gar
at arm's length and looked between his elevated feet at the landscape:
"'Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples, for I am sick of love.'
Great old lover--Solomon. Rather out of the amateur class--with his
thousand wives and concubines; perhaps a virtuous man withal, but hardly
a fanatic on the subject; and when he said he was sick of love--probably
somewhere in his fifties,--Solomon voiced a profound man's truth. Most
of us are. Speaking generally of love, my boy, I am with Solomon. There
is nothing in it."

The cigar in his finely curved mouth--the sensuous mouth of youth, that
had pursed up dryly in middle age--was pointed upward. It stood out from
a reddish lean face and moved when the muscles of the face worked
viciously in response to some inward reflection of Tom Van Dorn.

He drawled on, "Think of the time men fool away chasing calico. I've
gone all the gaits, and I know what I'm talking about. Ladies and Judy
O'Gradies, married and single, decent and indecent--it's all the same. I
tell you, young man, there's nothing in it! Love," he laughed a little
laugh: "Love--why, when I was in the business," he sniffed, "I never had
any trouble loving any lady I desired, nor getting her if I loved her
long enough and strong enough. When I was a young cub like you," Van
Dorn waved his weed grandly toward the young broker, "I used to keep
myself awake, cutting notches in my memory--naming over my conquests.
But now I use it as a man does the sheep over the fence, to put me to
sleep, and I haven't been able to pass my fortieth birthday in the list
for two years, without snoozing. What a fool a man can make of himself
over calico! The ladies, God bless 'em, have got old John Barleycorn
beaten a mile, when it comes to playing hell with a man's life. Again
speaking broadly, and allowing for certain exceptions, I should say--"
he paused to give the judicial pomp of reflection to his
utterances--"the bigger fool the woman is, the greater fool a man makes
of himself for her. And all for what?"

His young guest interjected the word "Love?" in the pause. The Judge
made a wry face and continued:

"Love? Love--why, man, you talk like a school girl. There is no love.
Love and God are twin myths by which we explain the relation of our
fates to our follies. The only thing about me that will live is the
blood I transmit to my children! We live in posterity. As for love and
all the mysteries of the temple--waugh--woof!" he shu