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THE MAKING OF WILLIAM SIMMSBy Dana BurnetILLUSTRATIONS BY C. D.WILLIAMSHIS mother said fondly thathe saw everything throughcolored glasses, and professedto find the marks ofthem upon his nose. Thiswas a fiction dating fromWilliam's early youth, when, to his ownintense satisfaction, he had discoveredgoblins in the clothes-press. At the age oftwenty-seven he discovered a princess ina tower, and was moved to amazing adventures.William should have been a poet, apainter, a singer, a strolling minstrel, or atramp. He was a clerk in the bankinghouseof John Parr & Co., Wall Street,New York.His fellow clerks thought Williamslightly queer; they did not see the marksof the glasses on his nose. His immediatesuperiors found him scrupulously industrious,and agreed among themselves thathe would go far, if he ever received theimpulse to go at all. What Williamlacked, they said, was ambition.His mother frequently alluded to thissame weakness in his character." You're bright enough," she would say,"but you don't seem to get along veryfast. I suppose it's because you're somoony. Haven't you anv ambition,Will?""Plenty of it, mommie. My ambitionis to ride to the end of every street-carline, and climb to the top of every skyscraperin New York ""There!" mommie would exclaim, inmild exasperation; "you've been wearingyour colored glasses again."And William, catching her about thewaist, would reply:"Buy you a pair, mommie. They'regood for the eyes !"Mother Simms invariably refused thisoffer. She had not time to be fitted, shesaid, what with cooking William's supperand darning William's socks. It was herwont to add gently that such occupationscomposed her happiness.William said that happiness was expectingthe impossible.The Simms apartment consisted of fourrooms and bath. It was located upon thefifth floor of a converted dwelling-house inWest Ninth Street. There was no elevator;but as William often remarked withunjustifiable levity, there was an elevated.The tracks of the Sixth Avenue super-77