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Update abbreviation periods and semantics
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<reason>Quotes are for a single word, not dialog.</reason>
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</ignore>
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</file>
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<file path="the-roads-we-take.xhtml">
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<ignore>
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<code>t-030</code>
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<reason>Stock ticker symbols are set without periods.</reason>
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</se-lint-ignore>
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<p>I am not without claim to distinction. Although I still stick to suspenders—which, happily, reciprocate—I am negatively egregious. I have never, for instance, seen a professional baseball game, never said that George M. Cohan was “clever,” never started to keep a diary, never called Eugene Walter by his first name, never parodied “The Raven,” never written a Christmas story, never—but what denizen of Never-Never Land can boast so much? Or would, I overhear you think, if he could?</p>
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<p>Always have I been on the lookout for the Impossible, always on the trail of the Unattainable. Someday, perhaps, I shall find a sleeping-car with a name that means something, an intelligent West Indian hallboy in a New York apartment building, a boardinghouse whose inmates occasionally smile, a man born in Manhattan, a 60-cent <span xml:lang="fr">table d’hôte</span> that serves six oysters the portion instead of four, a Southerner who leaves you in doubt as to his birthplace longer than ten minutes after the introduction, and myself writing a Christmas story. But that will happen ten days after the millennium, and as the millennium is to be magazineless—</p>
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<p>Every June I am asked to write a Christmas story. Every August I promise, vow, insist, swear that it shall be ready in two weeks. And every November I protest that I am sorry, but I couldn’t think of anything new and—well, next year, sure. It was so last year and the year before. It was so this year. And I said to myself that next year it would not be so. I would spend Christmas Eve looking about me. I would get copy from a cop, material from a mater, plot from a messenger boy. And behold! it was Christmas Eve.</p>
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<p>It was Christmas Eve, to give a synopsis of preceding chapters. I will fine-toothcomb the town for an idea next summer, quoth I. And so I walked, rode and taxi-cabbed. I spoke to waiters, subway guards, chauffeurs and newsboys and tried to draw from them some bit of life, some experience that might make a story, a Christmas story, <abbr class="initialism">COD</abbr>, at twenty cents a word. But there was not a syllable in the silly bunch, not a comma in the comatose lot.</p>
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<p>It was Christmas Eve, to give a synopsis of preceding chapters. I will fine-toothcomb the town for an idea next summer, quoth I. And so I walked, rode and taxi-cabbed. I spoke to waiters, subway guards, chauffeurs and newsboys and tried to draw from them some bit of life, some experience that might make a story, a Christmas story, <abbr class="initialism">C.O.D.</abbr>, at twenty cents a word. But there was not a syllable in the silly bunch, not a comma in the comatose lot.</p>
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<p>And then I wandered into Grand Street and I saw that which made me instinctively clutch my fountain pen. A man, unswept, unmoneyed and unstrung, was about to hurl a brick into a pawnbroker’s window. His arm was raised and he was as deliberate as <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Tri-Digital Brown of Chicago trying to lessen the average of <abbr>Mr.</abbr> John P. Hanswagner of Pittsburgh. (I always spell Pittsburgh with the final “h”; it’s a final h of a town.)</p>
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<p>“Here, Bill,” I aid, “I wouldn’t do that.”</p>
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<p>“Oh, yes, you would,” he responded.</p>
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@ -23,7 +23,7 @@
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<p>A slim, wiry youth in high-heeled boots came down to the water’s edge. His face was boyish, but with a premature severity that hinted at a man’s experience. His complexion was naturally dark; and the sun and wind of an outdoor life had burned it to a coffee brown. His hair was as black and straight as an Indian’s; his face had not yet been upturned to the humiliation of a razor; his eyes were a cold and steady blue. He carried his left arm somewhat away from his body, for pearl-handled .45s are frowned upon by town marshals, and are a little bulky when placed in the left armhole of one’s vest. He looked beyond Captain Boone at the gulf with the impersonal and expressionless dignity of a Chinese emperor.</p>
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<p>“Thinkin’ of buyin’ that’ar gulf, buddy?” asked the captain, made sarcastic by his narrow escape from a tobaccoless voyage.</p>
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<p>“Why, no,” said the Kid gently, “I reckon not. I never saw it before. I was just looking at it. Not thinking of selling it, are you?”</p>
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<p>“Not this trip,” said the captain. “I’ll send it to you <abbr class="initialism">COD</abbr> when I get back to Buenas Tierras. Here comes that capstanfooted lubber with the chewin’. I ought to’ve weighed anchor an hour ago.”</p>
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<p>“Not this trip,” said the captain. “I’ll send it to you <abbr class="initialism">C.O.D.</abbr> when I get back to Buenas Tierras. Here comes that capstanfooted lubber with the chewin’. I ought to’ve weighed anchor an hour ago.”</p>
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<p>“Is that your ship out there?” asked the Kid.</p>
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<p>“Why, yes,” answered the captain, “if you want to call a schooner a ship, and I don’t mind lyin’. But you better say Miller and Gonzales, owners, and ordinary plain, Billy-be-damned old Samuel <abbr class="name">K.</abbr> Boone, skipper.”</p>
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<p>“Where are you going to?” asked the refugee.</p>
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<p>“The very thing!” said Jacob. “I will charter two river steamboats, pack them full of these unfortunate children and—say ten thousand dolls and drums and a thousand freezers of ice cream, and give them a delightful outing up the Sound. The sea breezes on that trip ought to blow the taint off some of this money that keeps coming in faster than I can work it off my mind.”</p>
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<p>Jacob must have leaked some of his benevolent intentions, for an immense person with a bald face and a mouth that looked as if it ought to have a “Drop Letters Here” sign over it hooked a finger around him and set him in a space between a barber’s pole and a stack of ash cans. Words came out of the post-office slit—smooth, husky words with gloves on ’em, but sounding as if they might turn to bare knuckles any moment.</p>
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<p>“Say, Sport, do you know where you are at? Well, dis is Mike O’Grady’s district you’re buttin’ into—see? Mike’s got de stomachache privilege for every kid in dis neighborhood—see? And if dere’s any picnics or red balloons to be dealt out here, Mike’s money pays for ’em—see? Don’t you butt in, or something’ll be handed to you. Youse d⸺ settlers and reformers with your social ologies and your millionaire detectives have got dis district in a hell of a fix, anyhow. With your college students and professors roughhousing de soda-water stands and dem rubberneck coaches fillin’ de streets, de folks down here are ’fraid to go out of de houses. Now, you leave ’em to Mike. Dey belongs to him, and he knows how to handle ’em. Keep on your own side of de town. Are you some wiser now, uncle, or do you want to scrap wit’ Mike O’Grady for de Santa Claus belt in dis district?”</p>
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<p>Clearly, that spot in the moral vineyard was preempted. So Caliph Spraggins menaced no more the people in the bazaars of the East Side. To keep down his growing surplus he doubled his donations to organized charity, presented the <abbr class="initialism">YMCA</abbr> of his native town with a $10,000 collection of butterflies, and sent a check to the famine sufferers in China big enough to buy new emerald eyes and diamond-filled teeth for all their gods. But none of these charitable acts seemed to bring peace to the caliph’s heart. He tried to get a personal note into his benefactions by tipping bellboys and waiters $10 and $20 bills. He got well snickered at and derided for that by the minions who accept with respect gratuities commensurate to the service performed. He sought out an ambitious and talented but poor young woman, and bought for her the star part in a new comedy. He might have gotten rid of $50,000 more of his cumbersome money in this philanthropy if he had not neglected to write letters to her. But she lost the suit for lack of evidence, while his capital still kept piling up, and his <i xml:lang="la">optikos needleorum camelibus</i>—or rich man’s disease—was unrelieved.</p>
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<p>Clearly, that spot in the moral vineyard was preempted. So Caliph Spraggins menaced no more the people in the bazaars of the East Side. To keep down his growing surplus he doubled his donations to organized charity, presented the <abbr class="initialism">Y.M.C.A.</abbr> of his native town with a $10,000 collection of butterflies, and sent a check to the famine sufferers in China big enough to buy new emerald eyes and diamond-filled teeth for all their gods. But none of these charitable acts seemed to bring peace to the caliph’s heart. He tried to get a personal note into his benefactions by tipping bellboys and waiters $10 and $20 bills. He got well snickered at and derided for that by the minions who accept with respect gratuities commensurate to the service performed. He sought out an ambitious and talented but poor young woman, and bought for her the star part in a new comedy. He might have gotten rid of $50,000 more of his cumbersome money in this philanthropy if he had not neglected to write letters to her. But she lost the suit for lack of evidence, while his capital still kept piling up, and his <i xml:lang="la">optikos needleorum camelibus</i>—or rich man’s disease—was unrelieved.</p>
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<p>In Caliph Spraggins’s $3,000,000 home lived his sister Henrietta, who used to cook for the coal miners in a twenty-five-cent eating house in Coketown, <abbr class="postal">Pa.</abbr>, and who now would have offered John Mitchell only two fingers of her hand to shake. And his daughter Celia, nineteen, back from boarding-school and from being polished off by private instructors in the restaurant languages and those études and things.</p>
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<p>Celia is the heroine. Lest the artist’s delineation of her charms on this very page humbug your fancy, take from me her authorized description. She was a nice-looking, awkward, loud, rather bashful, brown-haired girl, with a sallow complexion, bright eyes, and a perpetual smile. She had a wholesome, Spraggins-inherited love for plain food, loose clothing, and the society of the lower classes. She had too much health and youth to feel the burden of wealth. She had a wide mouth that kept the peppermint-pepsin tablets rattling like hail from the slot-machine wherever she went, and she could whistle hornpipes. Keep this picture in mind; and let the artist do his worst.</p>
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<p>Celia looked out of her window one day and gave her heart to the grocer’s young man. The receiver thereof was at that moment engaged in conceding immortality to his horse and calling down upon him the ultimate fate of the wicked; so he did not notice the transfer. A horse should stand still when you are lifting a crate of strictly new-laid eggs out of the wagon.</p>
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<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
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<article id="aristocracy-versus-hash" epub:type="se:short-story">
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<h2 epub:type="title">Aristocracy Versus Hash</h2>
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<p>The snake reporter of <i epub:type="se:name.publication.magazine">The Rolling Stone</i> was wandering up the avenue last night on his way home from the <abbr class="initialism">YMCA</abbr> rooms when he was approached by a gaunt, hungry-looking man with wild eyes and dishevelled hair. He accosted the reporter in a hollow, weak voice.</p>
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<p>The snake reporter of <i epub:type="se:name.publication.magazine">The Rolling Stone</i> was wandering up the avenue last night on his way home from the <abbr class="initialism">Y.M.C.A.</abbr> rooms when he was approached by a gaunt, hungry-looking man with wild eyes and dishevelled hair. He accosted the reporter in a hollow, weak voice.</p>
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<p>“ ‘Can you tell me, Sir, where I can find in this town a family of scrubs?’</p>
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<p>“ ‘I don’t understand exactly.’</p>
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<p>“ ‘Let me tell you how it is,’ said the stranger, inserting his forefinger in the reporter’s buttonhole and badly damaging his chrysanthemum. ‘I am a representative from Soapstone County, and I and my family are houseless, homeless, and shelterless. We have not tasted food for over a week. I brought my family with me, as I have indigestion and could not get around much with the boys. Some days ago I started out to find a boarding house, as I cannot afford to put up at a hotel. I found a nice aristocratic-looking place, that suited me, and went in and asked for the proprietress. A very stately lady with a Roman nose came in the room. She had one hand laid across her stom—across her waist, and the other held a lace handkerchief. I told her I wanted board for myself and family, and she condescended to take us. I asked for her terms, and she said $300 per week.</p>
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<p>I went straight to the medicine cabinet and looked.</p>
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<p>“You unmitigated hayseed!” I growled. “See what money will do for a man’s brains!”</p>
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<p>There stood the morphine bottle with the stopple out, just as Tom had left it.</p>
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<p>I routed out another young <abbr class="initialism">MD</abbr> who roomed on the floor above, and sent him for old Doctor Gales, two squares away. Tom Hopkins has too much money to be attended by rising young practitioners alone.</p>
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<p>When Gales came we put Tom through as expensive a course of treatment as the resources of the profession permit. After the more drastic remedies we gave him citrate of caffeine in frequent doses and strong coffee, and walked him up and down the floor between two of us. Old Gales pinched him and slapped his face and worked hard for the big check he could see in the distance. The young <abbr class="initialism">MD</abbr> from the next floor gave Tom a most hearty, rousing kick, and then apologized to me.</p>
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<p>I routed out another young <abbr class="degree">MD</abbr> who roomed on the floor above, and sent him for old Doctor Gales, two squares away. Tom Hopkins has too much money to be attended by rising young practitioners alone.</p>
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<p>When Gales came we put Tom through as expensive a course of treatment as the resources of the profession permit. After the more drastic remedies we gave him citrate of caffeine in frequent doses and strong coffee, and walked him up and down the floor between two of us. Old Gales pinched him and slapped his face and worked hard for the big check he could see in the distance. The young <abbr class="degree">MD</abbr> from the next floor gave Tom a most hearty, rousing kick, and then apologized to me.</p>
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<p>“Couldn’t help it,” he said. “I never kicked a millionaire before in my life. I may never have another opportunity.”</p>
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<p>“Now,” said Doctor Gales, after a couple of hours, “he’ll do. But keep him awake for another hour. You can do that by talking to him and shaking him up occasionally. When his pulse and respiration are normal then let him sleep. I’ll leave him with you now.”</p>
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<p>I was left alone with Tom, whom we had laid on a couch. He lay very still, and his eyes were half closed. I began my work of keeping him awake.</p>
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</blockquote>
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<p>Boyd read it twice.</p>
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<p>“It’s either a cipher or a sunstroke,” said he.</p>
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<p>“Ever hear of anything like a code in the office—a secret code?” asked the <abbr class="initialism">ME</abbr>, who had held his desk for only two years. Managing editors come and go.</p>
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<p>“Ever hear of anything like a code in the office—a secret code?” asked the <abbr class="initialism">M.E.</abbr>, who had held his desk for only two years. Managing editors come and go.</p>
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<p>“None except the vernacular that the lady specials write in,” said Boyd. “Couldn’t be an acrostic, could it?”</p>
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<p>“I thought of that,” said the <abbr class="initialism">ME</abbr>, “but the beginning letters contain only four vowels. It must be a code of some sort.”</p>
