“He’s simply unique,” he boasted to wondering local managers—“unique, and it took me to find him. There he was, a little black gold-mine, and all of ’em passed him by until I came. Some eye? What? I guess you’ll admit you have to hand it some to your Uncle Felix. If that coon’s health holds out, we’ll have all the money there is in the mint.” That was Felix’s real anxiety—“If his health holds out.” Gideon’s health was watched over as if he had been an ailing prince. His bubbling vivacity was the foundation upon which his charm and his success were built. Stuhk became a sort of vicarious neurotic, eternally searching for symptoms in his protégé; Gideon’s tongue, Gideon’s liver, Gideon’s heart were matters to him of an unfailing and anxious interest. And of late—of course it might be imagination —Gideon had shown a little physical falling off. He ate a bit less, he had begun to move in a restless way, and, worst of all, he laughed less frequently. As a matter of fact, there was ground for Stuhk’s apprehension. It was not all a matter of managerial imagination: Gideon was less himself. Physically there was nothing the matter with him; he could have passed his rigid insurance scrutiny as easily as he had done months before, when his life and health had been insured for a sum that made good copy for his press-agent. He was sound in every organ, but there was something lacking in general tone. Gideon felt it himself, and was certain that a “misery,” that embracing indisposition of his race, was creeping upon him. He had been fed well, too well; he was growing rich, too rich; he had all the praise, all the flattery that his enormous appetite for approval desired, and too much of it. White men sought him out and made much of him; white women talked to him about his career; and wherever he went, women of color—black girls, brown girls, yellow girls—wrote him of their admiration, whispered, when he would listen, of their passion and hero-worship. “City niggers” bowed down before him; the high gallery was always packed with them. Musk-scented notes scrawled upon barbaric, “high-toned” stationery poured in upon him. Even a few white women, to his horror and embarrassment, had written him of love, letters which he straightway destroyed. His sense of his position was strong in him; he was proud of it. There might be “folks outer their haids,” but he had the sense to remember. For months he had lived in a heaven of gratified vanity, but at last his appetite had begun to falter. He was sated; his soul longed to wipe a spiritual mouth on the back of a spiritual hand, and have done. His face, now that the curtain was down and he was leaving the stage, was doleful, almost sullen. Stuhk met him anxiously in the wings, and walked with him to his dressing-room. He felt suddenly very weary of Stuhk. “Nothing the matter, Gideon, is there? Not feeling sick or anything?” “No, Misteh Stuhk; no, seh. Jes don’ feel extry pert, that’s all.”