"The same as everybody else," he repeated, soberly. "Not but what there's lots of difference between folks. And there are things it's good to know, too ... things that women like Madame ... and Miss Mary Virginia Eustis ... expect a man to know, if they're not going to be ashamed of him." He thought about this awhile, then: "I tell you what, father," he remarked, tentatively, "it must be a mighty fine thing to know you've got the right address written on you, good and plain, and the right number of stamps, and the sender's name somewhere on a corner, to keep you from going astray or to the Dead Letter Office; and not to be scrawled in lead-pencil, and misspelt, and finger-smutched, and with a couple of postage-due stamps stuck on you crooked, and the Lord only knows who and where from." "Why, yes," said I, "that's true, and one does well to consider it. But the main thing, the really important thing, is the letter itself--what's written inside, John Flint." "But what's written inside wouldn't be any the worse if it was written clearer and better, and the outside was cleaner and on nice paper? And in pen-and-ink, not lead-pencil scratches?" he insisted earnestly. "Of course not." "That's what I've been thinking lately, father. Somehow, I always did like things to have some class to 'em. I remember how I used to lean against the restaurant windows when I was a kid, and watch the folks inside, how they dressed and acted, and the way the nicest of 'em handled table-tools. They weren't swells, of course, and plenty of 'em made plenty of mistakes--I've seen stunts done with a common table-knife that had the best of the sword-swallowing gents skinned a mile--but I wasn't a fool, and I learned some. Then when I--er--began to make real money (parson, I made it in wads and gobs and lumps those days!) why, I got me the real thing in glad rags from the real thing in tailors, and I used to blow a queen that'd been a swell herself once, to the joint where the gilt-edged bunch eat and show off their clothes and the rest of themselves. My jane looked the part to the life, I had the kale and the clothes and was chesty as a head-waiter, being considerably stuck on yours truly along about then, so we put it over. I had the chance to get hep to the last word in clothes and manners; that's what I'd gone for, though I didn't tell that to the skirt I was buying the eats for. And it was good business, too, for more than once when some precinct bonehead that pipe-dreamed he was a detective was pussy-catting some cold rat-hole, there was me vanbibbering in the white light at the swellest joints in little old New York! Funny, wasn't it? And handy! And I was learning, too--learning things worth good money to know. I saw that the best sort didn't make any noise about anything. They went about their business, whatever it was, easy-easy, same as me in my line. But, parson, though I'd got hep to the outside, and had sense enough to