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<p>“I thought of that,” said the <abbr class="initialism">M.E.</abbr>, “but the beginning letters contain only four vowels. It must be a code of some sort.”</p>
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<p>“Try em in groups,” suggested Boyd. “Let’s see—‘Rash witching goes’—not with me it doesn’t. ‘Muffled rumour mine’—must have an underground wire. ‘Dark silent unfortunate richmond’—no reason why he should knock that town so hard. ‘Existing great hotly’—no it doesn’t pan out. I’ll call Scott.”</p>
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<p>The city editor came in a hurry, and tried his luck. A city editor must know something about everything; so Scott knew a little about cipher-writing.</p>
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<p>“It may be what is called an inverted alphabet cipher,” said he. “I’ll try that. <i epub:type="z3998:grapheme">R</i> seems to be the oftenest used initial letter, with the exception of <i epub:type="z3998:grapheme">m</i>. Assuming <i epub:type="z3998:grapheme">r</i> to mean <i epub:type="z3998:grapheme">e</i>, the most frequently used vowel, we transpose the letters—so.”</p>
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<p>Scott worked rapidly with his pencil for two minutes; and then showed the first word according to his reading—the word “Scejtzez.”</p>
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<p>“Great!” cried Boyd. “It’s a charade. My first is a Russian general. Go on, Scott.”</p>
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<p>“No, that won’t work,” said the city editor. “It’s undoubtedly a code. It’s impossible to read it without the key. Has the office ever used a cipher code?”</p>
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<p>“Just what I was asking,” said the <abbr class="initialism">ME</abbr>. “Hustle everybody up that ought to know. We must get at it some way. Calloway has evidently got hold of something big, and the censor has put the screws on, or he wouldn’t have cabled in a lot of chop suey like this.”</p>
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<p>Throughout the office of the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Enterprise</i> a dragnet was sent, hauling in such members of the staff as would be likely to know of a code, past or present, by reason of their wisdom, information, natural intelligence, or length of servitude. They got together in a group in the city room, with the <abbr class="initialism">ME</abbr> in the centre. No one had heard of a code. All began to explain to the head investigator that newspapers never use a code, anyhow—that is, a cipher code. Of course the Associated Press stuff is a sort of code—an abbreviation, rather—but—</p>
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<p>The <abbr class="initialism">ME</abbr> knew all that, and said so. He asked each man how long he had worked on the paper. Not one of them had drawn pay from an <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Enterprise</i> envelope for longer than six years. Calloway had been on the paper twelve years.</p>
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<p>“Try old Heffelbauer,” said the <abbr class="initialism">ME</abbr>. “He was here when Park Row was a potato patch.”</p>
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<p>“Just what I was asking,” said the <abbr class="initialism eoc">M.E.</abbr> “Hustle everybody up that ought to know. We must get at it some way. Calloway has evidently got hold of something big, and the censor has put the screws on, or he wouldn’t have cabled in a lot of chop suey like this.”</p>
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<p>Throughout the office of the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Enterprise</i> a dragnet was sent, hauling in such members of the staff as would be likely to know of a code, past or present, by reason of their wisdom, information, natural intelligence, or length of servitude. They got together in a group in the city room, with the <abbr class="initialism">M.E.</abbr> in the centre. No one had heard of a code. All began to explain to the head investigator that newspapers never use a code, anyhow—that is, a cipher code. Of course the Associated Press stuff is a sort of code—an abbreviation, rather—but—</p>
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<p>The <abbr class="initialism">M.E.</abbr> knew all that, and said so. He asked each man how long he had worked on the paper. Not one of them had drawn pay from an <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Enterprise</i> envelope for longer than six years. Calloway had been on the paper twelve years.</p>
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<p>“Try old Heffelbauer,” said the <abbr class="initialism eoc">M.E.</abbr> “He was here when Park Row was a potato patch.”</p>
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<p>Heffelbauer was an institution. He was half janitor, half handyman about the office, and half watchman—thus becoming the peer of thirteen and one-half tailors. Sent for, he came, radiating his nationality.</p>
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<p>“Heffelbauer,” said the <abbr class="initialism">ME</abbr>, “did you ever hear of a code belonging to the office a long time ago—a private code? You know what a code is, don’t you?”</p>
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<p>“Heffelbauer,” said the <abbr class="initialism">M.E.</abbr>, “did you ever hear of a code belonging to the office a long time ago—a private code? You know what a code is, don’t you?”</p>
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<p>“Yah,” said Heffelbauer. “Sure I know vat a code is. Yah, apout dwelf or fifteen year ago der office had a code. Der reborters in der city-room haf it here.”</p>
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<p>“Ah!” said the <abbr class="initialism">ME</abbr>. “We’re getting on the trail now. Where was it kept, Heffelbauer? What do you know about it?”</p>
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<p>“Ah!” said the <abbr class="initialism eoc">M.E.</abbr> “We’re getting on the trail now. Where was it kept, Heffelbauer? What do you know about it?”</p>
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<p>“Somedimes,” said the retainer, “dey keep it in der little room behind der library room.”</p>
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<p>“Can you find it?” asked the <abbr class="initialism">ME</abbr> eagerly. “Do you know where it is?”</p>
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<p>“Can you find it?” asked the <abbr class="initialism">M.E.</abbr> eagerly. “Do you know where it is?”</p>
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<p>“Mein Gott!” said Heffelbauer. “How long you dink a code live? Der reborters call him a maskeet. But von day he butt mit his head der editor, und—”</p>
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<p>“Oh, he’s talking about a goat,” said Boyd. “Get out, Heffelbauer.”</p>
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<p>Again discomfited, the concerted wit and resource of the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Enterprise</i> huddled around Calloway’s puzzle, considering its mysterious words in vain.</p>
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<p>Then Vesey came in.</p>
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<p>Vesey was the youngest reporter. He had a thirty-two-inch chest and wore a number fourteen collar; but his bright Scotch plaid suit gave him presence and conferred no obscurity upon his whereabouts. He wore his hat in such a position that people followed him about to see him take it off, convinced that it must be hung upon a peg driven into the back of his head. He was never without an immense, knotted, hardwood cane with a German-silver tip on its crooked handle. Vesey was the best photograph hustler in the office. Scott said it was because no living human being could resist the personal triumph it was to hand his picture over to Vesey. Vesey always wrote his own news stories, except the big ones, which were sent to the rewrite men. Add to this fact that among all the inhabitants, temples, and groves of the earth nothing existed that could abash Vesey, and his dim sketch is concluded.</p>
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<p>Vesey butted into the circle of cipher readers very much as Heffelbauer’s “code” would have done, and asked what was up. Someone explained, with the touch of half-familiar condescension that they always used toward him. Vesey reached out and took the cablegram from the <abbr class="initialism">ME</abbr>’s hand. Under the protection of some special Providence, he was always doing appalling things like that, and coming off unscathed.</p>
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<p>Vesey butted into the circle of cipher readers very much as Heffelbauer’s “code” would have done, and asked what was up. Someone explained, with the touch of half-familiar condescension that they always used toward him. Vesey reached out and took the cablegram from the <abbr class="initialism">M.E.</abbr>’s hand. Under the protection of some special Providence, he was always doing appalling things like that, and coming off unscathed.</p>
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<p>“It’s a code,” said Vesey. “Anybody got the key?”</p>
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<p>“The office has no code,” said Boyd, reaching for the message. Vesey held to it.</p>
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<p>“Then old Calloway expects us to read it, anyhow,” said he. “He’s up a tree, or something, and he’s made this up so as to get it by the censor. It’s up to us. Gee! I wish they had sent me, too. Say—we can’t afford to fall down on our end of it. ‘Foregone, preconcerted rash, witching’—h’m.”</p>
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<p>“Then old Calloway expects us to read it, anyhow,” said he. “He’s up a tree, or something, and he’s made this up so as to get it by the censor. It’s up to us. Gee! I wish they had sent me, too. Say—we can’t afford to fall down on our end of it. ’Foregone, preconcerted rash, witching’—h’m.”</p>
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<p>Vesey sat down on a table corner and began to whistle softly, frowning at the cablegram.</p>
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<p>“Let’s have it, please,” said the <abbr class="initialism">ME</abbr>. “We’ve got to get to work on it.”</p>
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<p>“Let’s have it, please,” said the <abbr class="initialism eoc">M.E.</abbr> “We’ve got to get to work on it.”</p>
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<p>“I believe I’ve got a line on it,” said Vesey. “Give me ten minutes.”</p>
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<p>He walked to his desk, threw his hat into a wastebasket, spread out flat on his chest like a gorgeous lizard, and started his pencil going. The wit and wisdom of the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Enterprise</i> remained in a loose group, and smiled at one another, nodding their heads toward Vesey. Then they began to exchange their theories about the cipher.</p>
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<p>It took Vesey exactly fifteen minutes. He brought to the <abbr class="initialism">ME</abbr> a pad with the code-key written on it.</p>
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<p>It took Vesey exactly fifteen minutes. He brought to the <abbr class="initialism">M.E.</abbr> a pad with the code-key written on it.</p>
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<p>“I felt the swing of it as soon as I saw it,” said Vesey. “Hurrah for old Calloway! He’s done the Japs and every paper in town that prints literature instead of news. Take a look at that.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Thus had Vesey set forth the reading of the code:</p>
|
||||
<blockquote>
|
||||
@ -118,7 +118,7 @@
|
||||
<p>Concluded arrangement to act at hour of midnight without saying. Report hath it that a large body of cavalry and an overwhelming force of infantry will be thrown into the field. Conditions white. Way contested by only a small force. Question the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Times</i> description. Its correspondent is unaware of the facts.</p>
|
||||
</blockquote>
|
||||
<p>“Great stuff!” cried Boyd excitedly. “Kuroki crosses the Yalu tonight and attacks. Oh, we won’t do a thing to the sheets that make up with Addison’s essays, real estate transfers, and bowling scores!”</p>
|
||||
<p>“<abbr>Mr.</abbr> Vesey,” said the <abbr class="initialism">ME</abbr>, with his jollying-which-you-should-regard-as-a-favour manner, “you have cast a serious reflection upon the literary standards of the paper that employs you. You have also assisted materially in giving us the biggest ‘beat’ of the year. I will let you know in a day or two whether you are to be discharged or retained at a larger salary. Somebody send Ames to me.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“<abbr>Mr.</abbr> Vesey,” said the <abbr class="initialism">M.E.</abbr>, with his jollying-which-you-should-regard-as-a-favour manner, “you have cast a serious reflection upon the literary standards of the paper that employs you. You have also assisted materially in giving us the biggest ‘beat’ of the year. I will let you know in a day or two whether you are to be discharged or retained at a larger salary. Somebody send Ames to me.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Ames was the kingpin, the snowy-petalled Marguerite, the star-bright looloo of the rewrite men. He saw attempted murder in the pains of green-apple colic, cyclones in the summer zephyr, lost children in every top-spinning urchin, an uprising of the downtrodden masses in every hurling of a derelict potato at a passing automobile. When not rewriting, Ames sat on the porch of his Brooklyn villa playing checkers with his ten-year-old son.</p>
|
||||
<p>Ames and the “war editor” shut themselves in a room. There was a map in there stuck full of little pins that represented armies and divisions. Their fingers had been itching for days to move those pins along the crooked line of the Yalu. They did so now; and in words of fire Ames translated Calloway’s brief message into a front page masterpiece that set the world talking. He told of the secret councils of the Japanese officers; gave Kuroki’s flaming speeches in full; counted the cavalry and infantry to a man and a horse; described the quick and silent building, of the bridge at Suikauchen, across which the Mikado’s legions were hurled upon the surprised Zassulitch, whose troops were widely scattered along the river. And the battle!—well, you know what Ames can do with a battle if you give him just one smell of smoke for a foundation. And in the same story, with seemingly supernatural knowledge, he gleefully scored the most profound and ponderous paper in England for the false and misleading account of the intended movements of the Japanese First Army printed in its issue of <em>the same date</em>.</p>
|
||||
<p>Only one error was made; and that was the fault of the cable operator at Wi-ju. Calloway pointed it out after he came back. The word “great” in his code should have been “gage,” and its complemental words “of battle.” But it went to Ames “conditions white,” and of course he took that to mean snow. His description of the Japanese army struggling through the snowstorm, blinded by the whirling flakes, was thrillingly vivid. The artists turned out some effective illustrations that made a hit as pictures of the artillery dragging their guns through the drifts. But, as the attack was made on the first day of May, “conditions white” excited some amusement. But it in made no difference to the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Enterprise</i>, anyway.</p>
|
||||
|
@ -17,7 +17,7 @@
|
||||
<p>In May Cherokee packed his burro and turned its thoughtful, mouse-coloured forehead to the north. Many citizens escorted him to the undefined limits of Yellowhammer and bestowed upon him shouts of commendation and farewells. Five pocket flasks without an air bubble between contents and cork were forced upon him; and he was bidden to consider Yellowhammer in perpetual commission for his bed, bacon and eggs, and hot water for shaving in the event that luck did not see fit to warm her hands by his campfire in the Mariposas.</p>
|
||||
<p>The name of the father of Yellowhammer was given him by the gold hunters in accordance with their popular system of nomenclature. It was not necessary for a citizen to exhibit his baptismal certificate in order to acquire a cognomen. A man’s name was his personal property. For convenience in calling him up to the bar and in designating him among other blue-shirted bipeds, a temporary appellation, title, or epithet was conferred upon him by the public. Personal peculiarities formed the source of the majority of such informal baptisms. Many were easily dubbed geographically from the regions from which they confessed to have hailed. Some announced themselves to be “Thompsons,” and “Adamses,” and the like, with a brazenness and loudness that cast a cloud upon their titles. A few vaingloriously and shamelessly uncovered their proper and indisputable names. This was held to be unduly arrogant, and did not win popularity. One man who said he was Chesterton <abbr class="name">L. C.</abbr> Belmont, and proved it by letters, was given till sundown to leave the town. Such names as “Shorty,” “Bowlegs,” “Texas,” “Lazy Bill,” “Thirsty Rogers,” “Limping Riley,” “The Judge,” and “California Ed” were in favour. Cherokee derived his title from the fact that he claimed to have lived for a time with that tribe in the Indian Nation.</p>
|
||||
<p>On the twentieth day of December Baldy, the mail rider, brought Yellowhammer a piece of news.</p>
|
||||
<p>“What do I see in Albuquerque,” said Baldy, to the patrons of the bar, “but Cherokee all embellished and festooned up like the Czar of Turkey, and lavishin’ money in bulk. Him and me seen the elephant and the owl, and we had specimens of this seidlitz powder wine; and Cherokee he audits all the bills, <abbr class="initialism eoc">COD</abbr>. His pockets looked like a pool table’s after a fifteen-ball run.</p>
|
||||
