From f233943b933d595b52a2b43be80ffa84c71bd570 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: vr8ce Date: Sat, 16 Nov 2019 15:54:16 -0600 Subject: [PATCH] Add nbsp on either side of ampersands --- src/epub/text/a-call-loan.xhtml | 2 +- src/epub/text/after-twenty-years.xhtml | 2 +- src/epub/text/an-afternoon-miracle.xhtml | 2 +- src/epub/text/dicky.xhtml | 2 +- src/epub/text/holding-up-a-train.xhtml | 2 +- src/epub/text/law-and-order.xhtml | 2 +- src/epub/text/rus-in-urbe.xhtml | 12 ++++++------ src/epub/text/seats-of-the-haughty.xhtml | 6 +++--- src/epub/text/the-hiding-of-black-bill.xhtml | 2 +- src/epub/text/the-higher-abdication.xhtml | 2 +- src/epub/text/the-moment-of-victory.xhtml | 4 ++-- src/epub/text/the-rose-of-dixie.xhtml | 4 ++-- src/epub/text/the-unprofitable-servant.xhtml | 2 +- src/epub/text/thimble-thimble.xhtml | 4 ++-- 14 files changed, 24 insertions(+), 24 deletions(-) diff --git a/src/epub/text/a-call-loan.xhtml b/src/epub/text/a-call-loan.xhtml index 9977902..8175c43 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/a-call-loan.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/a-call-loan.xhtml @@ -33,7 +33,7 @@

“Well, I suppose it means be jumped on with both of Uncle Sam’s feet.”

“I’ll try to raise the money for you on time,” said Merwin, interested in his plaiting.

“All right, Tom,” concluded Longley, as he turned toward the door; “I knew you would if you could.”

-

Merwin threw down his whip and went to the only other bank in town, a private one, run by Cooper & Craig.

+

Merwin threw down his whip and went to the only other bank in town, a private one, run by Cooper & Craig.

“Cooper,” he said, to the partner by that name, “I’ve got to have $10,000 today or tomorrow. I’ve got a house and lot there that’s worth about $6,000 and that’s all the actual collateral. But I’ve got a cattle deal on that’s sure to bring me in more than that much profit within a few days.”

Cooper began to cough.

“Now, for God’s sake don’t say no,” said Merwin. “I owe that much money on a call loan. It’s been called, and the man that called it is a man I’ve laid on the same blanket with in cow-camps and ranger-camps for ten years. He can call anything I’ve got. He can call the blood out of my veins and it’ll come. He’s got to have the money. He’s in a devil of a⁠—Well, he needs the money, and I’ve got to get it for him. You know my word’s good, Cooper.”

diff --git a/src/epub/text/after-twenty-years.xhtml b/src/epub/text/after-twenty-years.xhtml index 27ae829..63149fd 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/after-twenty-years.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/after-twenty-years.xhtml @@ -41,7 +41,7 @@

“It sometimes changes a good man into a bad one,” said the tall man. “You’ve been under arrest for ten minutes, ‘Silky’ Bob. Chicago thinks you may have dropped over our way and wires us she wants to have a chat with you. Going quietly, are you? That’s sensible. Now, before we go on to the station here’s a note I was asked to hand you. You may read it here at the window. It’s from Patrolman Wells.”

The man from the West unfolded the little piece of paper handed him. His hand was steady when he began to read, but it trembled a little by the time he had finished. The note was rather short.

-

Bob: I was at the appointed place on time. When you struck the match to light your cigar I saw it was the face of the man wanted in Chicago. Somehow I couldn’t do it myself, so I went around and got a plain clothes man to do the job. Jimmy.

+

Bob: I was at the appointed place on time. When you struck the match to light your cigar I saw it was the face of the man wanted in Chicago. Somehow I couldn’t do it myself, so I went around and got a plain clothes man to do the job. Jimmy.

diff --git a/src/epub/text/an-afternoon-miracle.xhtml b/src/epub/text/an-afternoon-miracle.xhtml index f4a55b9..d262969 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/an-afternoon-miracle.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/an-afternoon-miracle.xhtml @@ -39,7 +39,7 @@

The Mexican had left behind him a wake of closed doors and an empty street, but now people were beginning to emerge from their places of refuge with assumed unconsciousness of anything having happened. Many citizens who knew the ranger pointed out to him with alacrity the course of Garcia’s retreat.

