"Ducks," said I. "The songs of swans are for luckier ears. They swim and curve their necks
in artificial lakes on the estates of the wealthy to delight the eyes of the favorites of
Fortune."
"Also in Central Park," said North, "to delight the eyes of immigrants and bummers. I've
seen em there lots of times. But why are you in the city so late in the summer?"
"New York City," I began to recite, "is the finest sum--"
"No, you don't," said North, emphatically. "You don't spring that old one on me. I know you
know better. Man, you ought to have gone up with us this summer. The Prestons are there,
and Tom Volney and the Monroes and Lulu Stanford and the Miss Kennedy and her aunt
that you liked so well."
"I never liked Miss Kennedy's aunt," I said.
"I didn't say you did," said North. "We are having the greatest time we've ever had. The
pickerel and trout are so ravenous that I believe they would swallow your hook with a
Montana copper-mine prospectus fastened on it. And we've a couple of electric launches;
and I'll tell you what we do every night or two--we tow a rowboat behind each one with a
big phonograph and a boy to change the discs in 'em. On the water, and twenty yards behind
you, they are not so bad. And there are passably good roads through the woods where we go
motoring. I shipped two cars up there. And the Pinecliff Inn is only three miles away. You
know the Pinecliff. Some good people are there this season, and we run over to the dances
twice a week. Can't you go back with me for a week, old man?"
I laughed. "Northy," said I--"if I may be so familiar with a millionaire, because I hate both
the names Spencer and Grenville--your invitation is meant kindly, but--the city in the
summer-time for me. Here, while the bourgeoisie is away, I can live as Nero lived-barring,
thank heaven, the fiddling-while the city burns at ninety in the shade. The tropics and the
zones wait upon me like handmaidens. I sit under Florida palms and eat pomegranates
while Boreas himself, electrically conjured up, blows upon me his Arctic breath. As for
trout, you know, yourself, that Jean, at Maurice's, cooks them better than any one else in the
world."
"Be advised," said North. "My chef has pinched the blue ribbon from the lot. He lays some
slices of bacon inside the trout, wraps it all in corn-husks--the husks of green corn, you
know--buries them in hot ashes and covers them with live coals. We build fires on the bank
of the lake and have fish suppers."
"I know," said I. "And the servants bring down tables and chairs and damask cloths, and
you eat with silver forks. I know the kind of camps that you millionaires have. And therc
are champagne pails set about, disgracing the wild flowers, and, no doubt, Madame
Tetrazzini to sing in the boat pavilion after the trout."
"Oh no," said North, concernedly, "we were never as bad as that. We did have a variety
troupe up from the city three or four nights, but they weren't stars by as far as light can
travel in the same length of time. I always like a few home comforts even when I'm