required.
If you receive this letter and can do anything for me, please cable. If you cannot, please cable anyway. It is needless for me to state that the terms of division are as you make them, although I think fifty-fifty would place us both on Easy Street for the rest of our days. Do let me hear from you, Jack, if only to tell me the old entente cordiale still exists. I know now that I was considerable of a heedless pup a few years ago and overlooked my hand quite regularly, but now that I have a good thing I do not know of anybody with whom I care to share it except your own genial self. Please let me hear from you.
Affectionately,
Billy.
Jerome finished reading this remarkable communication; then with infinite amusement he regarded John Stuart Webster over the tops of his glasses as one who examines a new and interesting species of bug.
“So Billy loves that dear Sobrante, eh?” he said with abysmal sarcasm. “Jack Webster, listen to a sane man and be guided accordingly. I was in this same little Buenaventura once. I was there for three days, and I wouldn't have been there three minutes if I could have caught a steamer out sooner. Of all the miserable, squalid, worthless, ornery, stinking holes on the face of God's green footstool, Sobrante is the worst—if one may judge it by its capital city. Jack, there is an old bromide that describes aptly the republic of Sobrante, and it's so trite I hesitate to repeat it—but I will, for your benefit. Sobrante is a country where the flowers are without fragrance, the men without honour, and the women without virtue. It is hot and unhealthy, and the mosquitoes wear breechclouts; and when they bite you, you die. You get mail three times a month, and there isn't a white man in the whole Roman-candle republic that a gentleman would associate with.”
“You forget Billy Geary,” Webster reminded him gently.
“He's a boy. What does his judgment amount to? Are you going to chase off to this God-forsaken fever-hole at the behest of a lad scarcely out of his swaddling clothes? Jack Webster, surely you aren't going to throw yourself away—give up the sure thing I offer you—to join Billy Geary in Sobrante and finance a wildcat prospect without a
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