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<head>
<title>Chapter 1</title>
<title>“The Rose of Dixie”</title>
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<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
<section id="chapter-1" epub:type="chapter">
<h2>“THE ROSE OF DIXIE”</h2>
<h2 epub:type="title">“The Rose of Dixie”</h2>
<p>When <i>The Rose of Dixie</i> magazine was started by a stock company in Toombs City, Georgia, there was never but one candidate for its chief editorial position in the minds of its owners. Col. Aquila Telfair was the man for the place. By all the rights of learning, family, reputation, and Southern traditions, he was its foreordained, fit, and logical editor. So, a committee of the patriotic Georgia citizens who had subscribed the founding fund of $100,000 called upon Colonel Telfair at his residence, Cedar Heights, fearful lest the enterprise and the South should suffer by his possible refusal.</p>
<p>The colonel received them in his great library, where he spent most of his days. The library had descended to him from his father. It contained ten thousand volumes, some of which had been published as late as the year 1861. When the deputation arrived, Colonel Telfair was seated at his massive white-pine centre-table, reading Burton’s “Anatomy of Melancholy.” He arose and shook hands punctiliously with each member of the committee. If you were familiar with <i>The Rose of Dixie</i> you will remember the colonel’s portrait, which appeared in it from time to time. You could not forget the long, carefully brushed white hair; the hooked, high-bridged nose, slightly twisted to the left; the keen eyes under the still black eyebrows; the classic mouth beneath the drooping white mustache, slightly frazzled at the ends.</p>
<p>The committee solicitously offered him the position of managing editor, humbly presenting an outline of the field that the publication was designed to cover and mentioning a comfortable salary. The colonel’s lands were growing poorer each year and were much cut up by red gullies. Besides, the honor was not one to be refused.</p>
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<p>In spite of which <i>The Rose of Dixie</i> kept coming out every month. Although in every issue it ran photos of either the Taj Mahal or the Luxembourg Gardens, or Carmencita or La Follette, a certain number of people bought it and subscribed for it. As a boom for it, Editor-Colonel Telfair ran three different views of Andrew Jackson’s old home, “The Hermitage,” a full-page engraving of the second battle of Manassas, entitled “Lee to the Rear!” and a five-thousand-word biography of Belle Boyd in the same number. The subscription list that month advanced 118. Also there were poems in the same issue by Leonina Vashti Haricot (pen-name), related to the Haricots of Charleston, South Carolina, and Bill Thompson, nephew of one of the stockholders. And an article from a special society correspondent describing a tea-party given by the swell Boston and English set, where a lot of tea was spilled overboard by some of the guests masquerading as Indians.</p>
<p>One day a person whose breath would easily cloud a mirror, he was so much alive, entered the office of <i>The Rose of Dixie</i>. He was a man about the size of a real-estate agent, with a self-tied tie and a manner that he must have borrowed conjointly from W. J. Bryan, Hackenschmidt, and Hetty Green. He was shown into the editor-colonel’s <i>pons asinorum</i>. Colonel Telfair rose and began a Prince Albert bow.</p>
<p>“I’m Thacker,” said the intruder, taking the editor’s chair⁠—“T. T. Thacker, of New York.”</p>
<p>He dribbled hastily upon the colonel’s desk some cards, a bulky manila envelope, and a letter from the owners of <i>The Rose of Dixie</i>. This letter introduced Mr. Thacker, and politely requested Colonel Telfair to give him a conference and whatever information about the magazine he might desire.</p>
<p>He dribbled hastily upon the colonel’s desk some cards, a bulky manila envelope, and a letter from the owners of <i>The Rose of Dixie</i>. This letter introduced <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Thacker, and politely requested Colonel Telfair to give him a conference and whatever information about the magazine he might desire.</p>
<p>“I’ve been corresponding with the secretary of the magazine owners for some time,” said Thacker, briskly. “I’m a practical magazine man myself, and a circulation booster as good as any, if I do say it. I’ll guarantee an increase of anywhere from ten thousand to a hundred thousand a year for any publication that isn’t printed in a dead language. I’ve had my eye on <i>The Rose of Dixie</i> ever since it started. I know every end of the business from editing to setting up the classified ads. Now, I’ve come down here to put a good bunch of money in the magazine, if I can see my way clear. It ought to be made to pay. The secretary tells me it’s losing money. I don’t see why a magazine in the South, if it’s properly handled, shouldn’t get a good circulation in the North, too.”</p>
<p>Colonel Telfair leaned back in his chair and polished his gold-rimmed glasses.</p>
<p>“Mr. Thacker,” said he, courteously but firmly, “<i>The Rose of Dixie</i> is a publication devoted to the fostering and the voicing of Southern genius. Its watchword, which you may have seen on the cover, is ‘Of, For, and By the South.’ ”</p>
<p>“<abbr>Mr.</abbr> Thacker,” said he, courteously but firmly, “<i>The Rose of Dixie</i> is a publication devoted to the fostering and the voicing of Southern genius. Its watchword, which you may have seen on the cover, is ‘Of, For, and By the South.’ ”</p>
<p>“But you wouldn’t object to a Northern circulation, would you?” asked Thacker.</p>
<p>“I suppose,” said the editor-colonel, “that it is customary to open the circulation lists to all. I do not know. I have nothing to do with the business affairs of the magazine. I was called upon to assume editorial control of it, and I have devoted to its conduct such poor literary talents as I may possess and whatever store of erudition I may have acquired.”</p>
<p>“Sure,” said Thacker. “But a dollar is a dollar anywhere, North, South, or West⁠—whether you’re buying codfish, goober peas, or Rocky Ford cantaloupes. Now, I’ve been looking over your November number. I see one here on your desk. You don’t mind running over it with me?</p>
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<p>“But why,” persisted Thacker, “is the poem illustrated with a view of the M. &amp; O. Railroad freight depot at Tuscaloosa?”</p>
<p>“The illustration,” said the colonel, with dignity, “shows a corner of the fence surrounding the old homestead where Miss Lascelles was born.”</p>
<p>“All right,” said Thacker. “I read the poem, but I couldn’t tell whether it was about the depot of the battle of Bull Run. Now, here’s a short story called ‘Rosies’ Temptation,’ by Fosdyke Piggott. It’s rotten. What is a Piggott, anyway?”</p>
<p>“Mr. Piggott,” said the editor, “is a brother of the principal stockholder of the magazine.”</p>
<p>“<abbr>Mr.</abbr> Piggott,” said the editor, “is a brother of the principal stockholder of the magazine.”</p>
<p>“All’s right with the world⁠—Piggott passes,” said Thacker. “Well this article on Arctic exploration and the one on tarpon fishing might go. But how about this write-up of the Atlanta, New Orleans, Nashville, and Savannah breweries? It seems to consist mainly of statistics about their output and the quality of their beer. What’s the chip over the bug?”</p>
<p>“If I understand your figurative language,” answered Colonel Telfair, “it is this: the article you refer to was handed to me by the owners of the magazine with instructions to publish it. The literary quality of it did not appeal to me. But, in a measure, I feel impelled to conform, in certain matters, to the wishes of the gentlemen who are interested in the financial side of <i>The Rose</i>.”</p>
<p>“I see,” said Thacker. “Next we have two pages of selections from ‘Lalla Rookh,’ by Thomas Moore. Now, what Federal prison did Moore escape from, or what’s the name of the F.F.V. family that he carries as a handicap?”</p>
<p>“I see,” said Thacker. “Next we have two pages of selections from ‘Lalla Rookh,’ by Thomas Moore. Now, what Federal prison did Moore escape from, or what’s the name of the F.F.<span epub:type="z3998:roman">V</span>. family that he carries as a handicap?”</p>
<p>“Moore was an Irish poet who died in 1852,” said Colonel Telfair, pityingly. “He is a classic. I have been thinking of reprinting his translation of Anacreon serially in the magazine.”</p>
<p>“Look out for the copyright laws,” said Thacker, flippantly. Who’s Bessie Belleclair, who contributes the essay on the newly completed water-works plant in Milledgeville?”</p>
<p>“The name, sir,” said Colonel Telfair, “is the <i>nom de guerre</i> of Miss Elvira Simpkins. I have not the honor of knowing the lady; but her contribution was sent to us by Congressman Brower, of her native state. Congressman Brower’s mother was related to the Polks of Tennessee.</p>
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</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<p>“That’s the stuff,” continued Thacker. “What do you think of that?”</p>
<p>“I am not unfamiliar with the works of Mr. Riley,” said the colonel, deliberately. “I believe he lives in Indiana. For the last ten years I have been somewhat of a literary recluse, and am familiar with nearly all the books in the Cedar Heights library. I am also of the opinion that a magazine should contain a certain amount of poetry. Many of the sweetest singers of the South have already contributed to the pages of <i>The Rose of Dixie</i>. I, myself, have thought of translating from the original for publication in its pages the works of the great Italian poet Tasso. Have you ever drunk from the fountain of this immortal poet’s lines, Mr. Thacker?”</p>
<p>“I am not unfamiliar with the works of <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Riley,” said the colonel, deliberately. “I believe he lives in Indiana. For the last ten years I have been somewhat of a literary recluse, and am familiar with nearly all the books in the Cedar Heights library. I am also of the opinion that a magazine should contain a certain amount of poetry. Many of the sweetest singers of the South have already contributed to the pages of <i>The Rose of Dixie</i>. I, myself, have thought of translating from the original for publication in its pages the works of the great Italian poet Tasso. Have you ever drunk from the fountain of this immortal poet’s lines, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Thacker?”</p>
<p>“Not even a demi-Tasso,” said Thacker. Now, let’s come to the point, Colonel Telfair. I’ve already invested some money in this as a flyer. That bunch of manuscripts cost me $4,000. My object was to try a number of them in the next issue⁠—I believe you make up less than a month ahead⁠—and see what effect it has on the circulation. I believe that by printing the best stuff we can get in the North, South, East, or West we can make the magazine go. You have there the letter from the owning company asking you to co-operate with me in the plan. Let’s chuck out some of this slush that you’ve been publishing just because the writers are related to the Skoopdoodles of Skoopdoodle County. Are you with me?”</p>
<p>“As long as I continue to be the editor of The Rose,” said Colonel Telfair, with dignity, “I shall be its editor. But I desire also to conform to the wishes of its owners if I can do so conscientiously.”</p>
<p>“That’s the talk,” said Thacker, briskly. “Now, how much of this stuff I’ve brought can we get into the January number? We want to begin right away.”</p>
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<p>“You are disposed to be facetious,” said Colonel Telfair, calmly. “The article is from the pen of a thinker, a philosopher, a lover of mankind, a student, and a rhetorician of high degree.”</p>
<p>“It must have been written by a syndicate,” said Thacker. “But, honestly, Colonel, you want to go slow. I don’t know of any eight-thousand-word single doses of written matter that are read by anybody these days, except Supreme Court briefs and reports of murder trials. You haven’t by any accident gotten hold of a copy of one of Daniel Webster’s speeches, have you?”</p>
<p>Colonel Telfair swung a little in his chair and looked steadily from under his bushy eyebrows at the magazine promoter.</p>
<p>“Mr. Thacker,” he said, gravely, “I am willing to segregate the somewhat crude expression of your sense of humor from the solicitude that your business investments undoubtedly have conferred upon you. But I must ask you to cease your jibes and derogatory comments upon the South and the Southern people. They, sir, will not be tolerated in the office of <i>The Rose of Dixie</i> for one moment. And before you proceed with more of your covert insinuations that I, the editor of this magazine, am not a competent judge of the merits of the matter submitted to its consideration, I beg that you will first present some evidence or proof that you are my superior in any way, shape, or form relative to the question in hand.”</p>
<p>“<abbr>Mr.</abbr> Thacker,” he said, gravely, “I am willing to segregate the somewhat crude expression of your sense of humor from the solicitude that your business investments undoubtedly have conferred upon you. But I must ask you to cease your jibes and derogatory comments upon the South and the Southern people. They, sir, will not be tolerated in the office of <i>The Rose of Dixie</i> for one moment. And before you proceed with more of your covert insinuations that I, the editor of this magazine, am not a competent judge of the merits of the matter submitted to its consideration, I beg that you will first present some evidence or proof that you are my superior in any way, shape, or form relative to the question in hand.”</p>
<p>“Oh, come, Colonel,” said Thacker, good-naturedly. “I didn’t do anything like that to you. It sounds like an indictment by the fourth assistant attorney-general. Let’s get back to business. What’s this 8,000 to 1 shot about?”</p>
<p>“The article,” said Colonel Telfair, acknowledging the apology by a slight bow, “covers a wide area of knowledge. It takes up theories and questions that have puzzled the world for centuries, and disposes of them logically and concisely. One by one it holds up to view the evils of the world, points out the way of eradicating them, and then conscientiously and in detail commends the good. There is hardly a phase of human life that it does not discuss wisely, calmly, and equitably. The great policies of governments, the duties of private citizens, the obligations of home life, law, ethics, morality⁠—all these important subjects are handled with a calm wisdom and confidence that I must confess has captured my admiration.”</p>
<p>“It must be a crackerjack,” said Thacker, impressed.</p>
<p>“It is a great contribution to the world’s wisdom,” said the colonel. “The only doubt remaining in my mind as to the tremendous advantage it would be to us to give it publication in <i>The Rose of Dixie</i> is that I have not yet sufficient information about the author to give his work publicity in our magazine.</p>
<p>“I thought you said he is a distinguished man,” said Thacker.</p>
<p>“He is,” replied the colonel, “both in literary and in other more diversified and extraneous fields. But I am extremely careful about the matter that I accept for publication. My contributors are people of unquestionable repute and connections, which fact can be verified at any time. As I said, I am holding this article until I can acquire more information about its author. I do not know whether I will publish it or not. If I decide against it, I shall be much pleased, Mr. Thacker, to substitute the matter that you are leaving with me in its place.”</p>
<p>“He is,” replied the colonel, “both in literary and in other more diversified and extraneous fields. But I am extremely careful about the matter that I accept for publication. My contributors are people of unquestionable repute and connections, which fact can be verified at any time. As I said, I am holding this article until I can acquire more information about its author. I do not know whether I will publish it or not. If I decide against it, I shall be much pleased, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Thacker, to substitute the matter that you are leaving with me in its place.”</p>
<p>Thacker was somewhat at sea.</p>
<p>“I don’t seem to gather,” said he, “much about the gist of this inspired piece of literature. It sounds more like a dark horse than Pegasus to me.”</p>
<p>“It is a human document,” said the colonel-editor, confidently, “from a man of great accomplishments who, in my opinion, has obtained a stronger grasp on the world and its outcomes than that of any man living to-day.”</p>
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<p>“No, sir,” said Colonel Telfair. “I am speaking of mentality and literature, not of the less worthy intricacies of trade.”</p>
<p>“Well, what’s the trouble about running the article,” asked Thacker, a little impatiently, “if the man’s well known and has got the stuff?”</p>
<p>Colonel Telfair sighed.</p>
<p>“Mr. Thacker,” said he, “for once I have been tempted. Nothing has yet appeared in <i>The Rose of Dixie</i> that has not been from the pen of one of its sons or daughters. I know little about the author of this article except that he has acquired prominence in a section of the country that has always been inimical to my heart and mind. But I recognize his genius; and, as I have told you, I have instituted an investigation of his personality. Perhaps it will be futile. But I shall pursue the inquiry. Until that is finished, I must leave open the question of filling the vacant space in our January number.”</p>
<p>“<abbr>Mr.</abbr> Thacker,” said he, “for once I have been tempted. Nothing has yet appeared in <i>The Rose of Dixie</i> that has not been from the pen of one of its sons or daughters. I know little about the author of this article except that he has acquired prominence in a section of the country that has always been inimical to my heart and mind. But I recognize his genius; and, as I have told you, I have instituted an investigation of his personality. Perhaps it will be futile. But I shall pursue the inquiry. Until that is finished, I must leave open the question of filling the vacant space in our January number.”</p>
<p>Thacker arose to leave.</p>
<p>“All right, Colonel,” he said, as cordially as he could. “You use your own judgment. If you’ve really got a scoop or something that will make ’em sit up, run it instead of my stuff. I’ll drop in again in about two weeks. Good luck!”</p>
<p>Colonel Telfair and the magazine promoter shook hands.</p>

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<title>Chapter 10</title>
