a bazaar or a Turkish bath or a side street, and inquire into his private and personal affairs, the police court’ll get you.
Old Tom was tired of clubs, theatres, dinners, friends, music, money and everything. That’s what makes a caliph—you must get to despise everything that money can buy, and then go out and try to want something that you can’t pay for.
“I’ll take a little trot around town all by myself,” thought old Tom, “and try if I can stir up anything new. Let’s see—it seems I’ve read about a king or a Cardiff giant or something in old times who used to go about with false whiskers on, making Persian dates with folks he hadn’t been introduced to. That don’t listen like a bad idea. I certainly have got a case of humdrumness and fatigue on for the ones I do know. That old Cardiff used to pick up cases of trouble as he ran upon ’em and give ’em gold—sequins, I think it was—and make ’em marry or got ’em good Government jobs. Now, I’d like something of that sort. My money is as good as his was even if the magazines do ask me every month where I got it. Yes, I guess I’ll do a little Cardiff business to-night, and see how it goes.”
Plainly dressed, old Tom Crowley left his Madison Avenue palace, and walked westward and then south. As he stepped to the sidewalk, Fate, who holds the ends of the strings in the central offices of all the enchanted