The effect of his scientific budget-planning was that he felt at once triumphantly wealthy and perilously poor, and in the midst of these dissertations he stopped his car, rushed into a small news-and-miscellany shop, and bought the electric cigar-lighter which he had coveted for a week. He dodged his conscience by being jerky and noisy, and by shouting at the clerk, “Guess this will prett’ near pay for itself in matches, eh?” It was a pretty thing, a nickeled cylinder with an almost silvery socket, to be attached to the dashboard of his car. It was not only, as the placard on the counter observed, “a dandy little refinement, lending the last touch of class to a gentleman’s auto,” but a priceless time-saver. By freeing him from halting the car to light a match, it would in a month or two easily save ten minutes. As he drove on he glanced at it. “Pretty nice. Always wanted one,” he said wistfully. “The one thing a smoker needs, too.” Then he remembered that he had given up smoking. “Darn it!” he mourned. “Oh well, I suppose I’ll hit a cigar once in a while. And-- Be a great convenience for other folks. Might make just the difference in getting chummy with some fellow that would put over a sale. And-- Certainly looks nice there. Certainly is a mighty clever little jigger. Gives the last touch of refinement and class. I-- By golly, I guess I can afford it if I want to! Not going to be the only member of this family that never has a single doggone luxury!” Thus, laden with treasure, after three and a half blocks of romantic adventure, he drove up to the club. III The Zenith Athletic Club is not athletic and it isn’t exactly a club, but it is Zenith in perfection. It has an active and smoke-misted billiard room, it is represented by baseball and football teams, and in the pool and the gymnasium a tenth of the members sporadically try to reduce. But most of its three thousand members use it as a café in which to lunch, play cards, tell stories, meet customers, and entertain out-of-town uncles at dinner. It is the largest club in the city, and its chief hatred is the conservative Union Club, which all sound members of the Athletic call “a rotten, snobbish, dull, expensive old hole--not one Good Mixer in the place--you couldn’t hire me to join.” Statistics show that no member of the Athletic has ever refused election to the Union, and of those who are elected, sixty-seven per cent. resign from the Athletic and are thereafter heard to say, in the drowsy sanctity of the Union lounge, “The Athletic would be a pretty good hotel, if it were more exclusive.”