else.

"You see Henry was doing the Rake's Progress act there in New
York--being a gilded youth and such like. Now being a gilded youth and
'a well-known man about town' is something that wants to be done in
moderation, and Henry didn't seem to know the meaning of the word. I
put up something like a hundred and eighty thousand dollars for Hank's
gilding last year. Not that I grudged him the money, but it wasn't
doing him any good. He was making a monkey of himself with it, Henry
was. A good bit of that hundred and eighty went into a comic opera
company that was one of the worst I ever _did_ see. Henry had no
judgment. He was _too_ easy. Well, along this summer he was on the
point of making a break that would--well, I says to him, says I, 'Hank,
I'm no penny-squeezer; I like good stretchy legs myself,' I says; 'I
like to see them elastic so they'll give a plenty when they're pulled;
but,' I says, 'if you take that step,' I says, 'if you declare
yourself, then the rubber in your legs,' I says, 'will just naturally
snap; you'll find you've overplayed the tension,' I says, 'and there
won't be any more stretch left in them.'

"The secret is, Hank was being chased by a whole family of
wolves--that's the gist of it--fortune-hunters--with tushes like the
ravening lion in Afric's gloomy jungle. They were not only cold, stone
broke, mind you, but hyenas into the bargain--the father and the mother
and the girl, too.

"They'd got their minds made up to marry the girl to a good wad of
money--and they'll do it, too, sooner or later, because she's a corker
for looks, all right--and they'd all made a dead set for Hank; so,
quick as I saw how it was, I says, 'Here,' I says, 'is where I save my