<title>The Moment of Victory</title>
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<h2>THE MOMENT OF VICTORY</h2>
<h2 epub:type="title">The Moment of Victory</h2>
<p>Ben Granger is a war veteran aged twenty-nine⁠—which should enable you to guess the war. He is also principal merchant and postmaster of Cadiz, a little town over which the breezes from the Gulf of Mexico perpetually blow.</p>
<p>Ben helped to hurl the Don from his stronghold in the Greater Antilles; and then, hiking across half the world, he marched as a corporal-usher up and down the blazing tropic aisles of the open-air college in which the Filipino was schooled. Now, with his bayonet beaten into a cheese-slicer, he rallies his corporal’s guard of cronies in the shade of his well-whittled porch, instead of in the matted jungles of Mindanao. Always have his interest and choice been for deeds rather than for words; but the consideration and digestion of motives is not beyond him, as this story, which is his, will attest.</p>
<p>“What is it,” he asked me one moonlit eve, as we sat among his boxes and barrels, “that generally makes men go through dangers, and fire, and trouble, and starvation, and battle, and such recourses? What does a man do it for? Why does he try to outdo his fellow-humans, and be braver and stronger and more daring and showy than even his best friends are? What’s his game? What does he expect to get out of it? He don’t do it just for the fresh air and exercise. What would you say, now, Bill, that an ordinary man expects, generally speaking, for his efforts along the line of ambition and extraordinary hustling in the marketplaces, forums, shooting-galleries, lyceums, battle-fields, links, cinder-paths, and arenas of the civilized and <i>vice versa</i> places of the world?”</p>
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<p>“I’ll give you an estimate of his physiological and pictorial make-up, and then I’ll stick spurs into the sides of my narrative.</p>
<p>“Willie inclined to the Caucasian in his coloring and manner of style. His hair was opalescent and his conversation fragmentary. His eyes were the same blue shade as the china dog’s on the right-hand corner of your Aunt Ellen’s mantelpiece. He took things as they came, and I never felt any hostility against him. I let him live, and so did others.</p>
<p>“But what does this Willie do but coax his heart out of his boots and lose it to Myra Allison, the liveliest, brightest, keenest, smartest, and prettiest girl in San Augustine. I tell you, she had the blackest eyes, the shiniest curls, and the most tantalizing⁠—Oh, no, you’re off⁠—I wasn’t a victim. I might have been, but I knew better. I kept out. Joe Granberry was It from the start. He had everybody else beat a couple of leagues and thence east to a stake and mound. But, anyhow, Myra was a nine-pound, full-merino, fall-clip fleece, sacked and loaded on a four-horse team for San Antone.</p>
<p>“One night there was an ice-cream sociable at Mrs. Colonel Spraggins’, in San Augustine. We fellows had a big room up-stairs opened up for us to put our hats and things in, and to comb our hair and put on the clean collars we brought along inside the sweat-bands of our hats⁠—in short, a room to fix up in just like they have everywhere at high-toned doings. A little farther down the hall was the girls’ room, which they used to powder up in, and so forth. Downstairs we⁠—that is, the San Augustine Social Cotillion and Merrymakers’ Club⁠—had a stretcher put down in the parlor where our dance was going on.</p>
<p>“One night there was an ice-cream sociable at <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Colonel Spraggins’, in San Augustine. We fellows had a big room up-stairs opened up for us to put our hats and things in, and to comb our hair and put on the clean collars we brought along inside the sweat-bands of our hats⁠—in short, a room to fix up in just like they have everywhere at high-toned doings. A little farther down the hall was the girls’ room, which they used to powder up in, and so forth. Downstairs we⁠—that is, the San Augustine Social Cotillion and Merrymakers’ Club⁠—had a stretcher put down in the parlor where our dance was going on.</p>
<p>“Willie Robbins and me happened to be up in our⁠—cloak-room, I believe we called it⁠—when Myra Allison skipped through the hall on her way down-stairs from the girls’ room. Willie was standing before the mirror, deeply interested in smoothing down the blond grass-plot on his head, which seemed to give him lots of trouble. Myra was always full of life and devilment. She stopped and stuck her head in our door. She certainly was good-looking. But I knew how Joe Granberry stood with her. So did Willie; but he kept on ba-a-a-ing after her and following her around. He had a system of persistence that didn’t coincide with pale hair and light eyes.</p>
<p>“ ‘Hello, Willie!’ says Myra. ‘What are you doing to yourself in the glass?’</p>
<p>“ ‘I’m trying to look fly,’ says Willie.</p>
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<p>“Well, without itemizing his deeds, Willie sure made good as a hero. He simply spent most of his time on his knees begging our captain to send him on forlorn hopes and dangerous scouting expeditions. In every fight he was the first man to mix it at close quarters with the Don Alfonsos. He got three or four bullets planted in various parts of his autonomy. Once he went off with a detail of eight men and captured a whole company of Spanish. He kept Captain Floyd busy writing out recommendations of his bravery to send in to headquarters; and he began to accumulate medals for all kinds of things⁠—heroism and target-shooting and valor and tactics and uninsubordination, and all the little accomplishments that look good to the third assistant secretaries of the War Department.</p>
<p>“Finally, Cap Floyd got promoted to be a major-general, or a knight commander of the main herd, or something like that. He pounded around on a white horse, all desecrated up with gold-leaf and hen-feathers and a Good Templar’s hat, and wasn’t allowed by the regulations to speak to us. And Willie Robbins was made captain of our company.</p>
<p>“And maybe he didn’t go after the wreath of fame then! As far as I could see it was him that ended the war. He got eighteen of us boys⁠—friends of his, too⁠—killed in battles that he stirred up himself, and that didn’t seem to me necessary at all. One night he took twelve of us and waded through a little rill about a hundred and ninety yards wide, and climbed a couple of mountains, and sneaked through a mile of neglected shrubbery and a couple of rock-quarries and into a rye-straw village, and captured a Spanish general named, as they said, Benny Veedus. Benny seemed to me hardly worth the trouble, being a blackish man without shoes or cuffs, and anxious to surrender and throw himself on the commissary of his foe.</p>
<p>“But that job gave Willie the big boost he wanted. The San Augustine <i>News</i> and the Galveston, St. Louis, New York, and Kansas City papers printed his picture and columns of stuff about him. Old San Augustine simply went crazy over its ‘gallant son.’ The <i>News</i> had an editorial tearfully begging the Government to call off the regular army and the national guard, and let Willie carry on the rest of the war single-handed. It said that a refusal to do so would be regarded as a proof that the Northern jealousy of the South was still as rampant as ever.</p>
<p>“But that job gave Willie the big boost he wanted. The San Augustine <i>News</i> and the Galveston, <abbr>St.</abbr> Louis, New York, and Kansas City papers printed his picture and columns of stuff about him. Old San Augustine simply went crazy over its ‘gallant son.’ The <i>News</i> had an editorial tearfully begging the Government to call off the regular army and the national guard, and let Willie carry on the rest of the war single-handed. It said that a refusal to do so would be regarded as a proof that the Northern jealousy of the South was still as rampant as ever.</p>
<p>“If the war hadn’t ended pretty soon, I don’t know to what heights of gold braid and encomiums Willie would have climbed; but it did. There was a secession of hostilities just three days after he was appointed a colonel, and got in three more medals by registered mail, and shot two Spaniards while they were drinking lemonade in an ambuscade.</p>
<p>“Our company went back to San Augustine when the war was over. There wasn’t anywhere else for it to go. And what do you think? The old town notified us in print, by wire cable, special delivery, and a nigger named Saul sent on a gray mule to San Antone, that they was going to give us the biggest blow-out, complimentary, alimentary, and elementary, that ever disturbed the kildees on the sand-flats outside of the immediate contiguity of the city.</p>
<p>“I say ‘we,’ but it was all meant for ex-Private, Captain <i>de facto</i>, and Colonel-elect Willie Robbins. The town was crazy about him. They notified us that the reception they were going to put up would make the Mardi Gras in New Orleans look like an afternoon tea in Bury St. Edmunds with a curate’s aunt.</p>
<p>“I say ‘we,’ but it was all meant for ex-Private, Captain <i>de facto</i>, and Colonel-elect Willie Robbins. The town was crazy about him. They notified us that the reception they were going to put up would make the Mardi Gras in New Orleans look like an afternoon tea in Bury <abbr>St.</abbr> Edmunds with a curate’s aunt.</p>
<p>“Well, the San Augustine Rifles got back home on schedule time. Everybody was at the depot giving forth Roosevelt-Democrat⁠—they used to be called Rebel⁠—yells. There was two brass-bands, and the mayor, and schoolgirls in white frightening the street-car horses by throwing Cherokee roses in the streets, and⁠—well, maybe you’ve seen a celebration by a town that was inland and out of water.</p>
<p>“They wanted Brevet-Colonel Willie to get into a carriage and be drawn by prominent citizens and some of the city aldermen to the armory, but he stuck to his company and marched at the head of it up Sam Houston Avenue. The buildings on both sides was covered with flags and audiences, and everybody hollered ‘Robbins!’ or ‘Hello, Willie!’ as we marched up in files of fours. I never saw a illustriouser-looking human in my life than Willie was. He had at least seven or eight medals and diplomas and decorations on the breast of his khaki coat; he was sunburnt the color of a saddle, and he certainly done himself proud.</p>
<p>“They told us at the depot that the courthouse was to be illuminated at half-past seven, and there would be speeches and chili-con-carne at the Palace Hotel. Miss Delphine Thompson was to read an original poem by James Whitcomb Ryan, and Constable Hooker had promised us a salute of nine guns from Chicago that he had arrested that day.</p>

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<title>The Head-Hunter</title>
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<h2>THE HEAD-HUNTER</h2>
<h2 epub:type="title">The Head-Hunter</h2>
<p>When the war between Spain and George Dewey was over, I went to the Philippine Islands. There I remained as bush-whacker correspondent for my paper until its managing editor notified me that an eight-hundred-word cablegram describing the grief of a pet carabao over the death of an infant Moro was not considered by the office to be war news. So I resigned, and came home.</p>
<p>On board the trading-vessel that brought me back I pondered much upon the strange things I had sensed in the weird archipelago of the yellow-brown people. The manœuvres and skirmishings of the petty war interested me not: I was spellbound by the outlandish and unreadable countenance of that race that had turned its expressionless gaze upon us out of an unguessable past.</p>
<p>Particularly during my stay in Mindanao had I been fascinated and attracted by that delightfully original tribe of heathen known as the head-hunters. Those grim, flinty, relentless little men, never seen, but chilling the warmest noonday by the subtle terror of their concealed presence, paralleling the trail of their prey through unmapped forests, across perilous mountain-tops, adown bottomless chasms, into uninhabitable jungles, always near with the invisible hand of death uplifted, betraying their pursuit only by such signs as a beast or a bird or a gliding serpent might make⁠—a twig crackling in the awful, sweat-soaked night, a drench of dew showering from the screening foliage of a giant tree, a whisper at even from the rushes of a water-level⁠—a hint of death for every mile and every hour⁠—they amused me greatly, those little fellows of one idea.</p>
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<p>Truly, the life of the merry head-hunter captivated me. He had reduced art and philosophy to a simple code. To take your adversary’s head, to basket it at the portal of your castle, to see it lying there, a dead thing, with its cunning and stratagems and power gone⁠—Is there a better way to foil his plots, to refute his arguments, to establish your superiority over his skill and wisdom?</p>
<p>The ship that brought me home was captained by an erratic Swede, who changed his course and deposited me, with genuine compassion, in a small town on the Pacific coast of one of the Central American republics, a few hundred miles south of the port to which he had engaged to convey me. But I was wearied of movement and exotic fancies; so I leaped contentedly upon the firm sands of the village of Mojada, telling myself I should be sure to find there the rest that I craved. After all, far better to linger there (I thought), lulled by the sedative plash of the waves and the rustling of palm-fronds, than to sit upon the horsehair sofa of my parental home in the East, and there, cast down by currant wine and cake, and scourged by fatuous relatives, drivel into the ears of gaping neighbors sad stories of the death of colonial governors.</p>
<p>When I first saw Chloe Greene she was standing, all in white, in the doorway of her father’s tile-roofed ‘dobe house. She was polishing a silver cup with a cloth, and she looked like a pearl laid against black velvet. She turned on me a flatteringly protracted but a wiltingly disapproving gaze, and then went inside, humming a light song to indicate the value she placed upon my existence.</p>
<p>Small wonder: for Dr. Stamford (the most disreputable professional man between Juneau and Valparaiso) and I were zigzagging along the turfy street, tunelessly singing the words of “Auld Lang Syne” to the air of “Muzzer’s Little Coal-Black Coon.” We had come from the ice factory, which was Mojada’s palace of wickedness, where we had been playing billiards and opening black bottles, white with frost, that we dragged with strings out of old Sandoval’s ice-cold vats.</p>
<p>I turned in sudden rage to Dr. Stamford, as sober as the verger of a cathedral. In a moment I had become aware that we were swine cast before a pearl.</p>
<p>Small wonder: for <abbr>Dr.</abbr> Stamford (the most disreputable professional man between Juneau and Valparaiso) and I were zigzagging along the turfy street, tunelessly singing the words of “Auld Lang Syne” to the air of “Muzzer’s Little Coal-Black Coon.” We had come from the ice factory, which was Mojada’s palace of wickedness, where we had been playing billiards and opening black bottles, white with frost, that we dragged with strings out of old Sandoval’s ice-cold vats.</p>
<p>I turned in sudden rage to <abbr>Dr.</abbr> Stamford, as sober as the verger of a cathedral. In a moment I had become aware that we were swine cast before a pearl.</p>
<p>“You beast,” I said, “this is half your doing. And the other half is the fault of this cursed country. I’d better have gone back to Sleepy-town and died in a wild orgy of currant wine and buns than to have had this happen.”</p>
<p>Stamford filled the empty street with his roaring laughter.</p>
<p>“You too!” he cried. “And all as quick as the popping of a cork. Well, she does seem to strike agreeably upon the retina. But don’t burn your fingers. All Mojada will tell you that Louis Devoe is the man.</p>
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<p>I stooped and kissed her. Then a moisture broke out on my forehead, and I began to feel weak. I saw the red stains vanish from Chloe’s apron, and the head of Louis Devoe turn to a brown, dried cocoanut.</p>
<p>“There will be cocoanut-pudding for dinner, Tommy, boy,” said Chloe, gayly, “and you must come. I must go in for a little while.”</p>
<p>She vanished in a delightful flutter.</p>
<p>Dr. Stamford tramped up hurriedly. He seized my pulse as though it were his own property that I had escaped with.</p>
<p><abbr>Dr.</abbr> Stamford tramped up hurriedly. He seized my pulse as though it were his own property that I had escaped with.</p>
<p>“You are the biggest fool outside of any asylum!” he said, angrily. “Why did you leave your bed? And the idiotic things you’ve been doing!⁠—and no wonder, with your pulse going like a sledge-hammer.”</p>
<p>“Name some of them,” said I.</p>
<p>“Devoe sent for me,” said Stamford. “He saw you from his window go to old Campos’ store, chase him up the hill with his own yardstick, and then come back and make off with his biggest cocoanut.”</p>

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<h2>NO STORY</h2>
<h2 epub:type="title">No Story</h2>
<p>To avoid having this book hurled into corner of the room by the suspicious reader, I will assert in time that this is not a newspaper story. You will encounter no shirt-sleeved, omniscient city editor, no prodigy “cub” reporter just off the farm, no scoop, no story⁠—no anything.</p>
<p>But if you will concede me the setting of the first scene in the reporters’ room of the <i>Morning Beacon</i>, I will repay the favor by keeping strictly my promises set forth above.</p>
<p>I was doing space-work on the <i>Beacon</i>, hoping to be put on a salary. Some one had cleared with a rake or a shovel a small space for me at the end of a long table piled high with exchanges, <i>Congressional Records</i>, and old files. There I did my work. I wrote whatever the city whispered or roared or chuckled to me on my diligent wanderings about its streets. My income was not regular.</p>
@ -21,14 +21,14 @@
<p>I became placated. The proposition showed that Tripp appreciated past favors, although he did not return them. If he had been wise enough to strike me for a quarter then he would have got it.</p>
<p>“What is the story?” I asked, poising my pencil with a finely calculated editorial air.</p>
<p>“I’ll tell you,” said Tripp. “It’s a girl. A beauty. One of the howlingest Amsden’s Junes you ever saw. Rosebuds covered with dew⁠—violets in their mossy bed⁠—and truck like that. She’s lived on Long Island twenty years and never saw New York City before. I ran against her on Thirty-fourth Street. She’d just got in on the East River ferry. I tell you, she’s a beauty that would take the hydrogen out of all the peroxides in the world. She stopped me on the street and asked me where she could find George Brown. Asked me where she could find <i>George Brown in New York City!</i> What do you think of that?</p>
