diplomacy never to come within that youth his
ken. The morning voyage to the post-office,
long mocked as a fable and screen by the families
of the sages, had grown so difficult to accomplish
for one of them, Colonel Flitcroft (Colonel in the
war with Mexico), that he had been put to it,
indeed, to foot the firing-line against his wife (a lady
of celebrated determination and hale-voiced at
seventy), and to defend the rental of a box which
had sheltered but three missives in four years.
Desperation is often inspiration; the Colonel
brilliantly subscribed for the Standard, forgetting to
give his house address, and it took the others just
thirteen days to wring his secret from him. Then
the Standard served for all.

Mail-time had come to mean that bright hour
when they all got their feet on the brass rod which
protected the sills of the two big windows, with the
steam-radiators sizzling like kettles against the
side wall. Mr. Jonas Tabor, who had sold his
hardware business magnificently (not magnificently
for his nephew, the purchaser) some ten years
before, was usually, in spite of the fact that he
remained a bachelor at seventy-nine, the last to settle
down with the others, though often the first to reach
the hotel, which he always entered by a side door,
because he did not believe in the treating system.
And it was Mr. Eskew Arp, only seventy-five, but
already a thoroughly capable cynic, who, almost