Update semantics

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Alex Cabal 2021-06-11 13:49:16 -05:00
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[epub|type~="z3998:acronym"],
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[epub|type~="se:era"]{
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<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 Bouguereaus 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 meetinghouse; 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 <abbr class="compass">S.</abbr> 45 <abbr class="compass">E.</abbr> 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>He knew every city from Bangor to San Francisco, thence north to Portland, thence <abbr epub:type="se:compass">S.</abbr> 45 <abbr epub:type="se:compass">E.</abbr> 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 Polloks “Course of Time,” and so do you; but every time I saw Jacks I would think of the poets description of another poet by the name of <abbr epub:type="z3998:given-name">G. G.</abbr> 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 <abbr epub:type="z3998:given-name">S. P.</abbr> <abbr>Ry.</abbr> <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>

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<p>All right, says I. Preliminary canter satisfactory. But, kay vooly, voo? What good is the art junk to us? And the oil?</p>
<p>Now, that man, says Andy, sitting thoughtfully on the bed, aint what you would call an ordinary scutt. When he was showing me his cabinet of art curios his face lighted up like the door of a coke oven. He says that if some of his big deals go through hell make <abbr epub:type="z3998:given-name">J. P.</abbr> Morgans collection of sweatshop tapestry and Augusta, Me., beadwork look like the contents of an ostrichs craw thrown on a screen by a magic lantern.</p>
<p>And then he showed me a little carving, went on Andy, that anybody could see was a wonderful thing. It was something like 2,000 years old, he said. It was a lotus flower with a womans face in it carved out of a solid piece of ivory.</p>
<p>“Scudder looks it up in a catalogue and describes it. An Egyptian carver named Khafra made two of em for King Rameses <span epub:type="z3998:roman">II</span> about the year <abbr class="era">BC</abbr>. The other one cant be found. The junkshops and antique bugs have rubbered all Europe for it, but it seems to be out of stock. Scudder paid $2,000 for the one he has.</p>
<p>“Scudder looks it up in a catalogue and describes it. An Egyptian carver named Khafra made two of em for King Rameses <span epub:type="z3998:roman">II</span> about the year <abbr epub:type="se:era">BC</abbr>. The other one cant be found. The junkshops and antique bugs have rubbered all Europe for it, but it seems to be out of stock. Scudder paid $2,000 for the one he has.</p>
<p>Oh, well, says I, this sounds like the purling of a rill to me. I thought we came here to teach the millionaires business, instead of learning art from em?</p>
<p>Be patient, says Andy, kindly. Maybe we will see a rift in the smoke ere long.</p>
<p>“All the next morning Andy was out. I didnt see him until about noon. He came to the hotel and called me into his room across the hall. He pulled a roundish bundle about as big as a goose egg out of his pocket and unwrapped it. It was an ivory carving just as he had described the millionaires to me.</p>

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<p>Katy walked away with the green roses dangling indignantly. Danny stopped two blocks away. He stood still with his hands in his pockets, at the curb on the corner. His face was that of a graven image. Deep in his soul something stirred so small, so fine, so keen and leavening that his hard fibres did not recognize it. It was something more tender than the April day, more subtle than the call of the senses, purer and deeper-rooted than the love of woman—for had he not turned away from green roses and eyes that had kept him chained for a year? And Danny did not know what it was. The preacher, who was in a hurry to go to his dinner, had told him, but Danny had had no libretto with which to follow the drowsy intonation. But the preacher spoke the truth.</p>
<p>Suddenly Danny slapped his leg and gave forth a hoarse yell of delight.</p>
<p>“Hippopotamus!” he shouted to an elevated road pillar. “Well, how is that for a bum guess? Why, blast my skylights! I know what he was driving at now.</p>
<p>“Hippopotamus! Wouldnt that send you to the Bronx! Its been a year since he heard it; and he didnt miss it so very far. We quit at 469 <abbr class="era">BC</abbr>, and this comes next. Well, a wooden man wouldnt have guessed what he was trying to get out of him.”</p>
<p>“Hippopotamus! Wouldnt that send you to the Bronx! Its been a year since he heard it; and he didnt miss it so very far. We quit at 469 <abbr epub:type="se:era">BC</abbr>, and this comes next. Well, a wooden man wouldnt have guessed what he was trying to get out of him.”</p>
<p>Danny caught a crosstown car and went up to the rear flat that his labor supported.</p>
<p>Old man McCree was still sitting by the window. His extinct pipe lay on the sill.</p>
<p>“Will that be you, lad?” he asked.</p>
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<p>Danny reached up on a shelf and took down a thick book labeled in gilt letters, “The History of Greece.” Dust was on it half an inch thick. He laid it on the table and found a place in it marked by a strip of paper. And then he gave a short roar at the top of his voice, and said:</p>
<p>“Was it the hippopotamus you wanted to be read to about then?”</p>
