a butler, a garage, solid silver plate, and a long-distance telephone.

Of course it was in the woods--if Mr. Pinchot wants to preserve the
forests let him give every citizen two or ten or thirty million

dollars, and the trees will all gather around the summer camps, as the
Birnam woods came to Dunsinane, and be preserved.

North came to see me in my three rooms and bath, extra charge for
light when used extravagantly or all night. He slapped me on the back

(I would rather have my shins kicked any day), and greeted me with
out-door obstreperousness and revolting good spirits. He was

insolently brown and healthy-looking, and offensively well dressed.
"Just ran down for a few days," said he, "to sign some papers and

stuff like that. My lawyer wired me to come. Well, you indolent
cockney, what are you doing in town? I took a chance and telephoned,

and they said you were here. What's the matter with that Utopia on
Long Island where you used to take your typewriter and your villanous

temper every summer? Anything wrong with the--er--swans, weren't
they, that used to sing on the farms at night?"

"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 roughing it.
But don't tell me you prefer to stay in the city during summer. I

don't believe it. If you do, why did you spend your summers there for
the last four years, even sneaking away from town on a night train,

and refusing to tell your friends where this Arcadian village was?"
"Because," said I, "they might have followed me and discovered it.

But since then I have learned that Amaryllis has come to town. The
coolest things, the freshest, the brightest, the choicest, are to be

found in the city. If you've nothing on hand this evening I will show
you."

"I'm free," said North, "and I have my light car outside. I suppose,
since you've been converted to the town, that your idea of rural sport

is to have a little whirl between bicycle cops in Central Park and
then a mug of sticky ale in some stuffy rathskeller under a fan that

can't stir up as many revolutions in a week as Nicaragua can in a
day."

"We'll begin with the spin through the Park, anyhow," I said. I was
choking with the hot, stale air of my little apartment, and I wanted

that breath of the cool to brace me for the task of proving to my
friend that New York was the greatest--and so forth.

"Where can you find air any fresher or purer than this?" I asked, as
we sped into Central's boskiest dell.

"Air!" said North, contemptuously. "Do you call this air?--this muggy
vapor, smelling of garbage and gasoline smoke. Man, I wish you could

get one sniff of the real Adirondack article in the pine woods at
daylight."

"I have heard of it," said I. "But for fragrance and tang and a joy
in the nostrils I would not give one puff of sea breeze across the

bay, down on my little boat dock on Long Island, for ten of your
turpentine-scented tornadoes."

"Then why," asked North, a little curiously, "don't you go there
instead of staying cooped up in this Greater Bakery?"

"Because," said I, doggedly, "I have discovered that New York is the
greatest summer--"

"Don't say that again," interrupted North, "unless you've actually got
a job as General Passenger Agent of the Subway. You can't really

believe it."
I went to some trouble to try to prove my theory to my friend. The

Weather Bureau and the season had conspired to make the argument
worthy of an able advocate.

The city seemed stretched on a broiler directly above the furnaces of
Avernus. There was a kind of tepid gayety afoot and awheel in the

boulevards, mainly evinced by languid men strolling about in straw
hats and evening clothes, and rows of idle taxicabs with their flags

up, looking like a blockaded Fourth of July procession. The hotels
kept up a specious brilliancy and hospitableoutlook, but inside one

saw vast empty caverns, and the footrails at the bars gleamed brightly
from long disacquaintance with the sole-leather of customers. In the

cross-town streets the steps of the old brownstone houses were
swarming with "stoopers," that motley race hailing from sky-light room

and basement, bringing out their straw doorstep mats to sit and fill
the air with strange noises and opinions.

North and I dined on the top of a hotel; and here, for a few minutes,
I thought I had made a score. An east wind, almost cool, blew across

the roofless roof. A capableorchestra concealed in a bower of
wistaria played with sufficient judgment to make the art of music

probable and the art of conversation possible.
Some ladies in reproachless summer gowns at other tables gave

animation and color to the scene. And an excellent dinner, mainly
from the refrigerator, seemed to successfully back my judgment as to

summer resorts. But North grumbled all during the meal, and cursed