A Fool and His Money | Page 3

trifling detail he had overlooked in presenting
me as his nephew--but who did ask me to have a drink.
A month later, he died. He left me a fortune, which was all the more
staggering in view of the circumstance that had seen me named for my
Uncle John and not for him.
It was not long afterward that I made a perfect fool of myself by falling
in love. It turned out very badly. I can't imagine what got into me to
want to commit bigamy after I had already proclaimed myself to be
irrevocably wedded to my profession. Nevertheless, I deliberately
coveted the experience, and would have attained to it no doubt had it
not been for the young woman in the case. She would have none of me,
but with considerable independence of spirit and, I must say,
noteworthy acumen, elected to wed a splendid looking young fellow
who clerked in a jeweller's shop in Fifth Avenue. They had been

engaged for several years, it seems, and my swollen fortune failed to
disturb her sense of fidelity. Perhaps you will be interested enough in a
girl who could refuse to share a fortune of something like three hundred
thousand dollars--(not counting me, of course)--to let me tell you
briefly who and what she was. She was my typist. That is to say, she
did piece-work for me as I happened to provide substance for her active
fingers to work upon when she wasn't typing law briefs in the regular
sort of grind. Not only was she an able typist, but she was an
exceedingly wholesome, handsome and worthy young woman. I think I
came to like her with genuine resolution when I discovered that she
could spell correctly and had the additional knack of uniting my stray
infinitives with stubborn purposefulness, as well as the ability to
administer my grammar with tact and discretion.
Unfortunately she loved the jeweller's clerk. She tried to convince me,
with a sweetness I shall never forget, that she was infinitely better
suited to be a jeweller's wife than to be a weight upon the neck of a
genius. Moreover, when I foolishly mentioned my snug fortune as an
extra inducement, she put me smartly in my place by remarking that
fortunes like wine are made in a day while really excellent jeweller's
clerks are something like thirty years in the making. Which, I take it,
was as much as to say that there is always room for improvement in a
man. I confess I was somewhat disturbed by one of her gentlest
remarks. She seemed to be repeating my Uncle Rilas, although I am
quite sure she had never heard of him. She argued that the fortune
might take wings and fly away, and then what would be to pay! Of
course, it was perfectly clear to me, stupid as I must have been, that she
preferred the jeweller's clerk to a fortune.
I was loth to lose her as a typist. The exact point where I appear to have
made a fool of myself was when I first took it into my head that I could
make something else of her. I not only lost a competent typist, but I lost
a great deal of sleep, and had to go abroad for awhile, as men do when
they find out unpleasant things about themselves in just that way.
I gave her as a wedding present a very costly and magnificent
dining-room set, fondly hoping that the jeweller's clerk would

experience a great deal of trouble in living up to it. At first I had
thought of a Marie Antoinette bedroom set, but gave it up when I
contemplated the cost.
If you will pardon me, I shall not go any further into this lamentable
love affair. I submit, in extenuation, that people do not care to be
regaled with the heartaches of past affairs; they are only interested in
those which appear to be in the process of active development or
retrogression. Suffice to say, I was terribly cut up over the way my first
serious affair of the heart turned out, and tried my best to hate myself
for letting it worry me. Somehow I was able to attribute the fiasco to an
inborn sense of shyness that has always made me faint-hearted, dilatory
and unaggressive. No doubt if I had gone about it roughshod and fiery I
could have played hob with the excellent jeweller's peace of mind, to
say the least, but alas! I succeeded only in approaching at a time when
there was nothing left for me to do but to start him off in life with a
mild handicap in the shape of a dining-room set that would not go with
anything else he had in the