<p>“Did I hear ye open the book?” said old man McCree. “Many and weary be the months since my lad has read it to me. I dinno; but I took a great likings to them Greeks. Ye left off at a place. Tis a fine day outside, lad. Be out and take rest from your work. I have gotten used to me chair by the windy and me pipe.”</p>
<p>“Pel-Peloponnesus was the place where we left off, and not hippopotamus,” said Danny. “The war began there. It kept something doing for thirty years. The headlines says that a guy named Philip of Macedon, in 338 <abbr class="era">BC</abbr>, got to be boss of Greece by getting the decision at the battle of Cher-Cheronoea. Ill read it.”</p>
<p>“Pel-Peloponnesus was the place where we left off, and not hippopotamus,” said Danny. “The war began there. It kept something doing for thirty years. The headlines says that a guy named Philip of Macedon, in 338 <abbr epub:type="se:era">BC</abbr>, got to be boss of Greece by getting the decision at the battle of Cher-Cheronoea. Ill read it.”</p>
<p>With his hand to his ear, rapt in the Peloponnesian War, old man McCree sat for an hour, listening.</p>
<p>Then he got up and felt his way to the door of the kitchen. <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> McCree was slicing cold meat. She looked up. Tears were running from old man McCrees eyes.</p>
<p>“Do you hear our lad readin to me?” he said. “There is none finer in the land. My two eyes have come back to me again.”</p>
<p>After supper he said to Danny: “Tis a happy day, this Easter. And now ye will be off to see Katy in the evening. Well enough.”</p>
<p>“Who pays the rent and buys the food that is eaten in this house?” said Danny, angrily. “Have I no right to stay in it? After supper there is yet to come the reading of the battle of Corinth, 146 <abbr class="era">BC</abbr>, when the kingdom, as they say, became an in-integral portion of the Roman Empire. Am I nothing in this house?”</p>
<p>“Who pays the rent and buys the food that is eaten in this house?” said Danny, angrily. “Have I no right to stay in it? After supper there is yet to come the reading of the battle of Corinth, 146 <abbr epub:type="se:era">BC</abbr>, when the kingdom, as they say, became an in-integral portion of the Roman Empire. Am I nothing in this house?”</p>
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<p>A woman like that, says Andy, ought to lead a man to the highest positions of opulence and fame.</p>
<p>I misdoubt, says I, if any woman ever helped a man to secure a job any more than to have his meals ready promptly and spread a report that the other candidates wife had once been a shoplifter. They are no more adapted for business and politics, says I, than Algernon Charles Swinburne is to be floor manager at one of Chuck Connors annual balls. I know, says I to Andy, that sometimes a woman seems to step out into the kalsomine light as the charge daffaires of her mans political job. But how does it come out? Say, they have a neat little berth somewhere as foreign consul of record to Afghanistan or lockkeeper on the Delaware and Raritan Canal. One day this man finds his wife putting on her overshoes and three months supply of bird seed into the canarys cage. “Sioux Falls?” he asks with a kind of hopeful light in his eye. “No, Arthur,” says she, “Washington. Were wasted here,” says she. “You ought to be Toady Extraordinary to the Court of <abbr>St.</abbr> Bridget or Head Porter of the Island of Puerto Rico. Im going to see about it.”</p>
<p>Then this lady, I says to Andy, moves against the authorities at Washington with her baggage and munitions, consisting of five dozen indiscriminating letters written to her by a member of the Cabinet when she was 15; a letter of introduction from King Leopold to the Smithsonian Institution, and a pink silk costume with canary colored spats.</p>
<p>Well and then what? I goes. She has the letters printed in the evening papers that match her costume, she lectures at an informal tea given in the palm room of the <abbr>B. &amp; O.</abbr> Depot and then calls on the President. The ninth Assistant Secretary of Commerce and Labor, the first aide-de-camp of the Blue Room and an unidentified colored man are waiting there to grasp her by the hands—and feet. They carry her out to <abbr class="compass">S. W.</abbr> <abbr>B.</abbr> street and leave her on a cellar door. That ends it. The next time we hear of her she is writing postcards to the Chinese Minister asking him to get Arthur a job in a tea store.</p>
<p>Well and then what? I goes. She has the letters printed in the evening papers that match her costume, she lectures at an informal tea given in the palm room of the <abbr>B. &amp; O.</abbr> Depot and then calls on the President. The ninth Assistant Secretary of Commerce and Labor, the first aide-de-camp of the Blue Room and an unidentified colored man are waiting there to grasp her by the hands—and feet. They carry her out to <abbr epub:type="se:compass">S. W.</abbr> <abbr>B.</abbr> street and leave her on a cellar door. That ends it. The next time we hear of her she is writing postcards to the Chinese Minister asking him to get Arthur a job in a tea store.</p>
<p>Then, says Andy, you dont think <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Avery will land the Marshalship for Bill?</p>
<p>I do not, says I. I do not wish to be a septic, but I doubt if she can do as well as you and me could have done.</p>
<p>I dont agree with you, says Andy. Ill bet you she does. Im proud of having a higher opinion of the talent and the powers of negotiation of ladies.</p>

