mental perturbation perceived that sooner or later he, too, would share the common lot and actually take pleasure in explaining to something pink and white, with large rolling eyes and smiling teeth, that the game of baseball is played with a ball and a bat and that the fielder and not the batter is chasing the ball, that the difference between baseball and football is that a baseball hurts the hands and a football hurts the foot.

Some day when he grew to be Captain of the Eleven like Dink Stover undoubtedly he would condescend to be gazed at and flattered and fondled. If Dink Stover could stand the way Tough McCarthy's sister hung on his arm and flirted openly before the whole school—why of course in permitting such a display of affection Dink Stover was right, for Dink Stover could do no wrong. Some day, then, like his hero, he would condescend to be adored. Some day his turn would come as they sang at the immortal Weber and Fields:

But all this was in the uncharted future. His attitude toward the sex was still the attitude of normal soap-defying boyhood, defensive and belligerent. Yet all this was to change, in the twinkling of an eye, in one short season. The first great disillusionments of youth were at hand and woman with the mask of sympathy and understanding waiting to fashion the man out of the urchin. By what ways, ludicrous and tragically comic, this sentimental progression was achieved is here set down in reverent reminiscence.

CONTENTS

Preface PAGE Likewise a Declaration of Principles vii CHAPTER I Fate in a Bathtub 1 II Birth of an Idea 7 III Macnooder Opens Vistas 10 IV Loneliness of Great Men 16 V The Golden Shower 21 VI Methods of a Financier 26 VII Tragedy 37 VIII When Friends Prove False 40 IX Snorky as a Lady-Killer 51 X Love Lightly Considered 59 XI The Demon of Jealousy 62 XII All's Well That Ends Well 70 XIII A Woman of the World 74 XIV The Plot Against the Mosquito 83 XV The Tennessee Shad Suspects 94 XVI Experiments in Fragrance 99 XVII Soap and Sentiment 110 XVIII Love Comes Like the Measles 118 XIX The Urchin Begins to Bloom 127 XX The Heart of a Brunette 135 XXI Worldly Wisdom of Skippy Bedelle public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@25465@[email protected]#Page_145" class="pginternal"