and the third-precinct police-station of Washington, D. C, which is
not enchanting. It is several thousand miles. Again, if you will take
the pains to run your glance, no doubt discerning, over the police-
blotter at the court (and frankly, I refuse to tell you the exact
date of this whimsical adventure), you will note with even greater
surprise that all this hubbub was caused by no crime against the
commonwealth of the Republic or against the person of any of its
conglomerate people. The blotter reads, in heavy simple fist,
"disorderly conduct," a phrase which is almost as embracing as the
word diplomacy, or society, or respectability.

So far as my knowledge goes, there is no such a person as James
Osborne. If, by any unhappy chance, he _does_ exist, I trust
that he will pardon the civil law of Washington, my own measure of
familiarity, and the questionable taste on the part of my hero--hero,
because, from the rise to the fall of the curtain, he occupies the
center of the stage in this little comedy-drama, and because authors
have yet to find a happy synonym for the word. The name James Osborne
was given for the simple reason that it was the first that occurred
to the culprit's mind, so desperate an effort did he make to hide his
identity. Supposing, for the sake of an argument in his favor,
supposing he had said John Smith or William Jones or John Brown? To
this very day he would have been hiring lawyers to extricate him from
libel and false-representation suits. Besides, had he given any of
these names, would not that hound-like scent of the ever suspicious
police have been aroused?

To move round and round in the circle of commonplace, and then to pop
out of it like a tailed comet! Such is the history of many a man's
life. I have a near friend who went away from town one fall, happy