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<p>Not even a watch, he says. Aint you ashamed of yourself, you whited sculpture? Going about dressed like a headwaiter, and financed like a Count! You havent even got carfare. What did you do with your transfer?</p>
<p>“The man speaks up and says he has no assets or valuables of any sort. But Bassett takes his hand-satchel and opens it. Out comes some collars and socks and a half a page of a newspaper clipped out. Bill reads the clipping careful, and holds out his hand to the held-up party.</p>
<p>Brother, says he, greetings! Accept the apologies of friends. I am Bill Bassett, the burglar. <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Peters, you must make the acquaintance of <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Alfred <abbr epub:type="z3998:given-name">E.</abbr> Ricks. Shake hands. <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Peters, says Bill, stands about halfway between me and you, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Ricks, in the line of havoc and corruption. He always gives something for the money he gets. Im glad to meet you, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Ricks—you and <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Peters. This is the first time I ever attended a full gathering of the National Synod of Sharks—housebreaking, swindling, and financiering all represented. Please examine <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Ricks credentials, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Peters.</p>
<p>“The piece of newspaper that Bill Bassett handed me had a good picture of this Ricks on it. It was a Chicago paper, and it had obloquies of Ricks in every paragraph. By reading it over I harvested the intelligence that said alleged Ricks had laid off all that portion of the State of Florida that lies under water into town lots and sold em to alleged innocent investors from his magnificently furnished offices in Chicago. After he had taken in a hundred thousand or so dollars one of these fussy purchasers that are always making trouble (Ive had em actually try gold watches Ive sold em with acid) took a cheap excursion down to the land where it is always just before supper to look at his lot and see if it didnt need a new paling or two on the fence, and market a few lemons in time for the Christmas present trade. He hires a surveyor to find his lot for him. They run the line out and find the flourishing town of Paradise Hollow, so advertised, to be about 40 rods and 16 poles <abbr class="compass">S.</abbr>, 27 degrees <abbr class="compass">E.</abbr> of the middle of Lake Okeechobee. This mans lot was under thirty-six feet of water, and, besides, had been preempted so long by the alligators and gars that his title looked fishy.</p>
<p>“The piece of newspaper that Bill Bassett handed me had a good picture of this Ricks on it. It was a Chicago paper, and it had obloquies of Ricks in every paragraph. By reading it over I harvested the intelligence that said alleged Ricks had laid off all that portion of the State of Florida that lies under water into town lots and sold em to alleged innocent investors from his magnificently furnished offices in Chicago. After he had taken in a hundred thousand or so dollars one of these fussy purchasers that are always making trouble (Ive had em actually try gold watches Ive sold em with acid) took a cheap excursion down to the land where it is always just before supper to look at his lot and see if it didnt need a new paling or two on the fence, and market a few lemons in time for the Christmas present trade. He hires a surveyor to find his lot for him. They run the line out and find the flourishing town of Paradise Hollow, so advertised, to be about 40 rods and 16 poles <abbr epub:type="se:compass">S.</abbr>, 27 degrees <abbr epub:type="se:compass">E.</abbr> of the middle of Lake Okeechobee. This mans lot was under thirty-six feet of water, and, besides, had been preempted so long by the alligators and gars that his title looked fishy.</p>
<p>“Naturally, the man goes back to Chicago and makes it as hot for Alfred <abbr epub:type="z3998:given-name">E.</abbr> Ricks as the morning after a prediction of snow by the weather bureau. Ricks defied the allegation, but he couldnt deny the alligators. One morning the papers came out with a column about it, and Ricks come out by the fire-escape. It seems the alleged authorities had beat him to the safe-deposit box where he kept his winnings, and Ricks has to westward ho! with only feetwear and a dozen 15-and-a-half English pokes in his shopping bag. He happened to have some mileage left in his book, and that took him as far as the town in the wilderness where he was spilled out on me and Bill Bassett as Elijah <span epub:type="z3998:roman">III</span> with not a raven in sight for any of us.</p>
<p>“Then this Alfred <abbr epub:type="z3998:given-name">E.</abbr> Ricks lets out a squeak that he is hungry, too, and denies the hypothesis that he is good for the value, let alone the price, of a meal. And so, there was the three of us, representing, if we had a mind to draw syllogisms and parabolas, labor and trade and capital. Now, when trade has no capital there isnt a dicker to be made. And when capital has no money theres a stagnation in steak and onions. That put it up to the man with the jimmy.</p>
<p>Brother bushrangers, says Bill Bassett, never yet, in trouble, did I desert a pal. Hard by, in yon wood, I seem to see unfurnished lodgings. Let us go there and wait till dark.</p>