In this crowded jungle of spotless stone Lions, tomblike seats and arches backed by California privet and immature cypresses there was an irreverent suggestion of the Villa D’Este done into American slang. He turned hearing my step, “Where is it I have seen it—before?” “In the movies perhaps”—I ventured. “That’s it! Thank you very much!” he exclaimed. “I knew I had seen it somewhere!” After ascertaining my name in reluctant payment for the unsolicited tender of his own he continued, “but the Lions show better in the ‘pictures’ don’t they? Why didn’t they get them with moss already.” “With moss?” I queried. “Sure!” said Finchsifter. “Didn’t you know such a stone Lion comes also with the moss, the same as the genuine old antique furniture comes with the real hand-made worm-holes!” I remembered guiltily how on the occasion of my last visit to Lake towers when asked by Mrs. Barabbas Wolfe, what I thought of her marble Lions, I had exclaimed with truthful enthusiasm “Wonderful! But my dear lady _how_ do you keep them so clean?” We walked on together, and though avoiding as we did so the physical proximity of my Lake we could not exclude it wholly from our conversation. It was a passing glitter of the water caught through the pines below us at a turn in the road that inspired the Diamond-plush simile from which try as I may, I shall never be able to dissociate the image of my Lake. Greatly to my surprise I found myself becoming interested in Finchsifter, and during the luncheon which followed our return to my Bungalow and the dinner that evening at his hotel, we laid what promised to be the foundation of a lasting friendship. To be sure he was a man of many words, but the words of Finchsifter were well trained words, old family servants that knew their places and never presumed, or took liberties with the listener. If a reply or comment were imperative—an adjective caught at random gave instant clue to what had gone before—even as a single toe joint restores to the naturalist the forgotten form of the Iohippus. Finchsifter was a mental rest cure, his talk was soothing as a verbal brain massage. I conceived that one might form the Finchsifter habit, in time even become a slave to it as men become slaves to cocaine, Psychoanalysis, or Taxicabs. But this was not to be. As a would-be suicide has been turned from his purpose by the chill of the water into which he has plunged—so it was by Finchsifter himself that I was cured of the Finchsifter habit. It was on the occasion of our second meeting, appointed at the suggestion of Finchsifter that we take our matutinal walk around the Lake in each others company. He greeted me with a delighted smile, exclaiming as he took my hand in both of his very new saffron gloves.