However, one morning during a slight lull in the daily hostilities between me and the number-seeking guests, I am reading my favorite book--the _Morning Squawk_, the newspaper that made the expression "It is alleged" famous, or maybe it was the other way around. Spattered all over the front page is a highly sensational account of the latest adventures of one of these modern prodigal sons--in round numbers, Carlton Van Ryker, whose father celebrated his ninety-fifth birthday by entering a tomb in a horizontal position and leaving his only progeny two paltry $500,000 bank notes. The young millionaire with the name like a Pullman car and a soft collar had been stepping high, wide and fast with his pennies and at the time of going to press was the plot of an "alienation of my wife's affections" suit, a badly mismanaged shooting affair, and various other things that would keep his mind off the weather for quite a spell. While I'm drinking all this in with my lustrous orbs, along comes Mons. James Joseph Aloysius Burns, who was either the hero of this episode in my exciting career, or else he wasn't. Although I've known Jimmy Burns for the worst part of two years, we're still good friends, both of us being refugees from the land of Utah. My home town was the metropolis of Bountiful, where I once won a beauty contest single-handed, and James fled from Salt Lake City, where smoking cigarettes is the same as throwing rocks at the President, in the eyes of the genial authorities. But to get to the business of the meeting--Jimmy sported a sarcastical sneer as he approached my switchboard on this particular morning. "Kin you feature a cuckoo like this dizzy Van Ryker havin' all that sugar," he snorts, nodding angrily at the newspaper, "whilst us regular white folks is got to slave like Uncle Tom or we don't eat? Is that fair?" "Cheer up, Jimmy," I says with a smile. "We don't get much money, that's a fact, but then we can laugh out loud. That's more than Van Ryker can do! Look at the pushing around he's getting because he hauled oil and inherited a million, poor fellow; he----" "That mug was ru'ned by too much jack!" butts in Jimmy. "He's what you call a weak sister. He wasn't _built_ to handle important money--you got to be _born_ that way! Knowin' how to spend money is a gift. _I_ got the gift, but I ain't got the money!" "And you never _will_ have the money, frittering away your life hopping bells in a hotel, Jamesy--not to give you a short answer," I says. "When they assembled you they left out the motor--_ambition!_"