A box of Carolina perfectos was brought in, with a coffee-urn, cognac, and liqueurs, and the three men, now calm, genial, and satisfied, gave themselves up to the comforts of tobacco. Even the youngest allowed himself to draw up a chair for his feet, and sighed in content. Coffee John finished the last drop in his glass, drew out his brier pipe, and lighted it. Then, producing a folded paper from his pocket, he raised his finger for silence and said: “If yer wants to know the w’y and the w’erfore of this ’ere reparst, gents, I am nar ready to give yer satisfaction o’ sorts. It ain’t me yer obligyted to, at all; it’s a newspyper Johnnie nymed Sol Bauer who’s put up for it, him as I arsked yer for to drink a ’elth to. It’s a proper queer story ’ow ’e come to myke and bryke in this ’ere very shop o’ mine, an’ if yer stogies is all drawin’ easy, I’ll read the tyle as ’e wrote it art for me, skippin’ the interduction, w’ich is personal, ’e bein’ of the belief that it wos me wot brought ’im luck. “So ’ere goes, from w’ere ’e come darn to this plyce of a Hoctober night five years ago.” And so saying, he opened the paper. The narrative, deleted of Coffee John’s dialect, was as follows: THE STORY OF THE GREAT BAUER SYNDICATE Ten years I had been a newspaper man, and had filled almost every position from club reporter to managing editor, when just a year ago I found myself outside Coffee John’s restaurant, friendless, hungry, and without a cent to my name. Although I had a reputation for knowing journalism from A to Z, I had been discharged from every paper in the city. The reason was good enough; I was habitually intemperate, and therefore habitually unreliable. I did not drink, as many journalists do, to stimulate my forces, but for love of the game. It was physically impossible for me to remain sober for more than two weeks at a time. I had, that day, been discharged from the _Tribune_ for cause. The new president of the Southern Pacific Company was on his way to San Francisco, and it was necessary for our paper to get ahead of its contemporaries and obtain the first interview. I was told to meet the magnate at Los Angeles. I loitered at a saloon till I was too late for the train, and then decided I would meet my man down the line at Fresno. The next train south left while I was still drinking. I had time, however, to catch the victim on the other side of the bay, and interview him on the ferry, but he got in before I roused myself from my dalliance with the grape. Then, trusting to sheer bluff, I hurried into the office, called up two stenographers, dictated a fake interview containing important news, and rushed the thing on the press. The next day the president of the railway repudiated the whole thing, and I was summarily given the sack. Nevertheless, it so happened that almost the whole of what I had predicted came true within the year.