greenroom, and the patronizing approval of the boxes. He couldn't
put his heart into it any more. The idea of a slow approach to
the luxury of liesure drove him wild. He was, of course,
progressing toward it, but, like a child, eating his ice-cream so
slowly that he couldn't taste it at all.

He wanted to have a lot of money and time and opportunity to read
and play, and the sort of men and women round him that he could
never have--the kind who, if they thought of him at all, would
have considered him rather contemptible; in short he wanted all
those things which he was beginning to lump under the general
head of aristocracy, an aristocracy which it seemed almost any
money could buy except money made as he was making it. He was
twenty-five then, without family or education or any promise that
he would succeed in a business career. He began speculating
wildly, and within three weeks he had lost every cent he had
saved.

Then the war came. He went to Plattsburg, and even there his
profession followed him. A brigadier-general called him up to
headquarters and told him he could serve his country better as a
band leader--so he spent the war entertaining celebrities behind
the line with a headquarters band. It was not so bad--except
that when the infantry came limping back from the trenches he
wanted to be one of them. The sweat and mud they wore seemed
only one of those ineffable symbols of aristocracy that were
forever eluding him.

"It was the private dances that did it. After I came back from
the war the old routine started. We had an offer from a