The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1915-05-07

back to New York. Strange to relate I was homesick. Never before had my thoughts turned so Festlessly, so wist- fully to the haunts of my boyhood days I began to long for the lights of Broad way (whieE had seornfully despised in other days) and the gay peacockery of Fifth avenue at 4 in the afternoon It seemed to me that nowhere in all the world was life so joyous and bdthe and worth while as in 'fold New York nowhere were the theaters so attract i've, nowhere such restaurants Even. in retrospect, the subway looked allur- ing, and as for the Fifth avenue stages, they were too beautiful for words. Ah, what a builder of unreal things q spell of homesickness may become if one gives it half chanceI
 As for Schloss Rothhoefen, I had it on excellent authority (no less a person than Conrad Schmick himseID that barely had I shaken the dust of the place from myself before the new mat ter put into execution a most extraor- ainary and ineomprehensibIe plan of Mconstruction. In the first place. he gave all the servants two weeks notice and then began to rage the castle from the bottom upward instead Of the other way round, as a sensible person might have been expected to do. He was knocking out the walls in the cellars and digging up the stone floors with splendid disregard for that ominous thing known as eataelysm- The grave question in the minds of the servants was whether the usual and somewhat mandatory two weeks no tice wouldn't prove trifle too Ions aft CT all In fact. Hawkes, with an inspira- 1 ton worthy of an office boy, managed to produce a sick grandmether and got away from the place at the end of one week, although having been paid fn full for two.
 The day on which I left foz Paris still saw Tarnowsy at work, with his masons, heroically battering down the l walls of the grim old stronghold, and I chuclled to myself It was quite evident that he hadn't found the hid ing place up to that time.
 After several days in Paris ! took myself off to London. I was expecting letters at Carriages, where always 1 take rooms-not because I think it is the best hotel in London, but because | am to some extent a creature of hab- it. My mother took me to Cartridges when I was a boy, and saw won l derful parsonage at the door, whom I was pleased to call the king Ever since then I have been going to CIa- ridges, and while my first king is dead there is one in his place, who bids fair to live long, albeit no one shouts en- couragement to him. He wears the most gorgeous buttons I've ever seen, and doubt if King Solomon himself could have been more regal, certainly not Nebuchadnezzar. He works from 2 in the morning until 2 at night, and he has an imperial scorn for anything smaller than half Q sovereign
 There were many letters waiting there for me, but not one from the Countess Aline I had encouraged tue hope that she might write to me. 1t was the least she could do in return 1 for all that had done for her not withstanding my wretehed behavior on the last day of our association. While I had undoubtedly offended in the most fragrant manner, still my act was not unpardonable. There was tribute. not outrage, in my behavior.
 Poopendyke fdgeted a good deal with the scanty results of my literary Iabors, rattling the. typed pages in a most insinuating way. He oiled his machine with accusatiye frequency, but I failed to respond. l was in no mood Tor Wf1Llng- he sa1o 70 me one day:
 I s.I don't. see why you keep a seere- tary, MT. Smart. I don't begin to earn my salt.''
 ''Salt, MT. Poopendyke," said I, '9s the cheapest thing I know of Now, if you had said pepper might pause to reflect But I am absolutely, inezor- ably opposed to rating anything on a salt basis If you's-
 ~You know what I mean,'' he said stifdy. q am of no use to you.9
 IC0ntinued.9