“Dear me! I must get in on this Paddock wave. He sounds very promising. The first thing we know they’ll be snatching him up for heresy and I’ve always wanted to know a heretic. It would be quite an experience to attend and comfort a convicted heretic in his last merry moments before they chuck him into a coke oven to sizzle for ever and ever.” Wayne grinned at this cheerful forecast of Paddock’s immolation. “They’d better let Paddock alone. He doesn’t pretend to know anything about theology. He has a curious fancy that the man beast can be tamed by kindness and made to feed from the hand. It’s this old brotherhood-of-man business you read about in the magazines.” “It’s not unpicturesque--a fellow with a private barrel spending his money that way. I must get him to send in a few bunches of his parishioners to hear the orchestra at our expense. Our fat and waddling rich don’t know a symphony from a canvassed ham anyhow. Our chief hope for the fine arts lies in people who draw their dividends in yellow envelopes at the end of a long, hungry line of the horny-handed. I’m disposed to think Paddock may be deeper than appears. I’ve about concluded, myself, that the people we know--the prospering Philistines we see in the clubs and in each other’s houses--are a dreary rotten bore. The human race has really been decadent ever since it dropped by its tail from the ancestral breadfruit tree and wiggled into its first trousers.” “You feel that way this morning because you had to dress in a sleeper without your usual bath. A shower will set you up. You’re always rather savage when the luxuries of civilization are cut off.” “You never can tell when a man is going to need the consolations of religion,” resumed Wingfield, reverting to Paddock. “Here I am turned into the forties, which means that I have crossed the summit and started down the shadowy side of the mountain. My last photographs cost me double--such a lot of retouching to keep me from looking like a wrinkled monkey. People are beginning to pick lint off of me--a sure sign of age. The seeds of mortal disease are abroad in my system. At night I often hear a stealthy step behind--the Ancient Destroyer taking my measure. I’m getting on. My old popularity as best man and light-footed usher is waning and I’ve passed from the active to the honorary pall-bearer list--a frank recognition of my senility. The jump from being the gay usher at a church wedding and finding aisle seats for all the prettiest girls, to marching in behind some poor devil who’s gone the long road--it jolts, my dear boy!” “That’s what you get for being so respectable. I haven’t had any chances to carry the white ribbons since my first year at home. My social career stopped abruptly at about 3 A. M. that morning I cruised in from the country in my first motor and hit a bread wagon.”