<p>“What do I see in Albuquerque,” said Baldy, to the patrons of the bar, “but Cherokee all embellished and festooned up like the Czar of Turkey, and lavishin’ money in bulk. Him and me seen the elephant and the owl, and we had specimens of this seidlitz powder wine; and Cherokee he audits all the bills, <abbr class="initialism eoc">C.O.D.</abbr> His pockets looked like a pool table’s after a fifteen-ball run.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Cherokee must have struck pay ore,” remarked California Ed. “Well, he’s white. I’m much obliged to him for his success.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Seems like Cherokee would ramble down to Yellowhammer and see his friends,” said another, slightly aggrieved. “But that’s the way. Prosperity is the finest cure there is for lost forgetfulness.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“You wait,” said Baldy; “I’m comin’ to that. Cherokee strikes a three-foot vein up in the Mariposas that assays a trip to Europe to the ton, and he closes it out to a syndicate outfit for a hundred thousand hasty dollars in cash. Then he buys himself a baby sealskin overcoat and a red sleigh, and what do you think he takes it in his head to do next?”</p>
|
||||
|
@ -22,7 +22,7 @@
|
||||
<table>
|
||||
<tbody>
|
||||
<tr>
|
||||
<td><abbr class="initialism">RR</abbr> fare to and from</td>
|
||||
<td><abbr class="initialism">R.R.</abbr> fare to and from</td>
|
||||
<td>$21.00</td>
|
||||
</tr>
|
||||
<tr>
|
||||
|
@ -24,7 +24,7 @@
|
||||
<p>Ragged, shiftless, barefooted, a confirmed eater of the lotus, William Trotter had pleased me much, and I hated to see him gobbled up by the tropics.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I’ve no doubt you could,” he said, idly splitting the bark from a section of sugarcane. “I’ve no doubt you could do much for me. If every man could do as much for himself as he can for others, every country in the world would be holding millenniums instead of centennials.”</p>
|
||||
<p>There seemed to be pabulum in <abbr class="name">W. T.</abbr>’s words. And then another idea came to me.</p>
|
||||
<p>I had a brother in Chicopee Falls who owned manufactories—cotton, or sugar, or <abbr class="initialism">AA</abbr> sheetings, or something in the commercial line. He was vulgarly rich, and therefore reverenced art. The artistic temperament of the family was monopolized at my birth. I knew that Brother James would honor my slightest wish. I would demand from him a position in cotton, sugar, or sheetings for William Trotter—something, say, at two hundred a month or thereabouts. I confided my beliefs and made my large propositions to William. He had pleased me much, and he was ragged.</p>
|
||||
<p>I had a brother in Chicopee Falls who owned manufactories—cotton, or sugar, or <abbr class="initialism">A.A.</abbr> sheetings, or something in the commercial line. He was vulgarly rich, and therefore reverenced art. The artistic temperament of the family was monopolized at my birth. I knew that Brother James would honor my slightest wish. I would demand from him a position in cotton, sugar, or sheetings for William Trotter—something, say, at two hundred a month or thereabouts. I confided my beliefs and made my large propositions to William. He had pleased me much, and he was ragged.</p>
|
||||
<p>While we were talking, there was a sound of firing guns—four or five, rattlingly, as if by a squad. The cheerful noise came from the direction of the cuartel, which is a kind of makeshift barracks for the soldiers of the republic.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Hear that?” said William Trotter. “Let me tell you about it.</p>
|
||||
<p>“A year ago I landed on this coast with one solitary dollar. I have the same sum in my pocket today. I was second cook on a tramp fruiter; and they marooned me here early one morning, without benefit of clergy, just because I poulticed the face of the first mate with cheese omelette at dinner. The fellow had kicked because I’d put horseradish in it instead of cheese.</p>
|
||||
|
@ -98,7 +98,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“Gentlemen,” says Colonel Rockingham, “allow me to introduce my brother, Captain Duval <abbr class="name">C.</abbr> Rockingham, vice-president of the Sunrise & Edenville Tap Railroad.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Otherwise the King of Morocco,” says I. “I reckon you don’t mind my counting the ransom, just as a business formality.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Well, no, not exactly,” says the fat man, “not when it comes. I turned that matter over to our second vice-president. I was anxious after Brother Jackson’s safetiness. I reckon he’ll be along right soon. What does that lobster salad you mentioned taste like, Brother Jackson?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“<abbr>Mr.</abbr> Vice-President,” says I, “you’ll oblige us by remaining here till the second <abbr class="initialism">VP</abbr> arrives. This is a private rehearsal, and we don’t want any roadside speculators selling tickets.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“<abbr>Mr.</abbr> Vice-President,” says I, “you’ll oblige us by remaining here till the second <abbr class="initialism">V.P.</abbr> arrives. This is a private rehearsal, and we don’t want any roadside speculators selling tickets.”</p>
|
||||
<p>In half an hour Caligula sings out again:</p>
|
||||
<p>“Sail ho! Looks like an apron on a broomstick.”</p>
|
||||
<p>I perambulated down the cliff again, and escorted up a man six foot three, with a sandy beard and no other dimension that you could notice. Thinks I to myself, if he’s got ten thousand dollars on his person it’s in one bill and folded lengthwise.</p>
|
||||
|
@ -74,7 +74,7 @@
|
||||
<p>Tripp feebly unbuttoned his coat of the faded pattern and glossy seams to reach for something that had once been a handkerchief deep down in some obscure and cavernous pocket. As he did so I caught the shine of a cheap silver-plated watch-chain across his vest, and something dangling from it caused me to stretch forth my hand and seize it curiously. It was the half of a silver dime that had been cut in halves with a chisel.</p>
|
||||
<p>“What!” I said, looking at him keenly.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Oh yes,” he responded, dully. “George Brown, alias Tripp. What’s the use?”</p>
|
||||
<p>Barring the <abbr class="initialism">WCTU</abbr>, I’d like to know if anybody disapproves of my having produced promptly from my pocket Tripp’s whiskey dollar and unhesitatingly laying it in his hand.</p>
|
||||
<p>Barring the <abbr class="initialism">W.C.T.U.</abbr>, I’d like to know if anybody disapproves of my having produced promptly from my pocket Tripp’s whiskey dollar and unhesitatingly laying it in his hand.</p>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
@ -13,7 +13,7 @@
|
||||
<p>From this high view the city itself becomes degraded to an unintelligible mass of distorted buildings and impossible perspectives; the revered ocean is a duck pond; the earth itself a lost golf ball. All the minutiae of life are gone. The philosopher gazes into the infinite heavens above him, and allows his soul to expand to the influence of his new view. He feels that he is the heir to Eternity and the child of Time. Space, too, should be his by the right of his immortal heritage, and he thrills at the thought that some day his kind shall traverse those mysterious aerial roads between planet and planet. The tiny world beneath his feet upon which this towering structure of steel rests as a speck of dust upon a Himalayan mountain—it is but one of a countless number of such whirling atoms. What are the ambitions, the achievements, the paltry conquests and loves of those restless black insects below compared with the serene and awful immensity of the universe that lies above and around their insignificant city?</p>
|
||||
<p>It is guaranteed that the philosopher will have these thoughts. They have been expressly compiled from the philosophies of the world and set down with the proper interrogation point at the end of them to represent the invariable musings of deep thinkers on high places. And when the philosopher takes the elevator down his mind is broader, his heart is at peace, and his conception of the cosmogony of creation is as wide as the buckle of Orion’s summer belt.</p>
|
||||
<p>But if your name happened to be Daisy, and you worked in an Eighth Avenue candy store and lived in a little cold hall bedroom, five feet by eight, and earned $6 per week, and ate ten-cent lunches and were nineteen years old, and got up at 6:30 and worked till 9, and never had studied philosophy, maybe things wouldn’t look that way to you from the top of a skyscraper.</p>
|
||||
<p>Two sighed for the hand of Daisy, the unphilosophical. One was Joe, who kept the smallest store in New York. It was about the size of a toolbox of the <abbr class="initialism">DPW</abbr>, and was stuck like a swallow’s nest against a corner of a downtown skyscraper. Its stock consisted of fruit, candies, newspapers, song books, cigarettes, and lemonade in season. When stern winter shook his congealed locks and Joe had to move himself and the fruit inside, there was exactly room in the store for the proprietor, his wares, a stove the size of a vinegar cruet, and one customer.</p>
|
||||
<p>Two sighed for the hand of Daisy, the unphilosophical. One was Joe, who kept the smallest store in New York. It was about the size of a toolbox of the <abbr class="initialism">D.P.W.</abbr>, and was stuck like a swallow’s nest against a corner of a downtown skyscraper. Its stock consisted of fruit, candies, newspapers, song books, cigarettes, and lemonade in season. When stern winter shook his congealed locks and Joe had to move himself and the fruit inside, there was exactly room in the store for the proprietor, his wares, a stove the size of a vinegar cruet, and one customer.</p>
|
||||
<p>Joe was not of the nation that keeps us forever in a furore with fugues and fruit. He was a capable American youth who was laying by money, and wanted Daisy to help him spend it. Three times he had asked her.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I got money saved up, Daisy,” was his love song; “and you know how bad I want you. That store of mine ain’t very big, but—”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Oh, ain’t it?” would be the antiphony of the unphilosophical one. “Why, I heard Wanamaker’s was trying to get you to sublet part of your floor space to them for next year.”</p>
|
||||
|
@ -39,7 +39,7 @@
|
||||
<p>The 25th of December.</p>
|
||||
<hr/>
|
||||
<blockquote>
|
||||
<p>What does an <abbr class="initialism">FFV</abbr> mean?</p>
|
||||
<p>What does an <abbr class="initialism">F.F.V.</abbr> mean?</p>
|
||||
<p class="signature">Ignorant.</p>
|
||||
</blockquote>
|
||||
<p>What does he mean by what? If he takes you by the arm and tells you how much you are like a brother of his in Richmond, he means Feel For Your Vest, for he wants to borrow a five. If he holds his head high and don’t speak to you on the street he means that he already owes you ten and is Following a Fresh Victim.</p>
|
||||
|
@ -18,7 +18,7 @@
|
||||
<p>But I beg you to observe <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> James Williams—Hattie Chalmers that was—once the belle of Cloverdale. Pale-blue is the bride’s, if she will; and this colour she had honoured. Willingly had the moss rosebud loaned to her cheeks of its pink—and as for the violet!—her eyes will do very well as they are, thank you. A useless strip of white chaf—oh, no, he was guiding the auto car—of white chiffon—or perhaps it was grenadine or tulle—was tied beneath her chin, pretending to hold her bonnet in place. But you know as well as I do that the hatpins did the work.</p>
|
||||
<p>And on <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> James Williams’s face was recorded a little library of the world’s best thoughts in three volumes. Volume <abbr>No.</abbr> 1 contained the belief that James Williams was about the right sort of thing. Volume <abbr>No.</abbr> 2 was an essay on the world, declaring it to be a very excellent place. Volume <abbr>No.</abbr> 3 disclosed the belief that in occupying the highest seat in a Rubberneck auto they were travelling the pace that passes all understanding.</p>
|
||||
<p>James Williams, you would have guessed, was about twenty-four. It will gratify you to know that your estimate was so accurate. He was exactly twenty-three years, eleven months and twenty-nine days old. He was well built, active, strong-jawed, good-natured and rising. He was on his wedding trip.</p>
|
||||
<p>Dear kind fairy, please cut out those orders for money and 40 <abbr class="initialism">HP</abbr> touring cars and fame and a new growth of hair and the presidency of the boat club. Instead of any of them turn backward—oh, turn backward and give us just a teeny-weeny bit of our wedding trip over again. Just an hour, dear fairy, so we can remember how the grass and poplar trees looked, and the bow of those bonnet strings tied beneath her chin—even if it was the hatpins that did the work. Can’t do it? Very well; hurry up with that touring car and the oil stock, then.</p>
|
||||
<p>Dear kind fairy, please cut out those orders for money and 40 <abbr class="initialism">H.P.</abbr> touring cars and fame and a new growth of hair and the presidency of the boat club. Instead of any of them turn backward—oh, turn backward and give us just a teeny-weeny bit of our wedding trip over again. Just an hour, dear fairy, so we can remember how the grass and poplar trees looked, and the bow of those bonnet strings tied beneath her chin—even if it was the hatpins that did the work. Can’t do it? Very well; hurry up with that touring car and the oil stock, then.</p>
|
||||
<p>Just in front of <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> James Williams sat a girl in a loose tan jacket and a straw hat adorned with grapes and roses. Only in dreams and milliners’ shops do we, alas! gather grapes and roses at one swipe. This girl gazed with large blue eyes, credulous, when the megaphone man roared his doctrine that millionaires were things about which we should be concerned. Between blasts she resorted to Epictetian philosophy in the form of pepsin chewing gum.</p>
|
||||
<p>At this girl’s right hand sat a young man about twenty-four. He was well-built, active, strong-jawed and good-natured. But if his description seems to follow that of James Williams, divest it of anything Cloverdalian. This man belonged to hard streets and sharp corners. He looked keenly about him, seeming to begrudge the asphalt under the feet of those upon whom he looked down from his perch.</p>
|
||||
<p>While the megaphone barks at a famous hostelry, let me whisper you through the low-tuned cardiaphone to sit tight; for now things are about to happen, and the great city will close over them again as over a scrap of ticker tape floating down from the den of a Broad Street bear.</p>
|
||||
|
@ -16,7 +16,7 @@
|
||||
<p>Whether the old or the new report of the sock-and-buskiners be the true one is a surmise that has no place here. I offer you merely this little story of two strollers; and for proof of its truth I can show you only the dark patch above the cast-iron of the stage-entrance door of Keetor’s old vaudeville theatre made there by the petulant push of gloved hands too impatient to finger the clumsy thumb-latch—and where I last saw Cherry whisking through like a swallow into her nest, on time to the minute, as usual, to dress for her act.</p>
|
||||
<p>The vaudeville team of Hart & Cherry was an inspiration. Bob Hart had been roaming through the Eastern and Western circuits for four years with a mixed-up act comprising a monologue, three lightning changes with songs, a couple of imitations of celebrated imitators, and a buck-and-wing dance that had drawn a glance of approval from the bass-viol player in more than one house—than which no performer ever received more satisfactory evidence of good work.</p>
|
||||
<p>The greatest treat an actor can have is to witness the pitiful performance with which all other actors desecrate the stage. In order to give himself this pleasure he will often forsake the sunniest Broadway corner between Thirty-fourth and Forty-fourth to attend a matinée offering by his less gifted brothers. Once during the lifetime of a minstrel joke one comes to scoff and remains to go through with that most difficult exercise of Thespian muscles—the audible contact of the palm of one hand against the palm of the other.</p>
|
||||
<p>One afternoon Bob Hart presented his solvent, serious, well-known vaudevillian face at the box-office window of a rival attraction and got his <abbr class="initialism">DH</abbr> coupon for an orchestra seat.</p>
|
||||
<p>One afternoon Bob Hart presented his solvent, serious, well-known vaudevillian face at the box-office window of a rival attraction and got his <abbr class="initialism">D.H.</abbr> coupon for an orchestra seat.</p>
|
||||
<p>A, B, C, and D glowed successively on the announcement spaces and passed into oblivion, each plunging <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Hart deeper into gloom. Others of the audience shrieked, squirmed, whistled, and applauded; but Bob Hart, “All the Mustard and a Whole Show in Himself,” sat with his face as long and his hands as far apart as a boy holding a hank of yarn for his grandmother to wind into a ball.</p>
|
||||
<p>But when H came on, “The Mustard” suddenly sat up straight. H was the happy alphabetical prognosticator of Winona Cherry, in Character Songs and Impersonations. There were scarcely more than two bites to Cherry; but she delivered the merchandise tied with a pink cord and charged to the old man’s account. She first showed you a deliciously dewy and ginghamy country girl with a basket of property daisies who informed you ingenuously that there were other things to be learned at the old log schoolhouse besides cipherin’ and nouns, especially “When the Teacher Kept Me in.” Vanishing, with a quick flirt of gingham apron-strings, she reappeared in considerably less than a “trice” as a fluffy “Parisienne”—so near does Art bring the old red mill to the Moulin Rouge. And then—</p>
|
||||
<p>But you know the rest. And so did Bob Hart; but he saw somebody else. He thought he saw that Cherry was the only professional on the short order stage that he had seen who seemed exactly to fit the part of “Helen Grimes” in the sketch he had written and kept tucked away in the tray of his trunk. Of course Bob Hart, as well as every other normal actor, grocer, newspaper man, professor, curb broker, and farmer, has a play tucked away somewhere. They tuck ’em in trays of trunks, trunks of trees, desks, haymows, pigeonholes, inside pockets, safe-deposit vaults, handboxes, and coal cellars, waiting for <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Frohman to call. They belong among the fifty-seven different kinds.</p>
|
||||
|
@ -30,7 +30,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“As soon as me and Andy saw that building the same idea struck both of us. We would fix it up with lights and pen wipers and professors, and put an iron dog and statues of Hercules and Father John on the lawn, and start one of the finest free educational institutions in the world right there.</p>
