difficulties; but for what he gave in advice and help the Ad-Visor
took payment in experience and knowledge of human nature. Still it
was the hard, honest study, and the helpful toil which held him to
his task, rather than the romance and adventure which he had hoped
for and Waldemar had foretold--until, in a quiet, street in
Brooklyn, of which he had never so much as heard, there befell that
which, first of many events, justified the prophetic Waldemar and
gave Average Jones a part in the greater drama of the metropolis.
The party of the second part was the Honorable William Linder.

Mr., Linder sat at five P. m., of an early summer day, behind lock
and bolt. The third floor front room of his ornate mansion on
Brooklyn's Park Slope was dedicated to peaceful thought. Sprawled
in a huge and softly upholstered chair at the window, he took his
ease in his house. The chair had been a recent gift from an
anonymous admirer whose political necessities, the Honorable Mr.
Linder idly surmised, had not yet driven him to reveal his identity.
Its occupant stretched his shoeless feet, as was his custom, upon
the broad window-sill, flooded by the seasonable warmth of sunshine,
the while he considered the ripening mayoralty situation. He found
it highly satisfactory. In the language of his inner man, it was a
cinch.

Below, in Kennard Street, a solitary musician plodded. His
pretzel-shaped brass rested against his shoulder. He appeared to be
the "scout" of one of those prevalent and melancholious German
bands, which, under Brooklyn's easy ordinances, are privileged to
draw echoes of the past writhing from their forgotten recesses. The
man looked slowly about him as if apprising potential returns. His
gravid glance encountered the prominent feet in the third story