While nature seemed to have constructed Bill Vanderhook for a short-stop or a half-back, it had reserved Alonzo Leffingwell for the higher arts of mystical mysteries.
On attaining his majority Bill consulted with his father and accepted a partnership in the paternal pharmacy. Alonzo consulted with himself, determined upon mysticism and cut loose from parental guidance. Upon this he resigned, as humorist of the _Daily Clarion_, and set out upon the path of wisdom.
About the same time that Bill turned from bats to bottles and gave up the kicking of balls for the rolling of pills, Alonzo laid down his pen, took up his crystal and immured himself in his bedroom.
Naturally, the exactions of these widely differing occupations tended more and more to separate the two young men.
To Bill Vanderhook it meant an active daily life and a perpetual hustle in holding his father's trade and reaching out for the increase. It meant for him a frequent dip in the social swim, and great popularity among those who attended "functions" and presided at Chafing Dishes.
To Alonzo, his decision to become a "Wise Man" cut him out of pretty nearly everything in the town. It meant renunciation of all social and sentimental diversions of Kankakee. While upon the Druggist were fixed the obligations of citizenship which rooted him in his ancestral home, to the Mystic it meant only obscuration and retirement.
While Bill was now joyously "taking stock" and setting up new show cases, Mr. Leffingwell, in obedience to his "Higher Self," was packing his grip for India.
For he who aspires to the state of Gnanum must seek a more adequate asylum than that of Kankakee.
Against all this Bill had violently protested. "Cut out this foolishness, and get the bats out of your belfry. Come," he implored, "and clerk for me. This is the Leader in Kankakee, and when you learn the business I'll make you my Pardner. Now what's the matter with THAT?"
"Pouf! _Piff_! PELF!"--and Alonzo had shuddered as he thus expressed in a musical crescendo his repulsion for trade. At the mere mention of the Drug Store, or the Stock, this Prophet's apprentice might have been seen to curl his mustache with disdain.
He was strangely indifferent to the possible profits of the show-case and the soda fountain.