|
||||
<p>“So we talks it over to the prominent citizens of Floresville, who falls in fine with the idea. They give a banquet in the engine house to us, and we make our bow for the first time as benefactors to the cause of progress and enlightenment. Andy makes an hour-and-a-half speech on the subject of irrigation in Lower Egypt, and we have a moral tune on the phonograph and pineapple sherbet.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Andy and me didn’t lose any time in philanthropping. We put every man in town that could tell a hammer from a step ladder to work on the building, dividing it up into class rooms and lecture halls. We wire to Frisco for a car load of desks, footballs, arithmetics, penholders, dictionaries, chairs for the professors, slates, skeletons, sponges, twenty-seven cravenetted gowns and caps for the senior class, and an open order for all the truck that goes with a first-class university. I took it on myself to put a campus and a curriculum on the list; but the telegraph operator must have got the words wrong, being an ignorant man, for when the goods come we found a can of peas and a currycomb among ’em.</p>
|
||||
<p>“While the weekly papers was having chalk-plate cuts of me and Andy we wired an employment agency in Chicago to express us <abbr class="initialism">FOB</abbr>, six professors immediately—one English literature, one up-to-date dead languages, one chemistry, one political economy—democrat preferred—one logic, and one wise to painting, Italian and music, with union card. The Esperanza bank guaranteed salaries, which was to run between $800 and $800.50.</p>
|
||||
<p>“While the weekly papers was having chalk-plate cuts of me and Andy we wired an employment agency in Chicago to express us <abbr class="initialism">F.O.B.</abbr>, six professors immediately—one English literature, one up-to-date dead languages, one chemistry, one political economy—democrat preferred—one logic, and one wise to painting, Italian and music, with union card. The Esperanza bank guaranteed salaries, which was to run between $800 and $800.50.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Well, sir, we finally got in shape. Over the front door was carved the words: ‘The World’s University; Peters & Tucker, Patrons and Proprietors. And when September the first got a cross-mark on the calendar, the come-ons begun to roll in. First the faculty got off the tri-weekly express from Tucson. They was mostly young, spectacled, and redheaded, with sentiments divided between ambition and food. Andy and me got ’em billeted on the Floresvillians and then laid for the students.</p>
|
||||
<p>“They came in bunches. We had advertised the University in all the state papers, and it did us good to see how quick the country responded. Two hundred and nineteen husky lads aging along from 18 up to chin whiskers answered the clarion call of free education. They ripped open that town, sponged the seams, turned it, lined it with new mohair; and you couldn’t have told it from Harvard or Goldfields at the March term of court.</p>
|
||||
<p>“They marched up and down the streets waving flags with the World’s University colors—ultramarine and blue—and they certainly made a lively place of Floresville. Andy made them a speech from the balcony of the Skyview Hotel, and the whole town was out celebrating.</p>
|
||||
|
@ -14,7 +14,7 @@
|
||||
<p>John Hopkins was like a thousand others. He worked at $20 per week in a nine-story, redbrick building at either Insurance, Buckle’s Hoisting Engines, Chiropody, Loans, Pulleys, Boas Renovated, Waltz Guaranteed in Five Lessons, or Artificial Limbs. It is not for us to wring <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Hopkins’s avocation from these outward signs that be.</p>
|
||||
<p><abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Hopkins was like a thousand others. The auriferous tooth, the sedentary disposition, the Sunday afternoon wanderlust, the draught upon the delicatessen store for homemade comforts, the furor for department store marked-down sales, the feeling of superiority to the lady in the third-floor front who wore genuine ostrich tips and had two names over her bell, the mucilaginous hours during which she remained glued to the window sill, the vigilant avoidance of the instalment man, the tireless patronage of the acoustics of the dumbwaiter shaft—all the attributes of the Gotham flat-dweller were hers.</p>
|
||||
<p>One moment yet of sententiousness and the story moves.</p>
|
||||
<p>In the Big City large and sudden things happen. You round a corner and thrust the rib of your umbrella into the eye of your old friend from Kootenai Falls. You stroll out to pluck a Sweet William in the park—and lo! bandits attack you—you are ambulanced to the hospital—you marry your nurse; are divorced—get squeezed while short on <abbr class="initialism">UPS</abbr> and <abbr class="initialism">DOWNS</abbr>—stand in the bread line—marry an heiress, take out your laundry and pay your club dues—seemingly all in the wink of an eye. You travel the streets, and a finger beckons to you, a handkerchief is dropped for you, a brick is dropped upon you, the elevator cable or your bank breaks, a <span xml:lang="fr">table d’hôte</span> or your wife disagrees with you, and Fate tosses you about like cork crumbs in wine opened by an un-feed waiter. The City is a sprightly youngster, and you are red paint upon its toy, and you get licked off.</p>
|
||||
<p>In the Big City large and sudden things happen. You round a corner and thrust the rib of your umbrella into the eye of your old friend from Kootenai Falls. You stroll out to pluck a Sweet William in the park—and lo! bandits attack you—you are ambulanced to the hospital—you marry your nurse; are divorced—get squeezed while short on <abbr class="initialism">U.P.S.</abbr> and <abbr class="initialism">D.O.W.N.S.</abbr>—stand in the bread line—marry an heiress, take out your laundry and pay your club dues—seemingly all in the wink of an eye. You travel the streets, and a finger beckons to you, a handkerchief is dropped for you, a brick is dropped upon you, the elevator cable or your bank breaks, a <span xml:lang="fr">table d’hôte</span> or your wife disagrees with you, and Fate tosses you about like cork crumbs in wine opened by an un-feed waiter. The City is a sprightly youngster, and you are red paint upon its toy, and you get licked off.</p>
|
||||
<p>John Hopkins sat, after a compressed dinner, in his glove-fitting straight-front flat. He sat upon a hornblende couch and gazed, with satiated eyes, at Art Brought Home to the People in the shape of “The Storm” tacked against the wall. <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Hopkins discoursed droningly of the dinner smells from the flat across the hall. The flea-bitten terrier gave Hopkins a look of disgust, and showed a man-hating tooth.</p>
|
||||
<p>Here was neither poverty, love, nor war; but upon such barren stems may be grafted those essentials of a complete life.</p>
|
||||
<p>John Hopkins sought to inject a few raisins of conversation into the tasteless dough of existence. “Putting a new elevator in at the office,” he said, discarding the nominative noun, “and the boss has turned out his whiskers.”</p>
|
||||
|
@ -12,7 +12,7 @@
|
||||
<p>Sharp and Simpson send us a check for $50 in addition to their monthly account, to cover difference in price of a higher grade of goods shipped them last time by mistake.</p>
|
||||
<p>Senior Partner: Do they give us another order?</p>
|
||||
<p>Junior Partner: Yes! The longest they have ever made.</p>
|
||||
<p>Senior Partner: Ship ’em <abbr class="initialism eoc">COD</abbr>.</p>
|
||||
<p>Senior Partner: Ship ’em <abbr class="initialism eoc">C.O.D.</abbr></p>
|
||||
<hr/>
|
||||
<p>“Well! how are they coming?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I’m getting a move on me,” said the checkerboard.</p>
|
||||
|
@ -18,7 +18,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“When me and Liverpool got so low down that the American consul wouldn’t speak to us we knew we’d struck bed rock.</p>
|
||||
<p>“We boarded with a snuff-brown lady named Chica, who kept a rum-shop and a ladies’ and gents’ restaurant in a street called the <i xml:lang="es">calle de los</i> Forty-seven Inconsolable Saints. When our credit played out there, Liverpool, whose stomach overshadowed his sensations of <span xml:lang="fr">noblesse oblige</span>, married Chica. This kept us in rice and fried plantain for a month; and then Chica pounded Liverpool one morning sadly and earnestly for fifteen minutes with a casserole handed down from the stone age, and we knew that we had out-welcomed our liver. That night we signed an engagement with Don Jaime McSpinosa, a hybrid banana fancier of the place, to work on his fruit preserves nine miles out of town. We had to do it or be reduced to sea water and broken doses of feed and slumber.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Now, speaking of Liverpool Sam, I don’t malign or inexculpate him to you any more than I would to his face. But in my opinion, when an Englishman gets as low as he can he’s got to dodge so that the dregs of other nations don’t drop ballast on him out of their balloons. And if he’s a Liverpool Englishman, why, firedamp is what he’s got to look out for. Being a natural American, that’s my personal view. But Liverpool and me had much in common. We were without decorous clothes or ways and means of existence; and, as the saying goes, misery certainly does enjoy the society of accomplices.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Our job on old McSpinosa’s plantation was chopping down banana stalks and loading the bunches of fruit on the backs of horses. Then a native dressed up in an alligator hide belt, a machete, and a pair of AA sheeting pajamas, drives ’em over to the coast and piles ’em up on the beach.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Our job on old McSpinosa’s plantation was chopping down banana stalks and loading the bunches of fruit on the backs of horses. Then a native dressed up in an alligator hide belt, a machete, and a pair of <abbr class="initialism">A.A.</abbr> sheeting pajamas, drives ’em over to the coast and piles ’em up on the beach.</p>
|
||||
<p>“You ever been in a banana grove? It’s as solemn as a rathskeller at seven <abbr class="time eoc">a.m.</abbr> It’s like being lost behind the scenes at one of these mushroom musical shows. You can’t see the sky for the foliage above you; and the ground is knee deep in rotten leaves; and it’s so still that you can hear the stalks growing again after you chop ’em down.</p>
|
||||
<p>“At night me and Liverpool herded in a lot of grass huts on the edge of a lagoon with the red, yellow, and black employees of Don Jaime. There we lay fighting mosquitoes and listening to the monkeys squalling and the alligators grunting and splashing in the lagoon until daylight with only snatches of sleep between times.</p>
|
||||
<p>“We soon lost all idea of what time of the year it was. It’s just about eighty degrees there in December and June and on Fridays and at midnight and election day and any other old time. Sometimes it rains more than at others, and that’s all the difference you notice. A man is liable to live along there without noticing any fugiting of tempus until some day the undertaker calls in for him just when he’s beginning to think about cutting out the gang and saving up a little to invest in real estate.</p>
|
||||
|
@ -26,7 +26,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Now listen,’ says I. ‘You know my rule, Andy, that in all my illegitimate inroads against the legal letter of the law the article sold must be existent, visible, producible. In that way and by a careful study of city ordinances and train schedules I have kept out of all trouble with the police that a five dollar bill and a cigar could not square. Now, to work this scheme we’ve got to be able to produce bodily a charming widow or its equivalent with or without the beauty, hereditaments and appurtenances set forth in the catalogue and writ of errors, or hereafter be held by a justice of the peace.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Well,’ says Andy, reconstructing his mind, ‘maybe it would be safer in case the post office or the peace commission should try to investigate our agency. But where,’ he says, ‘could you hope to find a widow who would waste time on a matrimonial scheme that had no matrimony in it?’</p>
|
||||
<p>“I told Andy that I thought I knew of the exact party. An old friend of mine, Zeke Trotter, who used to draw soda water and teeth in a tent show, had made his wife a widow a year before by drinking some dyspepsia cure of the old doctor’s instead of the liniment that he always got boozed up on. I used to stop at their house often, and I thought we could get her to work with us.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ’Twas only sixty miles to the little town where she lived, so I jumped out on the <abbr class="initialism">IC</abbr> and finds her in the same cottage with the same sunflowers and roosters standing on the washtub. <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Trotter fitted our ad first rate except, maybe for beauty and age and property valuation. But she looked feasible and praiseworthy to the eye, and it was a kindness to Zeke’s memory to give her the job.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ’Twas only sixty miles to the little town where she lived, so I jumped out on the <abbr class="initialism">I.C.</abbr> and finds her in the same cottage with the same sunflowers and roosters standing on the washtub. <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Trotter fitted our ad first rate except, maybe for beauty and age and property valuation. But she looked feasible and praiseworthy to the eye, and it was a kindness to Zeke’s memory to give her the job.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Is this an honest deal you are putting on, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Peters,’ she asks me when I tell her what we want.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘<abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Trotter,’ says I, ‘Andy Tucker and me have computed the calculation that 3,000 men in this broad and unfair country will endeavor to secure your fair hand and ostensible money and property through our advertisement. Out of that number something like thirty hundred will expect to give you in exchange, if they should win you, the carcass of a lazy and mercenary loafer, a failure in life, a swindler and contemptible fortune seeker.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Me and Andy,’ says I, ‘propose to teach these preyers upon society a lesson. It was with difficulty,’ says I, ‘that me and Andy could refrain from forming a corporation under the title of the Great Moral and Millennial Malevolent Matrimonial Agency. Does that satisfy you?’</p>
|
||||
@ -43,7 +43,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“Most of them admitted that they ran principally to whiskers and lost jobs and were misunderstood by the world, but all of ’em were sure that they were so chock full of affection and manly qualities that the widow would be making the bargain of her life to get ’em.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Every applicant got a reply from Peters & Tucker informing him that the widow had been deeply impressed by his straightforward and interesting letter and requesting them to write again; stating more particulars; and enclosing photograph if convenient. Peters & Tucker also informed the applicant that their fee for handing over the second letter to their fair client would be $2, enclosed therewith.</p>
|
||||
<p>“There you see the simple beauty of the scheme. About 90 percent of them domestic foreign noblemen raised the price somehow and sent it in. That was all there was to it. Except that me and Andy complained an amount about being put to the trouble of slicing open them envelopes, and taking the money out.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Some few clients called in person. We sent ’em to <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Trotter and she did the rest; except for three or four who came back to strike us for carfare. After the letters began to get in from the <abbr class="initialism">RFD</abbr> districts Andy and me were taking in about $200 a day.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Some few clients called in person. We sent ’em to <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Trotter and she did the rest; except for three or four who came back to strike us for carfare. After the letters began to get in from the <abbr class="initialism">R.F.D.</abbr> districts Andy and me were taking in about $200 a day.</p>
|
||||
<p>“One afternoon when we were busiest and I was stuffing the two and ones into cigar boxes and Andy was whistling ‘No Wedding Bells for Her’ a small slick man drops in and runs his eye over the walls like he was on the trail of a lost Gainesborough painting or two. As soon as I saw him I felt a glow of pride, because we were running our business on the level.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘I see you have quite a large mail today,’ says the man.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I reached and got my hat.</p>
|
||||
|
@ -46,7 +46,7 @@
|
||||
<p>Thomas McQuade took in the splendors of this palatial apartment with one eye. With the other he looked for his imposing conductor—to find that he had disappeared.</p>
|
||||
<p>“B’gee!” muttered Thomas, “this listens like a spook shop. Shouldn’t wonder if it ain’t one of these Moravian Nights’ adventures that you read about. Wonder what became of the furry guy.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Suddenly a stuffed owl that stood on an ebony perch near the illuminated globe slowly raised his wings and emitted from his eyes a brilliant electric glow.</p>
|
||||
<p>With a fright-born imprecation, Thomas seized a bronze statuette of Hebe from a cabinet nearby and hurled it with all his might at the terrifying and impossible fowl. The owl and his perch went over with a crash. With the sound there was a click, and the room was flooded with light from a dozen frosted globes along the walls and ceiling. The gold portières parted and closed, and the mysterious automobilist entered the room. He was tall and wore evening dress of perfect cut and accurate taste. A Vandyke beard of glossy, golden brown, rather long and wavy hair, smoothly parted, and large, magnetic, orientally occult eyes gave him a most impressive and striking appearance. If you can conceive a Russian Grand Duke in a Rajah’s throne-room advancing to greet a visiting Emperor, you will gather something of the majesty of his manner. But Thomas McQuade was too near his <abbr class="initialism">DT</abbr>’s to be mindful of his <i epub:type="z3998:grapheme">p’s</i> and <i epub:type="z3998:grapheme">q’s</i>. When he viewed this silken, polished, and somewhat terrifying host he thought vaguely of dentists.</p>
