The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories

of the New York dailies. He finished the news, the editorials, the special articles: nothing was there to upset the equilibrium of his life. His

ype allotted them, by the fact that their function was not held over

, unsuspected by himself, the readjustment of his mind to other interests b

lection, he became generally interested in the recreations of the great world: he acquired a habit, much to his

ven he, prosaic, phlegmatic, with nerves of iron and brain of shallows, had in him that germ of the picturesque which in some natures shoots to high and full-flowered ideals, in others t

bies was due,-the family appeared to be a large one,-could not his little wandering ego have found its way into that ugly but notable mansion on Fifth Avenue instead of having been spitefully guided to a New Jersey farm? Not that Andrew expressed him

il half-past five in the afternoon of pleasant days. He lived for the hour which would find him sauntering from Forty-first Street to the Park and back again. He knew all the fashionable men and women by sight. There was no one to tell him their names, but the names themselves were more familiar than the rows of figures in his books down-town. He fitted them to such presences as seemed to demand them as their right. He grew into a certain intimacy with the slender trimly accoutred girls who held themselves so er

boys and poodles. Before him were the wide gates of the Park, the green wooded knolls rolling away-almost to his home in Harlem. Just beyond the gates was a bend in the driveway, and he never tired of watching the stream of carriages wind as from a cavern and roll out to the avenue. The vivid background claimed as its own those superb traps wi

d with that his soul was identified. Insensibly, he began to talk of New York Society as if it were part of his daily experience. His careful, if restricted, study of its habits had made him sufficiently familiar with it to enable him to deceive the wholly ignorant. He described the people, their brilliant "functions," the individualities of certain of its members. He talked freely of Ward McAllister, and imitated that gentleman's peculiarities of thought and speech, so familiar to the newspaper reader. For the time he deceived himself as well as his hearers; and so fa

at the cause was worthy of the sacrifice. One evening, however, he lingered on upper Fifth Avenue longer than usual, and entered late. The restaurant was crowded. He stood at the door, he

ively. "My name's Slocum, and I've seen yo

lowed Mr. Slocum over to the little

s dinner, "I've hit on a plan. It's been in my

a mo

r a month, if I don't have my hair cut. Now, suppose we dine together. One portion's e

s not to be ignored, and he closed with it. For the following three years, until he was twenty-eight, he dined regularly at Delmonico's, a