<p>“I talked to her, and found that she was going to marry a young farmer named Dodd⁠—Hiram Dodd⁠—next week. But it seems that George Brown still holds the championship in her youthful fancy. George had greased his cowhide boots some years ago, and came to the city to make his fortune. But he forgot to remember to show up again at Greenburg, and Hiram got in as second-best choice. But when it comes to the scratch Ada⁠—her name’s Ada Lowery⁠—saddles a nag and rides eight miles to the railroad station and catches the 6.45 <span class="smallcaps">a.m.</span> train for the city. Looking for George, you know⁠—you understand about women⁠—George wasn’t there, so she wanted him.</p>
<p>“I talked to her, and found that she was going to marry a young farmer named Dodd⁠—Hiram Dodd⁠—next week. But it seems that George Brown still holds the championship in her youthful fancy. George had greased his cowhide boots some years ago, and came to the city to make his fortune. But he forgot to remember to show up again at Greenburg, and Hiram got in as second-best choice. But when it comes to the scratch Ada⁠—her name’s Ada Lowery⁠—saddles a nag and rides eight miles to the railroad station and catches the 6.45 <span class="smallcaps"><abbr class="time">a.m.</abbr></span> train for the city. Looking for George, you know⁠—you understand about women⁠—George wasn’t there, so she wanted him.</p>
<p>“Well, you know, I couldn’t leave her loose in Wolftown-on-the-Hudson. I suppose she thought the first person she inquired of would say: ‘George Brown?⁠—why, yes⁠—lemme see⁠—he’s a short man with light-blue eyes, ain’t he? Oh yes⁠—you’ll find George on One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street, right next to the grocery. He’s bill-clerk in a saddle-and-harness store.’ That’s about how innocent and beautiful she is. You know those little Long Island water-front villages like Greenburg⁠—a couple of duck-farms for sport, and clams and about nine summer visitors for industries. That’s the kind of a place she comes from. But, say⁠—you ought to see her!</p>
<p>“What could I do? I don’t know what money looks like in the morning. And she’d paid her last cent of pocket-money for her railroad ticket except a quarter, which she had squandered on gum-drops. She was eating them out of a paper bag. I took her to a boarding-house on Thirty-second Street where I used to live, and hocked her. She’s in soak for a dollar. That’s old Mother McGinnis’ price per day. I’ll show you the house.”</p>
<p>“What words are these, Tripp?” said I. “I thought you said you had a story. Every ferryboat that crosses the East River brings or takes away girls from Long Island.”</p>
<p>The premature lines on Tripp’s face grew deeper. He frowned seriously from his tangle of hair. He separated his hands and emphasized his answer with one shaking forefinger.</p>
<p>“Can’t you see,” he said, “what a rattling fine story it would make? You could do it fine. All about the romance, you know, and describe the girl, and put a lot of stuff in it about true love, and sling in a few stickfuls of funny business⁠—joshing the Long Islanders about being green, and, well⁠—you know how to do it. You ought to get fifteen dollars out of it, anyhow. And it’ll cost you only about four dollars. You’ll make a clear profit of eleven.”</p>
<p>“How will it cost me four dollars?” I asked, suspiciously.</p>
<p>“One dollar to Mrs. McGinnis,” Tripp answered, promptly, “and two dollars to pay the girl’s fare back home.”</p>
<p>“One dollar to <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> McGinnis,” Tripp answered, promptly, “and two dollars to pay the girl’s fare back home.”</p>
<p>“And the fourth dimension?” I inquired, making a rapid mental calculation.</p>
<p>“One dollar to me,” said Tripp. “For whiskey. Are you on?”</p>
<p>I smiled enigmatically and spread my elbows as if to begin writing again. But this grim, abject, specious, subservient, burr-like wreck of a man would not be shaken off. His forehead suddenly became shiningly moist.</p>
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<p>In the dim parlor a girl sat at the cracked marble centre-table weeping comfortably and eating gum-drops. She was a flawless beauty. Crying had only made her brilliant eyes brighter. When she crunched a gum-drop you thought only of the poetry of motion and envied the senseless confection. Eve at the age of five minutes must have been a ringer for Miss Ada Lowery at nineteen or twenty. I was introduced, and a gum-drop suffered neglect while she conveyed to me a naïve interest, such as a puppy dog (a prize winner) might bestow upon a crawling beetle or a frog.</p>
<p>Tripp took his stand by the table, with the fingers of one hand spread upon it, as an attorney or a master of ceremonies might have stood. But he looked the master of nothing. His faded coat was buttoned high, as if it sought to be charitable to deficiencies of tie and linen.</p>
<p>I thought of a Scotch terrier at the sight of his shifty eyes in the glade between his tangled hair and beard. For one ignoble moment I felt ashamed of having been introduced as his friend in the presence of so much beauty in distress. But evidently Tripp meant to conduct the ceremonies, whatever they might be. I thought I detected in his actions and pose an intention of foisting the situation upon me as material for a newspaper story, in a lingering hope of extracting from me his whiskey dollar.</p>
<p>“My friend” (I shuddered), “Mr. Chalmers,” said Tripp, “will tell you, Miss Lowery, the same that I did. He’s a reporter, and he can hand out the talk better than I can. That’s why I brought him with me.” (O Tripp, wasn’t it the <i>silver</i>-tongued orator you wanted?) “He’s wise to a lot of things, and he’ll tell you now what’s best to do.”</p>
<p>“My friend” (I shuddered), “<abbr>Mr.</abbr> Chalmers,” said Tripp, “will tell you, Miss Lowery, the same that I did. He’s a reporter, and he can hand out the talk better than I can. That’s why I brought him with me.” (O Tripp, wasn’t it the <i>silver</i>-tongued orator you wanted?) “He’s wise to a lot of things, and he’ll tell you now what’s best to do.”</p>
<p>I stood on one foot, as it were, as I sat in my rickety chair.</p>
<p>“Why⁠—er⁠—Miss Lowery,” I began, secretly enraged at Tripp’s awkward opening, “I am at your service, of course, but⁠—er⁠—as I haven’t been apprized of the circumstances of the case, I⁠—er⁠—”</p>
<p>“Oh,” said Miss Lowery, beaming for a moment, “it ain’t as bad as that⁠—there ain’t any circumstances. It’s the first time I’ve ever been in New York except once when I was five years old, and I had no idea it was such a big town. And I met Mr.⁠—Mr. Snip on the street and asked him about a friend of mine, and he brought me here and asked me to wait.”</p>
<p>“I advise you, Miss Lowery,” said Tripp, “to tell Mr. Chalmers all. He’s a friend of mine” (I was getting used to it by this time), “and he’ll give you the right tip.”</p>
<p>“Why, certainly,” said Miss Ada, chewing a gum-drop toward me. “There ain’t anything to tell except that⁠—well, everything’s fixed for me to marry Hiram Dodd next Thursday evening. Hi has got two hundred acres of land with a lot of shore-front, and one of the best truck-farms on the Island. But this morning I had my horse saddled up⁠—he’s a white horse named Dancer⁠—and I rode over to the station. I told ’em at home I was going to spend the day with Susie Adams. It was a story, I guess, but I don’t care. And I came to New York on the train, and I met Mr.⁠—Mr. Flip on the street and asked him if he knew where I could find G⁠—G⁠—”</p>
<p>“Oh,” said Miss Lowery, beaming for a moment, “it ain’t as bad as that⁠—there ain’t any circumstances. It’s the first time I’ve ever been in New York except once when I was five years old, and I had no idea it was such a big town. And I met <abbr>Mr.</abbr>⁠—<abbr>Mr.</abbr> Snip on the street and asked him about a friend of mine, and he brought me here and asked me to wait.”</p>
<p>“I advise you, Miss Lowery,” said Tripp, “to tell <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Chalmers all. He’s a friend of mine” (I was getting used to it by this time), “and he’ll give you the right tip.”</p>
<p>“Why, certainly,” said Miss Ada, chewing a gum-drop toward me. “There ain’t anything to tell except that⁠—well, everything’s fixed for me to marry Hiram Dodd next Thursday evening. Hi has got two hundred acres of land with a lot of shore-front, and one of the best truck-farms on the Island. But this morning I had my horse saddled up⁠—he’s a white horse named Dancer⁠—and I rode over to the station. I told ’em at home I was going to spend the day with Susie Adams. It was a story, I guess, but I don’t care. And I came to New York on the train, and I met <abbr>Mr.</abbr>⁠—<abbr>Mr.</abbr> Flip on the street and asked him if he knew where I could find G⁠—G⁠—”</p>
<p>“Now, Miss Lowery,” broke in Tripp, loudly, and with much bad taste, I thought, as she hesitated with her word, “you like this young man, Hiram Dodd, don’t you? He’s all right, and good to you, ain’t he?”</p>
<p>“Of course I like him,” said Miss Lowery emphatically. “Hi’s all right. And of course he’s good to me. So is everybody.”</p>
<p>I could have sworn it myself. Throughout Miss Ada Lowery’s life all men would be to good to her. They would strive, contrive, struggle, and compete to hold umbrellas over her hat, check her trunk, pick up her handkerchief, and buy for her soda at the fountain.</p>
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<p>By-and-by the shower passed. She straightened up, brave and half-way smiling. She would have made a splendid wife, for crying only made her eyes more bright and tender. She took a gum-drop and began her story.</p>
<p>“I guess I’m a terrible hayseed,” she said between her little gulps and sighs, “but I can’t help it. G⁠—George Brown and I were sweethearts since he was eight and I was five. When he was nineteen⁠—that was four years ago⁠—he left Greenburg and went to the city. He said he was going to be a policeman or a railroad president or something. And then he was coming back for me. But I never heard from him any more. And I⁠—I⁠—liked him.”</p>
<p>Another flow of tears seemed imminent, but Tripp hurled himself into the crevasse and dammed it. Confound him, I could see his game. He was trying to make a story of it for his sordid ends and profit.</p>
<p>“Go on, Mr. Chalmers,” said he, “and tell the lady what’s the proper caper. That’s what I told her⁠—you’d hand it to her straight. Spiel up.”</p>
<p>“Go on, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Chalmers,” said he, “and tell the lady what’s the proper caper. That’s what I told her⁠—you’d hand it to her straight. Spiel up.”</p>
<p>I coughed, and tried to feel less wrathful toward Tripp. I saw my duty. Cunningly I had been inveigled, but I was securely trapped. Tripp’s first dictum to me had been just and correct. The young lady must be sent back to Greenburg that day. She must be argued with, convinced, assured, instructed, ticketed, and returned without delay. I hated Hiram and despised George; but duty must be done. <i>Noblesse oblige</i> and only five silver dollars are not strictly romantic compatibles, but sometimes they can be made to jibe. It was mine to be Sir Oracle, and then pay the freight. So I assumed an air that mingled Solomon’s with that of the general passenger agent of the Long Island Railroad.</p>
<p>“Miss Lowery,” said I, as impressively as I could, “life is rather a queer proposition, after all.” There was a familiar sound to these words after I had spoken them, and I hoped Miss Lowery had never heard Mr. Cohan’s song. “Those whom we first love we seldom wed. Our earlier romances, tinged with the magic radiance of youth, often fail to materialize.” The last three words sounded somewhat trite when they struck the air. “But those fondly cherished dreams,” I went on, “may cast a pleasant afterglow on our future lives, however impracticable and vague they may have been. But life is full of realities as well as visions and dreams. One cannot live on memories. May I ask, Miss Lowery, if you think you could pass a happy⁠—that is, a contented and harmonious life with Mr.⁠—er⁠—Dodd⁠—if in other ways than romantic recollections he seems to⁠—er⁠—fill the bill, as I might say?”</p>
<p>“Miss Lowery,” said I, as impressively as I could, “life is rather a queer proposition, after all.” There was a familiar sound to these words after I had spoken them, and I hoped Miss Lowery had never heard <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Cohan’s song. “Those whom we first love we seldom wed. Our earlier romances, tinged with the magic radiance of youth, often fail to materialize.” The last three words sounded somewhat trite when they struck the air. “But those fondly cherished dreams,” I went on, “may cast a pleasant afterglow on our future lives, however impracticable and vague they may have been. But life is full of realities as well as visions and dreams. One cannot live on memories. May I ask, Miss Lowery, if you think you could pass a happy⁠—that is, a contented and harmonious life with <abbr>Mr.</abbr>⁠—er⁠—Dodd⁠—if in other ways than romantic recollections he seems to⁠—er⁠—fill the bill, as I might say?”</p>
<p>“Oh, Hi’s all right,” answered Miss Lowery. “Yes, I could get along with him fine. He’s promised me an automobile and a motor-boat. But somehow, when it got so close to the time I was to marry him, I couldn’t help wishing⁠—well, just thinking about George. Something must have happened to him or he’d have written. On the day he left, he and me got a hammer and a chisel and cut a dime into two pieces. I took one piece and he took the other, and we promised to be true to each other and always keep the pieces till we saw each other again. I’ve got mine at home now in a ring-box in the top drawer of my dresser. I guess I was silly to come up here looking for him. I never realized what a big place it is.”</p>
<p>And then Tripp joined in with a little grating laugh that he had, still trying to drag in a little story or drama to earn the miserable dollar that he craved.</p>
<p>“Oh, the boys from the country forget a lot when they come to the city and learn something. I guess George, maybe, is on the bum, or got roped in by some other girl, or maybe gone to the dogs on account of whiskey or the races. You listen to Mr. Chalmers and go back home, and you’ll be all right.”</p>
<p>“Oh, the boys from the country forget a lot when they come to the city and learn something. I guess George, maybe, is on the bum, or got roped in by some other girl, or maybe gone to the dogs on account of whiskey or the races. You listen to <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Chalmers and go back home, and you’ll be all right.”</p>
<p>But now the time was come for action, for the hands of the clock were moving close to noon. Frowning upon Tripp, I argued gently and philosophically with Miss Lowery, delicately convincing her of the importance of returning home at once. And I impressed upon her the truth that it would not be absolutely necessary to her future happiness that she mention to Hi the wonders or the fact of her visit to the city that had swallowed up the unlucky George.</p>
<p>She said she had left her horse (unfortunate Rosinante) tied to a tree near the railroad station. Tripp and I gave her instructions to mount the patient steed as soon as she arrived and ride home as fast as possible. There she was to recount the exciting adventure of a day spent with Susie Adams. She could “fix” Susie⁠—I was sure of that⁠—and all would be well.</p>
<p>And then, being susceptible to the barbed arrows of beauty, I warmed to the adventure. The three of us hurried to the ferry, and there I found the price of a ticket to Greenburg to be but a dollar and eighty cents. I bought one, and a red, red rose with the twenty cents for Miss Lowery. We saw her aboard her ferryboat, and stood watching her wave her handkerchief at us until it was the tiniest white patch imaginable. And then Tripp and I faced each other, brought back to earth, left dry and desolate in the shade of the sombre verities of life.</p>

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<title>The Higher Pragmatism</title>
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<h2>THE HIGHER PRAGMATISM</h2>
<h2 epub:type="title">The Higher Pragmatism</h2>
<h4>I</h4>
<p>Where to go for wisdom has become a question of serious import. The ancients are discredited; Plato is boiler-plate; Aristotle is tottering; Marcus Aurelius is reeling; Æsop has been copyrighted by Indiana; Solomon is too solemn; you couldn’t get anything out of Epictetus with a pick.</p>
<p>The ant, which for many years served as a model of intelligence and industry in the school-readers, has been proven to be a doddering idiot and a waster of time and effort. The owl to-day is hooted at. Chautauqua conventions have abandoned culture and adopted diabolo. Graybeards give glowing testimonials to the venders of patent hair-restorers. There are typographical errors in the almanacs published by the daily newspapers. College professors have become⁠—</p>
@ -19,7 +19,7 @@
<p>Once upon a time I found a ten-cent magazine lying on a bench in a little city park. Anyhow, that was the amount he asked me for when I sat on the bench next to him. He was a musty, dingy, and tattered magazine, with some queer stories bound in him, I was sure. He turned out to be a scrap-book.</p>
<p>“I am a newspaper reporter,” I said to him, to try him. “I have been detailed to write up some of the experiences of the unfortunate ones who spend their evenings in this park. May I ask you to what you attribute your downfall in⁠—”</p>
<p>I was interrupted by a laugh from my purchase⁠—a laugh so rusty and unpractised that I was sure it had been his first for many a day.</p>
<p>“Oh, no, no,” said he. “You ain’t a reporter. Reporters don’t talk that way. They pretend to be one of us, and say they’ve just got in on the blind baggage from St. Louis. I can tell a reporter on sight. Us park bums get to be fine judges of human nature. We sit here all day and watch the people go by. I can size up anybody who walks past my bench in a way that would surprise you.”</p>
<p>“Oh, no, no,” said he. “You ain’t a reporter. Reporters don’t talk that way. They pretend to be one of us, and say they’ve just got in on the blind baggage from <abbr>St.</abbr> Louis. I can tell a reporter on sight. Us park bums get to be fine judges of human nature. We sit here all day and watch the people go by. I can size up anybody who walks past my bench in a way that would surprise you.”</p>
<p>“Well,” I said, “go on and tell me. How do you size me up?”</p>