As Buckley swung along upon the trail he felt the beginning of the suffocating constriction about his throat, the cold sweat under the brim of his hat, the old, shameful, dreaded sinking of his heart as it went down, down, down in his bosom.

-

The morning train of the Mexican Central had that day been three hours late, thus failing to connect with the I. & G. N. on the other side of the river. Passengers for Los Estados Unidos grumblingly sought entertainment in the little swaggering mongrel town of two nations, for, until the morrow, no other train would come to rescue them. Grumblingly, because two days later would begin the great fair and races in San Antone. Consider that at that time San Antone was the hub of the wheel of Fortune, and the names of its spokes were Cattle, Wool, Faro, Running Horses, and Ozone. In those times cattlemen played at crack-loo on the sidewalks with double-eagles, and gentlemen backed their conception of the fortuitous card with stacks limited in height only by the interference of gravity. Wherefore, thither journeyed the sowers and the reapers⁠—they who stampeded the dollars, and they who rounded them up. Especially did the caterers to the amusement of the people haste to San Antone. Two greatest shows on earth were already there, and dozens of smallest ones were on the way.

+

The morning train of the Mexican Central had that day been three hours late, thus failing to connect with the I. & G. N. on the other side of the river. Passengers for Los Estados Unidos grumblingly sought entertainment in the little swaggering mongrel town of two nations, for, until the morrow, no other train would come to rescue them. Grumblingly, because two days later would begin the great fair and races in San Antone. Consider that at that time San Antone was the hub of the wheel of Fortune, and the names of its spokes were Cattle, Wool, Faro, Running Horses, and Ozone. In those times cattlemen played at crack-loo on the sidewalks with double-eagles, and gentlemen backed their conception of the fortuitous card with stacks limited in height only by the interference of gravity. Wherefore, thither journeyed the sowers and the reapers⁠—they who stampeded the dollars, and they who rounded them up. Especially did the caterers to the amusement of the people haste to San Antone. Two greatest shows on earth were already there, and dozens of smallest ones were on the way.

On a side track near the mean little ’dobe depot stood a private car, left there by the Mexican train that morning and doomed by an ineffectual schedule to ignobly await, amid squalid surroundings, connection with the next day’s regular.

The car had been once a common day-coach, but those who had sat in it and gringed to the conductor’s hatband slips would never have recognised it in its transformation. Paint and gilding and certain domestic touches had liberated it from any suspicion of public servitude. The whitest of lace curtains judiciously screened its windows. From its fore end drooped in the torrid air the flag of Mexico. From its rear projected the Stars and Stripes and a busy stovepipe, the latter reinforcing in its suggestion of culinary comforts the general suggestion of privacy and ease. The beholder’s eye, regarding its gorgeous sides, found interest to culminate in a single name in gold and blue letters extending almost its entire length⁠—a single name, the audacious privilege of royalty and genius. Doubly, then, was this arrogant nomenclature here justified; for the name was that of “Alvarita, Queen of the Serpent Tribe.” This, her car, was back from a triumphant tour of the principal Mexican cities, and now headed for San Antonio, where, according to promissory advertisement, she would exhibit her “Marvellous Dominion and Fearless Control over Deadly and Venomous Serpents, Handling them with Ease as they Coil and Hiss to the Terror of Thousands of Tongue-tied Tremblers!”

One hundred in the shade kept the vicinity somewhat depeopled. This quarter of the town was a ragged edge; its denizens the bubbling froth of five nations; its architecture tent, jacal, and ‘dobe; its distractions the hurdy-gurdy and the informal contribution to the sudden stranger’s store of experience. Beyond this dishonourable fringe upon the old town’s jowl rose a dense mass of trees, surmounting and filling a little hollow. Through this bickered a small stream that perished down the sheer and disconcerting side of the great canon of the Rio Bravo del Norte.

diff --git a/src/epub/text/dicky.xhtml b/src/epub/text/dicky.xhtml index 41e3726..eebc490 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/dicky.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/dicky.xhtml @@ -10,7 +10,7 @@

Dicky

There is little consecutiveness along the Spanish Main. Things happen there intermittently. Even Time seems to hang his scythe daily on the branch of an orange tree while he takes a siesta and a cigarette.

