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[Editorial] hardhearted -> hard-hearted
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<p>“The situation does not seem a novel one to you,” said Chalmers with a smile.</p>
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<p>“By the chin whiskers of the prophet—no!” answered the guest. “New York’s as full of cheap Haroun al Raschids as Bagdad is of fleas. I’ve been held up for my story with a loaded meal pointed at my head twenty times. Catch anybody in New York giving you something for nothing! They spell curiosity and charity with the same set of building blocks. Lots of ’em will stake you to a dime and chop-suey; and a few of ’em will play Caliph to the tune of a top sirloin; but every one of ’em will stand over you till they screw your autobiography out of you with foot notes, appendix and unpublished fragments. Oh, I know what to do when I see victuals coming toward me in little old Bagdad-on-the-Subway. I strike the asphalt three times with my forehead and get ready to spiel yarns for my supper. I claim descent from the late Tommy Tucker, who was forced to hand out vocal harmony for his predigested wheaterina and spoopju.”</p>
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<p>“I do not ask your story,” said Chalmers. “I tell you frankly that it was a sudden whim that prompted me to send for some stranger to dine with me. I assure you you will not suffer through any curiosity of mine.”</p>
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<p>“Oh, fudge!” exclaimed the guest, enthusiastically tackling his soup; “I don’t mind it a bit. I’m a regular Oriental magazine with a red cover and the leaves cut when the Caliph walks abroad. In fact, we fellows in the bed line have a sort of union rate for things of this sort. Somebody’s always stopping and wanting to know what brought us down so low in the world. For a sandwich and a glass of beer I tell ’em that drink did it. For corned beef and cabbage and a cup of coffee I give ’em the hardhearted-landlord—six-months-in-the-hospital-lost-job story. A sirloin steak and a quarter for a bed gets the Wall Street tragedy of the swept-away fortune and the gradual descent. This is the first spread of this kind I’ve stumbled against. I haven’t got a story to fit it. I’ll tell you what, <abbr epub:type="z3998:name-title">Mr.</abbr> Chalmers, I’m going to tell you the truth for this, if you’ll listen to it. It’ll be harder for you to believe than the made-up ones.”</p>
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<p>“Oh, fudge!” exclaimed the guest, enthusiastically tackling his soup; “I don’t mind it a bit. I’m a regular Oriental magazine with a red cover and the leaves cut when the Caliph walks abroad. In fact, we fellows in the bed line have a sort of union rate for things of this sort. Somebody’s always stopping and wanting to know what brought us down so low in the world. For a sandwich and a glass of beer I tell ’em that drink did it. For corned beef and cabbage and a cup of coffee I give ’em the hard-hearted-landlord—six-months-in-the-hospital-lost-job story. A sirloin steak and a quarter for a bed gets the Wall Street tragedy of the swept-away fortune and the gradual descent. This is the first spread of this kind I’ve stumbled against. I haven’t got a story to fit it. I’ll tell you what, <abbr epub:type="z3998:name-title">Mr.</abbr> Chalmers, I’m going to tell you the truth for this, if you’ll listen to it. It’ll be harder for you to believe than the made-up ones.”</p>
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<p>An hour later the Arabian guest lay back with a sigh of satisfaction while Phillips brought the coffee and cigars and cleared the table.</p>
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<p>“Did you ever hear of Sherrard Plumer?” he asked, with a strange smile.</p>
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<p>“I remember the name,” said Chalmers. “He was a painter, I think, of a good deal of prominence a few years ago.”</p>
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@ -76,7 +76,7 @@
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<p>“ ‘You mean Ed Collier?’ says Mame.</p>
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<p>“ ‘I do,’ I answers; ‘and a pity it is that he has gone back to crime again. I met him outside the tent, and he exposed his intentions of devastating the food crop of the world. ’Tis enormously sad when one’s ideal descends from his pedestal to make a seventeen-year locust of himself.’</p>
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<p>“Mame looked me straight in the eye until she had corkscrewed my reflections.</p>
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<p>“ ‘Jeff,’ says she, ‘it isn’t quite like you to talk that way. I don’t care to hear Ed Collier ridiculed. A man may do ridiculous things, but they don’t look ridiculous to the girl he does ’em for. That was one man in a hundred. He stopped eating just to please me. I’d be hardhearted and ungrateful if I didn’t feel kindly toward him. Could you do what he did?’</p>