|
||||
<p>With a fright-born imprecation, Thomas seized a bronze statuette of Hebe from a cabinet nearby and hurled it with all his might at the terrifying and impossible fowl. The owl and his perch went over with a crash. With the sound there was a click, and the room was flooded with light from a dozen frosted globes along the walls and ceiling. The gold portières parted and closed, and the mysterious automobilist entered the room. He was tall and wore evening dress of perfect cut and accurate taste. A Vandyke beard of glossy, golden brown, rather long and wavy hair, smoothly parted, and large, magnetic, orientally occult eyes gave him a most impressive and striking appearance. If you can conceive a Russian Grand Duke in a Rajah’s throne-room advancing to greet a visiting Emperor, you will gather something of the majesty of his manner. But Thomas McQuade was too near his <abbr class="initialism">D.T.</abbr>’s to be mindful of his <i epub:type="z3998:grapheme">p</i>’s and <i epub:type="z3998:grapheme">q</i>’s. When he viewed this silken, polished, and somewhat terrifying host he thought vaguely of dentists.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Say, doc,” said he resentfully, “that’s a hot bird you keep on tap. I hope I didn’t break anything. But I’ve nearly got the williwalloos, and when he threw them 32-candlepower lamps of his on me, I took a snapshot at him with that little brass Flatiron Girl that stood on the sideboard.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“That is merely a mechanical toy,” said the gentleman with a wave of his hand. “May I ask you to be seated while I explain why I brought you to my house. Perhaps you would not understand nor be in sympathy with the psychological prompting that caused me to do so. So I will come to the point at once by venturing to refer to your admission that you know the Van Smuythe family, of Washington Square North.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Any silver missing?” asked Thomas tartly. “Any joolry displaced? Of course I know ’em. Any of the old ladies’ sunshades disappeared? Well, I know ’em. And then what?”</p>
|
||||
|
@ -13,7 +13,7 @@
|
||||
<p>I remember the clear picture of him that hung on the walls of my fancy during my barefoot days when I was dodging his oft-threatened devoirs. To me he was a terrible old man, in gray clothes, with a long, ragged, gray beard, and reddish, fierce eyes. I looked to see him come stumping up the road in a cloud of dust, with a white oak staff in his hand and his shoes tied with leather thongs. I may yet—</p>
|
||||
<p>But this is a story, not a sequel.</p>
|
||||
<p>I have taken notice with regret, that few stories worth reading have been written that did not contain drink of some sort. Down go the fluids, from Arizona Dick’s three fingers of red pizen to the inefficacious Oolong that nerves Lionel Montressor to repartee in the “Dotty Dialogues.” So, in such good company I may introduce an absinthe drip—one absinthe drip, dripped through a silver dripper, orderly, opalescent, cool, green-eyed—deceptive.</p>
|
||||
<p>Kerner was a fool. Besides that, he was an artist and my good friend. Now, if there is one thing on earth utterly despicable to another, it is an artist in the eyes of an author whose story he has illustrated. Just try it once. Write a story about a mining camp in Idaho. Sell it. Spend the money, and then, six months later, borrow a quarter (or a dime), and buy the magazine containing it. You find a full-page wash drawing of your hero, Black Bill, the cowboy. Somewhere in your story you employed the word “horse.” Aha! the artist has grasped the idea. Black Bill has on the regulation trousers of the <abbr class="initialism">MFH</abbr> of the Westchester County Hunt. He carries a parlor rifle, and wears a monocle. In the distance is a section of Forty-second Street during a search for a lost gas-pipe, and the Taj Mahal, the famous mausoleum in India.</p>
|
||||
<p>Kerner was a fool. Besides that, he was an artist and my good friend. Now, if there is one thing on earth utterly despicable to another, it is an artist in the eyes of an author whose story he has illustrated. Just try it once. Write a story about a mining camp in Idaho. Sell it. Spend the money, and then, six months later, borrow a quarter (or a dime), and buy the magazine containing it. You find a full-page wash drawing of your hero, Black Bill, the cowboy. Somewhere in your story you employed the word “horse.” Aha! the artist has grasped the idea. Black Bill has on the regulation trousers of the <abbr class="initialism">M.F.H.</abbr> of the Westchester County Hunt. He carries a parlor rifle, and wears a monocle. In the distance is a section of Forty-second Street during a search for a lost gas-pipe, and the Taj Mahal, the famous mausoleum in India.</p>
|
||||
<p>Enough! I hated Kerner, and one day I met him and we became friends. He was young and gloriously melancholy because his spirits were so high and life had so much in store for him. Yes, he was almost riotously sad. That was his youth. When a man begins to be hilarious in a sorrowful way you can bet a million that he is dyeing his hair. Kerner’s hair was plentiful and carefully matted as an artist’s thatch should be. He was a cigaretteur, and he audited his dinners with red wine. But, most of all, he was a fool. And, wisely, I envied him, and listened patiently while he knocked Velasquez and Tintoretto. Once he told me that he liked a story of mine that he had come across in an anthology. He described it to me, and I was sorry that <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Fitz-James O’Brien was dead and could not learn of the eulogy of his work. But mostly Kerner made few breaks and was a consistent fool.</p>
|
||||
<p>I’d better explain what I mean by that. There was a girl. Now, a girl, as far as I am concerned, is a thing that belongs in a seminary or an album; but I conceded the existence of the animal in order to retain Kerner’s friendship. He showed me her picture in a locket—she was a blonde or a brunette—I have forgotten which. She worked in a factory for eight dollars a week. Lest factories quote this wage by way of vindication, I will add that the girl had worked for five years to reach that supreme elevation of remuneration, beginning at $1.50 per week.</p>
|
||||
<p>Kerner’s father was worth a couple of millions He was willing to stand for art, but he drew the line at the factory girl. So Kerner disinherited his father and walked out to a cheap studio and lived on sausages for breakfast and on Farroni for dinner. Farroni had the artistic soul and a line of credit for painters and poets, nicely adjusted. Sometimes Kerner sold a picture and bought some new tapestry, a ring and a dozen silk cravats, and paid Farroni two dollars on account.</p>
|
||||
|
@ -14,14 +14,14 @@
|
||||
<p>Not even on the fair island of Nippon was there a more enthusiastic champion of the Mikado’s men. Supporters of the Russian cause did well to keep clear of Engine-House <abbr>No.</abbr> 99.</p>
|
||||
<p>Sometimes all thoughts of the Japs left John Byrnes’s head. That was when the alarm of fire had sounded and he was strapped in his driver’s seat on the swaying cart, guiding Erebus and Joe, the finest team in the whole department—according to the crew of 99.</p>
|
||||
<p>Of all the codes adopted by man for regulating his actions toward his fellow-mortals, the greatest are these—the code of King Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table, the Constitution of the United States and the unwritten rules of the New York Fire Department. The Round Table methods are no longer practicable since the invention of street cars and breach-of-promise suits, and our Constitution is being found more and more unconstitutional every day, so the code of our firemen must be considered in the lead, with the Golden Rule and Jeffries’s new punch trying for place and show.</p>
|
||||
<p>The Constitution says that one man is as good as another; but the Fire Department says he is better. This is a too generous theory, but the law will not allow itself to be construed otherwise. All of which comes perilously near to being a paradox, and commends itself to the attention of the <abbr class="initialism eoc">SPCA</abbr>.</p>
|
||||
<p>The Constitution says that one man is as good as another; but the Fire Department says he is better. This is a too generous theory, but the law will not allow itself to be construed otherwise. All of which comes perilously near to being a paradox, and commends itself to the attention of the <abbr class="initialism eoc">S.P.C.A.</abbr></p>
|
||||
<p>One of the transatlantic liners dumped out at Ellis Island a lump of protozoa which was expected to evolve into an American citizen. A steward kicked him down the gangway, a doctor pounced upon his eyes like a raven, seeking for trachoma or ophthalmia; he was hustled ashore and ejected into the city in the name of Liberty—perhaps, theoretically, thus inoculating against kingocracy with a drop of its own virus. This hypodermic injection of Europeanism wandered happily into the veins of the city with the broad grin of a pleased child. It was not burdened with baggage, cares or ambitions. Its body was lithely built and clothed in a sort of foreign fustian; its face was brightly vacant, with a small, flat nose, and was mostly covered by a thick, ragged, curling beard like the coat of a spaniel. In the pocket of the imported Thing were a few coins—denarii—scudi—kopecks—pfennigs—pilasters—whatever the financial nomenclature of his unknown country may have been.</p>
|
||||
<p>Prattling to himself, always broadly grinning, pleased by the roar and movement of the barbarous city into which the steamship cut-rates had shunted him, the alien strayed away from the sea, which he hated, as far as the district covered by Engine Company <abbr>No.</abbr> 99. Light as a cork, he was kept bobbing along by the human tide, the crudest atom in all the silt of the stream that emptied into the reservoir of Liberty.</p>
|
||||
<p>While crossing Third Avenue he slowed his steps, enchanted by the thunder of the elevated trains above him and the soothing crash of the wheels on the cobbles. And then there was a new, delightful chord in the uproar—the musical clanging of a gong and a great shining juggernaut belching fire and smoke, that people were hurrying to see.</p>
|
||||
<p>This beautiful thing, entrancing to the eye, dashed past, and the protoplasmic immigrant stepped into the wake of it with his broad, enraptured, uncomprehending grin. And so stepping, stepped into the path of <abbr>No.</abbr> 99’s flying hose-cart, with John Byrnes gripping, with arms of steel, the reins over the plunging backs of Erebus and Joe.</p>
|
||||
<p>The unwritten constitutional code of the fireman has no exceptions or amendments. It is a simple thing—as simple as the rule of three. There was the heedless unit in the right of way; there was the hose-cart and the iron pillar of the elevated railroad.</p>
|
||||
<p>John Byrnes swung all his weight and muscle on the left rein. The team and cart swerved that way and crashed like a torpedo into the pillar. The men on the cart went flying like skittles. The driver’s strap burst, the pillar rang with the shock, and John Byrnes fell on the car track with a broken shoulder twenty feet away, while Erebus—beautiful, raven-black, best-loved Erebus—lay whickering in his harness with a broken leg.</p>
|
||||
<p>In consideration for the feelings of Engine Company <abbr>No.</abbr> 99 the details will be lightly touched. The company does not like to be reminded of that day. There was a great crowd, and hurry calls were sent in; and while the ambulance gong was clearing the way the men of <abbr>No.</abbr> 99 heard the crack of the <abbr class="initialism">SPCA</abbr> agent’s pistol, and turned their heads away, not daring to look toward Erebus again.</p>
|
||||
<p>In consideration for the feelings of Engine Company <abbr>No.</abbr> 99 the details will be lightly touched. The company does not like to be reminded of that day. There was a great crowd, and hurry calls were sent in; and while the ambulance gong was clearing the way the men of <abbr>No.</abbr> 99 heard the crack of the <abbr class="initialism">S.P.C.A.</abbr> agent’s pistol, and turned their heads away, not daring to look toward Erebus again.</p>
|
||||
<p>When the firemen got back to the engine-house they found that one of them was dragging by the collar the cause of their desolation and grief. They set it in the middle of the floor and gathered grimly about it. Through its whiskers the calamitous object chattered effervescently and waved its hands.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Sounds like a seidlitz powder,” said Mike Dowling, disgustedly, “and it makes me sicker than one. Call that a man!—that hoss was worth a steamer full of such two-legged animals. It’s a immigrant—that’s what it is.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Look at the doctor’s chalk mark on its coat,” said Reilly, the desk man. “It’s just landed. It must be a kind of a Dago or a Hun or one of them Finns, I guess. That’s the kind of truck that Europe unloads onto us.”</p>
|
||||
|
@ -58,10 +58,10 @@
|
||||
<p>“There we found the meat gloriously done, and Jerry waiting, anxious. We sat around on the grass, and got hunks of it on our tin plates. Maximilian Jones, always made tenderhearted by drink, cried some because George Washington couldn’t be there to enjoy the day. ‘There was a man I love, Billy,’ he says, weeping on my shoulder. ‘Poor George! To think he’s gone, and missed the fireworks. A little more salt, please, Jerry.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“From what we could hear, General Dingo seemed to be kindly contributing some noise while we feasted. There were guns going off around town, and pretty soon we heard that cannon go ‘<b>boom</b>!’ just as he said it would. And then men began to skim along the edge of the plaza, dodging in among the orange trees and houses. We certainly had things stirred up in Salvador. We felt proud of the occasion and grateful to General Dingo. Sterrett was about to take a bite off a juicy piece of rib when a bullet took it away from his mouth.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Somebody’s celebrating with ball cartridges,’ says he, reaching for another piece. ‘Little overzealous for a nonresident patriot, isn’t it?’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Don’t mind it,’ I says to him. ‘’Twas an accident. They happen, you know, on the Fourth. After one reading of the Declaration of Independence in New York I’ve known the <abbr class="initialism">SRO</abbr> sign to be hung out at all the hospitals and police stations.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Don’t mind it,’ I says to him. ‘’Twas an accident. They happen, you know, on the Fourth. After one reading of the Declaration of Independence in New York I’ve known the <abbr class="initialism">S.R.O.</abbr> sign to be hung out at all the hospitals and police stations.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“But then Jerry gives a howl and jumps up with one hand clapped to the back of his leg where another bullet has acted overzealous. And then comes a quantity of yells, and round a corner and across the plaza gallops General Mary Esperanza Dingo embracing the neck of his horse, with his men running behind him, mostly dropping their guns by way of discharging ballast. And chasing ’em all is a company of feverish little warriors wearing blue trousers and caps.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Assistance, amigos,’ the General shouts, trying to stop his horse. ‘Assistance, in the name of Liberty!’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘That’s the Compañia Azul, the President’s bodyguard,’ says Jones. ‘What a shame! They’ve jumped on poor old Mary just because he was helping us to celebrate. Come on, boys, it’s our Fourth;—do we let that little squad of <abbr class="initialism">ADT</abbr>’s break it up?’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘That’s the Compañia Azul, the President’s bodyguard,’ says Jones. ‘What a shame! They’ve jumped on poor old Mary just because he was helping us to celebrate. Come on, boys, it’s our Fourth;—do we let that little squad of <abbr class="initialism">A.D.T.</abbr>’s break it up?’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘I vote No,’ says Martin Dillard, gathering his Winchester. ‘It’s the privilege of an American citizen to drink, drill, dress up, and be dreadful on the Fourth of July, no matter whose country he’s in.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Fellow citizens!’ says old man Billfinger, ‘In the darkest hour of Freedom’s birth, when our brave forefathers promulgated the principles of undying liberty, they never expected that a bunch of blue jays like that should be allowed to bust up an anniversary. Let us preserve and protect the Constitution.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“We made it unanimous, and then we gathered our guns and assaulted the blue troops in force. We fired over their heads, and then charged ’em with a yell, and they broke and ran. We were irritated at having our barbecue disturbed, and we chased ’em a quarter of a mile. Some of ’em we caught and kicked hard. The General rallied his troops and joined in the chase. Finally they scattered in a thick banana grove, and we couldn’t flush a single one. So we sat down and rested.</p>
|
||||
|
@ -19,7 +19,7 @@
|
||||
<p>Miss Merriam sat on a stool at a desk enclosed on three sides by a strong, high fencing of woven brass wire. Through an arched opening at the bottom you thrust your waiter’s check and the money, while your heart went pita-pat.</p>
|
||||
<p>For Miss Merriam was lovely and capable. She could take 45 cents out of a $2 bill and refuse an offer of marriage before you could—Next!—lost your chance—please don’t shove. She could keep cool and collected while she collected your check, give you the correct change, win your heart, indicate the toothpick stand, and rate you to a quarter of a cent better than Bradstreet could to a thousand in less time than it takes to pepper an egg with one of Hinkle’s casters.</p>
|
||||
<p>There is an old and dignified allusion to the “fierce light that beats upon a throne.” The light that beats upon the young lady cashier’s cage is also something fierce. The other fellow is responsible for the slang.</p>
|
||||
