fferent fellows came to me with schemes that haven't reached the
company stage. One had a scheme for getting possession of a nigger
republic in the West Indies by raising a loan, and then repudiating all
the previous loans. Another wanted me to buy a paper for him, in which
he was to support all my enterprises. Another wanted to start a bank--I
apparently to find the money, and he the brains. One chap wanted me to
finance a theatrical syndicate--he had a bag full of photographs of an
actress all eyes and teeth and hair,--and another chap had a scheme all
worked out for getting a concession from Spain for one of the Caroline
Islands, and putting up a factory there for making porpoise-hide
leather.

"Then there were three inventors--let's see, here they are--one with a
coiled wire spring for scissors inside a pocket-knife, and one with
a bottle, the whole top of which unscrews instead of having a cork or
stopper, and one with an electrical fish-line, a fine wire inside the
silk, you know, which connects with some battery when a fish bites, and
rings a bell, and throws out hooks in various directions, and does all
sorts of things.

"Well then, there was a man who wanted me to take the chairmanship of
a company, and one who wanted me to guarantee an overdraft at his bank,
and two who wanted to borrow money on stock, and one parson-fellow who
tried to stick me for a subscription to some Home or other he said he
had for children in the country. He was the worst bounder of the lot.

"Well, there's twenty-seven people--and twenty of them strangers to
me, and not worth a penny to me, and all trying to get money out of me.
Isn't that a dog's life for one?"

"I don't know," said Miss Madden, contemplatively. "A lady may have
twice that number of callers in an afternoon--quite as great strangers
to all intents and purposes--and not even have the satisfaction of
discovering that they had any object whatever in calling. At least your
people had some motive: the grey matter in their brain was working. And
besides, one of them might have had something to say which you would
value. I don't think that ever happens among a lady's callers; does it,
Edith?"

Edith smiled, pleasantly and yet a little wistfully, but said nothing.

"At any rate," Thorpe went on, with a kind of purpose gathering in his
eyes, "none of those fellows cost me anything, except in time. But then
I had three callers, almost in a bunch, and one of them took out o