for learning, for literature, and instead of spelling them with a very small "l," as "practical" men sometimes do with age and increasing vanity, he spelled them with huge capitals, erecting them into a position out of all proportion to their relative importance in the life of the human animal. 

 Mr. Feuerstein had just enough knowledge to enable him to play upon this weakness, this universal human susceptibility to the poison of pretense. All doubt of success fled his mind, and he was free to indulge his vanity and his contempt for these simple, unpretending people.  "So vulgar!" he said to himself, as he left their house that night—he who knew how to do nothing of use or value.  "It is a great condescension for me. Working people—ugh!" 

 As he strolled up town he was spending in fancy the income from at least two, perhaps all three, flat-houses—"The shop's enough for the old people and that dumb ass of a brother. I'll elevate the family. Yes, I think I'll run away with Hilda to-morrow—that's the safest plan." 

 Otto had guessed close to the truth about Feuerstein's affairs. They were in a desperate tangle. He had been discharged from the stock company on Saturday night. He was worthless as an actor, and had the hostility of the management and of his associates. His landlady had got the news promptly from a boarder who paid in part by acting as a sort of mercantile agency for her in watching her very uncertain boarders. She had given him a week's notice, and had so arranged matters that if he fled he could not take his meager baggage. He was down to eighty-five cents of a borrowed dollar. He owed money everywhere in sums ranging from five dollars to twenty-five cents. The most of these debts were in the form of half-dollar borrowings. He had begun his New York career with loans of "five dollars until Thursday—I'm a little pressed."  Soon it became impossible for him to get more than a dollar at a time even from the women, except an occasional windfall through a weak or ignorant new acquaintance. He clung tenaciously to the fifty-cent basis—to go lower would cheapen him. But for the last two weeks his regular levies had been of twenty-five cents, with not a few descents to ten and even five cents. 

 He reached Goerwitz's at ten o'clock and promenaded slowly through both rooms twice. Just as he was leaving he espied an acquaintance who was looking fiercely away from him as if saying: "I don't see you, and, damn you, don't you dare see me!"  But Feuerstein advanced boldly. Twelve years of active membership in that band of "beats" which patrols every 

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