"Then brace yourself, Morty," says I, "while I slip you some more
golden words. Tackle that boardin' house bunch of yours. Ah, hold
your breath while you're doin' it, if you want to, and spray yourself
afterwards with disinfectant, but see if you can't learn to mix in."

"But why?" says he. "I can't see the use."

"Say, for the love of Pete," says I, "ain't it hard enough for me to
press out all this wise dope without drawin' diagrams? I don't know
why, only you should. Go on now, take it from me."

Maybe it was followin' my hunch, or maybe there wa'n't anything else
for him to do, but blamed if this didn't work too. Inside of two weeks
he gives me the whole tale, one day as we're sittin' in the armchairs
at the dairy lunch.

"Remember my telling you about the fellow who wore the outing shirt?"
says he. "Well, say, he's quite a chap, you know. He's from some
little town out in Wyoming, and he's on here trying to be a
cartoonist--runs a hoisting engine day times and goes to an art school
evenings. How's that, eh?"

"Sounds batty," says I. "There's most as many would-be cartoonists as
there are nutty ones tryin' to write plays for Belasco."

"But this Blake's going to get there," says Mortimer. "I was up in his
room Sunday, and he showed me some of his work. Clever stuff, a lot of
it. He's landed a couple of things already. Then there's old man
McQuade, the one with the whiskers. Say, he's been all over the
world,--Siberia, Africa, Japan, South America. Used to be selling