<p>“I should say,” said the student of human nature with unpardonable hesitation, “that you was, say, in the contracting business⁠—or maybe worked in a store⁠—or was a sign-painter. You stopped in the park to finish your cigar, and thought you’d get a little free monologue out of me. Still, you might be a plasterer or a lawyer⁠—it’s getting kind of dark, you see. And your wife won’t let you smoke at home.”</p>
<p>I frowned gloomily.</p>
@ -81,7 +81,7 @@
<p>“Is that <i>you</i>?” said I, employing the foolish words that form the vocabulary of every talker through the telephone.</p>
<p>“Yes, this is I,” came back the answer in the low, clear-cut tones that are an inheritance of the Telfairs. “Who is it, please?”</p>
<p>“It’s me,” said I, less ungrammatically than egotistically. “It’s me, and I’ve got a few things that I want to say to you right now and immediately and straight to the point.”</p>
<p>“<i>Dear</i> me,” said the voice. “Oh, it’s you, Mr. Arden!”</p>
<p>“<i>Dear</i> me,” said the voice. “Oh, it’s you, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Arden!”</p>
<p>I wondered if any accent on the first word was intended; Mildred was fine at saying things that you had to study out afterward.</p>
<p>“Yes,” said I. “I hope so. And now to come down to brass tacks.” I thought that rather a vernacularism, if there is such a word, as soon as I had said it; but I didn’t stop to apologize. “You know, of course, that I love you, and that I have been in that idiotic state for a long time. I don’t want any more foolishness about it⁠—that is, I mean I want an answer from you right now. Will you marry me or not? Hold the wire, please. Keep out, Central. Hello, hello! Will you, or will you <i>not</i>?”</p>
<p>That was just the uppercut for Reddy Burns’ chin. The answer came back:</p>

18
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<title>Best-Seller</title>
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<h2>BEST-SELLER</h2>
<h2 epub:type="title">Best-Seller</h2>
<h4>I</h4>
<p>One day last summer I went to Pittsburgh⁠—well, I had to go there on business.</p>
<p>My chair-car was profitably well filled with people of the kind one usually sees on chair-cars. Most of them were ladies in brown-silk dresses cut with square yokes, with lace insertion, and dotted veils, who refused to have the windows raised. Then there was the usual number of men who looked as if they might be in almost any business and going almost anywhere. Some students of human nature can look at a man in a Pullman and tell you where he is from, his occupation and his stations in life, both flag and social; but I never could. The only way I can correctly judge a fellow-traveller is when the train is held up by robbers, or when he reaches at the same time I do for the last towel in the dressing-room of the sleeper.</p>
<p>The porter came and brushed the collection of soot on the window-sill off to the left knee of my trousers. I removed it with an air of apology. The temperature was eighty-eight. One of the dotted-veiled ladies demanded the closing of two more ventilators, and spoke loudly of Interlaken. I leaned back idly in chair No. 7, and looked with the tepidest curiosity at the small, black, bald-spotted head just visible above the back of No. 9.</p>
<p>Suddenly No. 9 hurled a book to the floor between his chair and the window, and, looking, I saw that it was “The Rose-Lady and Trevelyan,” one of the best-selling novels of the present day. And then the critic or Philistine, whichever he was, veered his chair toward the window, and I knew him at once for John A. Pescud, of Pittsburgh, travelling salesman for a plate-glass company⁠—an old acquaintance whom I had not seen in two years.</p>
<p>The porter came and brushed the collection of soot on the window-sill off to the left knee of my trousers. I removed it with an air of apology. The temperature was eighty-eight. One of the dotted-veiled ladies demanded the closing of two more ventilators, and spoke loudly of Interlaken. I leaned back idly in chair <abbr>No.</abbr> 7, and looked with the tepidest curiosity at the small, black, bald-spotted head just visible above the back of <abbr>No.</abbr> 9.</p>
<p>Suddenly <abbr>No.</abbr> 9 hurled a book to the floor between his chair and the window, and, looking, I saw that it was “The Rose-Lady and Trevelyan,” one of the best-selling novels of the present day. And then the critic or Philistine, whichever he was, veered his chair toward the window, and I knew him at once for John A. Pescud, of Pittsburgh, travelling salesman for a plate-glass company⁠—an old acquaintance whom I had not seen in two years.</p>
<p>In two minutes we were faced, had shaken hands, and had finished with such topics as rain, prosperity, health, residence, and destination. Politics might have followed next; but I was not so ill-fated.</p>
<p>I wish you might know John A. Pescud. He is of the stuff that heroes are not often lucky enough to be made of. He is a small man with a wide smile, and an eye that seems to be fixed upon that little red spot on the end of your nose. I never saw him wear but one kind of necktie, and he believes in cuff-holders and button-shoes. He is as hard and true as anything ever turned out by the Cambria Steel Works; and he believes that as soon as Pittsburgh makes smoke-consumers compulsory, St. Peter will come down and sit at the foot of Smithfield Street, and let somebody else attend to the gate up in the branch heaven. He believes that “our” plate-glass is the most important commodity in the world, and that when a man is in his home town he ought to be decent and law-abiding.</p>
<p>I wish you might know John A. Pescud. He is of the stuff that heroes are not often lucky enough to be made of. He is a small man with a wide smile, and an eye that seems to be fixed upon that little red spot on the end of your nose. I never saw him wear but one kind of necktie, and he believes in cuff-holders and button-shoes. He is as hard and true as anything ever turned out by the Cambria Steel Works; and he believes that as soon as Pittsburgh makes smoke-consumers compulsory, <abbr>St.</abbr> Peter will come down and sit at the foot of Smithfield Street, and let somebody else attend to the gate up in the branch heaven. He believes that “our” plate-glass is the most important commodity in the world, and that when a man is in his home town he ought to be decent and law-abiding.</p>
<p>During my acquaintance with him in the City of Diurnal Night I had never known his views on life, romance, literature, and ethics. We had browsed, during our meetings, on local topics, and then parted, after Chateau Margaux, Irish stew, flannel-cakes, cottage-pudding, and coffee (hey, there!⁠—with milk separate). Now I was to get more of his ideas. By way of facts, he told me that business had picked up since the party conventions, and that he was going to get off at Coketown.</p>
<h4>II</h4>
<p>“Say,” said Pescud, stirring his discarded book with the toe of his right shoe, “did you ever read one of these best-sellers? I mean the kind where the hero is an American swell⁠—sometimes even from Chicago⁠—who falls in love with a royal princess from Europe who is travelling under an alias, and follows her to her father’s kingdom or principality? I guess you have. They’re all alike. Sometimes this going-away masher is a Washington newspaper correspondent, and sometimes he is a Van Something from New York, or a Chicago wheat-broker worthy fifty millions. But he’s always ready to break into the king row of any foreign country that sends over their queens and princesses to try the new plush seats on the Big Four or the B. and O. There doesn’t seem to be any other reason in the book for their being here.</p>
@ -52,7 +52,7 @@
<p>“By-and-by I got him down to local gossip and answering questions.</p>
<p>“ ‘Why,’ says he, ‘I thought everybody knowed who lived in the big white house on the hill. It’s Colonel Allyn, the biggest man and the finest quality in Virginia, or anywhere else. They’re the oldest family in the State. That was his daughter that got off the train. She’s been up to Illinois to see her aunt, who is sick.’</p>
<p>“I registered at the hotel, and on the third day I caught the young lady walking in the front yard, down next to the paling fence. I stopped and raised my hat⁠—there wasn’t any other way.</p>
<p>“ ‘Excuse me,’ says I, ‘can you tell me where Mr. Hinkle lives?’</p>
<p>“ ‘Excuse me,’ says I, ‘can you tell me where <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Hinkle lives?’</p>
<p>“She looks at me as cool as if I was the man come to see about the weeding of the garden, but I thought I saw just a slight twinkle of fun in her eyes.</p>
<p>“ ‘No one of that name lives in Birchton,’ says she. ‘That is,’ she goes on, ‘as far as I know. Is the gentleman you are seeking white?’</p>
<p>“Well, that tickled me. ‘No kidding,’ says I. ‘I’m not looking for smoke, even if I do come from Pittsburgh.’</p>
@ -61,7 +61,7 @@
<p>“ ‘Not if you hadn’t waked up when the train started in Shelbyville,’ says she; and then she turned almost as red as one of the roses on the bushes in the yard. I remembered I had dropped off to sleep on a bench in the Shelbyville station, waiting to see which train she took, and only just managed to wake up in time.</p>
<p>“And then I told her why I had come, as respectful and earnest as I could. And I told her everything about myself, and what I was making, and how that all I asked was just to get acquainted with her and try to get her to like me.</p>
<p>“She smiles a little, and blushes some, but her eyes never get mixed up. They look straight at whatever she’s talking to.</p>
<p>“ ‘I never had any one talk like this to me before, Mr. Pescud,’ says she. ‘What did you say your name is⁠—John?’</p>
<p>“ ‘I never had any one talk like this to me before, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Pescud,’ says she. ‘What did you say your name is⁠—John?’</p>
<p>“ ‘John A.,’ says I.</p>
<p>“ ‘And you came mighty near missing the train at Powhatan Junction, too,’ says she, with a laugh that sounded as good as a mileage-book to me.</p>
<p>“ ‘How did you know?’ I asked.</p>
@ -71,7 +71,7 @@
<p>“ ‘I belted one of ’em once in the Duquesne Hotel, in Pittsburgh,’ says I, ‘and he didn’t offer to resent it. He was there dividing his attentions between Monongahela whiskey and heiresses, and he got fresh.’</p>
<p>“ ‘Of course,’ she goes on, ‘my father wouldn’t allow a drummer to set his foot in Elmcroft. If he knew that I was talking to one over the fence he would lock me in my room.’</p>
<p>“ ‘Would <i>you</i> let me come there?’ says I. ‘Would <i>you</i> talk to me if I was to call? For,’ I goes on, ‘if you said I might come and see you, the earls might be belted or suspendered, or pinned up with safety-pins, as far as I am concerned.’</p>
<p>“ ‘I must not talk to you,’ she says, ‘because we have not been introduced. It is not exactly proper. So I will say good-bye, Mr.⁠—’</p>
<p>“ ‘I must not talk to you,’ she says, ‘because we have not been introduced. It is not exactly proper. So I will say good-bye, <abbr>Mr.</abbr>⁠—’</p>
<p>“ ‘Say the name,’ says I. ‘You haven’t forgotten it.’</p>
<p>“ ‘Pescud,’ says she, a little mad.</p>
<p>“ ‘The rest of the name!’ I demands, cool as could be.</p>
@ -94,7 +94,7 @@
<p>“ ‘If there was,’ says I, ‘he can’t claim kin with our bunch. We’ve always lived in and around Pittsburgh. I’ve got an uncle in the real-estate business, and one in trouble somewhere out in Kansas. You can inquire about any of the rest of us from anybody in old Smoky Town, and get satisfactory replies. Did you ever run across that story about the captain of the whaler who tried to make a sailor say his prayers?’ says I.</p>
<p>“ ‘It occurs to me that I have never been so fortunate,’ says the colonel.</p>
<p>“So I told it to him. Laugh! I was wishing to myself that he was a customer. What a bill of glass I’d sell him! And then he says:</p>
<p>“ ‘The relating of anecdotes and humorous occurrences has always seemed to me, Mr. Pescud, to be a particularly agreeable way of promoting and perpetuating amenities between friends. With your permission, I will relate to you a fox-hunting story with which I was personally connected, and which may furnish you some amusement.’</p>
<p>“ ‘The relating of anecdotes and humorous occurrences has always seemed to me, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Pescud, to be a particularly agreeable way of promoting and perpetuating amenities between friends. With your permission, I will relate to you a fox-hunting story with which I was personally connected, and which may furnish you some amusement.’</p>
<p>“So he tells it. It takes forty minutes by the watch. Did I laugh? Well, say! When I got my face straight he calls in old Pete, the superannuated darky, and sends him down to the hotel to bring up my valise. It was Elmcroft for me while I was in the town.</p>
<p>“Two evenings later I got a chance to speak a word with Miss Jessie alone on the porch while the colonel was thinking up another story.</p>
<p>“ ‘It’s going to be a fine evening,’ says I.</p>

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<title>Chapter 15</title>
<title>Rus In Urbe</title>
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<h2>RUS IN URBE</h2>
<h2 epub:type="title">Rus In Urbe</h2>
<p>Considering men in relation to money, there are three kinds whom I dislike: men who have more money than they can spend; men who have more money than they do spend; and men who spend more money than they have. Of the three varieties, I believe I have the least liking for the first. But, as a man, I liked Spencer Grenville North pretty well, although he had something like two or ten or thirty millions⁠—I’ve forgotten exactly how many.</p>
<p>I did not leave town that summer. I usually went down to a village on the south shore of Long Island. The place was surrounded by duck-farms, and the ducks and dogs and whippoorwills and rusty windmills made so much noise that I could sleep as peacefully as if I were in my own flat six doors from the elevated railroad in New York. But that summer I did not go. Remember that. One of my friends asked me why I did not. I replied:</p>
<p>“Because, old man, New York is the finest summer resort in the world.” You have heard that phrase before. But that is what I told him.</p>
<p>I was press-agent that year for Binkly &amp; Bing, the theatrical managers and producers. Of course you know what a press-agent is. Well, he is not. That is the secret of being one.</p>
<p>Binkly was touring France in his new C. &amp; N. Williamson car, and Bing had gone to Scotland to learn curling, which he seemed to associate in his mind with hot tongs rather than with ice. Before they left they gave me June and July, on salary, for my vacation, which act was in accord with their large spirit of liberality. But I remained in New York, which I had decided was the finest summer resort in⁠—</p>
<p>But I said that before.</p>
<p>On July the 10th, North came to town from his camp in the Adirondacks. Try to imagine a camp with sixteen rooms, plumbing, eiderdown quilts, a butler, a garage, solid silver plate, and a long-distance telephone. Of course it was in the woods⁠—if Mr. Pinchot wants to preserve the forests let him give every citizen two or ten or thirty million dollars, and the trees will all gather around the summer camps, as the Birnam woods came to Dunsinane, and be preserved.</p>
<p>On July the 10th, North came to town from his camp in the Adirondacks. Try to imagine a camp with sixteen rooms, plumbing, eiderdown quilts, a butler, a garage, solid silver plate, and a long-distance telephone. Of course it was in the woods⁠—if <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Pinchot wants to preserve the forests let him give every citizen two or ten or thirty million dollars, and the trees will all gather around the summer camps, as the Birnam woods came to Dunsinane, and be preserved.</p>
<p>North came to see me in my three rooms and bath, extra charge for light when used extravagantly or all night. He slapped me on the back (I would rather have my shins kicked any day), and greeted me with out-door obstreperousness and revolting good spirits. He was insolently brown and healthy-looking, and offensively well dressed.</p>
<p>“Just ran down for a few days,” said he, “to sign some papers and stuff like that. My lawyer wired me to come. Well, you indolent cockney, what are you doing in town? I took a chance and telephoned, and they said you were here. What’s the matter with that Utopia on Long Island where you used to take your typewriter and your villainous temper every summer? Anything wrong with the⁠—er⁠—swans, weren’t they, that used to sing on the farms at night?”</p>
<p>“Ducks,” said I. “The songs of swans are for luckier ears. They swim and curve their necks in artificial lakes on the estates of the wealthy to delight the eyes of the favorites of Fortune.”</p>
@ -51,8 +51,8 @@
<p>“Annie Ashton,” said I, simply. “She played Nannette in Binkley &amp; Bing’s production of ‘The Silver Cord.’ She is to have a better part next season.”</p>
<p>“Take me to see her,” said North.</p>
<p>Miss Ashton lived with her mother in a small hotel. They were out of the West, and had a little money that bridged the seasons. As press-agent of Binkley &amp; Bing I had tried to keep her before the public. As Robert James Vandiver I had hoped to withdraw her; for if ever one was made to keep company with said Vandiver and smell the salt breeze on the south shore of Long Island and listen to the ducks quack in the watches of the night, it was the Ashton set forth above.</p>
<p>But she had a soul above ducks⁠—above nightingales; aye, even above birds of paradise. She was very beautiful, with quiet ways, and seemed genuine. She had both taste and talent for the stage, and she liked to stay at home and read and make caps for her mother. She was unvaryingly kind and friendly with Binkley &amp; Bing’s press-agent. Since the theatre had closed she had allowed Mr. Vandiver to call in an unofficial rôle. I had often spoken to her of my friend, Spencer Grenville North; and so, as it was early, the first turn of the vaudeville being not yet over, we left to find a telephone.</p>
<p>Miss Ashton would be very glad to see Mr. Vandiver and Mr. North.</p>
<p>But she had a soul above ducks⁠—above nightingales; aye, even above birds of paradise. She was very beautiful, with quiet ways, and seemed genuine. She had both taste and talent for the stage, and she liked to stay at home and read and make caps for her mother. She was unvaryingly kind and friendly with Binkley &amp; Bing’s press-agent. Since the theatre had closed she had allowed <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Vandiver to call in an unofficial rôle. I had often spoken to her of my friend, Spencer Grenville North; and so, as it was early, the first turn of the vaudeville being not yet over, we left to find a telephone.</p>
