bring out what's in you--and stop spending your allowance on a lot of
things that you don't want any more than a cow wants two tails. Now,
what in the name of common-sense did you buy that lamp for which you
have just hung? It doesn't light anything, and if it did, this is a
garret, not a church. To my mind it's as much out of place here as that
brass coal-hod you've got over there would be on a cathedral altar."

"Samuel Ruggles!" cried Jack, striking a theatrical attitude, "you talk
like a pig-sticker or a coal-baron. Your soul, Samuel, is steeped in
commercialism; you know not the color that delights men's hearts nor
the line that entrances. The lamp, my boy, is meat and drink to me, and
companionship and a joy unspeakable. Your dull soul, Samuel, is clay,
your meat is figures, and your drink profit and loss; all of which
reminds me, Samuel, that it is now two o'clock and that the nerves of my
stomach are on a strike. Let--me--see"--and he turned his back, felt in
his pocket, and counted out some bills and change--"Yes, Sam"--here his
dramatic manner changed--"the account is still good--we will now lunch.
Not expensively, Samuel"--with another wave of the hand--"not
riotously--simply, and within our means. Come, thou slave of the
desk--eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die--or bust, Samuel,
which is very nearly the same thing!"

"Old John" at Solari's took their order--a porter-house steak with
mushrooms, peas, cold asparagus, a pint of extra dry--in honor of the
day, Jack insisted, although Sam protested to the verge of
discourtesy--together with the usual assortment of small drinkables and
long smokables--a Reina Victoria each.

On the way back to the studio the two stopped to look in a shop-window,
when Jack gave a cry of delight and pressed his nose against the glass