to retain his hold on earth, and avoid translation before his hour was
ripe.

It was no pale morality that got between Richard and the wine cup. In
another day at college he had emptied many. But early in his twenties,
Richard discovered that he carried his drink uneasily; it gave a Gothic
cant to his spirit, which, under its warm spell, turned warlike. Once,
having sat late at dinner--this was in that seminary town in France
where he attended school--he bestrode a certain iron lion, the same
strange to him and guarding the portals of a public building. Being thus
happily placed, he drew two huge American six-shooters, whereof his
possession was wrapped in mystery even to himself, and blazed vacuously,
yet ferociously, at the moon. Spoken to by the constabulary who came
flying to the spot, Richard replied with acrimony.

"If you interfere with me," remarked Richard on that explosive occasion,
addressing the French constables, "I'll buy your town and burn it." The
last with a splendid disdain of limitations that was congenital.

Exploits similar to the above taught Richard the futility of alcoholic
things, and thereupon he cultivated a Puritan sobriety upon coffee and
tobacco.

Richard cast the half-burned cigar into the fire. Stepping to the
mantel, he took from it a small metal casket, builded to hold jewels.
What should be those gems of price which the metal box protected?
Richard did not strike one as the man to nurse a weakness for barbaric
adornment. A bathrobe is not a costume calculated to teach one the
wearer's fineness. To say best, a bathrobe is but a savage thing. It is
the garb most likely to obscure and set backward even a Walpole or a