The Washington times., 1906-03-04

al ACpSuuS DhOH LuS UdAhCl
OF your entrance to the Castle
or Adventure One does not
have to scale its beetling par
apets or assault its scarps
and frowning bastIons; neither is
one obliged To force with clamor and
blaring trumpets and glittering gor-
gets the drawbridge and portcullis.
Rather the pathway lies through one
Of those many little doors, obscure,
yet easily accessible, lathless, and
boltless, TO which the average per
son gives no particular attention,
and yet which invariably lead to the
very heart Of this Castle Delectable.
The whimsical chatelaine OF this
enchanted keep is shy goddess.
CircumspeCtiOn has no part IN her
Affairs, nor caution, nor practically;
nor does her eye linger upon the
dullaTd and the blunderer. 1magina-
ton solves the secret riddle, and
wit is the guide that leads the seeker
through the winding. bewildefing
labyrinths
And there Is something IN being
idle, too!
II had not gone idly into Mou-
quin's cellar for dinner that night,
l should have missed the most en-
saging adventure that ever fell to
my lot It is second nature for me
to be guided by impulse rather than
by reason; reason is always SO
square-toed and impulse is always
SO alluring. You viii find that near
ly all the great captains were and
are creatures of impulse; nothing
brilliant is ever achieved by calcu-
latiop. All this is not TO say that
1 am a great captain; it is offered
only to inform YOU that / am often
impulsive.
A Times, four days old; and II I
hadn't fallen upon II to pass the
tWenty-odd minutes between my Or
der and the service of it, I shouldn't
have made the acquaintance of the
police in that pretty little suburb
over in New Jersey; nor should I
have met the enchanting Blue Dom
ino; nor would fate have written
Kismet. The clairvoyant never has
any fun in this cycle; he has no sur
prises.
! had been away from New York
for several weeks, and had returned
only that afternoon. Thus, the spirit
Of unrest acquired by travel was still
upon me- 1t was nearing holiday
week. and those congeniaI friends /
might have called upon. to while
away the evening, were either busily
occupied with shopping or were out
of town; and ] determined not to go
to the club and be bored by some in
different billiard player | would
dine quietly, listen TO some light mu-
sic, and then go 10 the theater. l
was searching the theatrical amuse-
ments. when the society column In
differently attacked my eye. do
not know why it is, but I have a
wholesome contempt for the So
called society columns of the daily
newspaper in New York. Mayhap,
1t is because do not belong.
read this paragraph with
shrug. and that one with a smirk.
] was in no manner surprised at the
announcement that Miss High-Cul-
ture was going TO we'd the Duke of
fmpecune; I had always been GER
tain this girl would do some such
fool thing. That Mrs. Hyphen-
Bonds was giving a farewell dinner
at the Waldorf, prior to her de-
parture TO Europe, interested my
curiosity not in the least degree. IL
would be all the same to me If she
never came back. None OF the
wlshy -washy tittle-tattle interested
me, in fact. There was only one lit
tie six-nne aragraph that really
caught me. On Friday night (that