Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich

et in the City. It is a Grecian building of white stone. About it are great e

is not half so impressive, in the real sense, as what you may observe every morning on Plutoria Avenue beside the Mausoleum Club in the quietest part of the city. Here you may see a little toddling princess in a rabbit suit who owns fifty distilleries in her own right. There, in a lacquered perambulator, sails past a little hooded head that controls from its cradle an entire New Jersey corporation. The United States attorney-general is suing her as she sits, in a vain attempt to make her dissolve herself into constituent companies. Near by is a child of four, in a khaki suit, who represents the merger of

you see the tops of the sky-scraping buildings in the big commercial streets, and can hear or almost hear the roar of the elevated railway, ea

see the slums from there. But why should you? And on the other hand, if you never went up on the roof, bu

. The richer members are not ashamed to take the steps one at a time, first one foot and then the other; and at tight money periods, when there is a black cloud hanging over the Stock Exchange, you may see each and

Club on just such an evening. Its broad corridors and deep recesses are filled with shepherdesses such as you never saw, dressed in beautiful shimmering gowns, and wearing feathers in their hair that droop off sideways at every angle known to trigonometry. And there are shepherds, too, with broad white waistcoats and little patent leather shoes and heavy faces and congested cheeks. And there is dancing and conversation among the shepherds and shepherdesses, with such brill

t whiskey and Lithia water, and those who have important business to do in the afternoon limit themselves to whiskey and Radnor, or whiskey and Magi water. There are as many kinds of bubbling, gurgling, mineral waters in the caverns of the Mausoleum Club

ger ones explaining that the country is forging ahead as it never did before; but chiefly they love to talk of great national questions, such as the protective tariff and the need of raising it,

ables glittering with cut glass and green and yellow Rhine wines; and after dinner they sit again among the palm-trees, half-hidden in the blue smoke, still talking of the tariff and the labour class and trying to wash away the memory and the sadness of

ly," said Mr. Lucullus Fyshe on one side of the lunc

ns," said M

glassful of soda and handed

ully," he said, "is ther

ns," said

nkly-not too m

ecided

rcentage of sodium bicarbonate was

said Mr. Furlong, and in

she, "I shall use it for the

After all, what was a duke to a man who was president of the People's Traction and Suburban Co., and the Republican Soda and Siphon Co-operative, and chief director of the People's

ets a little over-sensitive about the possibility of his

s too much ammonia in the bacon; and another one protest at the amount of glucose in the olive oil; and another that there is too high a percentage of nitrogen in the anchovy. A man of distorted imagination might think this tasting of chemicals in the food a sort of nemesis of fate upon the members. But that would be very foolish, for i

ive college education calculated to develop all the faculties. Moreover, a rector of the Anglican Church who has been in the foreign mission field is the kind of person from whom one can find out, more or less incidentally, how one should address and converse with a du

Dulham. And Mr. Furlong, realizing that a clergyman must be all things to all men and not avoid a man merely because he is a duke, had accepted the invitat

downright fashion of a man so democratic that he is practically a revolutionary socialist, and doesn't mind sayin

is morning, did he n

I sent a telegram through one of our New York directors of the Tract

r pleasure?" a

une in American securities," but he thought better of it. Even with the clergy it is well

long?" asked

uld have said, "Not if I can get his money out of him

on of the Anglican Church in America should afford him an object of much consideratio

p," said

reat phil

y gr

ng a devout sip of the unfinished soda

acy as "these fellows.") "Land, you know, feudal estates; sheer robbery, I call it. How the working-class, the proletariat, stand f

urite topic; but he interrupted himself,

ean," he said, "by servi

said the waiter, "s

nd see that you don't serve me stuff o

, sir," sai

Gad, if I had my way I'd fire the whole lot of them: lock 'em out, put 'em on the street. That would teach 'em. Yes, Furlong, you'll l

king delegate of the Waiters' International Union leaning against a sideboard, with his bowler hat over one corner of his eye, and talking to

nyone else tonight?

father," said Mr. Fyshe, "but u

y glad not to have to ask your father, whom I w

irely the wrong man for Mr. Fyshe's present purpose. In fact, he was reputed to be as smart a man as ever sold a Bible. At this moment he was out of town, busied in New York with the preparation of

asking Mr. Boulde

very decidedly, dismiss

go, on the occasion of the visit of young Viscount FitzThistle to the Mausoleum Club, that Mr. Fyshe had introduced Mr. Boulder to the Viscount and had suffered grievously thereby. F

h man with a great frame suggesting broken strength, with a white beard and with falling under-eyelids that made him look as if he were just about to cry

