I was responsible
for the inspired as well as the uninspired portions, and so became
topheavy and foolhardy in handling a kind of fire I did not understand.
Many another has been burned the same way.

Before letters of this character are passed out for general reading, it
must be understood that the audience shall not include the man who sent