If it goes through," he added, "I
shall be in a position to let you in on the ground floor."
I knew the ground floor of old. I have already many
friends sitting on it; and others who have fallen through
it into the basement.
I said, "thank you," and he left me.
"That was Ellesworth, wasn't it?" said a friend of mine
who was near me. "Poor devil. I knew him slightly,--always
full of some new and wild idea of making money. He was
talking to me the other day of the possibility of cornering
all the huckleberry crop and making refined sugar. Isn't
it amazing what fool ideas fellows like him are always
putting up to business men?"
We both laughed.
After that I didn't see Ellesworth for some weeks.
Then I met him in the club again. How he paid his fees
there I do not know.
This time he was seated among a litter of foreign newspapers
with a cup of tea and a ten-cent package of cigarettes
beside him.
"Have one of these cigarettes," he said. "I get them
specially. They are milder than what we have in the club
here.
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