is time that the phrase, "See America First," came into such
wide circulation. It was considered the thing to look over the Grand
Canyon or the Yellowstone Park, or to run down to Florida, rather than
cross the ocean; and I next heard of Shelby in the West, diligently
writing--for other magazines. He had brought out one more novel, "The
Orange Sunset," and it had gone far better than the first, which must
have heartened him and given him a fresh impetus. He changed book
publishers, too--went to a smarter firm who did much for him in the way
of publicity. And special editions, in limp covers, helped his sales.
Even his short stories were brought out, and as little brochures, in
gorgeous binding with colored illustrations, a single tale would attract
the romantic maiden. It was a chocolate-cream appeal; but cream-drops
have their uses in this weary world.

The San Francisco earthquake--I believe they always allude to it out
there as "the fire"--occurred--that next year; and Stanton, who had
succeeded old Hanscher in Herald Square--the latter had died in harness
at his desk--heard, in that mysterious way that newspaper men hear
everything, that Shelby was in the ill-fated city when the earth rocked
on that disastrous night. Immediately he telegraphed him, "Write two
thousand words of your experiences, your sensations in calamity. Wire
them immediately. Big check awaits you."

Silence followed. Stanton and I talked it over, and we concluded that
Shelby must have been killed.

"If he isn't dead, here at last is the great adventure he has been
longing for," I couldn't help saying.

No word ever came from him; but two weeks later he blew into town, and
again Stanton found out that he had arrived.

"Why didn't you answer my wire?" he telephoned him.

"I couldn't," Shelby rather whimpered over the line. "You see, Stanton,
old top, the thing got me too deeply. I just couldn't--I hope you'll
understand--write one word of it."

But it was not the grief of the man who feels so deeply that he cannot
shed a tear. It was the craven in Shelby that had shocked the
meretricious Shelby into insensibility, into utter inarticulateness in
one of the crowning disasters of the ages.

In the face of something so real, so terribly real, he was but a puny
worm, with no vocabulary to express his emotions--for he had none, save
the emotion of fear. That we knew from people who had been at the same
hotel where he was stopping when the great