Philip Curtiss

“ Hence, lacking facts, imagination set to work without any one's really knowing that it was imagination. Old stories of which other men had actually been the heroes were attributed to Bellsmith. His college days were ransacked for picturesque incidents, and some of those old perennial campus fables which are tacked upon one famous graduate after another were tacked upon Bellsmith by men who, at college, had barely known him by sight, to the bewildered disgust of the few men in Leicester who actually did remember him as the quietest man who had ever entered Yale University. ”

“ There were calls from one or two younger women and one or two hearty little men—social climbers, in both cases,—who had only the most casual acquaintance with Bellsmith but now made an elaborate and effusive show of rallying around in this hour of trial ("You poor, dear chap," from the women; "Is there anything I can do for you old man?" from the men) , expecting, of course, their own pay later in the social coin of a grateful and cemented friendship. ”

“ While the newspapers, with a lively appreciation of the news value both of profligate wealth and of "local interest," were waging this legal and hypothetical battle, current gossip at luncheons, in offices, in pool-rooms and in clubs was building up a fictitious history of poor Bellsmith that would have amazed him. It was, moreover, "The Courier's" conception of Bellsmith and not the Pilgrim Trust Co.'s which was accepted by popular acclaim. ”