After the ineffectual revolt against the administration of President Losada, the country settled again into quiet toleration of the abuses with which he had been charged. In Coralio old political enemies went arm-in-arm, lightly eschewing for the time all differences of opinion.

-

The failure of the art expedition did not stretch the cat-footed Keogh upon his back. The ups and downs of Fortune made smooth travelling for his nimble steps. His blue pencil stub was at work again before the smoke of the steamer on which White sailed had cleared away from the horizon. He had but to speak a word to Geddie to find his credit negotiable for whatever goods he wanted from the store of Brannigan & Company. On the same day on which White arrived in New York Keogh, at the rear of a train of five pack mules loaded with hardware and cutlery, set his face toward the grim, interior mountains. There the Indian tribes wash gold dust from the auriferous streams; and when a market is brought to them trading is brisk and muy bueno in the Cordilleras.

+

The failure of the art expedition did not stretch the cat-footed Keogh upon his back. The ups and downs of Fortune made smooth travelling for his nimble steps. His blue pencil stub was at work again before the smoke of the steamer on which White sailed had cleared away from the horizon. He had but to speak a word to Geddie to find his credit negotiable for whatever goods he wanted from the store of Brannigan & Company. On the same day on which White arrived in New York Keogh, at the rear of a train of five pack mules loaded with hardware and cutlery, set his face toward the grim, interior mountains. There the Indian tribes wash gold dust from the auriferous streams; and when a market is brought to them trading is brisk and muy bueno in the Cordilleras.

In Coralio Time folded his wings and paced wearily along his drowsy path. They who had most cheered the torpid hours were gone. Clancy had sailed on a Spanish barque for Colon, contemplating a cut across the isthmus and then a further voyage to end at Calao, where the fighting was said to be on. Geddie, whose quiet and genial nature had once served to mitigate the frequent dull reaction of lotus eating, was now a home-man, happy with his bright orchid, Paula, and never even dreaming of or regretting the unsolved, sealed and monogramed Bottle whose contents, now inconsiderable, were held safely in the keeping of the sea.

Well may the Walrus, most discerning and eclectic of beasts, place sealing-wax midway on his programme of topics that fall pertinent and diverting upon the ear.

Atwood was gone⁠—he of the hospitable back porch and ingenuous cunning. Dr. Gregg, with his trepanning story smouldering within him, was a whiskered volcano, always showing signs of imminent eruption, and was not to be considered in the ranks of those who might contribute to the amelioration of ennui. The new consul’s note chimed with the sad sea waves and the violent tropical greens⁠—he had not a bar of Scheherezade or of the Round Table in his lute. Goodwin was employed with large projects: what time he was loosed from them found him at his home, where he loved to be. Therefore it will be seen that there was a dearth of fellowship and entertainment among the foreign contingent of Coralio.

diff --git a/src/epub/text/holding-up-a-train.xhtml b/src/epub/text/holding-up-a-train.xhtml index 943af68..eed7f21 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/holding-up-a-train.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/holding-up-a-train.xhtml @@ -69,7 +69,7 @@

But, in my opinion, the main condition that makes train robbing easy is the element of surprise in connection with the imagination of the passengers. If you have ever seen a horse that has eaten loco weed you will understand what I mean when I say that the passengers get locoed. That horse gets the awfullest imagination on him in the world. You can’t coax him to cross a little branch stream two feet wide. It looks as big to him as the Mississippi River. That’s just the way with the passenger. He thinks there are a hundred men yelling and shooting outside, when maybe there are only two or three. And the muzzle of a forty-five looks like the entrance to a tunnel. The passenger is all right, although he may do mean little tricks, like hiding a wad of money in his shoe and forgetting to dig-up until you jostle his ribs some with the end of your six-shooter; but there’s no harm in him.

