“In a town that shall be nameless,” he began, “in fact, a city of fifty thousand, a fair and beautiful city wherein men slave for dollars and women for dress, an idea came to me. My front was prepossessing, as fronts go, and my pockets empty. I had in recollection a thought I once entertained of writing a reconciliation of Kant and Spencer. Not that they are reconcilable, of course, but the room offered for scientific satire—” I waved my hand impatiently, and he broke off. “I was just tracing my mental states for you, in order to show the genesis of the action,” he explained. “However, the idea came. What was the matter with a tramp sketch for the daily press? The Irreconcilability of the Constable and the Tramp, for instance? So I hit the drag (the drag, my dear fellow, is merely the street), or the high places, if you will, for a newspaper office. The elevator whisked me into the sky, and Cerberus, in the guise of an anaemic office boy, guarded the door. Consumption, one could see it at a glance; nerve, Irish, colossal; tenacity, undoubted; dead inside the year. “‘Pale youth,’ quoth I, ‘I pray thee the way to the sanctum-sanctorum, to the Most High Cock-a-lorum.’ “He deigned to look at me, scornfully, with infinite weariness. “‘G’wan an’ see the janitor. I don’t know nothin’ about the gas.’ “‘Nay, my lily-white, the editor.’ “‘Wich editor?’ he snapped like a young bullterrier. ‘Dramatic? Sportin’? Society? Sunday? Weekly? Daily? Telegraph? Local? News? Editorial? Wich?’ “Which, I did not know. ‘THE Editor,’ I proclaimed stoutly. ‘The ONLY Editor.’ “‘Aw, Spargo!’ he sniffed. “‘Of course, Spargo,’ I answered. ‘Who else?’ “‘Gimme yer card,’ says he. “‘My what?’ “‘Yer card—Say! Wot’s yer business, anyway?’ “And the anaemic Cerberus sized me up with so insolent an eye that I reached over and took him out of his chair. I knocked on his meagre chest with my fore knuckle, and fetched forth a weak, gaspy cough; but he looked at me unflinchingly, much like a defiant sparrow held in the hand. “‘I am the census-taker Time,’ I boomed in sepulchral tones. ‘Beware lest I knock too loud.’ “‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he sneered. “Whereupon I rapped him smartly, and he choked and turned purplish. “‘Well, whatcher want?’ he wheezed with returning breath. “‘I want Spargo, the only Spargo.’ “‘Then leave go, an’ I’ll glide an’ see.’ “‘No you don’t, my lily-white.’ And I took a tighter grip on his collar. ‘No bouncers in mine, understand! I’ll go along.’” Leith dreamily surveyed the long ash of his cigar and turned to me. “Do you know, Anak, you can’t appreciate the joy of being the buffoon, playing the clown. You couldn’t do it if you wished. Your pitiful little conventions and smug assumptions of decency would prevent. But simply to turn loose your soul to every whimsicality, to play the fool unafraid of any possible result, why, that requires a man other than a householder and law-respecting citizen.