“Therefore,” he had written, “I give and bequeath to the said Adrian Van Reypen Egerton Jones, the residue of my property, the principal to be taken over by him at such time as he shall have completed five years of continuous residence in New York City. After such time the virus of the metropolis will have worked through his entire being. He will squander his unearned and undeserved fortune, thus completing the vicious circle, and returning the millions acquired by my political activities, in a poisoned shower upon the city, for which, having bossed, bullied and looted it, I feel no sentiment other than contempt.”
“And now,” remarked Waldemar in his heavy, rumbling voice, “you aspire to disappoint that good old man.”
“It’s only human nature, you know,” said Average Jones. “When a man puts a ten-million-dollar curse on you and suggests that you haven’t the backbone of a shrimp, you—you—”
“—naturally yearn to prove him a liar,” supplied Bertram.
“Exactly. Anyway, I’ve no taste for dissipation, either moral or financial. I want action; something to do. I’m bored in this infernal city.”
“The wail of the unslaked romanticist,” commented Bertram.
“Romanticist nothing!” protested the other. “My ambitions are practical enough if I could only get ’em stirred up.”
“Exactly. Boredom is simply romanticism with a morning-after thirst. You’re panting for romance, for something bizarre. Egypt and St. Petersburg and Buenos Ayres and Samoa have all become commonplace to you. You’ve overdone them. That’s why you’re back here in New York waiting with stretched nerves for the Adventure of Life to cat-creep up from behind and toss the lariat of rainbow dreams over your shoulders.”
Waldemar laughed. “Not a bad diagnosis. Why don’t you take up a hobby, Mr. Jones?”
“What kind of a hobby?”