<p>Every male patron of Hinkle’s, from the <abbr class="initialism">ADT</abbr> boys up to the curbstone brokers, adored Miss Merriam. When they paid their checks they wooed her with every wile known to Cupid’s art. Between the meshes of the brass railing went smiles, winks, compliments, tender vows, invitations to dinner, sighs, languishing looks and merry banter that was wafted pointedly back by the gifted Miss Merriam.</p>
|
||||
<p>Every male patron of Hinkle’s, from the <abbr class="initialism">A.D.T.</abbr> boys up to the curbstone brokers, adored Miss Merriam. When they paid their checks they wooed her with every wile known to Cupid’s art. Between the meshes of the brass railing went smiles, winks, compliments, tender vows, invitations to dinner, sighs, languishing looks and merry banter that was wafted pointedly back by the gifted Miss Merriam.</p>
|
||||
<p>There is no coign of vantage more effective than the position of young lady cashier. She sits there, easily queen of the court of commerce; she is duchess of dollars and devoirs, countess of compliments and coin, leading lady of love and luncheon. You take from her a smile and a Canadian dime, and you go your way uncomplaining. You count the cheery word or two that she tosses you as misers count their treasures; and you pocket the change for a five uncomputed. Perhaps the brassbound inaccessibility multiplies her charms—anyhow, she is a shirt-waisted angel, immaculate, trim, manicured, seductive, bright-eyed, ready, alert—Psyche, Circe, and Ate in one, separating you from your circulating medium after your sirloin medium.</p>
|
||||
<p>The young men who broke bread at Hinkle’s never settled with the cashier without an exchange of badinage and open compliment. Many of them went to greater lengths and dropped promissory hints of theatre tickets and chocolates. The older men spoke plainly of orange blossoms, generally withering the tentative petals by after-allusions to Harlem flats. One broker, who had been squeezed by copper proposed to Miss Merriam more regularly than he ate.</p>
|
||||
<p>During a brisk luncheon hour Miss Merriam’s conversation, while she took money for checks, would run something like this:</p>
|
||||
|
@ -37,7 +37,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“Is that Jimmy Dunn?” asked Kelley.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Yes,” came the answer.</p>
|
||||
<p>“You’re a liar,” sang back Kelley, joyfully. “You’re the Secretary of War. Wait there till I come up. I’ve got the finest thing down here in the way of a fish you ever baited for. It’s a Colorado-maduro, with a gold band around it and free coupons enough to buy a red hall lamp and a statuette of Psyche rubbering in the brook. I’ll be up on the next car.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Jimmy Dunn was an <abbr class="initialism">AM</abbr> of Crookdom. He was an artist in the confidence line. He never saw a bludgeon in his life; and he scorned knockout drops. In fact, he would have set nothing before an intended victim but the purest of drinks, if it had been possible to procure such a thing in New York. It was the ambition of “Spider” Kelley to elevate himself into Jimmy’s class.</p>
|
||||
<p>Jimmy Dunn was an <abbr class="initialism">A.M.</abbr> of Crookdom. He was an artist in the confidence line. He never saw a bludgeon in his life; and he scorned knockout drops. In fact, he would have set nothing before an intended victim but the purest of drinks, if it had been possible to procure such a thing in New York. It was the ambition of “Spider” Kelley to elevate himself into Jimmy’s class.</p>
|
||||
<p>These two gentlemen held a conference that night at McCrary’s. Kelley explained.</p>
|
||||
<p>“He’s as easy as a gumshoe. He’s from the Island of Colombia, where there’s a strike, or a feud, or something going on, and they’ve sent him up here to buy 2,000 Winchesters to arbitrate the thing with. He showed me two drafts for $10,000 each, and one for $5,000 on a bank here. ’S truth, Jimmy, I felt real mad with him because he didn’t have it in thousand-dollar bills, and hand it to me on a silver waiter. Now, we’ve got to wait till he goes to the bank and gets the money for us.”</p>
|
||||
<p>They talked it over for two hours, and then Dunn said; “Bring him to No. ⸻ Broadway, at four o’clock tomorrow afternoon.”</p>
|
||||
@ -50,7 +50,7 @@
|
||||
<p><abbr>Mrs.</abbr> O’Brien heard, and lifted an auriferous head. Her businesslike eye rested for an instant upon the disappearing form of <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Kelley. Except in street cars one should never be unnecessarily rude to a lady.</p>
|
||||
<p>When the gallant Colombian and his escort arrived at the Broadway address, they were held in an anteroom for half an hour, and then admitted into a well-equipped office where a distinguished looking man, with a smooth face, wrote at a desk. General Falcon was presented to the Secretary of War of the United States, and his mission made known by his old friend, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Kelley.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Ah—Colombia!” said the Secretary, significantly, when he was made to understand; “I’m afraid there will be a little difficulty in that case. The President and I differ in our sympathies there. He prefers the established government, while I—” the secretary gave the General a mysterious but encouraging smile. “You, of course, know, General Falcon, that since the Tammany war, an act of Congress has been passed requiring all manufactured arms and ammunition exported from this country to pass through the War Department. Now, if I can do anything for you I will be glad to do so to oblige my old friend, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Kelley. But it must be in absolute secrecy, as the President, as I have said, does not regard favorably the efforts of your revolutionary party in Colombia. I will have my orderly bring a list of the available arms now in the warehouse.”</p>
|
||||
<p>The Secretary struck a bell, and an orderly with the letters <abbr class="initialism">ADT</abbr> on his cap stepped promptly into the room.</p>
|
||||
<p>The Secretary struck a bell, and an orderly with the letters <abbr class="initialism">A.D.T.</abbr> on his cap stepped promptly into the room.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Bring me Schedule B of the small arms inventory,” said the Secretary.</p>
|
||||
<p>The orderly quickly returned with a printed paper. The Secretary studied it closely.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I find,” he said, “that in Warehouse 9, of Government stores, there is shipment of 2,000 stands of Winchester rifles that were ordered by the Sultan of Morocco, who forgot to send the cash with his order. Our rule is that legal-tender money must be paid down at the time of purchase. My dear Kelley, your friend, General Falcon, shall have this lot of arms, if he desires it, at the manufacturer’s price. And you will forgive me, I am sure, if I curtail our interview. I am expecting the Japanese Minister and Charles Murphy every moment!”</p>
|
||||
|
@ -34,7 +34,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“ ‘An’—let’s see—oh, yes—‘An anachronism,’ says the boss. ‘Cigarettes was not made at the time when halberdiers was invented.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘The ones you sell was,’ says Sir Percival. ‘Caporal wins from chronology by the length of a cork tip.’ So he gets ’em and lights one, and puts the box in his brass helmet, and goes back to patrolling the Rindslosh.</p>
|
||||
<p>“He made a big hit, ’specially with the ladies. Some of ’em would poke him with their fingers to see if he was real or only a kind of a stuffed figure like they burn in elegy. And when he’d move they’d squeak, and make eyes at him as they went up to the slosh. He looked fine in his halberdashery. He slept at $2 a week in a hall-room on Third Avenue. He invited me up there one night. He had a little book on the washstand that he read instead of shopping in the saloons after hours. ‘I’m on to that,’ says I, ‘from reading about it in novels. All the heroes on the bum carry the little book. It’s either Tantalus or Liver or Horace, and its printed in Latin, and you’re a college man. And I wouldn’t be surprised,’ says I, ‘if you wasn’t educated, too.’ But it was only the batting averages of the League for the last ten years.</p>
|
||||
<p>“One night, about half past eleven, there comes in a party of these high-rollers that are always hunting up new places to eat in and poke fun at. There was a swell girl in a 40 <abbr class="initialism">HP</abbr> auto tan coat and veil, and a fat old man with white side-whiskers, and a young chap that couldn’t keep his feet off the tail of the girl’s coat, and an oldish lady that looked upon life as immoral and unnecessary. ‘How perfectly delightful,’ they says, ‘to sup in a slosh.’ Up the stairs they go; and in half a minute back down comes the girl, her skirts swishing like the waves on the beach. She stops on the landing and looks our halberdier in the eye.</p>
|
||||
<p>“One night, about half past eleven, there comes in a party of these high-rollers that are always hunting up new places to eat in and poke fun at. There was a swell girl in a 40 <abbr class="initialism">H.P.</abbr> auto tan coat and veil, and a fat old man with white side-whiskers, and a young chap that couldn’t keep his feet off the tail of the girl’s coat, and an oldish lady that looked upon life as immoral and unnecessary. ‘How perfectly delightful,’ they says, ‘to sup in a slosh.’ Up the stairs they go; and in half a minute back down comes the girl, her skirts swishing like the waves on the beach. She stops on the landing and looks our halberdier in the eye.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘You!’ she says, with a smile that reminded me of lemon sherbet. I was waiting upstairs in the slosh, then, and I was right down here by the door, putting some vinegar and cayenne into an empty bottle of tabasco, and I heard all they said.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘It,’ says Sir Percival, without moving. ‘I’m only local colour. Are my hauberk, helmet, and halberd on straight?’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Is there an explanation to this?’ says she. ‘Is it a practical joke such as men play in those Griddlecake and Lamb Clubs? I’m afraid I don’t see the point. I heard, vaguely, that you were away. For three months I—we have not seen you or heard from you.’</p>
|
||||
@ -48,7 +48,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“Sir Percival kind of rattles his armour and says: ‘Helen, will you suspend sentence in this matter for just a little while? You don’t understand,’ says he. ‘I’ve got to hold this job down a little longer.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘You like being a harlequin—or halberdier, as you call it?’ says she.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘I wouldn’t get thrown out of the job just now,’ says he, with a grin, ‘to be appointed Minister to the Court of <abbr>St.</abbr> James’s.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“And then the 40-<abbr class="initialism">HP</abbr> girl’s eyes sparkled as hard as diamonds.</p>
|
||||
<p>“And then the 40 <abbr class="initialism">H.P.</abbr> girl’s eyes sparkled as hard as diamonds.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Very well,’ says she. ‘You shall have full run of your serving-man’s tastes this night.’ And she swims over to the boss’s desk and gives him a smile that knocks the specks off his nose.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘I think your Rindslosh,’ says she, ‘is as beautiful as a dream. It is a little slice of the Old World set down in New York. We shall have a nice supper up there; but if you will grant us one favour the illusion will be perfect—give us your halberdier to wait on our table.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“That hits the boss’s antiology hobby just right. ‘Sure,’ says he, ‘dot vill be fine. Und der orchestra shall blay “Die Wacht am Rhein” all der time.’ And he goes over and tells the halberdier to go upstairs and hustle the grub at the swells’ table.</p>
|
||||
|
@ -19,7 +19,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Exactly,’ says I. ‘Then why do the master minds of finance and philanthropy,’ says I, ‘charge us $2 to get into a racetrack and let us into a library free? Is that distilling into the masses,’ says I, ‘a correct estimate of the relative value of the two means of self-culture and disorder?’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘You are arguing outside of my faculties of sense and rhetoric,’ says Bill. ‘What I wanted you to do is to go to Washington and dig out this appointment for me. I haven’t no ideas of cultivation and intrigue. I’m a plain citizen and I need the job. I’ve killed seven men,’ says Bill; ‘I’ve got nine children; I’ve been a good Republican ever since the first of May; I can’t read nor write, and I see no reason why I ain’t illegible for the office. And I think your partner, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Tucker,’ goes on Bill, ‘is also a man of sufficient ingratiation and connected system of mental delinquency to assist you in securing the appointment. I will give you preliminary,’ says Bill, ‘$1,000 for drinks, bribes and carfare in Washington. If you land the job I will pay you $1,000 more, cash down, and guarantee you impunity in bootlegging whiskey for twelve months. Are you patriotic to the West enough to help me put this thing through the Whitewashed Wigwam of the Great Father of the most eastern flag station of the Pennsylvania Railroad?’ says Bill.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Well, I talked to Andy about it, and he liked the idea immense. Andy was a man of an involved nature. He was never content to plod along, as I was, selling to the peasantry some little tool like a combination steak beater, shoe horn, marcel waver, monkey wrench, nail file, potato masher and Multum in Parvo tuning fork. Andy had the artistic temper, which is not to be judged as a preacher’s or a moral man’s is by purely commercial deflections. So we accepted Bill’s offer, and strikes out for Washington.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Says I to Andy, when we get located at a hotel on South Dakota Avenue, <abbr class="initialism">GSSW</abbr> ‘Now Andy, for the first time in our lives we’ve got to do a real dishonest act. Lobbying is something we’ve never been used to; but we’ve got to scandalize ourselves for Bill Humble’s sake. In a straight and legitimate business,’ says I, ‘we could afford to introduce a little foul play and chicanery, but in a disorderly and heinous piece of malpractice like this it seems to me that the straightforward and aboveboard way is the best. I propose,’ says I, ‘that we hand over $500 of this money to the chairman of the national campaign committee, get a receipt, lay the receipt on the President’s desk and tell him about Bill. The President is a man who would appreciate a candidate who went about getting office that way instead of pulling wires.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“Says I to Andy, when we get located at a hotel on South Dakota Avenue, <abbr class="initialism">G.S.S.W.</abbr>, ‘Now Andy, for the first time in our lives we’ve got to do a real dishonest act. Lobbying is something we’ve never been used to; but we’ve got to scandalize ourselves for Bill Humble’s sake. In a straight and legitimate business,’ says I, ‘we could afford to introduce a little foul play and chicanery, but in a disorderly and heinous piece of malpractice like this it seems to me that the straightforward and aboveboard way is the best. I propose,’ says I, ‘that we hand over $500 of this money to the chairman of the national campaign committee, get a receipt, lay the receipt on the President’s desk and tell him about Bill. The President is a man who would appreciate a candidate who went about getting office that way instead of pulling wires.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“Andy agreed with me, but after we talked the scheme over with the hotel clerk we give that plan up. He told us that there was only one way to get an appointment in Washington, and that was through a lady lobbyist. He gave us the address of one he recommended, a <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Avery, who he said was high up in sociable and diplomatic rings and circles.</p>
|
||||
<p>“The next morning at 10 o’clock me and Andy called at her hotel, and was shown up to her reception room.</p>
|
||||
<p>“This <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Avery was a solace and a balm to the eyesight. She had hair the color of the back of a twenty dollar gold certificate, blue eyes and a system of beauty that would make the girl on the cover of a July magazine look like a cook on a Monongahela coal barge.</p>
|
||||
|
@ -108,7 +108,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Cash down now?’ I asks.</p>
|
||||
<p>“The captain has a sort of discussion with his helpmates, and they all produce the contents of their pockets for analysis. Out of the general results they figured up $102.30 in cash and $31 worth of plug tobacco.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Come nearer, capitán meeo,’ says I, ‘and listen.’ He so did.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘I am mighty poor and low down in the world,’ says I. ‘I am working for twelve dollars a month trying to keep a lot of animals together whose only thought seems to be to get asunder. Although,’ says I, ‘I regard myself as some better than the State of South Dakota, it’s a comedown to a man who has heretofore regarded sheep only in the form of chops. I’m pretty far reduced in the world on account of foiled ambitions and rum and a kind of cocktail they make along the <abbr class="initialism">PRR</abbr> all the way from Scranton to Cincinnati—dry gin, French vermouth, one squeeze of a lime, and a good dash of orange bitters. If you’re ever up that way, don’t fail to let one try you. And, again,’ says I, ‘I have never yet went back on a friend. I’ve stayed by ’em when they had plenty, and when adversity’s overtaken me I’ve never forsook ’em.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘I am mighty poor and low down in the world,’ says I. ‘I am working for twelve dollars a month trying to keep a lot of animals together whose only thought seems to be to get asunder. Although,’ says I, ‘I regard myself as some better than the State of South Dakota, it’s a comedown to a man who has heretofore regarded sheep only in the form of chops. I’m pretty far reduced in the world on account of foiled ambitions and rum and a kind of cocktail they make along the <abbr class="initialism">P.R.R.</abbr> all the way from Scranton to Cincinnati—dry gin, French vermouth, one squeeze of a lime, and a good dash of orange bitters. If you’re ever up that way, don’t fail to let one try you. And, again,’ says I, ‘I have never yet went back on a friend. I’ve stayed by ’em when they had plenty, and when adversity’s overtaken me I’ve never forsook ’em.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘But,’ I goes on, ‘this is not exactly the case of a friend. Twelve dollars a month is only bowing-acquaintance money. And I do not consider brown beans and cornbread the food of friendship. I am a poor man,’ says I, ‘and I have a widowed mother in Texarkana. You will find Black Bill,’ says I, ‘lying asleep in this house on a cot in the room to your right. He’s the man you want, as I know from his words and conversation. He was in a way a friend,’ I explains, ‘and if I was the man I once was the entire product of the mines of Gondola would not have tempted me to betray him. But,’ says I, ‘every week half of the beans was wormy, and not nigh enough wood in camp.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Better go in careful, gentlemen,’ says I. ‘He seems impatient at times, and when you think of his late professional pursuits one would look for abrupt actions if he was come upon sudden.’</p>
