As our friendship increased I found how many were the man’s accomplishments and how wide his range of sympathies.  He was an expert bicyclist, as well as a trick rider, and used a camera in a way to make an amateur envious.  He could sing, having a fine tenor voice, which I heard the very day I learned that he could sing.  It so happened that it was my turn to buy the theater tickets, and I invited him to come with me that especial evening.

“Can’t do it,” he replied.

“All right,” I said.

“I’m part of an entertainment tonight, or I would,” he added apologetically.

“What do you do?” I inquired.

“Sing.”

“Get out!” I said.

“So be it,” he answered.  “Come up this evening.”

To this I finally agreed, and was surprised to observe the ease with which he rendered his solo.  He had an exquisitely clear and powerful voice and received a long round of applause, which he refused to acknowledge by singing again.

The influence of success is easily observable in a man of so volatile a nature.  It seems to me that I could have told by his manner, day by day, the inwash of the separate ripples of the inrolling tide of success.  He was all alive, full of plans, and the tale of his coming conquests was told in his eye.  Sometime in the second year of our acquaintance I called at his studio in response to a card which he had stuck under my office door.  It was his habit to draw an outline head of himself, something almost bordering upon a caricature, writing underneath it “I called,” together with any word he might have to say.  This day he was in his usual good spirits, and rallied me upon having an office which was only a blind.  He had a roundabout way of getting me to talk about his personal affairs with him, and I soon saw that he had something very interesting, to himself, to communicate.  At last he said,—­

“I’m going to Europe next summer.”

“Is that so?” I replied.  “For pleasure?”

“Well, partly.”

“What’s up outside of that?” I asked.

“I’m going to represent the American Architectural League at the international convention.”

“I didn’t know you were an architect,” I said.

“Well, I’m not,” he answered, “professionally.  I’ve studied it pretty thoroughly.”

“Well, you seem to be coming up, Louis,” I remarked.

“I’m doing all right,” he answered.

He went on working at his easel as if his fate depended upon what he was doing.  He had the fortunate quality of being able to work and converse most entertainingly at the same time.  He seemed to enjoy company under such circumstances.

“You didn’t know I was a baron, did you?” he finally observed.

“No,” I answered, thinking he was exercising his fancy for the moment.  “Where do you keep your baronial lands, my lord?”

“In Germany, kind sir,” he replied, banteringly.