At twenty-five he might have bought a share in the business;
But, "No," he said, "I may cross over soon;
Let me be foot-free, and fancy-free—no entanglements here."
When he was twenty-six
Adelaide Waters, tired of waiting,
Married an ambitious young hardware-dealer,
And on the whole did well.
But Albert cared little:
"She" was waiting on the other side.
Early he became a boarder,
And a boarder he continued to be.
"Why tie myself up with property?" he asked;
"The time will come, and I must be without constraint."
Thus, without constraint, without career, without estate,
Without home and family,
He waited for the great hour,
Living on slick steel-engravings,
And flushed, mendacious chromo-lithographs,
And ecstatic travel-books penned by forlorn English spinsters.
In the new West others wooed Fortune and won her;
But Albert was spending fortune on fortune abroad
Before he had fairly learned to pay his way at home.
He lived in a palace on the Lung' Arno:
He saw the yellow river plainly enough
From the back window of the two-story frame on Ninth Street.
[244]
