"Oh, he flared up, and said it was his own affair."
"Well, I always thought Milburn a pretty square kind of a fellow," said a quiet man who stood leaning against a gilded column. "In that deal with '
Syndicate'—you recollect it, Frost—he could have beaten the life out of you, but he stood to you when I know he was offered double commission to come off.""Ah! nobody is saying anything against his honesty," returned Willard, sharply, "he's square enough, but it is his infernal recklessness. Now, yesterday, I sauntered into his office to remonstrate. I said, 'Robert, old boy, you are getting yourself out of everybody's good books; why don't you brace up? The first thing you know, you will be dropped like a hot nail.' I asked him why he couldn't be a little more modest about it, for instance, I suggested, 'when the spirit moves you to take Morris out for an airing, why wont a moon-*light night and a by-road answer the purpose as well as Fifty-eighth Street and the middle of the afternoon.'"
"And what did he say to that?"
"He held out his cigar case to me saying, 'You are wasting your time, I don't care to be respectably wicked, and I choose to go to the devil in my own way.'"