When Hiram laughed his blue eyes twinkled at you under shaggy black brows and his strong teeth gleamed at you beneath his white mustache; then, perhaps, he resembled a bluff German statesman. But as soon as he spoke you knew he was American through and through, and, somehow, you thought none the less of him for his quaint lapses in speech. Not all the rules of prosody and syntax could alter the fact that Hiram Baxter was a figure of compelling power, a strongly original and lovable man, who inspired immediate confidence in his wonderful resourcefulness.
It was during his recent voyage on the Lusitania, in the course of a brisk walk on the upper deck, that Baxter took the Bishop of Bunchester into his confidence regarding certain serious personal matters. Hiram's friendship with the bishop was of long standing, for the American some twenty-eight years before, at the outset of his varied career, had married an English lady, a distant connection of the prelate's, and it had long been the Baxters' custom to divide their year between a comfortable home in Washington Square, New York, and a country place in Surrey, about two hours out of London, where Mrs. Baxter entertained numerous relatives and friends with lavish hospitality.
"I tell ye, Bish," Hiram broke out abruptly, "it ain't by a man's successes that ye can size up his character. No, sir. It's by the mistakes he makes an' the way he faces 'em and gets out of 'em. Why, I know a doctor up in New Hampshire—homeliest feller I ever seen—he got rich makin' cough medicine out o' shingles."
"Bless my soul! Shingles!" the bishop exclaimed.
"Yes, sir; shingles. Good pine shingles. A whole lumber yard full of 'em. He got 'em in foreclosure proceedings—hadn't the first notion what to do with them shingles until he happened to think of cough medicine. That turned the trick. Ever heard of 'Peck's Peerless Pectoral'? It was his invention—stewed it out o' them shingles, every bottle of it; and say, Bish, it's great stuff. Which is what I call makin' the best of yer mistakes, for it ain't every country doctor could see his way to snatchin' victory out of a lot o' discredited pine shingles."
This bit of homely philosophy was received by the distinguished churchman with amused approval.
"Very true, my dear Baxter, but I don't see how this applies to you."
"I'll show ye," chortled Hiram. "Ever hear o' the feller that used to wear detachable cuffs and then went broke because he bought a shirt that had cuffs sewed on? No? It's a fact. Ye see he had to get a swell suit to match the shirt, and a swell fur overcoat to match the suit, and a swell automobile to match the fur overcoat, and the first thing he knew he was such a swell he blew up an' busted."
"What an extraordinary fancy!" exclaimed the bishop, laughing immoderately.
"Fancy nothing. It's a fact," declared Baxter. "And I want to tell you I've been a little that way myself. I've been tryin' to live up to the standards o' my wife an' my wife's relations. That's where I've made my mistake. Yes, sir. I'm only a rough feller, Bish, but—well, I married Eleanor and—you know what she is. Swell English family and—grand ideas, and—you understand. D'ye think I'm stuck on havin' a country place in England? Asbury Park 'd suit me a lot better, but Eleanor wanted it. She said it was the proper thing and—so I took Ipping House, with its ancestral towers and its dungeons and a lot o' blamed foolishness. Excuse me, Bish, but that's what it is. And as fer relatives—" he paused with a grim tightening of the lips.