Page:Love and Learn (1924).pdf/54

 a trade of some kind or enlist on the police force! Get up early in the morning, study the want ads and then lay out a route for yourself, taking the first job that's offered you! Why"

"I'm afraid you don't understand," butts in Robert, with coldly raised eyebrows. "I'm an artist—not a laborer!"

"I wouldn't brag about it!" I says. "Do you mean to say you have never done a day's work in your life?"

"I was at one time engaged in the work of bringing men's and women's attention to the fact that this life is not eternal—that death must come to us all!" says Robert. "And"

"You were a minister?" I interrupt, full of surprise.

"No," says Robert. "An insurance agent."

Well, we sat there and argued till I was plenty late when I went back to my board. Honestly, I rode Mr. Robert Meacham Westover to a fare-thee-well in an attempt to make him snap into it. He broke out with an attack of temperament and angry words flew back and forth like swallows, till finally he threw up his hands and promised me faithfully that if his latest masterpiece, "An Illegal Crime," wasn't accepted within a week he'd return to the respectable science of selling life insurance, as he was doing when what he called the "divine afflatus" knocked him for a loop.