324 WALL STREET AND THE WILDS 



the same house as I a young man with his wife 

 and little child. He was correspondent for a 

 San Francisco paper and the most versatile man 

 intellectually I have ever met. His disregard of 

 money was phenomenal. He had squandered 

 two moderate fortunes and was often at a loss for 

 money to pay for his baby's milk. Aside from 

 his precarious pay as correspondent he had a tiny 

 income, pa} r able quarterly. 



On one occasion, after receiving his quarterly 

 check, something like twenty-five dollars, he 

 called at the office and invited me out to dine. I 

 tried to escape for I felt what was coming, but 

 I could no more do so than I could avert what 

 followed, excepting at the cost of our friendship. 

 He was a perfect host and he made an intellectual 

 dream of that dinner. Yet I sat through it in 

 distress for he expended the check for which his 

 family and himself were suffering, down to the 

 last dollar or two and these he gave to the waiter. 



A few days after the dinner, on the hottest 

 Sunday of the year his wife handed me a manu- 

 script, saying: 



