You
are so nearly like ten thousand men I have seen to-day that you couldn't
be picked out from them if it weren't for your laundry marks."
"Camembert," finished William. "What's that? Oh, you've still
got your hammer out for New York, have you? Well, little old
Noisyville-on-the-Subway is good enough for me. It's giving me mine.
And, say, I used to think the West was the whole round world--only
slightly flattened at the poles whenever Bryan ran. I used to yell
myself hoarse about the free expense, and hang my hat on the horizon,
and say cutting things in the grocery to little soap drummers from
the East. But I'd never seen New York, then, Jack. Me for it from the
rathskellers up. Sixth Avenue is the West to me now. Have you heard this
fellow Crusoe sing? The desert isle for him, I say, but my wife made me
go. Give me May Irwin or E. S. Willard any time."
"Poor Billy," said the artist, delicately fingering a cigarette. "You
remember, when we were on our way to the East how we talked about this
great, wonderful city, and how we meant to conquer it and never let it
get the best of us? We were going to be just the same fellows we had
always been, and never let it master us.
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