“What is your game just now, Jack, if it isn’t impertinent? It’s hard to keep track of you. I remember very well that you started in to learn the wholesale drug business.”
“Oh tush! don’t refer to that, an thou lovest me! That is one of the darkest pages of my life. Those people down there in South High Street thought I was a jay, and they sent me out to help the shipping clerk. Wouldn’t that jar you! Overalls,—and a hand truck. Wow! I couldn’t get out of that fast enough. Then, you know, I went to Chicago and spent a year in a broker’s office, and I guess I learned a few up there. Oh, rather! They sent me into the country to sell mining stock and I made a record. They kept the printing presses going overtime to keep me supplied. Say, they got afraid of me; I was too good!”
He stroked his vandyke beard complacently, and flicked the ash from his cigar.
“What’s your line now? Real estate, mortgages, lending money to the poor? How do you classify yourself?”
“You do me a cruel wrong, Morris, a cruel wrong. You read my sign on the outer wall? Well, that’s a bluff. There’s nothing in real estate, per se, as old Doc Bridges used to say at college. And the loan business has all gone to the bad,—people are too rich; farmers are rolling in real money and have it to lend. There was nothing for little Willie in petty brokerages. I’m scheming—promoting—and I take my slice off of everything that passes.”
“That certainly sounds well. You’ve learned fast. You had an ambition to be a poet when you were in college. I think I still have a few pounds of your verses in my traps somewhere.”
Balcomb threw up his head and laughed in self-pity.
“I believe I was bitten with the literary tarantula for a while, but I’ve lived it down, I hope. Prexy used to predict a bright literary future for me in those days. You remember, when I made Phi Beta Kappa, how he took both my hands and wept over me. ‘Balcomb,’ he says, ‘you’re an honor to the college.’ I suppose he’d weep again, if he knew I’d only forgotten about half the letters of the Greek alphabet,—left them, as one might say, several thousand parasangs to the rear in my mad race for daily sustenance. Well, I may not leave any vestiges on the sands of time, but, please God, I shan’t die hungry,—not if I keep my health. Dear old Prexy! He was a nice old chump, though a trifle somnolent in his chapel talks.”
“Well, we needn’t pull the planks out of the bridge we’ve crossed on. I got a lot out of college that I’m grateful for. They did their best for us,” said Morris.
“Oh, yes; it was well enough, but if I had it to do over, Tippecanoe wouldn’t see me; not much! It isn’t what you learn in college, it’s the friendships you make and all that sort of thing that counts. A western man ought to go east to college and rub up against eastern fellows. The atmosphere at the freshwater colleges is pretty jay. Fred Waters left Tippecanoe and went to Yale and got in with a lot of influential fellows down there,—chaps whose fathers are in big things in New York. Fred has a fine position now, just through his college pull, and first thing you know, he’ll pick up an heiress and be fixed for life. Fred’s a winner all right.”