the city's wealthiest brokers and business men seeking trifling
loans of half a dozen millions or so from the dingy old lady with
the prehistoric handbag.

The stenographer and typewriter of the Acropolis Hotel (there! I've
let the name of it out!) was Miss Ida Bates. She was a hold-over
from the Greek classics. There wasn't a flaw in her looks. Some
old-timer paying his regards to a lady said: "To have loved her was
a liberal education." Well, even to have looked over the black hair
and neat white shirtwaist of Miss Bates was equal to a full course
in any correspondence school in the country. She sometimes did a
little typewriting for me, and, as she refused to take the money
in advance, she came to look upon me as something of a friend and
protégé. She had unfailing kindliness and a good nature; and not
even a white-lead drummer or a fur importer had ever dared to cross
the dead line of good behaviour in her presence. The entire force of
the Acropolis, from the owner, who lived in Vienna, down to the head
porter, who had been bedridden for sixteen years, would have sprung
to her defence in a moment.

One day I walked past Miss Bates's little sanctum Remingtorium,
and saw in her place a black-haired unit--unmistakably a
person--pounding with each of her forefingers upon the keys. Musing
on the mutability of temporal affairs, I passed on. The next day I
went on a two weeks' vacation. Returning, I strolled through the
lobby of the Acropolis, and saw, with a little warm glow of auld
lang syne, Miss Bates, as Grecian and kind and flawless as ever,
just putting the cover on her machine. The hour for closing had
come; but she asked me in to sit for a few minutes in the dictation
chair. Miss Bates explained her absence from and return to the