She took my reformation so much to heart that I began to be interested in it myself. I familiarized myself with all the symptoms of a husband’s dyspepsia. Mrs. Stickney’s eye trouble seemed to have been caused by a too close application to cook books—in search for a dish her husband could digest. From Mr. Blake’s peevish discourse I got a new insight into business and the big and little dishonesties which go to make it up. I sometimes wonder if he really was robbed during his illness as much as he expected to be. He was convinced that his chief competitor would buy his trade secrets from his head book-keeper. He did not seem angry at his rival nor at his employee for seizing this opportunity to cheat him, but at the fates which, by his sickness, offered them so great a temptation. He complained bitterly because no such lucky chances had ever come to him. But it was through the newspapers that I gained most. "Want to hear about a millionaire socialist, who says that all judges and policemen ought to serve a year in jail before being eligible for office?" "It sounds more hopeful than campaign speeches," I said submissively. It was Norman Benson. I recognized his quaint way of expressing things, before she came to his name. "I know him," I laughed. I had to tell her all about our short acquaintance. "Why don’t you ask him to come up and see you?" I did not feel that I knew him well enough to bother him. I had not seen him nor heard from him for three years. The first thing in the morning, without letting me know, she telephoned him of my plight. About eleven o’clock, to my immense surprise, Miss Wright brought him to my room. Benson was the busiest man I have ever known. In later years when I roomed with him and was his most intimate friend, I could never keep track of half his activities. He was a sort of "consulting engineer" in advertising. Big concerns all over the country would send for him and pay well to have him attract the attention of the public to some new product. He could write the Spotless Town kind of verses while eating breakfast, and although he did not take art seriously, he drew some of the most successful advertisements of his time. One year he earned about thirty thousand dollars, above his inherited income of ten thousand. He did not spend more than five thousand a year on himself, but he was always hard up. He was director of half a hundred philanthropies—settlements, day-nurseries, immigrant homes, children’s societies, and so forth. His pet hobby was the "Arbeiter Studenten Verein." When he did not entirely support these enterprises, he paid the yearly deficit. It was such expenses which pushed him into the advertising work he detested.