he had a reminiscence and a scheme; if gambling, a hard-luck story and
a system. There was no quarter of the globe of which he had not been an
inhabitant.

Once the timbered riches of Africa being mentioned, at once the Major gave
us a most graphic account of how "the old house"--for thus he designated
some commercial establishment, which either had no existence or which he
had some reason for not more particularly indicating--had sent him in
charge of a rosewood saw mill on the Ganges, and, after many ups and downs,
of how the floods had come and swept the plant away; and Rudolph Fink, who
was of the party, immediately said, "I can attest the truth of The Major's
story, because my brother Albert and I were in charge of some fishing camps
at the mouth of the Ganges at the exact date of the floods, and we caught
many of those rosewood logs in our nets as they floated out to sea."

Augustine's Terrapin came to be for a while the rage in Philadelphia, and
even got as far as New York and Washington, and straightway, The Major
declared he could and would make Augustine and his terrapin look "like a
monkey." He proposed to give a dinner.

There were great preparations and expectancy. None of us ate much at
luncheon that day. At the appointed hour, we assembled at The Brunswick. I
will dismiss the decorations and the preludes except to say that they were
Parisian. After a while in full regalia The Major appeared, a train of
servants following with a silver tureen. The lid was lifted.

"_Voila!_" says he.

The vision disclosed to our startled eyes was an ocean that looked like
bean soup flecked by a few strands of black crape!