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<p>“ ‘Jeff,’ says she, ‘it isn’t quite like you to talk that way. I don’t care to hear Ed Collier ridiculed. A man may do ridiculous things, but they don’t look ridiculous to the girl he does ’em for. That was one man in a hundred. He stopped eating just to please me. I’d be hard-hearted and ungrateful if I didn’t feel kindly toward him. Could you do what he did?’</p>
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<p>“ ‘I know,’ says I, seeing the point, ‘I’m condemned. I can’t help it. The brand of the consumer is upon my brow. <abbr epub:type="z3998:name-title">Mrs.</abbr> Eve settled that business for me when she made the dicker with the snake. I fell from the fire into the frying-pan. I guess I’m the Champion Feaster of the Universe.’ I spoke humble, and Mame mollified herself a little.</p>
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<p>“ ‘Ed Collier and I are good friends,’ she said, ‘the same as me and you. I gave him the same answer I did you—no marrying for me. I liked to be with Ed and talk with him. There was something mighty pleasant to me in the thought that here was a man who never used a knife and fork, and all for my sake.’</p>
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<p>“ ‘Wasn’t you in love with him?’ I asks, all injudicious. ‘Wasn’t there a deal on for you to become <abbr epub:type="z3998:name-title">Mrs.</abbr> Curiosity?’</p>
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<p>Then the blackness of the pit arose and filled the heart of Burney. Sucking the corpse of his deceased dudheen, he staggered through his duties with his barrowful of stones and dirt, feeling for the first time that the curse of Adam was upon him. Other men bereft of a pleasure might have recourse to other delights, but Burney had only two comforts in life. One was his pipe, the other was an ecstatic hope that there would be no Speedways to build on the other side of Jordan.</p>
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<p>At meal times he would let the other men go first into the grub-boat, and then he would go down on his hands and knees, grovelling fiercely upon the ground where they had been sitting, trying to find some stray crumbs of tobacco. Once he sneaked down the river bank and filled his pipe with dead willow leaves. At the first whiff of the smoke he spat in the direction of the boat and put the finest curse he knew on Corrigan—one that began with the first Corrigans born on earth and ended with the Corrigans that shall hear the trumpet of Gabriel blow. He began to hate Corrigan with all his shaking nerves and soul. Even murder occurred to him in a vague sort of way. Five days he went without the taste of tobacco—he who had smoked all day and thought the night misspent in which he had not awakened for a pipeful or two under the bedclothes.</p>
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<p>One day a man stopped at the boat to say that there was work to be had in the Bronx Park, where a large number of labourers were required in making some improvements.</p>
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<p>After dinner Burney walked thirty yards down the river bank away from the maddening smell of the others’ pipes. He sat down upon a stone. He was thinking he would set out for the Bronx. At least he could earn tobacco there. What if the books did say he owed Corrigan? Any man’s work was worth his keep. But then he hated to go without getting even with the hardhearted screw who had put his pipe out. Was there anyway to do it?</p>
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<p>After dinner Burney walked thirty yards down the river bank away from the maddening smell of the others’ pipes. He sat down upon a stone. He was thinking he would set out for the Bronx. At least he could earn tobacco there. What if the books did say he owed Corrigan? Any man’s work was worth his keep. But then he hated to go without getting even with the hard-hearted screw who had put his pipe out. Was there anyway to do it?</p>
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<p>Softly stepping among the clods came Tony, he of the race of Goths, who worked in the kitchen. He grinned at Burney’s elbow, and that unhappy man, full of race animosity and holding urbanity in contempt, growled at him: “What d’ye want, ye—Dago?”</p>
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<p>Tony also contained a grievance—and a plot. He, too, was a Corrigan hater, and had been primed to see it in others.</p>
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<p>“How you like-a <abbr epub:type="z3998:name-title">Mr.</abbr> Corrigan?” he asked. “You think-a him a nice-a man?”</p>
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