contest. Undismayed they had badgered Lizzie, the ice man, and a couple of neighbours into signing up at twenty-five cents each. They paid no heed to his temperate warnings that it would be impossible to get many subscriptions for so plebeian a journal. He wondered how he would ever be able to disillusion them.
The razor paused and he stared at his half-lathered face in the glass as he realized the nice parallel. Isn't it exactly what Nature is always doing to us? Promising us a Pony! The Pony of wealth, fame, satisfied desire, contentment, if we just sign on the dotted line. . . . Obey that Impulse. By Heaven, what a Promotion Scheme she has, the old jade! Had his sorry dreams been any wiser than those of Janet and Sylvia? His absurd vision of being an artist in living, of knowing the glamour and passion of some generous fruitful career, of piercing into the stormy darkness that lies beyond the pebbly shallows of to-day—all risible! Life is defeat. Hide, hide the things you know to be true. Fall back into the genial humdrum. Fill yourself with sleep. It's all a Promotion Scheme. . . . And inside these wary counsels something central and unarguable was crying: It wasn't just a Pony. It was the horse with wings.