stocks and cumulative dividends, there was as deep a tone in his qu

iscount, or a sturdy duke, or a popi

xty-five years back, in a lumber state-and, when he spoke of primeval trees and the howl of the wolf at night among the pines, there was the stamp of reality about it that held the visitor sp

ed almost like a sob, "a sort of shooting box, I think you'd call it, up i

uld interject, "made of logs

at once with logs, and Mr. Boulde

just the plain cedar, not squared, you know, the old or

itement was obvious. "And is t

is voice half choking at the sadness of the th

they fe

y so-quite un

nt to start for Wisconsin at once, even befo

ered with wolf bites, his whole available fortune was so completely invested in Mr. Bou

ntally round a big fire under the Wisconsin tim

lder to his little dinner. No, indeed. In fact, his one aim w

ity looking for investments, he telephoned at once to his little place in Wisconsin-which had, of course, a primeval telephone wire running to it-and told his steward to ha

coming then?"

ur. I thought the Duke might be interested in meeting Boomer. He may c

splendid chance in meeting the gigantic Dr.

a short talk-say half an hour-on the relative antiquity of the Neanderthal skull and the gravel deposits of the Missouri, his chance had come. He could learn as much a

meet a duke than an ar

o endow a chair in Primitive Anthropology, or do any useful little thing of the sort, that was only fair business all round; or if he even was willing to give a moderate sum

tation with alacrity, and had taken a look through the lis

d been driven up Fifth Avenue and had kept his eyes open for potatoes, but there were none. Nor had he seen any shorthorns in Central Park

wrapped up for him to take away, and tipped the head waiter twenty-five cents, feeling that in an extravagant country the only thing to do is to go the people one better. So the Duke carried the potato round for five days in New York and showed it to everybody. But beyond this he got no sign of agriculture out of the place at all. No one who entertained him seemed to know what the beef that they gave him had been fed on; no one, even in what seemed the best society, could talk rationally about preparing a hog for the breakfast table. People seemed to eat cauliflower without dis

ey, the awkwardness of how to go about it naturally makes one gloomy and preoccupied. Had there been broad fields of turnips to walk in and Holstein cattle to punch in the ribs, one might have managed to borrow it i

Towers for twenty thousand sterling, and by selling his Scotch shooting and leasing his Irish grazing and sub-letting his Welsh coal rent he could raise altogether a hundred thousand pounds. This for a duke, is an enormous sum. If he once had it he would be able

ung Marquis of Beldoodle, had to put in most of his time shooting big game in Uganda, with only twenty or twenty-five beaters, and with so few carriers and couriers and such a dearth of elephant men and hyena boys that the thing was a perfect scandal. The Duke indeed was so poor that a younger son, simply to add his efforts to those of the rest, was compelled to pass his days in mountain climbing in the Himalayas, and the Duke's daughter was obliged to pay long visits to minor German princesses, putting up with all sorts of hardship. And while the ducal family wandered about in this way-climbing mountains, and shooting hyenas, and saving mo

never borrowed it, and the Duke chafed under the necessity. There was something about the process that went against the grain. To sit down in pleasant converse with a man, perhaps almost a gentleman, and then

usand dollars to buy a house, or five millions to buy a railroad with complete indifference, and pay it back, too, if he could, and think nothing of it. In fact, ever so m

ely back to his hotel not a dollar the richer. The thing was childish, and he knew it. But to save his life the Duke didn't know how to begin. None of the things that he was able to talk about seemed to have the remotest connection with the subject of money. The Duke was able to converse reasonably well over such topics as the approaching downfall of England (they had talked of it at Dulham Towers for sixty years), or over the duty of England towards China, or the duty of England to Persia, or its duty to aid the Young Turk M

ung men in Nigeria, and as middle-aged men in St. Petersburg), and Belstairs, who was in abundant spirits and who was returning to England on the Glorita

a sigh, "How the deuce

wh

ple to talk about it? Here I am wanting to borrow a hundr

pening. Just borrow it straight out-ask for it across a dinner ta

le?" repeated the Duke

oon, you know-say after a second glass of

us Fyshe, praying him, as he was reported to be visiting the next day the City where

oon as Mr. Fyshe should give him a second glass of wine, that seco

hat provided he could make the Duke drink a second glass of the Mausole

the Duke of Dulham arrives at the Grand Palaver this morning," after which it traced the Duke's pedigree back to Jock of Ealing in the twelfth century and let the matter go at that; and the noon edition of the People's Advocate merely wrote, "We learn that Duke Dulham is in town. He is a r

reached every member of the Maus

m the look of him he could have got a job at sight in any lumber camp in Wisconsin. He wore a dinner jacket, just like an ordinary person, but even without his Norfolk coat and h

m a modest, quiet place, very different from the staring ostentation tha

hem. Mr. Fyshe he had met already that afternoon at the Palaver, and he called him "Fyshe" as if he had known him forever; and indeed, after a few minutes he called the rector of St. Asaph's simp

the leaf of a rubber tree with his fing

, "I imagine so"; and he added,

the Duke, "after big game,

t any?" ask

id the Duke; "

aid Mr.

