"It's a good system fur you, son, while you're learnin' to use your head. Your pa played it at first, then he cut loose. And you need it worse'n ever he did, if I got you sized up right. He touched me on one side, and touched you on the other. But you can last longer if you jest keep the system in mind a little. Remember what I say about the window stuff." Percival had listened to the old man's story with proper amusement, and to the didactics with that feeling inevitable to youth which says secretly, as it affects to listen to one whom it does not wish to wound, "Yes, yes, I know, but you were living in another day, long ago, and you are not _me!_" He went over to the desk and began to scribble a name on the pad of paper. "If a man really loves one woman he'll behave all right," he observed to Uncle Peter. "Oh, I ain't preachin' like some do. Havin' a good time is all right; it's the only thing, I reckon, sometimes, that justifies the misery of livin'. But cuttin' loose is bad jedgment. A man wakes up to find that his natural promptin's has cold-decked him. If I smoked the best see-gars now all the time, purty soon I'd get so't I wouldn't appreciate 'em. That's why I always keep some of these out-door free-burners on hand. One of them now and then makes the others taste better." The young man had become deaf to the musical old voice. He was writing: "MY DEAR MISS MILBREY:--I send you the first and only poem I ever wrote. I may of course be a prejudiced critic, but it seems to me to possess in abundance those graces of metre, rhyme, high thought in poetic form, and perfection of finish which the critics unite in demanding. To be honest with you--and why should I conceal that conceit which every artist is said secretly to feel in his own production?--I have encountered no other poem in our noble tongue which has so moved and captivated me. "It is but fair to warn you that this is only the first of a volume of similar poems which I contemplate writing. And as the theme appears now to be inexhaustible, I am not sure that I can see any limit to the number of volumes I shall be compelled to issue. Pray accept this author's copy with his best and hopefullest wishes. One other copy has been sent to the book reviewer of the Arcady _Lyre,_ in the hope that he, at least, will have the wit to perceive in it that ultimate and ideal perfection for which the humbler bards have hitherto striven in vain. "Sincerely and seriously yours, "P. PERCIVAL BINES" Thus ran the exalted poem on a sheet of note-paper: "AVICE MILBREY. Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey. And ninety-eight thousand other verses quite like it." CHAPTER XII. Plans for the Journey East