<p>Miss Ashton would be very glad to see <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Vandiver and <abbr>Mr.</abbr> North.</p>
<p>We found her fitting a new cap on her mother. I never saw her look more charming.</p>
<p>North made himself disagreeably entertaining. He was a good talker, and had a way with him. Besides, he had two, ten, or thirty millions, I’ve forgotten which. I incautiously admired the mother’s cap, whereupon she brought out her store of a dozen or two, and I took a course in edgings and frills. Even though Annie’s fingers had pinked, or ruched, or hemmed, or whatever you do to ’em, they palled upon me. And I could hear North drivelling to Annie about his odious Adirondack camp.</p>
<p>Two days after that I saw North in his motor-car with Miss Ashton and her mother. On the next afternoon he dropped in on me.</p>
@ -78,7 +78,7 @@
<p>“Yes,” said I, “I suppose you will. They usually do when there’s so much money.”</p>
<p>“There is no money,” she said, “or very little. Our money is almost gone.”</p>
<p>“But I am told,” said I, “that he has something like two or ten or thirty millions⁠—I have forgotten which.”</p>
<p>“I know what you mean,” she said. “I will not pretend that I do not. I am not going to marry Mr. North.”</p>
<p>“I know what you mean,” she said. “I will not pretend that I do not. I am not going to marry <abbr>Mr.</abbr> North.”</p>
<p>“Then why are you leaving the stage?” I asked, severely. “What else can you do to earn a living?”</p>
<p>She came closer to me, and I can see the look in her eyes yet as she spoke.</p>
<p>“I can pick ducks,” she said.</p>

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<title>Chapter 16</title>
<title>A Poor Rule</title>
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<h2>A POOR RULE</h2>
<p>I have always maintained, and asserted time to time, that woman is no mystery; that man can foretell, construe, subdue, comprehend, and interpret her. That she is a mystery has been foisted by herself upon credulous mankind. Whether I am right or wrong we shall see. As “Harper’s Drawer” used to say in bygone years: “The following good story is told of Miss⁠–⁠⁠–⁠⁠–⁠⁠–⁠, Mr. ⁠–⁠⁠–⁠⁠–⁠⁠–⁠, Mr. ⁠–⁠⁠–⁠⁠–⁠⁠–⁠, and Mr. ⁠–⁠⁠–⁠⁠–⁠⁠–⁠.”</p>
<p>We shall have to omit “Bishop X” and “the Rev. ⁠–⁠⁠–⁠⁠–⁠⁠–⁠,” for they do not belong.</p>
<h2 epub:type="title">A Poor Rule</h2>
<p>I have always maintained, and asserted time to time, that woman is no mystery; that man can foretell, construe, subdue, comprehend, and interpret her. That she is a mystery has been foisted by herself upon credulous mankind. Whether I am right or wrong we shall see. As “Harper’s Drawer” used to say in bygone years: “The following good story is told of Miss⁠–⁠⁠–⁠⁠–⁠⁠–⁠, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> ⁠–⁠⁠–⁠⁠–⁠⁠–⁠, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> ⁠–⁠⁠–⁠⁠–⁠⁠–⁠, and <abbr>Mr.</abbr> ⁠–⁠⁠–⁠⁠–⁠⁠–⁠.”</p>
<p>We shall have to omit “Bishop <span epub:type="z3998:roman">X</span>” and “the <abbr>Rev.</abbr> ⁠–⁠⁠–⁠⁠–⁠⁠–⁠,” for they do not belong.</p>
<p>In those days Paloma was a new town on the line of the Southern Pacific. A reporter would have called it a “mushroom” town; but it was not. Paloma was, first and last, of the toadstool variety.</p>
<p>The train stopped there at noon for the engine to drink and for the passengers both to drink and to dine. There was a new yellow-pine hotel, also a wool warehouse, and perhaps three dozen box residences. The rest was composed of tents, cow ponies, “black-waxy” mud, and mesquite-trees, all bound round by a horizon. Paloma was an about-to-be city. The houses represented faith; the tents hope; the twice-a-day train, by which you might leave, creditably sustained the rôle of charity.</p>
<p>The Parisian Restaurant occupied the muddiest spot in the town while it rained, and the warmest when it shone. It was operated, owned, and perpetrated by a citizen known as Old Man Hinkle, who had come out of Indiana to make his fortune in this land of condensed milk and sorghum.</p>
@ -19,13 +19,13 @@
<p>The spelling is correct, for I have seen her write it. No doubt she had been named by ear; but she so splendidly bore the orthography that Tom Moore himself (had he seen her) would have endorsed the phonography.</p>
<p>Ileen was the daughter of the house, and the first Lady Cashier to invade the territory south of an east-and-west line drawn through Galveston and Del Rio. She sat on a high stool in a rough pine grand-stand⁠—or was it a temple?⁠—under the shelter at the door of the kitchen. There was a barbed-wire protection in front of her, with a little arch under which you passed your money. Heaven knows why the barbed wire; for every man who dined Parisianly there would have died in her service. Her duties were light; each meal was a dollar; you put it under the arch, and she took it.</p>
<p>I set out with the intent to describe Ileen Hinkle to you. Instead, I must refer you to the volume by Edmund Burke entitled: <i>A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful</i>. It is an exhaustive treatise, dealing first with the primitive conceptions of beauty⁠—roundness and smoothness, I think they are, according to Burke. It is well said. Rotundity is a patent charm; as for smoothness⁠—the more new wrinkles a woman acquires, the smoother she becomes.</p>
<p>Ileen was a strictly vegetable compound, guaranteed under the Pure Ambrosia and Balm-of-Gilead Act of the year of the fall of Adam. She was a fruit-stand blonde⁠—strawberries, peaches, cherries, etc. Her eyes were wide apart, and she possessed the calm that precedes a storm that never comes. But it seems to me that words (at any rate per) are wasted in an effort to describe the beautiful. Like fancy, “It is engendered in the eyes.” There are three kinds of beauties⁠—I was foreordained to be homiletic; I can never stick to a story.</p>
<p>Ileen was a strictly vegetable compound, guaranteed under the Pure Ambrosia and Balm-of-Gilead Act of the year of the fall of Adam. She was a fruit-stand blonde⁠—strawberries, peaches, cherries, <abbr class="eoc">etc.</abbr> Her eyes were wide apart, and she possessed the calm that precedes a storm that never comes. But it seems to me that words (at any rate per) are wasted in an effort to describe the beautiful. Like fancy, “It is engendered in the eyes.” There are three kinds of beauties⁠—I was foreordained to be homiletic; I can never stick to a story.</p>
<p>The first is the freckle-faced, snub-nosed girl whom you like. The second is Maud Adams. The third is, or are, the ladies in Bouguereau’s paintings. Ileen Hinkle was the fourth. She was the mayoress of Spotless Town. There were a thousand golden apples coming to her as Helen of the Troy laundries.</p>
<p>The Parisian Restaurant was within a radius. Even from beyond its circumference men rode in to Paloma to win her smiles. They got them. One meal⁠—one smile⁠—one dollar. But, with all her impartiality, Ileen seemed to favor three of her admirers above the rest. According to the rules of politeness, I will mention myself last.</p>
<p>The first was an artificial product known as Bryan Jacks⁠—a name that had obviously met with reverses. Jacks was the outcome of paved cities. He was a small man made of some material resembling flexible sandstone. His hair was the color of a brick Quaker meeting-house; his eyes were twin cranberries; his mouth was like the aperture under a drop-letters-here sign.</p>
<p>He knew every city from Bangor to San Francisco, thence north to Portland, thence S. 45 E. to a given point in Florida. He had mastered every art, trade, game, business, profession, and sport in the world, had been present at, or hurrying on his way to, every headline event that had ever occurred between oceans since he was five years old. You might open the atlas, place your finger at random upon the name of a town, and Jacks would tell you the front names of three prominent citizens before you could close it again. He spoke patronizingly and even disrespectfully of Broadway, Beacon Hill, Michigan, Euclid, and Fifth avenues, and the St. Louis Four Courts. Compared with him as a cosmopolite, the Wandering Jew would have seemed a mere hermit. He had learned everything the world could teach him, and he would tell you about it.</p>
<p>He knew every city from Bangor to San Francisco, thence north to Portland, thence S. 45 E. to a given point in Florida. He had mastered every art, trade, game, business, profession, and sport in the world, had been present at, or hurrying on his way to, every headline event that had ever occurred between oceans since he was five years old. You might open the atlas, place your finger at random upon the name of a town, and Jacks would tell you the front names of three prominent citizens before you could close it again. He spoke patronizingly and even disrespectfully of Broadway, Beacon Hill, Michigan, Euclid, and Fifth avenues, and the <abbr>St.</abbr> Louis Four Courts. Compared with him as a cosmopolite, the Wandering Jew would have seemed a mere hermit. He had learned everything the world could teach him, and he would tell you about it.</p>
<p>I hate to be reminded of Pollok’s “Course of Time,” and so do you; but every time I saw Jacks I would think of the poet’s description of another poet by the name of G. G. Byron who “Drank early; deeply drank⁠—drank draughts that common millions might have quenched; then died of thirst because there was no more to drink.”</p>
<p>That fitted Jacks, except that, instead of dying, he came to Paloma, which was about the same thing. He was a telegrapher and station-and express-agent at seventy-five dollars a month. Why a young man who knew everything and could do everything was content to serve in such an obscure capacity I never could understand, although he let out a hint once that it was as a personal favor to the president and stockholders of the S. P. Ry. Co.</p>
<p>That fitted Jacks, except that, instead of dying, he came to Paloma, which was about the same thing. He was a telegrapher and station-and express-agent at seventy-five dollars a month. Why a young man who knew everything and could do everything was content to serve in such an obscure capacity I never could understand, although he let out a hint once that it was as a personal favor to the president and stockholders of the S. P. Ry. <abbr class="eoc">Co.</abbr></p>
<p>One more line of description, and I turn Jacks over to you. He wore bright blue clothes, yellow shoes, and a bow tie made of the same cloth as his shirt.</p>
<p>My rival No.2 was Bud Cunningham, whose services had been engaged by a ranch near Paloma to assist in compelling refractory cattle to keep within the bounds of decorum and order. Bud was the only cowboy off the stage that I ever saw who looked like one on it. He wore the sombrero, the chaps, and the handkerchief tied at the back of his neck.</p>
<p>Twice a week Bud rode in from the Val Verde Ranch to sup at the Parisian Restaurant. He rode a many-high-handed Kentucky horse at a tremendously fast lope, which animal he would rein up so suddenly under the big mesquite at the corner of the brush shelter that his hoofs would plough canals yards long in the loam.</p>
@ -42,11 +42,11 @@
<p>(Old Man Hinkle was shipping a thousand silver dollars a month, clear profit, to a bank in San Antonio.)</p>
<p>Bud twisted around in his chair and bent the rim of his hat, from which he could never be persuaded to separate. He did not know whether she wanted what she said she wanted or what she knew she deserved. Many a wiser man has hesitated at deciding. Bud decided.</p>
<p>“Why⁠—ah, Miss Ileen, beauty, as you might say, ain’t everything. Not sayin’ that you haven’t your share of good looks, I always admired more than anything else about you the nice, kind way you treat your ma and pa. Any one what’s good to their parents and is a kind of home-body don’t specially need to be too pretty.”</p>
<p>Ileen gave him one of her sweetest smiles. “Thank you, Mr. Cunningham,” she said. “I consider that one of the finest compliments I’ve had in a long time. I’d so much rather hear you say that than to hear you talk about my eyes and hair. I’m glad you believe me when I say I don’t like flattery.”</p>
<p>Ileen gave him one of her sweetest smiles. “Thank you, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Cunningham,” she said. “I consider that one of the finest compliments I’ve had in a long time. I’d so much rather hear you say that than to hear you talk about my eyes and hair. I’m glad you believe me when I say I don’t like flattery.”</p>
<p>Our cue was there for us. Bud had made a good guess. You couldn’t lose Jacks. He chimed in next.</p>
<p>“Sure thing, Miss Ileen,” he said; “the good-lookers don’t always win out. Now, you ain’t bad looking, of course⁠—but that’s nix-cum-rous. I knew a girl once in Dubuque with a face like a cocoanut, who could skin the cat twice on a horizontal bar without changing hands. Now, a girl might have the California peach crop mashed to a marmalade and not be able to do that. I’ve seen⁠—er⁠—worse lookers than <i>you</i>, Miss Ileen; but what I like about you is the business way you’ve got of doing things. Cool and wise⁠—that’s the winning way for a girl. Mr. Hinkle told me the other day you’d never taken in a lead silver dollar or a plugged one since you’ve been on the job. Now, that’s the stuff for a girl⁠—that’s what catches me.”</p>
<p>“Sure thing, Miss Ileen,” he said; “the good-lookers don’t always win out. Now, you ain’t bad looking, of course⁠—but that’s nix-cum-rous. I knew a girl once in Dubuque with a face like a cocoanut, who could skin the cat twice on a horizontal bar without changing hands. Now, a girl might have the California peach crop mashed to a marmalade and not be able to do that. I’ve seen⁠—er⁠—worse lookers than <i>you</i>, Miss Ileen; but what I like about you is the business way you’ve got of doing things. Cool and wise⁠—that’s the winning way for a girl. <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Hinkle told me the other day you’d never taken in a lead silver dollar or a plugged one since you’ve been on the job. Now, that’s the stuff for a girl⁠—that’s what catches me.”</p>
<p>Jacks got his smile, too.</p>
<p>“Thank you, Mr. Jacks,” said Ileen. “If you only knew how I appreciate any one’s being candid and not a flatterer! I get so tired of people telling me I’m pretty. I think it is the loveliest thing to have friends who tell you the truth.”</p>
<p>“Thank you, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Jacks,” said Ileen. “If you only knew how I appreciate any one’s being candid and not a flatterer! I get so tired of people telling me I’m pretty. I think it is the loveliest thing to have friends who tell you the truth.”</p>
<p>Then I thought I saw an expectant look on Ileen’s face as she glanced toward me. I had a wild, sudden impulse to dare fate, and tell her of all the beautiful handiwork of the Great Artificer she was the most exquisite⁠—that she was a flawless pearl gleaming pure and serene in a setting of black mud and emerald prairies⁠—that she was⁠—a⁠—a corker; and as for mine, I cared not if she were as cruel as a serpent’s tooth to her fond parents, or if she couldn’t tell a plugged dollar from a bridle buckle, if I might sing, chant, praise, glorify, and worship her peerless and wonderful beauty.</p>
<p>But I refrained. I feared the fate of a flatterer. I had witnessed her delight at the crafty and discreet words of Bud and Jacks. No! Miss Hinkle was not one to be beguiled by the plated-silver tongue of a flatterer. So I joined the ranks of the candid and honest. At once I became mendacious and didactic.</p>
<p>“In all ages, Miss Hinkle,” said I, “in spite of the poetry and romance of each, intellect in woman has been admired more than beauty. Even in Cleopatra, herself, men found more charm in her queenly mind than in her looks.”</p>
@ -66,25 +66,25 @@
<p>But a day came that gave us courage.</p>
<p>About dusk one evening I was sitting on the little gallery in front of the Hinkle parlor, waiting for Ileen to come, when I heard voices inside. She had come into the room with her father, and Old Man Hinkle began to talk to her. I had observed before that he was a shrewd man, and not unphilosophic.</p>
<p>“Ily,” said he, “I notice there’s three or four young fellers that have been callin’ to see you regular for quite a while. Is there any one of ’em you like better than another?”</p>
<p>“Why, pa,” she answered, “I like all of ’em very well. I think Mr. Cunningham and Mr. Jacks and Mr. Harris are very nice young men. They are so frank and honest in everything they say to me. I haven’t known Mr. Vesey very long, but I think he’s a very nice young man, he’s so frank and honest in everything he says to me.”</p>
<p>“Why, pa,” she answered, “I like all of ’em very well. I think <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Cunningham and <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Jacks and <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Harris are very nice young men. They are so frank and honest in everything they say to me. I haven’t known <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Vesey very long, but I think he’s a very nice young man, he’s so frank and honest in everything he says to me.”</p>
<p>“Now, that’s what I’m gittin’ at,” says old Hinkle. “You’ve always been sayin’ you like people what tell the truth and don’t go humbuggin’ you with compliments and bogus talk. Now, suppose you make a test of these fellers, and see which one of ’em will talk the straightest to you.”</p>
<p>“But how’ll I do it, pa?”</p>
<p>“I’ll tell you how. You know you sing a little bit, Ily; you took music-lessons nearly two years in Logansport. It wasn’t long, but it was all we could afford then. And your teacher said you didn’t have any voice, and it was a waste of money to keep on. Now, suppose you ask the fellers what they think of your singin’, and see what each one of ’em tells you. The man that’ll tell you the truth about it’ll have a mighty lot of nerve, and ‘ll do to tie to. What do you think of the plan?”</p>
<p>“All right, pa,” said Ileen. “I think it’s a good idea. I’ll try it.”</p>
<p>Ileen and Mr. Hinkle went out of the room through the inside doors. Unobserved, I hurried down to the station. Jacks was at his telegraph table waiting for eight o’clock to come. It was Bud’s night in town, and when he rode in I repeated the conversation to them both. I was loyal to my rivals, as all true admirers of all Ileens should be.</p>
<p>Ileen and <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Hinkle went out of the room through the inside doors. Unobserved, I hurried down to the station. Jacks was at his telegraph table waiting for eight o’clock to come. It was Bud’s night in town, and when he rode in I repeated the conversation to them both. I was loyal to my rivals, as all true admirers of all Ileens should be.</p>
