afternoon, this one emptied into my depths instead of the face of Mr. Saint Louis.

“That’s good, too,” returned my new-found friend with a laugh as she again wrote a word or two on the nice white paper. Then she placed her elbow upon the table, leaned her very firm cheek on her hand, and regarded me with fine and honest and sympathetic eyes. “I wonder what America is going to do to a beautiful boy like you. I’m glad that you are going to beat it to the tall timbers of the Harpeth Valley. There are women in New York who would eat you up alive. There’s La Frigeda, alias Maggie Sullivan from Milwaukee, over there devouring you with her eyes at this moment, and that pretty little Stuyvesant Blaine debutante hasn’t taken her eyes off of you long enough to eat her spiced ice. I know ’em both and could land something from either one if I introduced you in your title and very beautiful clothes.”

“Oh, I beg a pardon of you that I have not the time to have an introduction to your friends,” I exclaimed with a very true regret, because I did like that very nice woman and would have liked much to have brought advantage to her. “In less than an hour I must ‘beat’ to those ‘tall timbers of Harpeth’ you mention.”

“Speaking of the State of Harpeth, I don’t know as you’ll be so safe after all, young friend, if that is any sample of the variety of women that flower in that classic land of the cotton and the magnolia which I met at Mrs. Creed Payne’s war baby tea the other afternoon,” mused my fine friend as I paid the garçon for the very good tea. “She is in high-up political circles down there in Old Harpeth and from the bunch of women she was with I make a guess she is taking an interest in war contracts. She was with that Mrs. Benton, who pulled off that spectacular deal for desiccated soups for Greece the other day. My stomach is too delicate to feed soldiers dried dog and rotten cabbage melted down into glue in a can, but they may like the idea if not the soup. Anyway, the woman was a beauty, so don’t you let her get you.”

“I do not entirely understand you, my dear Madam, and I wish that I might have many days to talk with you about these American customs,” I said as I put into my pocket the exchange money handed to me by the garçon.

“Well, it is not exactly an American custom I have been putting you next to, and I guess I’m patriotically glad that you don’t entirely understand. Now, I’m going to put you on the train for Old Harpeth and kiss you good-bye for your mother. I’m not trusting Frigeda, and she’s lingering. Come on if your train leaves at six o’clock.”

And while she spoke, my interesting and fine woman rose and allowed me to assist her into her gray coat of tweed that was very like to mine.

It was with regret that I parted from that lady at the door of the taxicab that had been called for her, and I bent over and kissed her hand, the first woman that Mr. Robert Carruthers had ever so saluted.

“Good-bye, boy! Remember, the tall timbers of Harpeth are best. Run right down and get a Southern belle and beauty to settle down and have a dozen babies for you, just like ‘befo’ the war.’ Good-bye! I’ll send you down a paper to-morrow. I don’t suppose the New York journals ever penetrate the Harpeth Valley. Good-bye again.” And then my friend was gone, leaving me once more alone in New York and very shy of those tweed trousers, which I immediately put with me into another taxicab which was directed to the Pennsylvania Station.

At that Pennsylvania Station I remembered to send to my wicked Uncle an announcement by telegram of my arrival to him and then I got upon the train just in time for its departure.

I have remarked that life is like high waves of fate that break in sparkling white crests over buried mines, and I am now led to believe that many of those mines are but the habitation of mermaids of much mischief. Are all ripples on life due to women at the bottom of the matter? I do not know, but it would seem true from the things that immediately began to befall me. And was it not I, a woman who was called daredevil, who began it all?

These Pullman cars of America in which to travel great distances, are very remarkable for their many strange adventures, and I was very much interested but also perturbed when the black garçon placed my bag and overcoat upon the floor at the feet of a very prim lady and left me to stand uncomfortably in the aisle before her.

“Your seat, sir, upper five,” he said, and departed with my fifty centimes, which is called a dime in America.

In the little division which I could see was marked five were two nice seats that were to each other face to face, but it appeared that neither of them was vacant for Mr. Robert Carruthers. On one the lady sat with very stiff black silk skirts projecting from her sides, as did her thin elbows also in the stiffness of white linen. Beside her, occupying the rest of her seat, was a hat with large black bows of equal stiffness with the rest of the lady’s apparel and disposition not to be friendly. On the seat opposite, which from the nature of my ticket and the case I should have supposed belonged to me, were piled two large bundles, a shiny black bag, a black silk coat, also stiff like the lady, an umbrella, two magazines and a basket of fruit. No place was apparent for me or my bags or my overcoat. It seemed as if it would be best for me to stand in the middle of the car all the way to the State of Harpeth so that the lady’s stiffness be not disarranged. I did not know what I should do, and my knees began again to feel weak in that gray tweed and to be cold for their accustomed skirts, but the lady looked out of the window and said not a single word. I did not have any convenient cup of tea in my hand to throw in that lady’s face in a manner that would not be permitted a gentleman, but if I had had the very lovely lorgnette that has descended to me from my Great Grandmamma, the wife of the old Flanders grandsire, I would have settled the matter with very little trouble in an entirely ladylike manner. As it was, I did not know what to do but stand and then stand longer. Just at the moment when I began to feel that I would either be forced to forget that I was a gentleman or to faint as a lady, a very nice man touched me on the elbow and said:

“Just drop your bag on her feet and come into the smoker. She’s got your game beat,” and he passed on down the aisle of that car. I acted upon that very kind advice and I am glad that from the weight of the bag I got at least a small action from the stiff lady if only a groan and a glare. Also I should have been grateful that she had so discourteously treated me so that I was fortunate to receive the attention of Mr. George Slade of Detroit as my first experience in American manhood.

That Mr. Slade of Detroit is a man of remarkable adventures, and he related to me many of them as he sat with me in the place reserved for the smoking of gentlemen. They were all about ladies who resided in the different towns to which he traveled in the pursuit of selling cigars, and he called them all by the name of “skirts.”

“I tell you, Mr. Dago, there is a skirt in Louisville, Kentucky, that is such a peach that you’d call for the cream jug on sight. It would pay you to stop off and see her. She’s on the level all right, but any friend that took a line from me would be nuts to her. See?” And he bestowed upon me a pleasant wink from his eye. To that I made no response. I could make none.

“Now, Mr. Robert Carruthers,” I had said to myself at the beginning of the first story of “skirts,” “you will find yourself obliged to be in the presence of men as one of their kind and not throw scalding tea in their faces when they speak of ladies. You are of a great ignorance about the brute that is known as man and you must learn to know him as you do the wild hog in hunting.” But even for the sake of a larger