|
||||
<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>
|
||||
|
@ -10,7 +10,7 @@
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">The Marionettes</h2>
|
||||
<p>The policeman was standing at the corner of Twenty-fourth Street and a prodigiously dark alley near where the elevated railroad crosses the street. The time was two o’clock in the morning; the outlook a stretch of cold, drizzling, unsociable blackness until the dawn.</p>
|
||||
<p>A man, wearing a long overcoat, with his hat tilted down in front, and carrying something in one hand, walked softly but rapidly out of the black alley. The policeman accosted him civilly, but with the assured air that is linked with conscious authority. The hour, the alley’s musty reputation, the pedestrian’s haste, the burden he carried—these easily combined into the “suspicious circumstances” that required illumination at the officer’s hands.</p>
|
||||
<p>The “suspect” halted readily and tilted back his hat, exposing, in the flicker of the electric lights, an emotionless, smooth countenance with a rather long nose and steady dark eyes. Thrusting his gloved hand into a side pocket of his overcoat, he drew out a card and handed it to the policeman. Holding it to catch the uncertain light, the officer read the name “Charles Spencer James, <abbr class="initialism">MD</abbr>.” The street and number of the address were of a neighborhood so solid and respectable as to subdue even curiosity. The policeman’s downward glance at the article carried in the doctor’s hand—a handsome medicine case of black leather, with small silver mountings—further endorsed the guarantee of the card.</p>
|
||||
<p>The “suspect” halted readily and tilted back his hat, exposing, in the flicker of the electric lights, an emotionless, smooth countenance with a rather long nose and steady dark eyes. Thrusting his gloved hand into a side pocket of his overcoat, he drew out a card and handed it to the policeman. Holding it to catch the uncertain light, the officer read the name “Charles Spencer James, <abbr class="degree">MD</abbr>.” The street and number of the address were of a neighborhood so solid and respectable as to subdue even curiosity. The policeman’s downward glance at the article carried in the doctor’s hand—a handsome medicine case of black leather, with small silver mountings—further endorsed the guarantee of the card.</p>
|
||||
<p>“All right, doctor,” said the officer, stepping aside, with an air of bulky affability. “Orders are to be extra careful. Good many burglars and holdups lately. Bad night to be out. Not so cold, but—clammy.”</p>
|
||||
<p>With a formal inclination of his head, and a word or two corroborative of the officer’s estimate of the weather, Doctor James continued his somewhat rapid progress. Three times that night had a patrolman accepted his professional card and the sight of his paragon of a medicine case as vouchers for his honesty of person and purpose. Had any one of those officers seen fit, on the morrow, to test the evidence of that card he would have found it borne out by the doctor’s name on a handsome doorplate, his presence, calm and well dressed, in his well-equipped office—provided it were not too early, Doctor James being a late riser—and the testimony of the neighborhood to his good citizenship, his devotion to his family, and his success as a practitioner the two years he had lived among them.</p>
|
||||
<p>Therefore, it would have much surprised any one of those zealous guardians of the peace could they have taken a peep into that immaculate medicine case. Upon opening it, the first article to be seen would have been an elegant set of the latest conceived tools used by the “box man,” as the ingenious safe burglar now denominates himself. Specially designed and constructed were the implements—the short but powerful “jimmy,” the collection of curiously fashioned keys, the blued drills and punches of the finest temper—capable of eating their way into chilled steel as a mouse eats into a cheese, and the clamps that fasten like a leech to the polished door of a safe and pull out the combination knob as a dentist extracts a tooth. In a little pouch in the inner side of the “medicine” case was a four-ounce vial of nitroglycerine, now half empty. Underneath the tools was a mass of crumpled banknotes and a few handfuls of gold coin, the money, altogether, amounting to eight hundred and thirty dollars.</p>
|
||||
|
@ -35,7 +35,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“Poor old Bill was hungry,” interrupted Givens, in quick defence of the deceased. “We always made him jump for his supper in camp. He would lie down and roll over for a piece of meat. When he saw you he thought he was going to get something to eat from you.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Suddenly Josefa’s eyes opened wide.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I might have shot you!” she exclaimed. “You ran right in between. You risked your life to save your pet! That was fine, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Givens. I like a man who is kind to animals.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Yes; there was even admiration in her gaze now. After all, there was a hero rising out of the ruins of the anticlimax. The look on Givens’s face would have secured him a high position in the <abbr class="initialism eoc">SPCA</abbr>.</p>
|
||||
<p>Yes; there was even admiration in her gaze now. After all, there was a hero rising out of the ruins of the anticlimax. The look on Givens’s face would have secured him a high position in the <abbr class="initialism eoc">S.P.C.A.</abbr></p>
|
||||
<p>“I always loved ’em,” said he; “horses, dogs, Mexican lions, cows, alligators—”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I hate alligators,” instantly demurred Josefa; “crawly, muddy things!”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Did I say alligators?” said Givens. “I meant antelopes, of course.”</p>
|
||||
|
@ -33,7 +33,7 @@
|
||||
<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 epub:type="se:name.publication.magazine">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 <abbr class="initialism">FFV</abbr> 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 <abbr class="initialism">F.F.V.</abbr> 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 waterworks plant in Milledgeville?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“The name, sir,” said Colonel Telfair, “is the <span xml:lang="fr">nom de guerre</span> 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>
|
||||
|
@ -46,11 +46,11 @@
|
||||
<p>“Mee-ser-rhable!” commented Etienne, and took another three fingers.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Complete, cast-iron, pussyfooted, blank … blank!” said Ross, and followed suit.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Rotten,” said I.</p>
|
||||
<p>The cook said nothing. He stood in the door weighing our outburst; and insistently from behind that frozen visage I got two messages (via the <abbr class="initialism">MAM</abbr> wireless). One was that George considered our vituperation against the snow childish; the other was that George did not love Dagoes. Inasmuch as Etienne was a Frenchman, I concluded I had the message wrong. So I queried the other: “Bright eyes, you don’t really mean Dagoes, do you?” and over the wireless came three deathly, psychic taps: “Yes.” Then I reflected that to George all foreigners were probably “Dagoes.” I had once known another camp cook who had thought Mons., Sig., and Millie (Trans-Mississippi for <abbr>Mlle.</abbr>) were Italian given names; this cook used to marvel therefore at the paucity of Neo-Roman precognomens, and therefore why not—</p>
|
||||
<p>The cook said nothing. He stood in the door weighing our outburst; and insistently from behind that frozen visage I got two messages (via the <abbr class="initialism">M.A.M.</abbr> wireless). One was that George considered our vituperation against the snow childish; the other was that George did not love Dagoes. Inasmuch as Etienne was a Frenchman, I concluded I had the message wrong. So I queried the other: “Bright eyes, you don’t really mean Dagoes, do you?” and over the wireless came three deathly, psychic taps: “Yes.” Then I reflected that to George all foreigners were probably “Dagoes.” I had once known another camp cook who had thought Mons., Sig., and Millie (Trans-Mississippi for <abbr>Mlle.</abbr>) were Italian given names; this cook used to marvel therefore at the paucity of Neo-Roman precognomens, and therefore why not—</p>
|
||||
<p>I have said that snow is a test of men. For one day, two days, Etienne stood at the window, Fletcherizing his finger nails and shrieking and moaning at the monotony. To me, Etienne was just about as unbearable as the snow; and so, seeking relief, I went out on the second day to look at my horse, slipped on a stone, broke my collarbone, and thereafter underwent not the snow test, but the test of flat-on-the-back. A test that comes once too often for any man to stand.</p>
|
||||
<p>However, I bore up cheerfully. I was now merely a spectator, and from my couch in the big room I could lie and watch the human interplay with that detached, impassive, impersonal feeling which French writers tell us is so valuable to the litterateur, and American writers to the faro-dealer.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I shall go crazy in this abominable, mee-ser-rhable place!” was Etienne’s constant prediction.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Never knew Mark Twain to bore me before,” said Ross, over and over. He sat by the other window, hour after hour, a box of Pittsburg stogies of the length, strength, and odor of a Pittsburg graft scandal deposited on one side of him, and <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Roughing It</i>, <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">The Jumping Frog</i>, and <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Life on the Mississippi</i> on the other. For every chapter he lit a new stogy, puffing furiously. This in time gave him a recurrent premonition of cramps, gastritis, smoker’s colic or whatever it is they have in Pittsburg after a too deep indulgence in graft scandals. To fend off the colic, Ross resorted time and again to Old Doctor Still’s Amber-Colored <abbr class="initialism">USA</abbr> Colic Cure. Result, after forty-eight hours—nerves.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Never knew Mark Twain to bore me before,” said Ross, over and over. He sat by the other window, hour after hour, a box of Pittsburg stogies of the length, strength, and odor of a Pittsburg graft scandal deposited on one side of him, and <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Roughing It</i>, <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">The Jumping Frog</i>, and <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Life on the Mississippi</i> on the other. For every chapter he lit a new stogy, puffing furiously. This in time gave him a recurrent premonition of cramps, gastritis, smoker’s colic or whatever it is they have in Pittsburg after a too deep indulgence in graft scandals. To fend off the colic, Ross resorted time and again to Old Doctor Still’s Amber-Colored <abbr class="initialism">U.S.A.</abbr> Colic Cure. Result, after forty-eight hours—nerves.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Positive fact I never knew Mark Twain to make me tired before. Positive fact.” Ross slammed <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Roughing It</i> on the floor. “When you’re snowbound this-away you want tragedy, I guess. Humor just seems to bring out all your cussedness. You read a man’s poor, pitiful attempts to be funny and it makes you so nervous you want to tear the book up, get out your bandana, and have a good, long cry.”</p>
|
||||
<p>At the other end of the room, the Frenchman took his finger nails out of his mouth long enough to exclaim: “Humor! Humor at such a time as thees! My God, I shall go crazy in thees abominable—”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Supper,” announced George.</p>
|
||||
|
@ -18,7 +18,7 @@
|
||||
<p>The story of Hetty’s discharge from the Biggest Store is so nearly a repetition of her engagement as to be monotonous.</p>
|
||||
<p>In each department of the store there is an omniscient, omnipresent, and omnivorous person carrying always a mileage book and a red necktie, and referred to as a “buyer.” The destinies of the girls in his department who live on (see Bureau of Victual Statistics)—so much per week are in his hands.</p>
|
||||
<p>This particular buyer was a capable, cool-eyed, impersonal, young, bald-headed man. As he walked along the aisles of his department he seemed to be sailing on a sea of frangipanni, while white clouds, machine-embroidered, floated around him. Too many sweets bring surfeit. He looked upon Hetty Pepper’s homely countenance, emerald eyes, and chocolate-colored hair as a welcome oasis of green in a desert of cloying beauty. In a quiet angle of a counter he pinched her arm kindly, three inches above the elbow. She slapped him three feet away with one good blow of her muscular and not especially lily-white right. So, now you know why Hetty Pepper came to leave the Biggest Store at thirty minutes’ notice, with one dime and a nickel in her purse.</p>
|
||||
<p>This morning’s quotations list the price of rib beef at six cents per (butcher’s) pound. But on the day that Hetty was “released” by the <abbr class="initialism">BS</abbr> the price was seven and one-half cents. That fact is what makes this story possible. Otherwise, the extra four cents would have—</p>
|
||||
<p>This morning’s quotations list the price of rib beef at six cents per (butcher’s) pound. But on the day that Hetty was “released” by the <abbr class="initialism">B.S.</abbr> the price was seven and one-half cents. That fact is what makes this story possible. Otherwise, the extra four cents would have—</p>
|
||||
<p>But the plot of nearly all the good stories in the world is concerned with shorts who were unable to cover; so you can find no fault with this one.</p>
|
||||
<p>Hetty mounted with her rib beef to her $3.50 third-floor back. One hot, savory beef-stew for supper, a night’s good sleep, and she would be fit in the morning to apply again for the tasks of Hercules, Joan of Arc, Una, Job, and Little-Red-Riding-Hood.</p>
|
||||
<p>In her room she got the graniteware stewpan out of the 2×4-foot china—er—I mean earthenware closet, and began to dig down in a rat’s-nest of paper bags for the potatoes and onions. She came out with her nose and chin just a little sharper pointed.</p>
|
||||
@ -39,7 +39,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“Then we’ll have to cut the onion out instead of slicing it in,” said Hetty. “I’d ask the janitress for one, but I don’t want ’em hep just yet to the fact that I’m pounding the asphalt for another job. But I wish we did have an onion.”</p>
|
||||
<p>In the shop-girl’s room the two began to prepare their supper. Cecilia’s part was to sit on the couch helplessly and beg to be allowed to do something, in the voice of a cooing ringdove. Hetty prepared the rib beef, putting it in cold salted water in the stewpan and setting it on the one-burner gas-stove.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I wish we had an onion,” said Hetty, as she scraped the two potatoes.</p>
|
||||
<p>On the wall opposite the couch was pinned a flaming, gorgeous advertising picture of one of the new ferryboats of the <abbr class="initialism">PUFF</abbr> Railroad that had been built to cut down the time between Los Angeles and New York City one-eighth of a minute.</p>
|
||||
<p>On the wall opposite the couch was pinned a flaming, gorgeous advertising picture of one of the new ferryboats of the <abbr class="acronym">PUFF</abbr> Railroad that had been built to cut down the time between Los Angeles and New York City one-eighth of a minute.</p>
|
||||
<p>Hetty, turning her head during her continuous monologue, saw tears running from her guest’s eyes as she gazed on the idealized presentment of the speeding, foam-girdled transport.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Why, say, Cecilia, kid,” said Hetty, poising her knife, “is it as bad art as that? I ain’t a critic; but I thought it kind of brightened up the room. Of course, a manicure-painter could tell it was a bum picture in a minute. I’ll take it down if you say so. I wish to the holy Saint Potluck we had an onion.”</p>
|
||||
<p>But the miniature miniature-painter had tumbled down, sobbing, with her nose indenting the hard-woven drapery of the couch. Something was here deeper than the artistic temperament offended at crude lithography.</p>
|
||||
|
@ -46,7 +46,7 @@
|
||||
<p>The other girls soon became aware of Nancy’s ambition. “Here comes your millionaire, Nancy,” they would call to her whenever any man who looked the role approached her counter. It got to be a habit of men, who were hanging about while their womenfolk were shopping, to stroll over to the handkerchief counter and dawdle over the cambric squares. Nancy’s imitation high-bred air and genuine dainty beauty was what attracted. Many men thus came to display their graces before her. Some of them may have been millionaires; others were certainly no more than their sedulous apes. Nancy learned to discriminate. There was a window at the end of the handkerchief counter; and she could see the rows of vehicles waiting for the shoppers in the street below. She looked and perceived that automobiles differ as well as do their owners.</p>
