Page:MacGrath--The luck of the Irish.djvu/261

 forthwith they beat their foreheads in the dust. If you should ask William, no doubt he will tell you that this was the greatest moment in his life.

Great dramatizations do not always get over; the lesson does not always stick in the mind; it is often crowded aside by the false importance of some triviality. Perversely the audience will seize upon the incident, and right away they will proceed to make the dramatist rich, when all he wanted was to be famous.

The drama in William's life was always overshadowed by that comic episode in Jaipur. The least thing stirred him into the telling of it.

He did not find his letter of credit at Rangoon. He was shown a cable, ostensibly written by himself in Aden, by which the letter had been forwarded to Bombay. A wire to Bombay elicited the surprising fact that his money was now on its way to Hong-Kong as per his further instructions dated Colombo. He knew that this bewildering tangle would be due to forgeries, but this knowledge did not help him solve his increasing financial difficulties. He cabled Hong-Kong the facts, however, and ordered them to hold the letter until he called personally for it with the letter of identification. He landed in Singapore with a little less than a hundred dollars. But he was confident that this sum would tide him over until he reached Hong-Kong. They were to stop only three days in Singapore.

He bore up cheerfully, but none the less he worried in secret. Cook's agents confessed that this