Cod

"'I'll buy the telegram from you.

C.O.D.' "'Done,' said the doctor, holding out the message.

"'Here's your goods.' and there's your money said the idiot tossing the quarter across the table if you want to buy this message back at any time within the next sixty days doctor i'll give you the refusal of it without extra charge and he folded the paper up and put it away in his pocketbook do the banks really ask for so much security when they make a loan asked the poet hear him will you cried the idiot there's your lucky man he's never had to face a bank president in order to avoid the cold glance of the grocer no cashier ever asked him how many times he'd been sentenced to state prisons before he'd discounted his note do they ask security security isn't the name of it they demand a blockade establish a quarantine they require the would-be debtor to build up a wall as high as chimborazo and as invulnerable as gibraltar between them and the lost before they will part with a dime why they wouldn't discount a note to his own order for andrew carnegie for seventeen cents without his endorsement do they ask for security well i didn't know said the poet i never had anything to do with banks except a small depositor in the savings bank fortunate man said the idiot i wish i could say as much i borrowed five hundred dollars once from a bank and what the deuce do you suppose they did i don't know said the poet what They made me pay it back," said the idiot mournfully, although I needed it just as much when it was due as when I borrowed it.

The cashier was a friend of mine, too.

I'll take it.' "'You will?' said the idiot joyfully.

"'Put up your money.' "'All right,' laughed the poet.

"'I'll pay C.O.D.' "'Another hundred gone,' moaned the idiot, as the party broke up and its members went their several ways.

"'I think it's abominable that this commercial spirit of the age should have affected even you poets.' You ought to have gone into business, old man, and left the muses alone.