thought. Why wouldn't his Psyche picture fit in? The boss thinks it's worth lookin' up, and an hour later he comes back from the dealer's with the trade all made. And inside of three weeks no less than two dozen magazines was bindin' in a full page in colors showin' the fair form of the Countess Zecchi bendin' over a limpid pool tryin' to fish out a cake of Morning Glory soap. It was a big winner, that ad. The soap firm ordered a hundred thousand copies struck off on heavy plate paper, and if you sent in five wrappers with a two-cent stamp you'd be mailed a copy to tack up in the parlor.

Whether or not the general public would have recognized the Countess Zecchi as the girl in the soap ad. if she'd kept still about it is a question. Most likely it wouldn't. But the Countess didn't keep still. That wasn't her way. She proceeds to put up a holler. The very day she discovers the picture, through kind friends who almost swamped her with cut-out copies and telegrams, she rushes back to New York and calls up the reporters. All one afternoon she throws cat fits for their benefit up at her Plutoria apartment. She tells 'em what a wicked outrage has been sprung on her by a wretched shrimp of humanity who flags under the name of Bean and pretends to be a portrait painter. She goes into details about the mental anguish that has almost prostrated her since she discovered the fiendish assault on her privacy, and she announces how she has begun action for criminal libel and started suit for damages to the tune of half a million dollars.

Well, you've seen what the papers did to that bit of news. They sure did play it up, eh? The Psyche picture, with all its sketchy draperies, was printed side by side with half tones of the Countess Zecchi. And of course they didn't neglect F. Hallam Bean. He has to be photographed and interviewed, too. Also, Hallam wasn't dodgin' either a note-book or a camera. As a result he is mentioned as "the well-known portrait painter of Greenwich Village," and so on. One headline I remember was like this: "Founder of American Revertist School Sued for Half Million."

I expect I kidded Mr. Robert more or less about his artist friend. He don't know quite how to take it, Mr. Robert. In one way he feels kind of responsible for Hallam, but of course he ain't worried much about the damage suit. The Countess might get a judgment, but she'd have a swell time collectin' anything over a dollar forty-nine, all of which she must have known as well as anybody. But she was gettin' front page space. So was F. Hallam. And the soap firm was runnin' double shifts fillin' new orders.

Then here one afternoon, as Mr. Robert and me are puttin' the finishin' touches to a quarterly report, who should drift into the Corrugated general offices but F. Hallam Bean, all dolled up in an outfit that he must have collected at some costumers. Anyway, I ain't seen one of them black cape coats for years, and the wide-brimmed black felt hat is a curio. Also he's gone back to the flowin' necktie and is lettin' his hair grow wild again.

"Well, well!" says I. "Right off the boulevard, eh?"

"Why the masquerade?" demands Mr. Robert.

He don't seem a bit disturbed at our josh, but just smiles sort of satisfied and superior. "I suppose it is different," says he, "but then, so am I. I've just been having some new photos taken. They're to be used with an article I'm contributing to a Sunday paper. It is to be entitled, 'What is a Revertist?' They are paying me $100 for it. Not bad, eh!"

"Pretty soft, I'll say," says I. "Soak 'em while the soakin's good."

"Still getting on well with your job?" asked Mr. Robert.

"Oh, I've chucked that," says Hallam airy. "No more of that degrading grind for me. I've arrived, you know."

"Eh?" gasps Mr. Robert. "Where?"

"Why," says F. Hallam, "don't you understand what has happened during these last two weeks? Fame has found me out. I am known as the founder of a new school of art—the original Revertist. My name has become a household word. And before this absurd libel suit is finished I shall be painting the portraits of all the leading society people. They are already asking about me, and as soon as I find a suitable studio—I'm considering one on West 59th Street, facing Central Park—I shall be overwhelmed with orders. It's bound to come."

"You're quite sure this is fame, are you?" asks Mr. Robert.

F. Hallam smiles and shrugs his shoulders. "Quite," says he.

And Mr. Robert can't tell him it's anything else. Hasn't he got his pockets full of newspaper clippings to prove it? Don't people turn and stare after him in the street and nudge each other in the subway cars? Aren't his artist friends giving him a banquet at the Purple Pup? So why should he work for wages any more, or save up any of the easy money that's coming his way? And he sails out indignant, with his cape overcoat swayin' grand from his narrow shoulders.

"I give him up, Torchy," says Mr. Robert. "That is, unless you can suggest some way of making him see what an ass he is. Come, now!"

"All right," says I, gettin a sudden hunch. "I don't know as it will work in his case, for he's got it bad, but suppose we tow him out for a look at Private Ben Riggs?"

"By George!" says Mr. Robert, slappin' his knee. "The very thing. Sunday, eh?"

It was easy enough stagin' the affair. All he had to do was to ask the Beans out for the week-end, and then after Sunday dinner load 'em into the tourin' car, collect me, and drive off about 20 miles or so to the south shore of Long Island.

Maybe, though, you don't remember about Private Ben Riggs? Oh, of course the name still sticks. It's that kind of a name. But just what was it he did? Uh-huh! Scratchin' your head, ain't you? And yet it was less than two years ago that he was figurin' more prominent in the headlines than anybody else you could name, not barrin' Wilson or Von Hindenburg.

One of our first war heroes, Ben Riggs was, and for nearly two weeks there he had the great American people shoutin' themselves hoarse in his honor, as you might say. There was editorials, comparin' his stunt to what Dewey did at Manila Bay, or Hobson at Santiago, and showin' how Private Ben had a shade the best of it, after all. The Sunday illustrated sections had enlarged snapshots of him, of his boyhood home in Whositville; of his dear old mother who made that classic remark, "Now, wasn't that just like Ben"; and of his girlish sweetheart, who was cashier at the Acme Lunch and who admitted that "she always had known Ben was going to be a great man some day."

Then when the governor of Ben's state worked his pull and got Ben sent home right in the midst of it all there was another grand hooray—parades, banquets and so on. And they raised that testimonial fund for him to buy a home with, and presented him with a gold medal. Next, some rapid firin' publishin' firm rushed out a book: "Private Ben Rigg's Own Story," which he was supposed to have written. And then, too, he went on in a vaudeville sketch and found time to sign a movie contract with a firm that was preparin' to screen his big act, "True To Life."

It was along about that stage that Private Ben, with more money in the bank than he'd ever dreamed came from all the mints, got this great scheme in his nut that a noble plute like him ought to have a big estate somewhere and build a castle on it. So he comes out here on the south shore, lets a real estate shark get hold of him, and the next thing he knows he owns about a hundred acres of maybe the most worthless land on the whole island. His next move is to call in an architect, and inside of a month a young army of laborers was layin' the foundations for what looked like a