And the way of it was an odd little stroke of Fate, a whimsicality that would have pleased the ironic soul of Thomas Hardy.
An old college friend of mine, Minot Blackden, whom I used to call Leonardo da Vinci because he was so full of ideas and inventions, had rediscovered, he said, the art of glass-staining. After a five years' residence in Italy, on a modest patrimony, most of which had gone into glass or into stain, he had returned to his native land and set up a shop à la William Morris somewhere in the region of Bleecker Street, and proceeded to stain glass. He had had some newspaper publicity recently, and there were cuts of his work.
While passing a church in my hot and dusty peregrinations, it occurred to me that here might be a chance of serving him and also myself. By writing an interesting booklet about his craft, illustrating it profusely and sending it with personal letters to all the vestries in the country, I might bring a flood of custom to his shop. It is with this forlorn proposal that I was blundering about to discover Minot Blackden. I failed to find his shop, but I came face to face with my old Salmon and Byrd acquaintance, Signor Visconti.
In his palm beach suit and Panama hat, Visconti made a splendent and impressive figure in the purlieus of Bleecker Street.
"Ah-h, Signor Byrd," he cried with Latin cordiality, seizing my hand in both his own, "you are what you call a sight for sick eyes. I have often wonder about you—you must come into my banca—we must have leetla refreshment!"
Refreshment appealed to me at the moment and gladly I accompanied him to his private office in the bank, that stands between a junk warehouse and a delicatessen emporium. With a charming tact he touched upon the hard luck of Salmon and Byrd and dismissed the subject for good.
Briefly—for him—that is, with a wealth of gesture and illustration, he informed me that he was looking for a man for his enlarging bank, and asked me to recommend one.
"I want a fina man—" he explained. "American gentleman—who speeks a leetla da Italian—who put up what you call a fina fronta—understand me?"
"A fine front," I mused aloud, "and speaks Italian—no, Signor Visconti, we had no such young man in our office. I can think of no one I could recommend."
He was obviously nonplused.