



Produced by Sean Pobuda









AVERAGE JONES

By Samuel Hopkins Adams




CHAPTER I. THE B-FLAT TROMBONE


Three men sat in the Cosmic Club discussing the question: "What's the
matter with Jones?" Waldemar, the oldest of the conferees, was the
owner, and at times the operator, of an important and decent newspaper.
His heavy face wore the expression of good-humored power, characteristic
of the experienced and successful journalist. Beside him sat Robert
Bertram, the club idler, slender and languidly elegant. The third member
of the conference was Jones himself.

Average Jones had come by his nickname inevitably. His parents had
foredoomed him to it when they furnished him with the initials A. V. R.
E. as preface to his birthright of J for Jones. His character apparently
justified the chance concomitance. He was, so to speak, a composite
photograph of any thousand well-conditioned, clean-living Americans
between the ages of twenty-five and thirty. Happily, his otherwise
commonplace face was relieved by the one unfailing characteristic of
composite photographs, large, deep-set and thoughtful eyes. Otherwise he
would have passed in any crowd, and nobody would have noticed him pass.
Now, at twenty-seven, he looked back over the five years since his
graduation from college and wondered what he had done with them; and at
the four previous years of undergraduate life and wondered how he had
done so well with those and why he had not in some manner justified the
parting words of his favorite professor.

"You have one rare faculty, Jones. You can, when you choose, sharpen
the pencil of your mind to a very fine point.