The Make-Believe Man | Page 3

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Prepared by Don Lainson

THE MAKE-BELIEVE MAN
I
I had made up my mind that when my vacation came I would spend it
seeking adventures. I have always wished for adventures, but, though I
am old enough--I was twenty-five last October--and have always gone
half-way to meet them, adventures avoid me. Kinney says it is my fault.
He holds that if you want adventures you must go after them.
Kinney sits next to me at Joyce & Carboy's, the woollen manufacturers,
where I am a stenographer, and Kinney is a clerk, and we both have
rooms at Mrs. Shaw's boarding-house. Kinney is only a year older than
myself, but he is always meeting with adventures. At night, when I
have sat up late reading law, so that I may fit myself for court reporting,
and in the hope that some day I may become a member of the bar, he
will knock at my door and tell me some surprising thing that has just
happened to him. Sometimes he has followed a fire-engine and helped
people from a fire-escape, or he has pulled the shield off a policeman,
or at the bar of the Hotel Knickerbocker has made friends with a
stranger, who turns out to be no less than a nobleman or an actor. And
women, especially beautiful women, are always pursuing Kinney in
taxicabs and calling upon him for assistance. Just to look at Kinney,
without knowing how clever he is at getting people out of their
difficulties, he does not appear to be a man to whom you would turn in
time of trouble. You would think women in distress would appeal to
some one bigger and stronger; would sooner ask a policeman. But, on
the contrary, it is to Kinney that women always run, especially, as I
have said, beautiful women. Nothing of the sort ever happens to me. I
suppose, as Kinney says, it is because he was born and brought up in
New York City and looks and acts like a New York man, while I, until
a year ago, have always lived at Fairport. Fairport is a very pretty
harbor, but it does not train one for adventures. We arranged to take our
vacation at the same time, and together. At least Kinney so arranged it.
I see a good deal of him, and in looking forward to my vacation, not the
least pleasant feature of it was that everything connected with Joyce &
Carboy and Mrs. Shaw's boarding-house would be left behind me. But
when Kinney proposed we should go together, I could not see how,

without being rude, I could refuse his company, and when he pointed
out that for an expedition in search of adventure I could not select a
better guide, I felt that he was right.
"Sometimes," he said, "I can see you don't believe that half the things I
tell you have