Doctor Vardaman was not a wealthy man; he occupied what he considered the golden mean, the "neither poverty nor riches" of the Preacher; enough to live in a simple, uncalculating ease. His chief pastime, as he used to describe it with some amusement, was the practising of certain small economies whereby he accumulated enough to indulge himself once in a while with an expensive new edition, or rare and equally high-priced old one. Like most professional men, he had no turn for affairs, and no temptation ever assailed him to "take a flyer in Phosphate," or anything else. It was, therefore, without any idea of investment that he scaled the stairs leading to Colonel Pallinder's office a few days after the Misses Gwynne had visited Gwynne's to explain their operations in finance. He was, in fact, bent on an errand that took him past the colonel's door, and into the rear of the Turner Building, where the City Superintendent of Parks and Gardens had a retiring, little, unfrequented room. The doctor wanted to file objections against the setting up of several monumental bill-boards and advertising signs on the vacant lots along the west side of Richmond Avenue, facing number 201. "As a physician in good standing, sir," he expounded vigorously, yet not without a smile, to the City Superintendent, who was an old acquaintance and ex-patient. "I dislike to be confronted every time I open my front door with 'Geary's Purple Pills' for various disorders not commonly referred to in polite society. And as a patriotic citizen, I don't want to see our town disfigured by any such monstrosities!"