his seat, very red in the face and wearing a most injured expression.

But President Boon paid no attention except to the singular card,
which he continued to turn over and over, balancing it on his fingers
and holding it now at arm's-length and then near his nose, with one
eye squinted as if he were trying to look through a hole in the card.

At length this odd conduct of the presiding officer drew all eyes upon
the card, and then everybody shared the interest of Mr. Boon. In shape
and size the card was not extraordinary, but it was composed of
metal. What metal? That question had immediately arisen in Mr. Boon's
mind when the card came into his hand, and now it exercised the wits
of all the others. Plainly it was not tin, brass, copper, bronze,
silver, aluminum--although its lightness might have suggested that
metal--nor even base gold.

The president, although a skilled metallurgist, confessed his
inability to say what it was. So intent had he become in examining the
curious bit of metal that he forgot it was a visitor's card of
introduction, and did not even look for the name which it presumably
bore.

As he held the card up to get a better light upon it a stray sunbeam
from the window fell across the metal and instantly it bloomed with
exquisite colors! The president's chair being in the darker end of
the room, the radiant card suffused the atmosphere about him with a
faint rose tint, playing with surprising liveliness into alternate
canary color and violet.

The effect upon the company of clear-headed financiers was extremely