He makes this remark in a significant tone, which at once stamps it as a fact upon which theories may be built, and Aleck remembers it. “Now,” continues the disciple of Forrest and Booth, in an impressive way, “our time for conversation is limited to about one revolution. I have a story to tell connected with the fortunes of Aroun Scutari and Samson Cereal, and you will excuse me if I plunge into the details without further delay.” “With pleasure,” remarks the Canadian, who stands looking out upon the remarkable scene that, as they rise higher and higher, gradually unfolds before their vision until it looks like fairy-land--the Administration building standing out above all else, with its myriads of electric sparks showing the outlines of the dome, while ever and anon, as the moon hides behind a passing cloud, the search lights sweep across the fair grounds like lightning flashes from the skies, crossing and recrossing in mystic symbols. “Going back nearly twenty years, the grain king of Chicago, Samson Cereal, was in Turkey. I believe he was a United States consul at one of the ports, perhaps Constantinople itself. Let that pass. “By a series of strange circumstances, when traveling in Georgia--a place over in Asia where their greatest industry seems to be raising beautiful girls to be sold as wives to wealthy Turks--he met a young woman named Marda, as lovely as an houri. She bewitched the American, and as he had been taken wounded to her father’s house he had opportunities for talking with the object of his mad devotion. So, as was quite natural, they fell in love. “Now, anyone that knows old Samson to-day would be inclined to doubt that the cool, calculating manipulator of wheat could ever have been a Hotspur, ready to dare all for love, yet it is quite true. Imagine his despair when the object of his adoration, while admitting a return of his love, coolly told him the fates had decreed it otherwise; that she was destined to be the wife of a great pasha; money had already been paid to her parents, and they were in honor bound to see that when the attendants, now on the way from Stamboul, arrived, she should go to the beautiful harem of the pasha. “Well, Samson just up and stormed. He swore to the Georgian beauty that as she loved him, by that love she belonged to him--that he would have her, and take her to his country where one wife is all they allow a man to have. “This appeared to strike the lovely girl as quite a delightful thing. It ended in her declaring that if Samson won her she was his. “As the representative of the pasha and his suite appeared about the time this bargain was struck, there was no time to do anything then; but Samson was fully aroused and laid his plans. In this first speculation of his life he showed the same shrewdness that has of late years raised him to the proud pinnacle of 'king of the wheat pit.’