civilized; we are civilization! You see I'm a native, and devoted to the home sod. My father was one of the first settlers. I never knew why," he laughed again—it was a pleasant laugh—"but I've tried to live up to my duties as one of the first Caucasians born in the county. Some day I'll be exhibited at the State Fair and little children will look at me with awe and admiration."

"That makes me feel very humble. I'm almost afraid to tell you that I'm a native of Boston, with a long line of highly undistinguished and terribly conventional ancestors back of me. My father was never west of Albany; my mother was never in a sleeping-car. But I'm not a tenderfoot. I rode the initiating bronco in Wyoming through all the degrees; and a cowboy once shot at me on his unlucky day."

"Oh, your title's clear. That record gives you all the rights of a native."

Raridan waved away the waiter who had been hovering near, and who now went over to the electric switch and threatened them with light.

"That's too good to lose," Raridan said, nodding toward the west in explanation.

Warrick Raridan was, socially speaking, the most available man in the Clarkson Blue Book. He was a graduate in law who did not practise, for he had, unfortunately, been left alone in the world at twenty-six, with an income that seemed wholly adequate for his[Pg 16] immediate or future needs. He maintained an office, which was fairly well equipped with the literature of his profession, but this was merely to take away the reproach of his busier fellow citizens; it was not thought respectable to be an idler in Clarkson, even on reputable antecedents and established credit. But Raridan's office was useful otherwise than in providing its owner with a place for receiving his mail. It was the rendezvous for a variety of committees to which he was appointed by such unrelated bodies as the Clarkson Dramatic Club and the Diocesan Board of Missions of the Episcopal Church. He had never, by any chance, been pointed to as a model young man, but religious matters interested him sporadically, and he was referred to facetiously by his friends, when his punctilious religious observances were mentioned, as a fine type of the "cheerful Christian." He appeared every Sunday at the cathedral, which was the fashionable church in Clarkson, where he passed the plate for the alms and oblations of the well-dressed congregation; and he said of himself, with conscious humor, that he thought he did it rather well.

[Pg 16]

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