<p>Simultaneously the three of us were smitten by an uplifting thought. Surely this test would eliminate Vesey from the contest. He, with his unctuous flattery, would be driven from the lists. Well we remembered Ileen’s love of frankness and honesty⁠—how she treasured truth and candor above vain compliment and blandishment.</p>
<p>Linking arms, we did a grotesque dance of joy up and down the platform, singing “Muldoon Was a Solid Man” at the top of our voices.</p>
<p>That evening four of the willow rocking-chairs were filled besides the lucky one that sustained the trim figure of Miss Hinkle. Three of us awaited with suppressed excitement the application of the test. It was tried on Bud first.</p>
<p>“Mr. Cunningham,” said Ileen, with her dazzling smile, after she had sung “When the Leaves Begin to Turn,” “what do you really think of my voice? Frankly and honestly, now, as you know I want you to always be toward me.”</p>
<p>“<abbr>Mr.</abbr> Cunningham,” said Ileen, with her dazzling smile, after she had sung “When the Leaves Begin to Turn,” “what do you really think of my voice? Frankly and honestly, now, as you know I want you to always be toward me.”</p>
<p>Bud squirmed in his chair at his chance to show the sincerity that he knew was required of him.</p>
<p>“Tell you the truth, Miss Ileen,” he said, earnestly, “you ain’t got much more voice than a weasel⁠—just a little squeak, you know. Of course, we all like to hear you sing, for it’s kind of sweet and soothin’ after all, and you look most as mighty well sittin’ on the piano-stool as you do faced around. But as for real singin’⁠—I reckon you couldn’t call it that.”</p>
<p>I looked closely at Ileen to see if Bud had overdone his frankness, but her pleased smile and sweetly spoken thanks assured me that we were on the right track.</p>
<p>“And what do you think, Mr. Jacks?” she asked next.</p>
<p>“And what do you think, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Jacks?” she asked next.</p>
<p>“Take it from me,” said Jacks, “you ain’t in the prima donna class. I’ve heard ’em warble in every city in the United States; and I tell you your vocal output don’t go. Otherwise, you’ve got the grand opera bunch sent to the soap factory⁠—in looks, I mean; for the high screechers generally look like Mary Ann on her Thursday out. But nix for the gargle work. Your epiglottis ain’t a real side-stepper⁠—its footwork ain’t good.”</p>
<p>With a merry laugh at Jacks’ criticism, Ileen looked inquiringly at me.</p>
<p>I admit that I faltered a little. Was there not such a thing as being too frank? Perhaps I even hedged a little in my verdict; but I stayed with the critics.</p>
<p>“I am not skilled in scientific music, Miss Ileen,” I said, “but, frankly, I cannot praise very highly the singing-voice that Nature has given you. It has long been a favorite comparison that a great singer sings like a bird. Well, there are birds and birds. I would say that your voice reminds me of the thrush’s⁠—throaty and not strong, nor of much compass or variety⁠—but still⁠—er⁠—sweet⁠—in⁠—er⁠—its⁠—way, and⁠—er⁠—”</p>
<p>“Thank you, Mr. Harris,” interrupted Miss Hinkle. “I knew I could depend upon your frankness and honesty.”</p>
<p>“Thank you, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Harris,” interrupted Miss Hinkle. “I knew I could depend upon your frankness and honesty.”</p>
<p>And then C. Vincent Vesey drew back one sleeve from his snowy cuff, and the water came down at Lodore.</p>
<p>My memory cannot do justice to his masterly tribute to that priceless, God-given treasure⁠—Miss Hinkle’s voice. He raved over it in terms that, if they had been addressed to the morning stars when they sang together, would have made that stellar choir explode in a meteoric shower of flaming self-satisfaction.</p>
<p>He marshalled on his white finger-tips the grand opera stars of all the continents, from Jenny Lind to Emma Abbott, only to depreciate their endowments. He spoke of larynxes, of chest notes, of phrasing, arpeggios, and other strange paraphernalia of the throaty art. He admitted, as though driven to a corner, that Jenny Lind had a note or two in the high register that Miss Hinkle had not yet acquired⁠—but⁠—”!!!”⁠—that was a mere matter of practice and training.</p>

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<title>Chapter 2</title>
<title>The Third Ingredient</title>
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<h2>THE THIRD INGREDIENT</h2>
<h2 epub:type="title">The Third Ingredient</h2>
<p>The (so-called) Vallambrosa Apartment-House is not an apartment-house. It is composed of two old-fashioned, brownstone-front residences welded into one. The parlor floor of one side is gay with the wraps and head-gear of a modiste; the other is lugubrious with the sophistical promises and grisly display of a painless dentist. You may have a room there for two dollars a week or you may have one for twenty dollars. Among the Vallambrosa’s roomers are stenographers, musicians, brokers, shop-girls, space-rate writers, art students, wire-tappers, and other people who lean far over the banister-rail when the door-bell rings.</p>
<p>This treatise shall have to do with but two of the Vallambrosians⁠—though meaning no disrespect to the others.</p>
<p>At six o’clock one afternoon Hetty Pepper came back to her third-floor rear $3.50 room in the Vallambrosa with her nose and chin more sharply pointed than usual. To be discharged from the department store where you have been working four years, and with only fifteen cents in your purse, does have a tendency to make your features appear more finely chiselled.</p>
@ -48,7 +48,7 @@
<p>Hetty was only thirty-three, and she had not yet outlived the little pang that visited her whenever the head of youth and beauty leaned upon her for consolation. But one glance in her mirror always served as an instantaneous pain-killer. So she gave one pale look into the crinkly old looking-glass on the wall above the gas-stove, turned down the flame a little lower from the bubbling beef and potatoes, went over to the couch, and lifted Cecilia’s head to its confessional.</p>
<p>“Go on and tell me, honey,” she said. “I know now that it ain’t art that’s worrying you. You met him on a ferry-boat, didn’t you? Go on, Cecilia, kid, and tell your⁠—your Aunt Hetty about it.”</p>
<p>But youth and melancholy must first spend the surplus of sighs and tears that waft and float the barque of romance to its harbor in the delectable isles. Presently, through the stringy tendons that formed the bars of the confessional, the penitent⁠—or was it the glorified communicant of the sacred flame⁠—told her story without art or illumination.</p>
<p>“It was only three days ago. I was coming back on the ferry from Jersey City. Old Mr. Schrum, an art dealer, told me of a rich man in Newark who wanted a miniature of his daughter painted. I went to see him and showed him some of my work. When I told him the price would be fifty dollars he laughed at me like a hyena. He said an enlarged crayon twenty times the size would cost him only eight dollars.</p>
<p>“It was only three days ago. I was coming back on the ferry from Jersey City. Old <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Schrum, an art dealer, told me of a rich man in Newark who wanted a miniature of his daughter painted. I went to see him and showed him some of my work. When I told him the price would be fifty dollars he laughed at me like a hyena. He said an enlarged crayon twenty times the size would cost him only eight dollars.</p>
<p>“I had just enough money to buy my ferry ticket back to New York. I felt as if I didn’t want to live another day. I must have looked as I felt, for I saw <i>him</i> on the row of seats opposite me, looking at me as if he understood. He was nice-looking, but oh, above everything else, he looked kind. When one is tired or unhappy or hopeless, kindness counts more than anything else.</p>
<p>“When I got so miserable that I couldn’t fight against it any longer, I got up and walked slowly out the rear door of the ferry-boat cabin. No one was there, and I slipped quickly over the rail and dropped into the water. Oh, friend Hetty, it was cold, cold!</p>
<p>“For just one moment I wished I was back in the old Vallambrosa, starving and hoping. And then I got numb, and didn’t care. And then I felt that somebody else was in the water close by me, holding me up. <i>He</i> had followed me, and jumped in to save me.</p>

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<title>Chapter 3</title>
<title>The Hiding of Black Bill</title>
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<h2>THE HIDING OF BLACK BILL</h2>
<h2 epub:type="title">The Hiding of Black Bill</h2>
<p>A lank, strong, red-faced man with a Wellington beak and small, fiery eyes tempered by flaxen lashes, sat on the station platform at Los Pinos swinging his legs to and fro. At his side sat another man, fat, melancholy, and seedy, who seemed to be his friend. They had the appearance of men to whom life had appeared as a reversible coat⁠—seamy on both sides.</p>
<p>“Ain’t seen you in about four years, Ham,” said the seedy man. “Which way you been travelling?”</p>
<p>“Texas,” said the red-faced man. “It was too cold in Alaska for me. And I found it warm in Texas. I’ll tell you about one hot spell I went through there.</p>
@ -34,9 +34,9 @@
<p>“ ‘I’ll bring out your tent and camping outfit and rations in the buckboard before night,’ says he.</p>
<p>“ ‘Fine,’ says I. ‘And don’t forget the rations. Nor the camping outfit. And be sure to bring the tent. Your name’s Zollicoffer, ain’t it?”</p>
<p>“ ‘My name,’ says he, ‘is Henry Ogden.’</p>
<p>“ ‘All right, Mr. Ogden,’ says I. ‘Mine is Mr. Percival Saint Clair.’</p>
<p>“ ‘All right, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Ogden,’ says I. ‘Mine is <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Percival Saint Clair.’</p>
<p>“I herded sheep for five days on the Rancho Chiquito; and then the wool entered my soul. That getting next to Nature certainly got next to me. I was lonesomer than Crusoe’s goat. I’ve seen a lot of persons more entertaining as companions than those sheep were. I’d drive ’em to the corral and pen ’em every evening, and then cook my corn-bread and mutton and coffee, and lie down in a tent the size of a table-cloth, and listen to the coyotes and whip-poor-wills singing around the camp.</p>
<p>“The fifth evening, after I had corralled my costly but uncongenial muttons, I walked over to the ranch-house and stepped in the door. “ ‘Mr. Ogden,’ says I, ‘you and me have got to get sociable. Sheep are all very well to dot the landscape and furnish eight-dollar cotton suitings for man, but for table-talk and fireside companions they rank along with five-o’clock teazers. If you’ve got a deck of cards, or a parcheesi outfit, or a game of authors, get ’em out, and let’s get on a mental basis. I’ve got to do something in an intellectual line, if it’s only to knock somebody’s brains out.’</p>
<p>“The fifth evening, after I had corralled my costly but uncongenial muttons, I walked over to the ranch-house and stepped in the door. “ ‘<abbr>Mr.</abbr> Ogden,’ says I, ‘you and me have got to get sociable. Sheep are all very well to dot the landscape and furnish eight-dollar cotton suitings for man, but for table-talk and fireside companions they rank along with five-o’clock teazers. If you’ve got a deck of cards, or a parcheesi outfit, or a game of authors, get ’em out, and let’s get on a mental basis. I’ve got to do something in an intellectual line, if it’s only to knock somebody’s brains out.’</p>
<p>“This Henry Ogden was a peculiar kind of ranchman. He wore finger-rings and a big gold watch and careful neckties. And his face was calm, and his nose-spectacles was kept very shiny. I saw once, in Muscogee, an outlaw hung for murdering six men, who was a dead ringer for him. But I knew a preacher in Arkansas that you would have taken to be his brother. I didn’t care much for him either way; what I wanted was some fellowship and communion with holy saints or lost sinners⁠—anything sheepless would do.</p>
<p>“ ‘Well, Saint Clair,’ says he, laying down the book he was reading, ‘I guess it must be pretty lonesome for you at first. And I don’t deny that it’s monotonous for me. Are you sure you corralled your sheep so they won’t stray out?’</p>
<p>“ ‘They’re shut up as tight as the jury of a millionaire murderer,’ says I. ‘And I’ll be back with them long before they’ll need their trained nurse.’</p>
@ -51,7 +51,7 @@
<p>“ ‘Why, no,’ says Ogden; ‘they say nobody got a good sight of him because he wore a mask. But they know it was a train-robber called Black Bill, because he always works alone and because he dropped a handkerchief in the express-car that had his name on it.’</p>
<p>“ ‘All right,’ says I. ‘I approve of Black Bill’s retreat to the sheep-ranges. I guess they won’t find him.’</p>
<p>“ ‘There’s one thousand dollars reward for his capture,’ says Ogden.</p>
<p>“ ‘I don’t need that kind of money,’ says I, looking Mr. Sheepman straight in the eye. ‘The twelve dollars a month you pay me is enough. I need a rest, and I can save up until I get enough to pay my fare to Texarkana, where my widowed mother lives. If Black Bill,’ I goes on, looking significantly at Ogden, ‘was to have come down this way⁠—say, a month ago⁠—and bought a little sheep-ranch and⁠—’</p>
<p>“ ‘I don’t need that kind of money,’ says I, looking <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Sheepman straight in the eye. ‘The twelve dollars a month you pay me is enough. I need a rest, and I can save up until I get enough to pay my fare to Texarkana, where my widowed mother lives. If Black Bill,’ I goes on, looking significantly at Ogden, ‘was to have come down this way⁠—say, a month ago⁠—and bought a little sheep-ranch and⁠—’</p>
<p>“ ‘Stop,’ says Ogden, getting out of his chair and looking pretty vicious. ‘Do you mean to insinuate⁠—’</p>
<p>“ ‘Nothing,’ says I; ‘no insinuations. I’m stating a hypodermical case. I say, if Black Bill had come down here and bought a sheep-ranch and hired me to Little-Boy-Blue ’em and treated me square and friendly, as you’ve done, he’d never have anything to fear from me. A man is a man, regardless of any complications he may have with sheep or railroad trains. Now you know where I stand.’</p>
<p>“Ogden looks black as camp-coffee for nine seconds, and then he laughs, amused.</p>
@ -63,7 +63,7 @@
<p>“ ‘Too draughty,’ says Ogden. ‘But if you’re ever in the Middle West just mention my name, and you’ll get foot-warmers and dripped coffee.’</p>
<p>“ ‘Well,’ says I, ‘I wasn’t exactly fishing for your private telephone number and the middle name of your aunt that carried off the Cumberland Presbyterian minister. It don’t matter. I just want you to know you are safe in the hands of your shepherd. Now, don’t play hearts on spades, and don’t get nervous.’</p>
<p>“ ‘Still harping,’ says Ogden, laughing again. ‘Don’t you suppose that if I was Black Bill and thought you suspected me, I’d put a Winchester bullet into you and stop my nervousness, if I had any?’</p>
<p>“ ‘Not any,’ says I. ‘A man who’s got the nerve to hold up a train single-handed wouldn’t do a trick like that. I’ve knocked about enough to know that them are the kind of men who put a value on a friend. Not that I can claim being a friend of yours, Mr. Ogden,’ says I, ‘being only your sheep-herder; but under more expeditious circumstances we might have been.’</p>
<p>“ ‘Not any,’ says I. ‘A man who’s got the nerve to hold up a train single-handed wouldn’t do a trick like that. I’ve knocked about enough to know that them are the kind of men who put a value on a friend. Not that I can claim being a friend of yours, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Ogden,’ says I, ‘being only your sheep-herder; but under more expeditious circumstances we might have been.’</p>
<p>“ ‘Forget the sheep temporarily, I beg,’ says Ogden, ‘and cut for deal.’</p>
<p>“About four days afterward, while my muttons was nooning on the water-hole and I deep in the interstices of making a pot of coffee, up rides softly on the grass a mysterious person in the garb of the being he wished to represent. He was dressed somewhere between a Kansas City detective, Buffalo Bill, and the town dog-catcher of Baton Rouge. His chin and eye wasn’t molded on fighting lines, so I knew he was only a scout.</p>
<p>“ ‘Herdin’ sheep?’ he asks me.</p>
@ -87,7 +87,7 @@
<p>“And both of us drank.</p>
<p>“About two weeks later comes shearing-time. The sheep had to be driven up to the ranch, and a lot of frowzy-headed Mexicans would snip the fur off of them with back-action scissors. So the afternoon before the barbers were to come I hustled my underdone muttons over the hill, across the dell, down by the winding brook, and up to the ranch-house, where I penned ’em in a corral and bade ’em my nightly adieus.</p>
<p>“I went from there to the ranch-house. I find H. Ogden, Esquire, lying asleep on his little cot bed. I guess he had been overcome by anti-insomnia or diswakefulness or some of the diseases peculiar to the sheep business. His mouth and vest were open, and he breathed like a second-hand bicycle pump. I looked at him and gave vent to just a few musings. ‘Imperial Cæsar,’ says I, ‘asleep in such a way, might shut his mouth and keep the wind away.’</p>
<p>“A man asleep is certainly a sight to make angels weep. What good is all his brain, muscle, backing, nerve, influence, and family connections? He’s at the mercy of his enemies, and more so of his friends. And he’s about as beautiful as a cab-horse leaning against the Metropolitan Opera House at 12.30 <span class="smallcaps">a.m.</span> dreaming of the plains of Arabia. Now, a woman asleep you regard as different. No matter how she looks, you know it’s better for all hands for her to be that way.</p>
<p>“A man asleep is certainly a sight to make angels weep. What good is all his brain, muscle, backing, nerve, influence, and family connections? He’s at the mercy of his enemies, and more so of his friends. And he’s about as beautiful as a cab-horse leaning against the Metropolitan Opera House at 12.30 <span class="smallcaps"><abbr class="time">a.m.</abbr></span> dreaming of the plains of Arabia. Now, a woman asleep you regard as different. No matter how she looks, you know it’s better for all hands for her to be that way.</p>
<p>“Well, I took a drink of Bourbon and one for Ogden, and started in to be comfortable while he was taking his nap. He had some books on his table on indigenous subjects, such as Japan and drainage and physical culture⁠—and some tobacco, which seemed more to the point.</p>
<p>“After I’d smoked a few, and listened to the sartorial breathing of H. O., I happened to look out the window toward the shearing-pens, where there was a kind of a road coming up from a kind of a road across a kind of a creek farther away.</p>
<p>“I saw five men riding up to the house. All of ’em carried guns across their saddles, and among ’em was the deputy that had talked to me at my camp.</p>
