This with the air of a man who would be but too fluent and copious upon any subject in the world except the one particular point. I never met anybody else who looked so pleasantly communicative and managed to say so little. In fact, he didn't say anything at all; and I guessed that this faculty was not without its value in his political career, disastrous as it had proved to his private happiness. His habit of silence, moreover, was not cultivated: you could see that “the secret of it” was just that he was BORN quiet. My note-book remained noteless, and finally, at some odd evasion of his, accomplished by a monosyllable, I laughed outright--and he did, too! He joined cachinnations with me heartily, and with a twinkling quizzicalness that somehow gave me the idea that he might be thinking (rather apologetically) to himself: “Yes, sir, that old Beasley man is certainly a mighty funny critter!” When I went away, a few moments later, and left him still intermittently chuckling, the impression remained with me that he had had some such deprecatory and surreptitious thought. Two or three days after that, as I started down-town from Mrs. Apperthwaite's, Beasley came out of his gate, bound in the same direction. He gave me a look of gay recognition and offered his hand, saying, “WELL! Up in THIS neighborhood!” as if that were a matter of considerable astonishment. I mentioned that I was a neighbor, and we walked on together. I don't think he spoke again, except for a “Well, sir!” or two of genial surprise at something I said, and, now and then, “You don't tell me!” which he had a most eloquent way of exclaiming; but he listened visibly to my own talk, and laughed at everything that I meant for funny. I never knew anybody who gave one a greater responsiveness; he seemed to be WITH you every instant; and HOW he made you feel it was the true mystery of Beasley, this silent man who never talked, except (as my cousin said) to children. It happened that I thus met him, as we were both starting down-town, and walked on with him, several days in succession; in a word, it became a habit. Then, one afternoon, as I turned to leave him at the “Despatch” office, he asked me if I wouldn't drop in at his house the next day for a cigar before we started. I did; and he asked me if I wouldn't come again the day after that. So this became a habit, too. A fortnight elapsed before I met Hamilton Swift, Junior; for he, poor little father of dream-children, could be no spectator of track events upon the lawn, but lay in his bed up-stairs. However, he grew better at last, and my presentation took place. We had just finished our cigars in Beasley's airy, old-fashioned “sitting-room,” and were rising to go, when there came the faint creaking of small wheels from the hall. Beasley turned to me with the apologetic and monosyllabic chuckle that was distinctly his alone. “I've got a little chap here--” he said; then went to the door. “Bob!”