d added, "My sister was luckier, though; she potted a rhino

called i

pocket an eyeglass that he used for pictures and for Tamworth hogs, and he put it to his eye with

so," said

places ever to speak of "values" or "compositions" or anything of that sort. The Duke merely looked at a picture an

t of criticism. The Duke had l

w York," he went on, "but really the things y

r else in the soft, expensive light that shone on them, enabled him to see in the distant b

e water, Fyshe," said the Duke,

eal thought, he would have said, "Show me your which?"

to the Duke, and shook hands with Mr. Furlong, and talked to both of them, and named the kind of cocktail that he wanted, all in one breath, and in the very next he was asking the Duke about the Babylonian hieroglyphic bricks that his grandfather, the thirteenth Duke, had bro

d with Dr. Boomer and the Nigerian rubber tree and the shaded pictures and the charm of the whole place and the cer

ou have here, real

casual tone, "a comfortabl

tchens of the Mausoleum Club, Mr. Fyshe would have realized

riting down names and distributing strikers' cards of the International Union and assuring them that the "boys" of the Grand Palaver ha

tting on shabby jackets and bowler hats, worn sideways, and changing themselves by a wo

head waiter, shaking with apprehension, appeared with cocktails made by himself, in glasses that he himsel

adn't noticed them, and the Doctor assured him that Strabo had indubitably mentioned them (he would show the Duke the very passage), and that they apparently lay, if his memory served him, about halfway bet

f Nigerian geography, and explained that he had once actually descende

wards the private dining-room upstairs, still busily talking of the Bimbaweh remains, and the s

ut glass and flowers (as arranged by a retreating philosopher now heading tow

a most comfortable

ess-for he had been sending out telephone messages in vain to the Grand Palaver and the Continental, like the captain of a sinking ship-served oysters that he had opene

oysters as a Nigerian hippo might eat up the crew of a doolie, in great mo

ce in structure between the Mexican pueblo and the tribal house of the Navajos, and lest the Duke should confound eith

as directing angry glances towards the door, looking for the reappearance of the wait

ered a plate of oysters an ample meal. I should have

t), "these are the things that are going to ruin us. Mark my words, the whole thing is bound to end in a tremendous crash. I don't mind telling you, Duke-my friends here, I am sure, know it already-that I am more or less a revolutionary socialist. I am absolutely convinced, sir,

g the case. They were all going to

plaining with flashing eyes that it was bound to come, that it came; and when it came it li

ed and leaned over the back of Mr.

?" said M

tures stricken with inwa

. Fyshe, starting back in his chair. "On

. I'd hoped I might have got help from the outside,

r. Fyshe, speaking very slow

pears the chef hadn't even cooked it. Beyon

catastrop

lls, thinking perhaps of his college days. The Duke, with his hundred thousand dashed from his lips in the second cup o

was too true an artist to think that finance could be carried on over the table-cloth of a second-rate restaurant,

she dissolved itself into its constituent elements, like broken piec

tor to the brilliant rotunda of the Grand

d off home to his rectory, musing

ds along Plutoria Avenue, beneath the elm trees. Nor had they gon

d, "delightful. I feel e

led Mr. Fyshe, who was feeling in the sourest of democratic

the air; "I don't refer to that. Oh, not at all. I was thinking of his finan

ee and fortunes of the greater ducal families from Jock of Ealing downwards was nothing. It

in his tracks. "His financial posit

family are practically ruined. The Duke, I imagine, is under the necessity of mort

tion. Any man accustomed to the Sto

your door. May I just run in and use your tel

e Duke of Dulham, who came in quite unexpectedly from New York; felt sure you'd like to meet him. Wanted you at the club for dinner, and now it

llent idea-most kind of you. Pray do send your motor to the hotel and give the

of Mr. Boulder was rolling down from Plu

ar as they were in many ways, they found a common bond of interest in sport. And it is quite likely that Mr. Boulder may have mentioned that he had a hunting-lodge-what the Duke would call

t could measure the effect

t his breakfast-table next morning chuckled with sup

his morning with Mr. Asmodeus Boulder for the Wisconsin woods. We understand that Mr. Boul

olf traps and Heaven knows what. And the Duke had on his very roughest sporting-suit, made, apparently, of alligator hide; and as he sat there with a rifle across his knees, while the train swept onwards through open fiel

silent eyes, and murmured from time to time some re

nd fiercer still into whose hands the Duke

nsin, and to the Mausoleum Club the Duke and his vis