@ -114,7 +114,7 @@
<p>“So the whole posse unmounts and ties their horses, and unlimbers their ammunition and equipments, and tiptoes into the house. And I follows, like Delilah when she set the Philip Steins on to Samson.</p>
<p>“The leader of the posse shakes Ogden and wakes him up. And then he jumps up, and two more of the reward-hunters grab him. Ogden was mighty tough with all his slimness, and he gives ’em as neat a single-footed tussle against odds as I ever see.</p>
<p>“ ‘What does this mean?’ he says, after they had him down.</p>
<p>“ ‘You’re scooped in, Mr. Black Bill,’ says the captain. ‘That’s all.’</p>
<p>“ ‘You’re scooped in, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Black Bill,’ says the captain. ‘That’s all.’</p>
<p>“ ‘It’s an outrage,’ says H. Ogden, madder yet.</p>
<p>“ ‘It was,’ says the peace-and-good-will man. ‘The Katy wasn’t bothering you, and there’s a law against monkeying with express packages.’</p>
<p>“And he sits on H. Ogden’s stomach and goes through his pockets symptomatically and careful.</p>

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<h2>SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLS</h2>
<h2 epub:type="title">Schools and Schools</h2>
<h4>I</h4>
<p>Old Jerome Warren lived in a hundred-thousand-dollar house at 35 East Fifty-Soforth Street. He was a downtown broker, so rich that he could afford to walk⁠—for his health⁠—a few blocks in the direction of his office every morning, and then call a cab.</p>
<p>He had an adopted son, the son of an old friend named Gilbert⁠—Cyril Scott could play him nicely⁠—who was becoming a successful painter as fast as he could squeeze the paint out of his tubes. Another member of the household was Barbara Ross, a step-niece. Man is born to trouble; so, as old Jerome had no family of his own, he took up the burdens of others.</p>
<p>Gilbert and Barbara got along swimmingly. There was a tacit and tactical understanding all round that the two would stand up under a floral bell some high noon, and promise the minister to keep old Jerome’s money in a state of high commotion. But at this point complications must be introduced.</p>
<p>Thirty years before, when old Jerome was young Jerome, there was a brother of his named Dick. Dick went West to seek his or somebody else’s fortune. Nothing was heard of him until one day old Jerome had a letter from his brother. It was badly written on ruled paper that smelled of salt bacon and coffee-grounds. The writing was asthmatic and the spelling St. Vitusy.</p>
<p>Thirty years before, when old Jerome was young Jerome, there was a brother of his named Dick. Dick went West to seek his or somebody else’s fortune. Nothing was heard of him until one day old Jerome had a letter from his brother. It was badly written on ruled paper that smelled of salt bacon and coffee-grounds. The writing was asthmatic and the spelling <abbr>St.</abbr> Vitusy.</p>
<p>It appeared that instead of Dick having forced Fortune to stand and deliver, he had been held up himself, and made to give hostages to the enemy. That is, as his letter disclosed, he was on the point of pegging out with a complication of disorders that even whiskey had failed to check. All that his thirty years of prospecting had netted him was one daughter, nineteen years old, as per invoice, whom he was shipping East, charges prepaid, for Jerome to clothe, feed, educate, comfort, and cherish for the rest of her natural life or until matrimony should them part.</p>
<p>Old Jerome was a board-walk. Everybody knows that the world is supported by the shoulders of Atlas; and that Atlas stands on a rail-fence; and that the rail-fence is built on a turtle’s back. Now, the turtle has to stand on something; and that is a board-walk made of men like old Jerome.</p>
<p>I do not know whether immortality shall accrue to man; but if not so, I would like to know when men like old Jerome get what is due them?</p>
@ -42,7 +42,7 @@
<p>“I didn’t know,” said Nevada, demurely. “I thought I’d ask you. Couldn’t you go with us, uncle?”</p>
<p>“I? No, no, no, no! I’ve ridden once in a car that boy was driving. Never again! But it’s entirely proper for you and Barbara to go. Yes, yes. But I will not. No, no, no, no!”</p>
<p>Nevada flew to the door, and said to the maid:</p>
<p>“You bet we’ll go. I’ll answer for Miss Barbara. Tell the boy to say to Mr. Warren, ‘You bet we’ll go.’ ”</p>
<p>“You bet we’ll go. I’ll answer for Miss Barbara. Tell the boy to say to <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Warren, ‘You bet we’ll go.’ ”</p>
<p>“Nevada,” called old Jerome, “pardon me, my dear, but wouldn’t it be as well to send him a note in reply? Just a line would do.”</p>
<p>“No, I won’t bother about that,” said Nevada, gayly. “Gilbert will understand⁠—he always does. I never rode in an automobile in my life; but I’ve paddled a canoe down Little Devil River through the Lost Horse Cañon, and if it’s any livelier than that I’d like to know!”</p>
<h4>III</h4>
@ -54,7 +54,7 @@
<p>Barbara would have given her pearl necklace to know what the letter contained; but she could not open and read it by the aid of steam, or a pen-handle, or a hair-pin, or any of the generally approved methods, because her position in society forbade such an act. She had tried to read some of the lines of the letter by holding the envelope up to a strong light and pressing it hard against the paper, but Gilbert had too good a taste in stationery to make that possible.</p>
<p>At eleven-thirty the theatre-goers returned. It was a delicious winter night. Even so far as from the cab to the door they were powdered thickly with the big flakes downpouring diagonally from the east. Old Jerome growled good-naturedly about villainous cab service and blockaded streets. Nevada, colored like a rose, with sapphire eyes, babbled of the stormy nights in the mountains around dad’s cabin. During all these wintry apostrophes, Barbara, cold at heart, sawed wood⁠—the only appropriate thing she could think of to do.</p>
<p>Old Jerome went immediately up-stairs to hot-water-bottles and quinine. Nevada fluttered into the study, the only cheerfully lighted room, subsided into an arm-chair, and, while at the interminable task of unbuttoning her elbow gloves, gave oral testimony as to the demerits of the “show.”</p>
<p>“Yes, I think Mr. Fields is really amusing⁠—sometimes,” said Barbara. “Here is a letter for you, dear, that came by special delivery just after you had gone.”</p>
<p>“Yes, I think <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Fields is really amusing⁠—sometimes,” said Barbara. “Here is a letter for you, dear, that came by special delivery just after you had gone.”</p>
<p>“Who is it from?” asked Nevada, tugging at a button.</p>
<p>“Well, really,” said Barbara, with a smile, “I can only guess. The envelope has that queer little thing in one corner that Gilbert calls a palette, but which looks to me rather like a gilt heart on a school-girl’s valentine.”</p>
<p>“I wonder what he’s writing to me about” remarked Nevada, listlessly.</p>
@ -75,7 +75,7 @@
<p>Barbara seemed to hesitate.</p>
<p>“Really, Nevada,” she said, with a little show of embarrassment, “you shouldn’t have insisted on my opening this. I⁠—I’m sure it wasn’t meant for any one else to know.”</p>
<p>Nevada forgot her gloves for a moment.</p>
<p>“Then read it aloud,” she said. “Since you’ve already read it, what’s the difference? If Mr. Warren has written to me something that any one else oughtn’t to know, that is all the more reason why everybody should know it.”</p>
<p>“Then read it aloud,” she said. “Since you’ve already read it, what’s the difference? If <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Warren has written to me something that any one else oughtn’t to know, that is all the more reason why everybody should know it.”</p>
<p>“Well,” said Barbara, “this is what it says: ‘Dearest Nevada⁠—Come to my studio at twelve o’clock to-night. Do not fail.’ ” Barbara rose and dropped the note in Nevada’s lap. “I’m awfully sorry,” she said, “that I knew. It isn’t like Gilbert. There must be some mistake. Just consider that I am ignorant of it, will you, dear? I must go up-stairs now, I have such a headache. I’m sure I don’t understand the note. Perhaps Gilbert has been dining too well, and will explain. Good night!”</p>
<h4>IV</h4>
<p>Nevada tiptoed to the hall, and heard Barbara’s door close upstairs. The bronze clock in the study told the hour of twelve was fifteen minutes away. She ran swiftly to the front door, and let herself out into the snow-storm. Gilbert Warren’s studio was six squares away.</p>
@ -110,7 +110,7 @@
<p>“I was going to tell you,” she said, “anyhow, before you⁠—before we⁠—before⁠—well, before anything. Dad never gave me a day of schooling. I never learned to read or write a darned word. Now if⁠—”</p>
<p>Pounding their uncertain way up-stairs, the feet of Jack, the somnolent, and Agnes, the grateful, were heard.</p>
<h4>V</h4>
<p>When Mr. and Mrs. Gilbert Warren were spinning softly homeward in a closed carriage, after the ceremony, Gilbert said:</p>
<p>When <abbr>Mr.</abbr> and <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Gilbert Warren were spinning softly homeward in a closed carriage, after the ceremony, Gilbert said:</p>
<p>“Nevada, would you really like to know what I wrote you in the letter that you received to-night?”</p>
<p>“Fire away!” said his bride.</p>
<p>“Word for word,” said Gilbert, “it was this: ‘My dear Miss Warren⁠—You were right about the flower. It was a hydrangea, and not a lilac.’ ”</p>

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<title>Chapter 5</title>
<title>Thimble, Thimble</title>
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<h2>THIMBLE, THIMBLE</h2>
<h2 epub:type="title">Thimble, Thimble</h2>
<p>These are the directions for finding the office of Carteret &amp; Carteret, Mill Supplies and Leather Belting:</p>
<p>You follow the Broadway trail down until you pass the Crosstown Line, the Bread Line, and the Dead Line, and come to the Big Cañons of the Moneygrubber Tribe. Then you turn to the left, to the right, dodge a push-cart and the tongue of a two-ton four-horse dray and hop, skip, and jump to a granite ledge on the side of a twenty-one-story synthetic mountain of stone and iron. In the twelfth story is the office of Carteret &amp; Carteret. The factory where they make the mill supplies and leather belting is in Brooklyn. Those commodities⁠—to say nothing of Brooklyn⁠—not being of interest to you, let us hold the incidents within the confines of a one-act, one-scene play, thereby lessening the toil of the reader and the expenditure of the publisher. So, if you have the courage to face four pages of type and Carteret &amp; Carteret’s office boy, Percival, you shall sit on a varnished chair in the inner office and peep at the little comedy of the Old Nigger Man, the Hunting-Case Watch, and the Open-Faced Question⁠—mostly borrowed from the late Mr. Frank Stockton, as you will conclude.</p>
<p>You follow the Broadway trail down until you pass the Crosstown Line, the Bread Line, and the Dead Line, and come to the Big Cañons of the Moneygrubber Tribe. Then you turn to the left, to the right, dodge a push-cart and the tongue of a two-ton four-horse dray and hop, skip, and jump to a granite ledge on the side of a twenty-one-story synthetic mountain of stone and iron. In the twelfth story is the office of Carteret &amp; Carteret. The factory where they make the mill supplies and leather belting is in Brooklyn. Those commodities⁠—to say nothing of Brooklyn⁠—not being of interest to you, let us hold the incidents within the confines of a one-act, one-scene play, thereby lessening the toil of the reader and the expenditure of the publisher. So, if you have the courage to face four pages of type and Carteret &amp; Carteret’s office boy, Percival, you shall sit on a varnished chair in the inner office and peep at the little comedy of the Old Nigger Man, the Hunting-Case Watch, and the Open-Faced Question⁠—mostly borrowed from the late <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Frank Stockton, as you will conclude.</p>
<p>First, biography (but pared to the quick) must intervene. I am for the inverted sugar-coated quinine pill⁠—the bitter on the outside.</p>
<p>The Carterets were, or was (Columbia College professors please rule), an old Virginia family. Long time ago the gentlemen of the family had worn lace ruffles and carried tinless foils and owned plantations and had slaves to burn. But the war had greatly reduced their holdings. (Of course you can perceive at once that this flavor has been shoplifted from Mr. F. Hopkinson Smith, in spite of the “et” after “Carter.”) Well, anyhow:</p>
<p>In digging up the Carteret history I shall not take you farther back than the year 1620. The two original American Carterets came over in that year, but by different means of transportation. One brother, named John, came in the <i>Mayflower</i> and became a Pilgrim Father. You’ve seen his picture on the covers of the Thanksgiving magazines, hunting turkeys in the deep snow with a blunderbuss. Blandford Carteret, the other brother, crossed the pond in his own brigantine, landed on the Virginia coast, and became an F. F. V. John became distinguished for piety and shrewdness in business; Blandford for his pride, juleps; marksmanship, and vast slave-cultivated plantations.</p>
<p>The Carterets were, or was (Columbia College professors please rule), an old Virginia family. Long time ago the gentlemen of the family had worn lace ruffles and carried tinless foils and owned plantations and had slaves to burn. But the war had greatly reduced their holdings. (Of course you can perceive at once that this flavor has been shoplifted from <abbr>Mr.</abbr> F. Hopkinson Smith, in spite of the “et” after “Carter.”) Well, anyhow:</p>
<p>In digging up the Carteret history I shall not take you farther back than the year 1620. The two original American Carterets came over in that year, but by different means of transportation. One brother, named John, came in the <i>Mayflower</i> and became a Pilgrim Father. You’ve seen his picture on the covers of the Thanksgiving magazines, hunting turkeys in the deep snow with a blunderbuss. Blandford Carteret, the other brother, crossed the pond in his own brigantine, landed on the Virginia coast, and became an F. F. <span epub:type="z3998:roman">V</span>. John became distinguished for piety and shrewdness in business; Blandford for his pride, juleps; marksmanship, and vast slave-cultivated plantations.</p>
<p>Then came the Civil War. (I must condense this historical interpolation.) Stonewall Jackson was shot; Lee surrendered; Grant toured the world; cotton went to nine cents; Old Crow whiskey and Jim Crow cars were invented; the Seventy-ninth Massachusetts Volunteers returned to the Ninety-seventh Alabama Zouaves the battle flag of Lundy’s Lane which they bought at a second-hand store in Chelsea, kept by a man named Skzchnzski; Georgia sent the President a sixty-pound watermelon⁠—and that brings us up to the time when the story begins. My! but that was sparring for an opening! I really must brush op on my Aristotle.</p>
<p>The Yankee Carterets went into business in New York long before the war. Their house, as far as Leather Belting and Mill Supplies was concerned, was as musty and arrogant and solid as one of those old East India tea-importing concerns that you read about in Dickens. There were some rumors of a war behind its counters, but not enough to affect the business.</p>
<p>During and after the war, Blandford Carteret, F.F.V., lost his plantations, juleps, marksmanship, and life. He bequeathed little more than his pride to his surviving family. So it came to pass that Blandford Carteret, the Fifth, aged fifteen, was invited by the leather-and-mill-supplies branch of that name to come North and learn business instead of hunting foxes and boasting of the glory of his fathers on the reduced acres of his impoverished family. The boy jumped at the chance; and, at the age of twenty-five, sat in the office of the firm equal partner with John, the Fifth, of the blunderbuss-and-turkey branch. Here the story begins again.</p>
<p>During and after the war, Blandford Carteret, F.F.<span epub:type="z3998:roman">V</span>., lost his plantations, juleps, marksmanship, and life. He bequeathed little more than his pride to his surviving family. So it came to pass that Blandford Carteret, the Fifth, aged fifteen, was invited by the leather-and-mill-supplies branch of that name to come North and learn business instead of hunting foxes and boasting of the glory of his fathers on the reduced acres of his impoverished family. The boy jumped at the chance; and, at the age of twenty-five, sat in the office of the firm equal partner with John, the Fifth, of the blunderbuss-and-turkey branch. Here the story begins again.</p>
<p>The young men were about the same age, smooth of face, alert, easy of manner, and with an air that promised mental and physical quickness. They were razored, blue-serged, straw-hatted, and pearl stick-pinned like other young New Yorkers who might be millionaires or bill clerks.</p>
<p>One afternoon at four o’clock, in the private office of the firm, Blandford Carteret opened a letter that a clerk had just brought to his desk. After reading it, he chuckled audibly for nearly a minute. John looked around from his desk inquiringly.</p>
<p>“It’s from mother,” said Blandford. “I’ll read you the funny part of it. She tells me all the neighborhood news first, of course, and then cautions me against getting my feet wet and musical comedies. After that come vital statistics about calves and pigs and an estimate of the wheat crop. And now I’ll quote some:</p>
@ -27,7 +27,7 @@
<p>“ ‘If you are not too busy, I’d like for you to find him a place to board where they have white-meal corn-bread, and try to keep him from taking his shoes off in your office or on the street. His right foot swells a little, and he likes to be comfortable.</p>
<p>“ ‘If you can spare the time, count his handkerchiefs when they come back from the wash. I bought him a dozen new ones before he left. He should be there about the time this letter reaches you. I told him to go straight to your office when he arrives.’ ”</p>
<p>As soon as Blandford had finished the reading of this, something happened (as there should happen in stories and must happen on the stage).</p>
<p>Percival, the office boy, with his air of despising the world’s output of mill supplies and leather belting, came in to announce that a colored gentleman was outside to see Mr. Blandford Carteret.</p>
<p>Percival, the office boy, with his air of despising the world’s output of mill supplies and leather belting, came in to announce that a colored gentleman was outside to see <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Blandford Carteret.</p>
<p>“Bring him in,” said Blandford, rising.</p>
