The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-01-28
THE MASTERPIECE.
BY JAMES YEIsER.

come fromf" shrieked familiar Volce.
 Before I could collect my scattered senses, was jerked through the crowd into a hotel elevator. had sensation of. rising, another of being hauled I along a corridor. and when the misti- ness finally cleared away from my mind was sprawling in ai deep chair l with the countenance of my old friend Buckstaff, lowering over me like the tramp's vision of Christmas dinner :. . Tell me-" I gasped. looking about the room and blinking my eyes to 1 make certain they were not deceiving me, tell I-e, l say. when were you elected to a captaincy In the ranks of Standard Oil?" For why should he, s. Gloucester Buekstaff, eighth son of @ Methodist preacher. be lolling about in a luxurious suite of rooms on the third floor of the Saint Elmo7
 T owe 1t all to my muse, or fairy godmother. or. mayhap, the Goddess of Liberty" he replied, poking a Regina Principe into my face and fiourishinE a gold engraved match box. I'm an author. I belong to the same cate gory as Sir Walter Scott and Thomas De Quincey," and he ashamed like @ Hindoo prince.
 Now, look here. Buck" says I. whats the use lying to me. It's less than a year since I saw you patching your own pants in a fourbit hotel out West. Why, you couldn't write 8 novel to save yourS life, and. besides, authors don't wear clothes like those with diamonds in them. Where is your old vest with milk stains on 1t, and your dirty finger nails and unused up hair? They are the best evidence of the profession"
 T didn't say I'd written a novel" he replied in injured tones. Tn fact. haven't. I made my fortune on a sim gle short story under my own name then quit. I don't believe In art, for arts sake."
 "A single short storyl" I exclaimed 'Horatio, it was blackmail!"
 NO, sir, not blackmail; a good, le- gitimate short story. the kind that Edmondo de Amicis writes and better than any Poe turned out in his palm fest days. though 1t never appeared h print"
 Tell me about it." said.
 Buck settled himself in an easy chair, and knocking the ash from his cigar onto the moquet carpet, cooked his feet on the table and began: After left you out in San Fran cisco last summer I wandered about considerable. 1 sold colored balloons for Montmorency's Monstrous Cfrcu: for month or two., then I peddled H. lustrated Bibles for a Chicago firm and made some money.
 But 1t was wearing on my nerves SC came down here to New York tc look for a job that didn't require much knowledge of technical sort.
 There was a fellow who had a pat. ent dishwasher that he wanted me tc put on the market. It was a pretty good thing aud I was about to start or the road with 1t, when one evening happened to pick up 6 newspaper ant read an article that set my brain VI brating, Men That Success Ran tC Meet" was the name of 1t, and blame good piece. too, gotten up witt pictures of Botticelli, Copernicus, Feni more Cooper and a lot of others, mos of them authors. There was a para graph on Lord Byron. who went tC bed one night and awoke next morn ing to fad his name posted on ever, billboard and dead wall in London. ; ''Thinka l, what's the use of selling rubber balloons and fac4 rouge whei a man can sit in the shade some after noon and muss up a canvas with fifteeI cents worth of paint and call 1t tn, Nativity or the Birth of Aphro dite,' or, easier yet, to gulp down { couple of cocktails some Saturd ly night, not necessarily Saturday night you understandf and dash of a master piece like the FaIl of the House o Usher? The ethereal Buckstaff begar ] to assert himself and the sordid, com mercial Buckstah began to fee ashamed because he'd always manipu lated things with such poor success.
 Next day I sent around word tC the patent dish-washer man that was going into the country to visit a sick aunt and to hold the job open for me Then locked myself in that dingS room and commenced to exude some of my accumulated genius through the nib of a pen, In less than a week was deluged with returned manu. scripts, each of them accompanied with a polite little note from the editor. By the end of the month had written about everything and everybody. had tried my hand at the Uncle Josh sort, the sea tale, the cowboy and the gambler type, and was running short on material One afternoon I put or my hat and sauntered out on to the street in search of an idea for a new story, and who should 1 see shambline along the sidewalk but my dearly be- loved Uncle Gloucester, who shares with me a most illustrious name!" Perhaps l never mentioned to yoy that my uncle was very wealthy Made his money with a weapon called
 
 which you are familiar with. but not the stock. He and my father were half brothers and hated one another like sin. To see my father at his best, with fire in his eyes and pranc- ing about like a war horse with burnt powder in his nostrils. all you had to do was casually mention my uncle's name. I remember one time, when I was a boy, he took me to town; we met Uncle Gloucester and father put his nose in the air and he passed without speaking. Stafford, my lad, says he, jerking his thumb over his shoulder Che called me Stafford for obvious reasons). did you see that scurvy, yell low dog that just passed? That is your Uncle Gloucester. He's known all over New York as the stingiest caterpillar that ever crawled. May heaven forgive me for having given you his name!'
 "On this particular day when ] caught sight of my thrice removed relative slouching along the sidewalk looking more abject than ever in his threadbare coat, and with his eyes in the gutter for a lost dime. my muse or fairy godmother to whom I alluded a moment ago, whispered in my ear that here was an inspiration such as Dante himself never dreamed of hurried to my room in a feverish state of mind I knew his history tc a turn; father had drummed that into me as though 1t were the one impor- tant branch of all human learning Jupiter. what a plot I had! The viii lainous loan man and the poor victim