THE MAKE-BELIEVE MAN


I


I had made up my mind that when my vacation came I would spend it
seeking adventures. I have always wished for adventures, but,
though I am old enough--I was twenty-five last October--and have
always gone half-way to meet them, adventures avoid me. Kinney
says it is my fault. He holds that if you want adventures you must
go after them.

Kinney sits next to me at Joyce & Carboy's, the woollen
manufacturers, where I am a stenographer, and Kinney is a clerk,
and we both have rooms at Mrs. Shaw's boarding-house. Kinney is
only a year older than myself, but he is always meeting with
adventures. At night, when I have sat up late reading law, so that
I may fit myself for court reporting, and in the hope that some day
I may become a member of the bar, he will knock at my door and tell
me some surprising thing that has just happened to him. Sometimes
he has followed a fire-engine and helped people from a fire-escape,
or he has pulled the shield off a policeman, or at the bar of the
Hotel Knickerbocker has made friends with a stranger, who turns out
to be no less than a nobleman or an actor. And women, especially
beautiful women, are always pursuing Kinney in taxicabs and calling
upon him for assistance. Just to look at Kinney, without knowing
how clever he is at getting people out of their difficulties, he
does not appear to be a man to whom you would turn in time of
trouble. You would think women in distress would appeal to some