<p>John Carteret swung around in his chair and said to Percival: “Ask him to wait a few minutes outside. We’ll let you know when to bring him in.”</p>
<p>Then he turned to his cousin with one of those broad, slow smiles that was an inheritance of all the Carterets, and said:</p>
@ -43,7 +43,7 @@
<p>“Howdy, Marse Blandford⁠—howdy, suh?” he said, looking midway between the two young men.</p>
<p>“Howdy, Uncle Jake?” they both answered pleasantly and in unison. “Sit down. Have you brought the watch?”</p>
<p>Uncle Jake chose a hard-bottom chair at a respectful distance, sat on the edge of it, and laid his hat carefully on the floor. The watch in its buckskin case he gripped tightly. He had not risked his life on the battle-field to rescue that watch from his “old marster’s” foes to hand it over again to the enemy without a struggle.</p>
<p>“Yes, suh; I got it in my hand, suh. I’m gwine give it to you right away in jus’ a minute. Old Missus told me to put it in young Marse Blandford’s hand and tell him to wear it for the family pride and honor. It was a mighty longsome trip for an old nigger man to make⁠—ten thousand miles, it must be, back to old Vi’ginia, suh. You’ve growed mightily, young marster. I wouldn’t have reconnized you but for yo’ powerful resemblance to old marster.”</p>
<p>“Yes, suh; I got it in my hand, suh. I’m gwine give it to you right away in jus’ a minute. Old Missus told me to put it in young Marse Blandford’s hand and tell him to wear it for the family pride and honor. It was a mighty longsome trip for an old nigger man to make⁠—ten thousand miles, it must be, back to old <span epub:type="z3998:roman">Vi</span>’ginia, suh. You’ve growed mightily, young marster. I wouldn’t have reconnized you but for yo’ powerful resemblance to old marster.”</p>
<p>With admirable diplomacy the old man kept his eyes roaming in the space between the two men. His words might have been addressed to either. Though neither wicked nor perverse, he was seeking for a sign.</p>
<p>Blandford and John exchanged winks.</p>
<p>“I reckon you done got you ma’s letter,” went on Uncle Jake. “She said she was gwine to write to you ‘bout my comin’ along up this er-way.</p>
@ -54,7 +54,7 @@
<p>“Will then see to it⁠—” said John.</p>
<p>“That comfortable quarters are found for you,” said Blandford.</p>
<p>With creditable ingenuity, old Jake set up a cackling, high-pitched, protracted laugh. He beat his knee, picked up his hat and bent the brim in an apparent paroxysm of humorous appreciation. The seizure afforded him a mask behind which he could roll his eyes impartially between, above, and beyond his two tormentors.</p>
<p>“I sees what!” he chuckled, after a while. “You gen’lemen is tryin’ to have fun with the po’ old nigger. But you can’t fool old Jake. I knowed you, Marse Blandford, the minute I sot eyes on you. You was a po’ skimpy little boy no mo’ than about fo’teen when you lef’ home to come No’th; but I knowed you the minute I sot eyes on you. You is the mawtal image of old marster. The other gen’leman resembles you mightily, suh; but you can’t fool old Jake on a member of the old Vi’ginia family. No suh.”</p>
<p>“I sees what!” he chuckled, after a while. “You gen’lemen is tryin’ to have fun with the po’ old nigger. But you can’t fool old Jake. I knowed you, Marse Blandford, the minute I sot eyes on you. You was a po’ skimpy little boy no mo’ than about fo’teen when you lef’ home to come No’th; but I knowed you the minute I sot eyes on you. You is the mawtal image of old marster. The other gen’leman resembles you mightily, suh; but you can’t fool old Jake on a member of the old <span epub:type="z3998:roman">Vi</span>’ginia family. No suh.”</p>
<p>At exactly the same time both Carterets smiled and extended a hand for the watch.</p>
<p>Uncle Jake’s wrinkled, black face lost the expression of amusement to which he had vainly twisted it. He knew that he was being teased, and that it made little real difference, as far as its safety went, into which of those outstretched hands he placed the family treasure. But it seemed to him that not only his own pride and loyalty but much of the Virginia Carterets’ was at stake. He had heard down South during the war about that other branch of the family that lived in the North and fought on “the yuther side,” and it had always grieved him. He had followed his “old marster’s” fortunes from stately luxury through war to almost poverty. And now, with the last relic and reminder of him, blessed by “old missus,” and intrusted implicitly to his care, he had come ten thousand miles (as it seemed) to deliver it into the hands of the one who was to wear it and wind it and cherish it and listen to it tick off the unsullied hours that marked the lives of the Carterets⁠—of Virginia.</p>
<p>His experience and conception of the Yankees had been an impression of tyrants⁠—“low-down, common trash”⁠—in blue, laying waste with fire and sword. He had seen the smoke of many burning homesteads almost as grand as Carteret Hall ascending to the drowsy Southern skies. And now he was face to face with one of them⁠—and he could not distinguish him from his “young marster” whom he had come to find and bestow upon him the emblem of his kingship⁠—even as the arm “clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful” laid Excalibur in the right hand of Arthur. He saw before him two young men, easy, kind, courteous, welcoming, either of whom might have been the one he sought. Troubled, bewildered, sorely grieved at his weakness of judgment, old Jake abandoned his loyal subterfuges. His right hand sweated against the buckskin cover of the watch. He was deeply humiliated and chastened. Seriously, now, his prominent, yellow-white eyes closely scanned the two young men. At the end of his scrutiny he was conscious of but one difference between them. One wore a narrow black tie with a white pearl stickpin. The other’s “four-in-hand” was a narrow blue one pinned with a black pearl.</p>
@ -77,7 +77,7 @@
<p>“Now, let’s recapitulate a bit,” he said cheerfully. “All three of us, besides other mutual acquaintances, have been out on a good many larks together.”</p>
<p>“I’m afraid I’ll have to call the birds by another name,” said Miss De Ormond.</p>
<p>“All right,” responded Black-Tie, with unimpaired cheerfulness; “suppose we say ‘squabs’ when we talk about the ‘proposal’ and ‘larks’ when we discuss the ‘proposition.’ You have a quick mind, Miss De Ormond. Two months ago some half-dozen of us went in a motor-car for a day’s run into the country. We stopped at a road-house for dinner. My cousin proposed marriage to you then and there. He was influenced to do so, of course, by the beauty and charm which no one can deny that you possess.”</p>
<p>“I wish I had you for a press agent, Mr. Carteret,” said the beauty, with a dazzling smile.</p>
<p>“I wish I had you for a press agent, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Carteret,” said the beauty, with a dazzling smile.</p>
<p>“You are on the stage, Miss De Ormond,” went on Black-Tie. “You have had, doubtless, many admirers, and perhaps other proposals. You must remember, too, that we were a party of merrymakers on that occasion. There were a good many corks pulled. That the proposal of marriage was made to you by my cousin we cannot deny. But hasn’t it been your experience that, by common consent, such things lose their seriousness when viewed in the next day’s sunlight? Isn’t there something of a ‘code’ among good ‘sports’⁠—I use the word in its best sense⁠—that wipes out each day the follies of the evening previous?”</p>
<p>“Oh yes,” said Miss De Ormond. “I know that very well. And I’ve always played up to it. But as you seem to be conducting the case⁠—with the silent consent of the defendant⁠—I’ll tell you something more. I’ve got letters from him repeating the proposal. And they’re signed, too.”</p>
<p>“I understand,” said Black-Tie gravely. “What’s your price for the letters?”</p>

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<title>Chapter 6</title>
<title>Supply and Demand</title>
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<h2>SUPPLY AND DEMAND</h2>
<h2 epub:type="title">Supply and Demand</h2>
<p>Finch keeps a hats-cleaned-by-electricity-while-you-wait establishment, nine feet by twelve, in Third Avenue. Once a customer, you are always his. I do not know his secret process, but every four days your hat needs to be cleaned again.</p>
<p>Finch is a leathern, sallow, slow-footed man, between twenty and forty. You would say he had been brought up a bushelman in Essex Street. When business is slack he likes to talk, so I had my hat cleaned even oftener than it deserved, hoping Finch might let me into some of the secrets of the sweatshops.</p>
<p>One afternoon I dropped in and found Finch alone. He began to anoint my headpiece de Panama with his mysterious fluid that attracted dust and dirt like a magnet.</p>
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<p>I was interested but not surprised. The big city is like a mother’s knee to many who have strayed far and found the roads rough beneath their uncertain feet. At dusk they come home and sit upon the door-step. I know a piano player in a cheap café who has shot lions in Africa, a bell-boy who fought in the British army against the Zulus, an express-driver whose left arm had been cracked like a lobster’s claw for a stew-pot of Patagonian cannibals when the boat of his rescuers hove in sight. So a hat-cleaner who had been a friend of a king did not oppress me.</p>
<p>“A new band?” asked Finch, with his dry, barren smile.</p>
<p>“Yes,” said I, “and half an inch wider.” I had had a new band five days before.</p>
<p>“I meets a man one night,” said Finch, beginning his story⁠—“a man brown as snuff, with money in every pocket, eating schweinerknuckel in Schlagel’s. That was two years ago, when I was a hose-cart driver for No. 98. His discourse runs to the subject of gold. He says that certain mountains in a country down South that he calls Gaudymala is full of it. He says the Indians wash it out of the streams in plural quantities.</p>
<p>“I meets a man one night,” said Finch, beginning his story⁠—“a man brown as snuff, with money in every pocket, eating schweinerknuckel in Schlagel’s. That was two years ago, when I was a hose-cart driver for <abbr>No.</abbr> 98. His discourse runs to the subject of gold. He says that certain mountains in a country down South that he calls Gaudymala is full of it. He says the Indians wash it out of the streams in plural quantities.</p>
<p>“ ‘Oh, Geronimo!’ says I. ‘Indians! There’s no Indians in the South,’ I tell him, ‘except Elks, Maccabees, and the buyers for the fall dry-goods trade. The Indians are all on the reservations,’ says I.</p>
<p>“ ‘I’m telling you this with reservations,’ says he. ‘They ain’t Buffalo Bill Indians; they’re squattier and more pedigreed. They call ’em Inkers and Aspics, and they was old inhabitants when Mazuma was King of Mexico. They wash the gold out of the mountain streams,’ says the brown man, ‘and fill quills with it; and then they empty ’em into red jars till they are full; and then they pack it in buckskin sacks of one arroba each⁠—an arroba is twenty-five pounds⁠—and store it in a stone house, with an engraving of a idol with marcelled hair, playing a flute, over the door.’</p>
<p>“ ‘How do they work off this unearth increment?’ I asks.</p>

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<title>Chapter 7</title>
<title>Buried Treasure</title>
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<h2>BURIED TREASURE</h2>
<h2 epub:type="title">Buried Treasure</h2>
<p>There are many kinds of fools. Now, will everybody please sit still until they are called upon specifically to rise?</p>
<p>I had been every kind of fool except one. I had expended my patrimony, pretended my matrimony, played poker, lawn-tennis, and bucket-shops⁠—parted soon with my money in many ways. But there remained one rule of the wearer of cap and bells that I had not played. That was the Seeker after Buried Treasure. To few does the delectable furor come. But of all the would-be followers in the hoof-prints of King Midas none has found a pursuit so rich in pleasurable promise.</p>
<p>But, going back from my theme a while⁠—as lame pens must do⁠—I was a fool of the sentimental sort. I saw May Martha Mangum, and was hers. She was eighteen, the color of the white ivory keys of a new piano, beautiful, and possessed by the exquisite solemnity and pathetic witchery of an unsophisticated angel doomed to live in a small, dull, Texas prairie-town. She had a spirit and charm that could have enabled her to pluck rubies like raspberries from the crown of Belgium or any other sporty kingdom, but she did not know it, and I did not paint the picture for her.</p>

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<title>Chapter 8</title>
<title>To Him Who Waits</title>
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<h2>TO HIM WHO WAITS</h2>
<h2 epub:type="title">To Him Who Waits</h2>
<p>The Hermit of the Hudson was hustling about his cave with unusual animation.</p>
<p>The cave was on or in the top of a little spur of the Catskills that had strayed down to the river’s edge, and, not having a ferry ticket, had to stop there. The bijou mountains were densely wooded and were infested by ferocious squirrels and woodpeckers that forever menaced the summer transients. Like a badly sewn strip of white braid, a macadamized road ran between the green skirt of the hills and the foamy lace of the river’s edge. A dim path wound from the comfortable road up a rocky height to the hermit’s cave. One mile upstream was the Viewpoint Inn, to which summer folk from the city came; leaving cool, electric-fanned apartments that they might be driven about in burning sunshine, shrieking, in gasoline launches, by spindle-legged Modreds bearing the blankest of shields.</p>
<p>Train your lorgnette upon the hermit and let your eye receive the personal touch that shall endear you to the hero.</p>
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<p>“Well, sah,” said the servitor, “dey is having de reg’lar Thursday-evenin’ dance in de casino. And in de grill-room dere’s a beefsteak dinner, sah.”</p>
<p>The hermit glanced up at the inn on the hillside whence burst suddenly a triumphant strain of splendid harmony.</p>
<p>“And up there,” said he, “they are playing Mendelssohn⁠—what is going on up there?”</p>
<p>“Up in de inn,” said the dusky one, “dey is a weddin’ goin’ on. Mr. Binkley, a mighty rich man, am marryin’ Miss Trenholme, sah⁠—de young lady who am quite de belle of de place, sah.”</p>
<p>“Up in de inn,” said the dusky one, “dey is a weddin’ goin’ on. <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Binkley, a mighty rich man, am marryin’ Miss Trenholme, sah⁠—de young lady who am quite de belle of de place, sah.”</p>
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<title>Chapter 9</title>
<title>He Also Serves</title>
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<h2>HE ALSO SERVES</h2>
<h2 epub:type="title">He Also Serves</h2>
<p>If I could have a thousand years⁠—just one little thousand years⁠—more of life, I might, in that time, draw near enough to true Romance to touch the hem of her robe.</p>
<p>Up from ships men come, and from waste places and forest and road and garret and cellar to maunder to me in strangely distributed words of the things they have seen and considered. The recording of their tales is no more than a matter of ears and fingers. There are only two fates I dread⁠—deafness and writer’s cramp. The hand is yet steady; let the ear bear the blame if these printed words be not in the order they were delivered to me by Hunky Magee, true camp-follower of fortune.</p>
<p>Biography shall claim you but an instant⁠—I first knew Hunky when he was head-waiter at Chubb’s little beefsteak restaurant and café on Third Avenue. There was only one waiter besides.</p>
@ -44,7 +44,7 @@
<p>“And then I noticed he looked funny, and I turned around.</p>
<p>“He’d taken off his clothes to the waist, and he didn’t seem to hear me. I touched him, and came near beating it. High Jack had turned to stone. I had been drinking some rum myself.</p>
<p>“ ‘Ossified!’ I says to him, loudly. ‘I knew what would happen if you kept it up.’</p>
<p>“And then High Jack comes in from the alcove when he hears me conversing with nobody, and we have a look at Mr. Snakefeeder No. 2. It’s a stone idol, or god, or revised statute or something, and it looks as much like High Jack as one green pea looks like itself. It’s got exactly his face and size and color, but it’s steadier on its pins. It stands on a kind of rostrum or pedestal, and you can see it’s been there ten million years.</p>
<p>“And then High Jack comes in from the alcove when he hears me conversing with nobody, and we have a look at <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Snakefeeder <abbr>No.</abbr> 2. It’s a stone idol, or god, or revised statute or something, and it looks as much like High Jack as one green pea looks like itself. It’s got exactly his face and size and color, but it’s steadier on its pins. It stands on a kind of rostrum or pedestal, and you can see it’s been there ten million years.</p>
<p>“ ‘He’s a cousin of mine,’ sings High, and then he turns solemn.</p>
<p>“ ‘Hunky,’ he says, putting one hand on my shoulder and one on the statue’s, ‘I’m in the holy temple of my ancestors.’</p>
<p>“ ‘Well, if looks goes for anything,’ says I, ‘you’ve struck a twin. Stand side by side with buddy, and let’s see if there’s any difference.’</p>
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<p>I wondered what Hunky Magee thought about his own story; so I asked him if he had any theories about reincarnation and transmogrification and such mysteries as he had touched upon.</p>
<p>“Nothing like that,” said Hunky, positively. “What ailed High Jack was too much booze and education. They’ll do an Indian up every time.”</p>
<p>“But what about Miss Blue Feather?” I persisted.</p>
<p>“Say,” said Hunky, with a grin, “that little lady that stole High Jack certainly did give me a jar when I first took a look at her, but it was only for a minute. You remember I told you High Jack said that Miss Florence Blue Feather disappeared from home about a year ago? Well, where she landed four days later was in as neat a five-room flat on East Twenty-third Street as you ever walked sideways through⁠—and she’s been Mrs. Magee ever since.”</p>
<p>“Say,” said Hunky, with a grin, “that little lady that stole High Jack certainly did give me a jar when I first took a look at her, but it was only for a minute. You remember I told you High Jack said that Miss Florence Blue Feather disappeared from home about a year ago? Well, where she landed four days later was in as neat a five-room flat on East Twenty-third Street as you ever walked sideways through⁠—and she’s been <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Magee ever since.”</p>
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