"Yes. But what's digging graves got to do with your going to the Klondike?"
"Everything. It gave me the secret of it--the unearned part. Don't you see?"
"My dear sir, I loved the company of the Soulett boys and I enjoyed the society of their equals. So I naturally desired to become their equal. To become a gentleman I had to become rich. But the money must not be earned; so I couldn't make it in trade--which, moreover, was too slow. The careers of butcher, plumber, and liquor-dealer, that might have made me rich quickly, were closed to me by the social disqualifications they carry. And the careers of Jim Sands and Bill Train in Wall Street were too malodorous; besides which, you can't make very much money on the Stock Exchange without treading on influential social toes. Hence the Klondike. Do you see now?"
"Do you mean," said the reporter, to get it straight, "that you went to the Klondike to make money so as to climb--I mean, so as to go into society?"
"Exactly so! Yes, sir! And I tell you, Mr. Parker--"
"Park-_hurst!_" said J. Willoughby, with a frown of injured vanity.
"Mr. Parkhurst, a man has to have some strong motive to enable him to conquer success. In all my wanderings for twenty-five years, prospecting in Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, the Southwest, Nevada, California, Oregon, and Washington, and finally all over Alaska, I had but one object in mind, one purpose. It sustained me. It gave me courage when others despaired; it kept me marching onward when others fell by the wayside and died or became sheep-ranchers. I had no thought for amusement, none for pleasure, none for love. I simply kept up my search. It was the search for happiness that the old knights used to go out on. It was a search, Mr. Parker-hurst, for the yellow admission ticket to the Four Hundred!"
"Have you found it?" J. Willoughby could not help it.
"Let me tell you," pursued Jerningham, ignoring the question. "I used to read the society columns of the New York papers whenever I felt myself growing discouraged; and that always revived me. Up in the Klondike I had saved fifteen hundred dollars and I paid one thousand dollars in gold-dust for a six-months-old copy of a society paper which had an account of Mrs. Masters's ball. To me, 'among those present' meant more than a list of gilt-edge bonds. I've got it yet."