Page:Lynch Williams--The stolen story and other newspaper stories.djvu/98

 ably get bad for awhile, and make their mother cry at night and their father wonder at what was not at all wonderful. Then, later on, after they had been put up for certain clubs by papa's partner and seconded by Uncle John, who knew everybody, they would marry nice little New York girls who pronounce certain woids like nobody else in the woild—nice, well-dressed, little American products—approved by mamma (only, he doubted that), and, by and by, get a house as near as possible to the houses of other wealthier New Yorkers, and part of a box at the opera perhaps—with their names engraved on the silver door-plate—and be prominent in church-work, possibly, and finally die respectable, and the club flag would be put at half-mast, and some reporter would have a half-column "obit" to write. "Uhh," Linton shuddered, "how do they stand such a life." He thought he would like to be a satirist, if it weren't better to be a sociologist.

They had given him the Tombs Police Court now as a regular department.