Felix lighted his cigarette from Clive Bangs’ match. “I brought my copy to Chicago with me,” he said. “It’s the only book I did bring.” Clive Bangs looked at his watch and picked up his hat. Suddenly Felix remembered, and put his hand, embarrassedly, in his pocket for his letter of introduction. Clive Bangs laughed. “Never mind!” he said. “I know who you are. Come on, let’s have a drink.” A few minutes later they were sitting in a barroom called “The Tavern,” ordering ale with bitters, which Clive Bangs recommended as the specialty of the place. “So you are Helen’s wild young man from Iowa!” said Clive. “I wish Helen were here, and we three would get drunk together.” Felix was startled at the idea of Helen, the beautiful and condescending goddess of the library-shrine of his youth, getting drunk.... Clive laughed. “Oh,” he said, “I mean on ideas. Though for my part, after a hard day’s work, it takes a little alcohol to put the practical part of my mind asleep and set free my imagination. My mind is disposed in layers. After the first drink I cease to be interested in politics and social reform. After the second I forget the girl about whom I happen to be worrying at the time. And with the third drink, I enter the realm of pure theory.” The tall glasses of ale were set before them. “Here’s to Utopia!” said Clive. 2 It was only when Felix had warmly parted from his new friend, and agreed to come over the next noon for lunch and a visit to Downer’s, that he realized—with some chagrin—that he had failed to say anything to Mr. Clive Bangs about getting a job as a reporter on the Evening Chronicle. In fact, he had fallen very neatly into the trap prepared for him by his own fatal temperament. He had given himself away at the very start. And Bangs, who appeared to indulge some theoretical and visionary traits as a relaxation to the sober work of helping get out a great daily newspaper, had enjoyed his moon-calfishness: but to what end? Going back to his room at Community House, Felix gravely and dispassionately considered the question of what impression he had made. “On the one hand,” he said to himself, “it is doubtless true that Mr. Bangs must enjoy coming across another person who shares his own literary tastes. But, on the other hand, these tastes are in the nature of an avocation for him, and my possession of them proves nothing whatever as to my fitness for a newspaper job. Suppose he had happened to be enthusiastic about Japanese prints; suppose he had just bought a Kiyonaga, and I had looked at it and praised it; he would have been pleased to find some one who knew the difference between a Kiyonaga and a Kunisada—but would he have thought that a reason for helping me to get a newspaper job? I’m afraid not.”