en for ten years--at HIS
house. With a refined absence of natural affection he contented
himself with inquiring of the servants as to his father's habits, and
if he still wore dress clothes at dinner. The information thus
elicited forced him to the conclusion that the old gentleman's
circumstances were reduced, and that it was possible that he, John
Lummox, might be actually compelled to earn his own living. He
communicated that suspicion to his father at dinner, and over the last
bottle of "Mouton," a circumstance which also had determined him in his
resolution. "You might," said his father thoughtfully, "offer yourself
to some rising American novelist as a study for the new hero,--one
absolutely without ambition, capacity, or energy; willing, however, to
be whatever the novelist chooses to make him, so long as he hasn't to
choose for himself. If your inordinate self-consciousness is still in
your way, I could give him a few points about you, myself."

"I had thought," said John, hesitatingly, "of going into your office
and becoming your partner in the business. You could always look after
me, you know."

A shudder passed over the old man. Then he tremblingly muttered to
himself:

"Thank heaven! There is one way it may still be averted!" Retiring to
his room he calmly committed suicide, thoughtfully leaving the empty
poison bottle in the fender.

And this is how John Lummox came to offer himself as a clerk to Dan'l
Borem. The ways of Providence are indeed strange, yet those of the
novelist are only occasionally novel.

III

John K. Lummox lived for a week at the Turkey Buzzard Hotel exclusively
on doughnuts and innuendoes. He was informed by Mr. Borem's
clerk--whose place he was to fill--that he wouldn't be able to stand
it, and thus received the character of his employer from his last
employee.

"I suppose," said Dan'l Borem, chuckling, "that he said I was a old
skinflint, good only at a hoss trade, uneddicated, ignorant, and unable
to keep accounts, and an oppressor o' the widder and orphan. Allowed
that my cute sayin's was a kind o' ten-cent parody o' them proverbs in
Poor Richard's Almanack!"

"Omitting a few expletives, he certainly did," returned Lummox with
great delicacy.

"He allowed to me," said Dan'l thoughtfully, "that YOU was a poor
critter that hadn't a single reason to show for livin': that the
fool-killer had bin shadderin' you from your birth, and that you hadn't
paid a cent p