David Lockwin—The People's Idol

Daniel Trentworthy, Burritt Durand, Geoffrey, Jason Hortner, King Darwin, etc.

Esther Wandrell, of Chicago, will be worth millions of dollars.
It is a thought that inspires the young men of all the city with momentous ambitions. Why does she wait so long? Whom does she favor?
To-night the carriages are trolling and rumbling to the great mansion of the Wandrells on Prairie Avenue. The women are positive in their exclamations of reunion, and this undoubted feminine joy exhilarates, and entertains the men. The lights are brilliant, the music is far away and clever, the flowers and decorations are novel.
If you look in the faces of the guests you shall see that the affair cannot fail. Everybody has personally assured the success of the evening.
Many times has this hospitable home opened to its companies of selected men, and women. Often has the beautiful Esther Wandrell smiled upon the young men--upon rich and poor alike. Why is she, at twenty-seven years of age, rich, magnificent and unmarried?
Ask her mother, who married at fifteen. Ask the father, who for ten years worried to think his only child might go away from him at any day.
I tell you, says Dr. Tarpion, Harpwood will get her, and get her to-night. That is what this party is for. I've seen them together, and I know what's in the air.
Is that so? says David Lockwin.
Yes, it is so, and you know you don't like Harpwood any too well since he got your primary in the Eleventh.