To begin with my host--Arthur White was an attractive, lovable fellow when in his brighter moods, but weak and variable. A man of good impulses, I think, but so fond of luxury and idleness that he was often selfish in his self-indulgence; of that sort of men that other men feel something akin to affection for, such as for a younger brother or a woman, so easily led and dependent do they seem. He was still young, not yet out of his twenties, and, living in extravagant idleness and dissipation, was spending pretty rapidly a bequest of a hundred thousand dollars he had inherited, about two years before, from an uncle. The bequest had created some little comment at the time, because thereby the only son of the testator, who was named in the will as residuary legatee, was reported to have inherited little or nothing. However, the son had always been a "bad lot" and neglected the old man, whereas Arthur had lived with him, and, after his lazy fashion, cared for and helped him in his affairs. So the busy world shrugged its shoulders and passed the episode by, and only prosy moralists dwelt upon it to point the Fifth Commandment. How Arthur reconciled it with his conscience to keep all the money, I never heard him say, but any sacrifice, I fancy, would have seemed hard to one so self-indulgent. In any event, whatever may have been the right or wrong of it, he was making the most of his fortune while it lasted, and his friends were incidentally getting some benefit therefrom too, as our invitation for the evening testified. While White was the youngest of the quartette I was to join, Gilbert Littell was the oldest--old enough and worldly-wise enough, too, to have been a valuable friend and adviser to the young man, if the latter would have listened to, or been by any one diverted from the rapid pace he was going. He did try, I thought, to steady him sometimes, but would always abandon the effort and say in his quiet way that he guessed the boy would have to sow his wild oats and waste his dollars before he could be brought up; which was also the general opinion among us.