"Well, wait until I have laid my plan before you, and see if you won't change your mind," said my visitor, significantly.
"All right," I said. "Proceed. Only hurry. I go to bed early, as a rule, and it's getting quite early now."
"It's only one o'clock," said the visitor, ignoring the sarcasm. "But I will hasten, as I've several other calls to make before breakfast."
"Are you a milkman?" I asked.
"You are flippant," he replied. "But, Hiram," he added, "I have come here to aid you in spite of your unworthiness. You want to know what to provide for your club night on the 15th. You want something that will knock the 'Martyr's Night' silly."
"Not exactly that," I replied, "I don't want anything so abominably good as to make all the other things I have done seem failures. That is not good business."
"Would you like to be hailed as the discoverer of genius? Would you like to be the responsible agent for the greatest exhibition of skill in a certain direction ever seen? Would you like to become the most famous impresario the world has ever known?"
"Now," I said, forgetting my dignity under the enthusiasm with which I was inspired by my visitor's words, and infected more or less with his undoubtedly magnetite spirit—"now you're shouting."
"I thought so, Hiram. I thought so, and that's why I am here. I saw you on Wall Street to-day, and read your difficulty at once in your eyes, and I resolved to help you. I am a magician, and one or two little things have happened of late to make me wish to prestidigitate in public. I knew you were after a show of some kind, and I've come to offer you my services."
"Oh, pshaw!" I said. "The members of the Gutenberg Club are men of brains—not children. Card tricks are hackneyed, and sleight-of-hand shows pall."