progress in science? Is it not a fact that the greatest inventors
and scientists of our time--Marconi, who gave to the world
wireless telegraphy, Professor Curie, who discovered radium,
Pasteur, who found a cure for rabies, Santos-Dumont, who has
almost succeeded in navigating the air, Professor Röntgen who
discovered the X-ray--are not all these immortals Europeans? And
those two greatest mechanical inventions of our day, the
automobile and the submarine boat, were they not first introduced
and perfected in France before we in America woke up to appreciate
their use? Is it, therefore, not possible to take life easily and
still achieve?

The logic of these arguments, set forth in _Le Soir_ in an article
on the New World, appealed strongly to Jefferson Ryder as he sat
in front of the Café de la Paix, sipping a sugared Vermouth. It
was five o'clock, the magic hour of the _apéritif_, when the
glutton taxes his wits to deceive his stomach and work up an
appetite for renewed gorging. The little tables were all occupied
with the usual before-dinner crowd. There were a good many
foreigners, mostly English and Americans and a few Frenchmen,
obviously from the provinces, with only a sprinkling of real
Parisians.

Jefferson's acquaintance with the French language was none too
profound, and he had to guess at half the words in the article,
but he understood enough to follow the writer's arguments. Yes, it
was quite true, he thought, the American idea of life was all
wrong. What was the sense of slaving all one's life, piling up a
mass of money one cannot possibly spend, when there is only one
life to live? How much saner the man who is content with enough