But since it was easy for me to do it and could not injure the text in any way, and seemed to popularize the paper and myself immensely, I was glad to do it. Each evening, when at six or seven I chose to amble in, having spent the afternoon at my room or elsewhere idling, my text all done in an hour as a rule, my small chief would beam on me most cordially. “Whatcha got there? Another rib-tickler? Let’s see. Well, go get your dinner, and if you don’t want to come back go and see a show. There’s not much doing tonight anyhow, and I’d like to keep you fresh. Don’t stay up too late, and turn me in another good one tomorrow.” So it went. In a trice and as if by magic I was lifted into an entirely different realm. The ease of those hours! Citizens of local distinction wanted to meet me. I was asked by Wandell one afternoon to come to the Southern bar in order that Colonel So-and-So, the head of this, that or the other thing, as well as some others, might meet me. I was told that this, that and the other person here thought I must be clever, a fool, or a genius. I was invited to a midnight smoker at some country club. The local newspaper men who gathered at the LaClede daily all knew, and finding me in high favor with Phil Hackett, the lessee of the hotel bar whose name I had mentioned once, now laughed with me and drank at my expense—or rather at that of the proprietor, for I was grandly told by him that I “could pay for no drinks there,” which kept me often from going there at all. As the days went on I was assured that owing to my efforts the game was certain to be a big success, that it was the most successful stunt the _Republic_ had ever pulled and that it would net the fund several thousand dollars. For four or five weeks then it seemed to me as though I were walking on air. Life was so different, so pleasant these hot, bright days, with everybody pleased with me and my name as a clever man—a humorist!—being bandied about. Some of my new admirers were so pleased with me that they asked me to come to their homes to see them. I was becoming a personage. Hackett of the LaClede having asked me casually one day where I lived, I was surprised that night in my room by a large wicker hamper containing champagne, whiskey and cordials. I transferred it to the office of the _Republic_ for the reportorial staff, with my compliments.