|
||||
<p>Once a fascinating gentleman bought four dozen handkerchiefs, and wooed her across the counter with a King Cophetua air. When he had gone one of the girls said:</p>
|
||||
<p>“What’s wrong, Nance, that you didn’t warm up to that fellow. He looks the swell article, all right, to me.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Him?” said Nancy, with her coolest, sweetest, most impersonal, Van Alstyne Fisher smile; “not for mine. I saw him drive up outside. A 12 <abbr class="initialism">HP</abbr> machine and an Irish chauffeur! And you saw what kind of handkerchiefs he bought—silk! And he’s got dactylis on him. Give me the real thing or nothing, if you please.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Him?” said Nancy, with her coolest, sweetest, most impersonal, Van Alstyne Fisher smile; “not for mine. I saw him drive up outside. A 12 <abbr class="initialism">H.P.</abbr> machine and an Irish chauffeur! And you saw what kind of handkerchiefs he bought—silk! And he’s got dactylis on him. Give me the real thing or nothing, if you please.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Two of the most “refined” women in the store—a forelady and a cashier—had a few “swell gentlemen friends” with whom they now and then dined. Once they included Nancy in an invitation. The dinner took place in a spectacular café whose tables are engaged for New Year’s Eve a year in advance. There were two “gentlemen friends”—one without any hair on his head—high living ungrew it; and we can prove it—the other a young man whose worth and sophistication he impressed upon you in two convincing ways—he swore that all the wine was corked; and he wore diamond cuff buttons. This young man perceived irresistible excellencies in Nancy. His taste ran to shop-girls; and here was one that added the voice and manners of his high social world to the franker charms of her own caste. So, on the following day, he appeared in the store and made her a serious proposal of marriage over a box of hemstitched, grass-bleached Irish linens. Nancy declined. A brown pompadour ten feet away had been using her eyes and ears. When the rejected suitor had gone she heaped carboys of upbraidings and horror upon Nancy’s head.</p>
|
||||
<p>“What a terrible little fool you are! That fellow’s a millionaire—he’s a nephew of old Van Skittles himself. And he was talking on the level, too. Have you gone crazy, Nance?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Have I?” said Nancy. “I didn’t take him, did I? He isn’t a millionaire so hard that you could notice it, anyhow. His family only allows him $20,000 a year to spend. The bald-headed fellow was guying him about it the other night at supper.”</p>
|
||||
|
@ -28,7 +28,7 @@
|
||||
<p>A second result was that <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Kinsolving quit the game with $2,000,000 prof—er—rake-off.</p>
|
||||
<p><abbr>Mr.</abbr> Kinsolving’s son Dan was at college when the mathematical experiment in breadstuffs was made. Dan came home during vacation, and found the old gentleman in a red dressing-gown reading “Little Dorrit” on the porch of his estimable red brick mansion in Washington Square. He had retired from business with enough extra two-cent pieces from bread buyers to reach, if laid side by side, fifteen times around the earth and lap as far as the public debt of Paraguay.</p>
|
||||
<p>Dan shook hands with his father, and hurried over to Greenwich Village to see his old high-school friend, Kenwitz. Dan had always admired Kenwitz. Kenwitz was pale, curly-haired, intense, serious, mathematical, studious, altruistic, socialistic, and the natural foe of oligarchies. Kenwitz had foregone college, and was learning watch-making in his father’s jewelry store. Dan was smiling, jovial, easy-tempered and tolerant alike of kings and ragpickers. The two foregathered joyously, being opposites. And then Dan went back to college, and Kenwitz to his mainsprings—and to his private library in the rear of the jewelry shop.</p>
|
||||
<p>Four years later Dan came back to Washington Square with the accumulations of <abbr class="initialism">BA</abbr> and two years of Europe thick upon him. He took a filial look at Septimus Kinsolving’s elaborate tombstone in Greenwood and a tedious excursion through typewritten documents with the family lawyer; and then, feeling himself a lonely and hopeless millionaire, hurried down to the old jewelry store across Sixth Avenue.</p>
|
||||
<p>Four years later Dan came back to Washington Square with the accumulations of <abbr class="degree">BA</abbr> and two years of Europe thick upon him. He took a filial look at Septimus Kinsolving’s elaborate tombstone in Greenwood and a tedious excursion through typewritten documents with the family lawyer; and then, feeling himself a lonely and hopeless millionaire, hurried down to the old jewelry store across Sixth Avenue.</p>
|
||||
<p>Kenwitz unscrewed a magnifying glass from his eye, routed out his parent from a dingy rear room, and abandoned the interior of watches for outdoors. He went with Dan, and they sat on a bench in Washington Square. Dan had not changed much; he was stalwart, and had a dignity that was inclined to relax into a grin. Kenwitz was more serious, more intense, more learned, philosophical and socialistic.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I know about it now,” said Dan, finally. “I pumped it out of the eminent legal lights that turned over to me poor old dad’s collections of bonds and boodle. It amounts to $2,000,000, Ken. And I am told that he squeezed it out of the chaps that pay their pennies for loaves of bread at little bakeries around the corner. You’ve studied economics, Dan, and you know all about monopolies, and the masses, and octopuses, and the rights of laboring people. I never thought about those things before. Football and trying to be white to my fellow-man were about the extent of my college curriculum.</p>
|
||||
<p>“But since I came back and found out how dad made his money I’ve been thinking. I’d like awfully well to pay back those chaps who had to give up too much money for bread. I know it would buck the line of my income for a good many yards; but I’d like to make it square with ’em. Is there anyway it can be done, old Ways and Means?”</p>
|
||||
|
@ -15,7 +15,7 @@
|
||||
<p>Number four of my history-makers will simply construe from the premises the story that while an audience of two thousand enthusiasts was listening to a Rubinstein concert on Sixth Street, a woman who said she was <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Andrew <abbr class="name">M.</abbr> Carter threw a brick through a plate-glass window valued at five hundred dollars. The Carter woman claimed that someone in the building had stolen her dog.</p>
|
||||
<p>Now, the discrepancies in these registrations of the day’s doings need do no one hurt. Surely, one newspaper is enough for any man to prop against his morning water-bottle to fend off the smiling hatred of his wife’s glance. If he be foolish enough to read four he is no wiser than a Higher Critic.</p>
|
||||
<p>I remember (probably as well as you do) having read the parable of the talents. A prominent citizen, about to journey into a far country, first hands over to his servants his goods. To one he gives five talents; to another two; to another one—to every man according to his several ability, as the text has it. There are two versions of this parable, as you well know. There may be more—I do not know.</p>
|
||||
<p>When the <abbr class="initialism">PC</abbr> returns he requires an accounting. Two servants have put their talents out at usury and gained one hundred percent. Good. The unprofitable one simply digs up the talent deposited with him and hands it out on demand. A pattern of behavior for trust companies and banks, surely! In one version we read that he had wrapped it in a napkin and laid it away. But the commentator informs us that the talent mentioned was composed of 750 ounces of silver—about $900 worth. So the chronicler who mentioned the napkin, had either to reduce the amount of the deposit or do a lot of explaining about the size of the napery used in those davs. Therefore in his version we note that he uses the word “pound” instead of “talent.”</p>
|
||||
<p>When the <abbr class="initialism">P.C.</abbr> returns he requires an accounting. Two servants have put their talents out at usury and gained one hundred percent. Good. The unprofitable one simply digs up the talent deposited with him and hands it out on demand. A pattern of behavior for trust companies and banks, surely! In one version we read that he had wrapped it in a napkin and laid it away. But the commentator informs us that the talent mentioned was composed of 750 ounces of silver—about $900 worth. So the chronicler who mentioned the napkin, had either to reduce the amount of the deposit or do a lot of explaining about the size of the napery used in those davs. Therefore in his version we note that he uses the word “pound” instead of “talent.”</p>
|
||||
<p>A pound of silver may very well be laid away—and carried away—in a napkin, as any hotel or restaurant man will tell you.</p>
|
||||
<p>But let us get away from our mutton.</p>
|
||||
<p>When the returned nobleman finds that the one-talented servant has nothing to hand over except the original fund entrusted to him, he is as angry as a multi-millionaire would be if someone should hide under his bed and make a noise like an assessment. He orders the unprofitable servant cast into outer darkness, after first taking away his talent and giving it to the one-hundred-percent financier, and breathing strange saws, saying: “From him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.” Which is the same as to say: “Nothing from nothing leaves nothing.”</p>
|
||||
|
@ -15,7 +15,7 @@
|
||||
<hr/>
|
||||
<p>“Did you ever hear that story about the man from the West?” asked Billinger, in the little dark-oak room to your left as you penetrate the interior of the Powhatan Club.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Doubtless,” said John Reginald Forster, rising and leaving the room.</p>
|
||||
<p>Forster got his straw hat (straws will be in and maybe out again long before this is printed) from the checkroom boy, and walked out of the air (as Hamlet says). Billinger was used to having his stories insulted and would not mind. Forster was in his favorite mood and wanted to go away from anywhere. A man, in order to get on good terms with himself, must have his opinions corroborated and his moods matched by someone else. (I had written that “somebody”; but an <abbr class="initialism">ADT</abbr> boy who once took a telegram for me pointed out that I could save money by using the compound word. This is a vice versa case.)</p>
|
||||
<p>Forster got his straw hat (straws will be in and maybe out again long before this is printed) from the checkroom boy, and walked out of the air (as Hamlet says). Billinger was used to having his stories insulted and would not mind. Forster was in his favorite mood and wanted to go away from anywhere. A man, in order to get on good terms with himself, must have his opinions corroborated and his moods matched by someone else. (I had written that “somebody”; but an <abbr class="initialism">A.D.T.</abbr> boy who once took a telegram for me pointed out that I could save money by using the compound word. This is a vice versa case.)</p>
|
||||
<p>Forster’s favorite mood was that of greatly desiring to be a follower of Chance. He was a Venturer by nature, but convention, birth, tradition and the narrowing influences of the tribe of Manhattan had denied him full privilege. He had trodden all the main-traveled thoroughfares and many of the side roads that are supposed to relieve the tedium of life. But none had sufficed. The reason was that he knew what was to be found at the end of every street. He knew from experience and logic almost precisely to what end each digression from routine must lead. He found a depressing monotony in all the variations that the music of his sphere had grafted upon the tune of life. He had not learned that, although the world was made round, the circle has been squared, and that it’s true interest is to be in “What’s Around the Corner.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Forster walked abroad aimlessly from the Powhatan, trying not to tax either his judgment or his desire as to what streets he traveled. He would have been glad to lose his way if it were possible; but he had no hope of that. Adventure and Fortune move at your beck and call in the Greater City; but Chance is oriental. She is a veiled lady in a sedan chair, protected by a special traffic squad of dragonians. Crosstown, uptown, and downtown you may move without seeing her.</p>
|
||||
<p>At the end of an hour’s stroll, Forster stood on a corner of a broad, smooth avenue, looking disconsolately across it at a picturesque old hotel softly but brilliantly lit. Disconsolately, because he knew that he must dine; and dining in that hotel was no venture. It was one of his favorite caravansaries, and so silent and swift would be the service and so delicately choice the food, that he regretted the hunger that must be appeased by the “dead perfection” of the place’s cuisine. Even the music there seemed to be always playing da capo.</p>
|
||||
|
@ -12,10 +12,10 @@
|
||||
<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 Canyons of the Moneygrubber Tribe. Then you turn to the left, to the right, dodge a pushcart 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 & 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 & 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 sugarcoated 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 <abbr>Mr.</abbr> <abbr class="name">F.</abbr> 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 epub:type="se:name.vessel.ship">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 <abbr class="initialism">FFV</abbr>. John became distinguished for piety and shrewdness in business; Blandford for his pride, juleps; marksmanship, and vast slave-cultivated plantations.</p>
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<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 epub:type="se:name.vessel.ship">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 <abbr class="initialism eoc">F.F.V.</abbr> John became distinguished for piety and shrewdness in business; Blandford for his pride, juleps; marksmanship, and vast slave-cultivated plantations.</p>
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<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 secondhand 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 up on my Aristotle.</p>
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<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>
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<p>During and after the war, Blandford Carteret, <abbr class="initialism">FFV</abbr>, 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>
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<p>During and after the war, Blandford Carteret, <abbr class="initialism">F.F.V.</abbr>, 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>
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<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>
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<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>
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<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>
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@ -55,7 +55,7 @@
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<p>“Come, come!” said the burglar, sternly. “It’s not nice of you to take advantage because the story contains an ambiguous sentence. You know what I mean. It’s mighty little I get out of these fictional jobs, anyhow. I lose all the loot, and I have to reform every time; and all the swag I’m allowed is the blamed little fol-de-rols and luck-pieces that you kids hand over. Why, in one story, all I got was a kiss from a little girl who came in on me when I was opening a safe. And it tasted of molasses candy, too. I’ve a good notion to tie this table cover over your head and keep on into the silver-closet.”</p>
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<p>“Oh, no, you haven’t,” said Tommy, wrapping his arms around his knees. “Because if you did no editor would buy the story. You know you’ve got to preserve the unities.”</p>
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<p>“So’ve you,” said the burglar, rather glumly. “Instead of sitting here talking impudence and taking the bread out of a poor man’s mouth, what you’d like to be doing is hiding under the bed and screeching at the top of your voice.”</p>
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<p>“You’re right, old man,” said Tommy, heartily. “I wonder what they make us do it for? I think the <abbr class="initialism">SPCC</abbr> ought to interfere. I’m sure it’s neither agreeable nor usual for a kid of my age to butt in when a full-grown burglar is at work and offer him a red sled and a pair of skates not to awaken his sick mother. And look how they make the burglars act! You’d think editors would know—but what’s the use?”</p>
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<p>“You’re right, old man,” said Tommy, heartily. “I wonder what they make us do it for? I think the <abbr class="initialism">S.P.C.C.</abbr> ought to interfere. I’m sure it’s neither agreeable nor usual for a kid of my age to butt in when a full-grown burglar is at work and offer him a red sled and a pair of skates not to awaken his sick mother. And look how they make the burglars act! You’d think editors would know—but what’s the use?”</p>
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<p>The burglar wiped his hands on the tablecloth and arose with a yawn.</p>
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<p>“Well, let’s get through with it,” he said. “God bless you, my little boy! you have saved a man from committing a crime this night. Bessie shall pray for you as soon as I get home and give her her orders. I shall never burglarize another house—at least not until the June magazines are out. It’ll be your little sister’s turn then to run in on me while I am abstracting the <abbr class="initialism">U.S.</abbr> 4 percent from the tea urn and buy me off with her coral necklace and a falsetto kiss.”</p>
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<p>“You haven’t got all the kicks coming to you,” sighed Tommy, crawling out of his chair. “Think of the sleep I’m losing. But it’s tough on both of us, old man. I wish you could get out of the story and really rob somebody. Maybe you’ll have the chance if they dramatize us.”</p>
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