As to the train crew, we never had any more trouble with them than if they had been so many sheep. I don’t mean that they are cowards; I mean that they have got sense. They know they’re not up against a bluff. It’s the same way with the officers. I’ve seen secret service men, marshals, and railroad detectives fork over their change as meek as Moses. I saw one of the bravest marshals I ever knew hide his gun under his seat and dig up along with the rest while I was taking toll. He wasn’t afraid; he simply knew that we had the drop on the whole outfit. Besides, many of those officers have families and they feel that they oughtn’t to take chances; whereas death has no terrors for the man who holds up a train. He expects to get killed some day, and he generally does. My advice to you, if you should ever be in a holdup, is to line up with the cowards and save your bravery for an occasion when it may be of some benefit to you. Another reason why officers are backward about mixing things with a train robber is a financial one. Every time there is a scrimmage and somebody gets killed, the officers lose money. If the train robber gets away they swear out a warrant against John Doe et al. and travel hundreds of miles and sign vouchers for thousands on the trail of the fugitives, and the Government foots the bills. So, with them, it is a question of mileage rather than courage.

I will give one instance to support my statement that the surprise is the best card in playing for a holdup.

-

Along in ’92 the Daltons were cutting out a hot trail for the officers down in the Cherokee Nation, Those were their lucky days, and they got so reckless and sandy, that they used to announce before hand what job they were going to undertake. Once they gave it out that they were going to hold up the M. K. & T. flyer on a certain night at the station of Pryor Creek, in Indian Territory.

+

Along in ’92 the Daltons were cutting out a hot trail for the officers down in the Cherokee Nation, Those were their lucky days, and they got so reckless and sandy, that they used to announce before hand what job they were going to undertake. Once they gave it out that they were going to hold up the M. K. & T. flyer on a certain night at the station of Pryor Creek, in Indian Territory.

That night the railroad company got fifteen deputy marshals in Muscogee and put them on the train. Beside them they had fifty armed men hid in the depot at Pryor Creek.

When the Katy Flyer pulled in not a Dalton showed up. The next station was Adair, six miles away. When the train reached there, and the deputies were having a good time explaining what they would have done to the Dalton gang if they had turned up, all at once it sounded like an army firing outside. The conductor and brakeman came running into the car yelling, “Train robbers!”

Some of those deputies lit out of the door, hit the ground, and kept on running. Some of them hid their Winchesters under the seats. Two of them made a fight and were both killed.

diff --git a/src/epub/text/law-and-order.xhtml b/src/epub/text/law-and-order.xhtml index 83f6932..eb1b42a 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/law-and-order.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/law-and-order.xhtml @@ -56,7 +56,7 @@

“ ‘You don’t understand,’ says Luke. ‘I’m tired of space and horizons and territory and distances and things like that. What I want is reasonable contraction. I want a yard with a fence around it that you can go out and set on after supper and listen to whip-poor-wills,’ says Luke.

“That’s the kind of a man he was. He was homelike, although he’d had bad luck in such investments. But he never talked about them times on the ranch. It seemed like he’d forgotten about it. I wondered how, with his ideas of yards and chickens and notions of latticework, he’d seemed to have got out of his mind that kid of his that had been taken away from him, unlawful, in spite of his decree of court. But he wasn’t a man you could ask about such things as he didn’t refer to in his own conversation.

“I reckon he’d put all his emotions and ideas into being sheriff. I’ve read in books about men that was disappointed in these poetic and fine-haired and high-collared affairs with ladies renouncing truck of that kind and wrapping themselves up into some occupation like painting pictures, or herding sheep, or science, or teaching school⁠—something to make ’em forget. Well, I guess that was the way with Luke. But, as he couldn’t paint pictures, he took it out in rounding up horse thieves and in making Mojada County a safe place to sleep in if you was well armed and not afraid of requisitions or tarantulas.

-

“One day there passes through Bildad a bunch of these money investors from the East, and they stopped off there, Bildad being the dinner station on the I. & G. N. They was just coming back from Mexico looking after mines and such. There was five of ’em⁠—four solid parties, with gold watch chains, that would grade up over two hundred pounds on the hoof, and one kid about seventeen or eighteen.

+

“One day there passes through Bildad a bunch of these money investors from the East, and they stopped off there, Bildad being the dinner station on the I. & G. N. They was just coming back from Mexico looking after mines and such. There was five of ’em⁠—four solid parties, with gold watch chains, that would grade up over two hundred pounds on the hoof, and one kid about seventeen or eighteen.

“This youngster had on one of them cowboy suits such as tenderfoots bring West with ’em; and you could see he was aching to wing a couple of Indians or bag a grizzly or two with the little pearl-handled gun he had buckled around his waist.

“I walked down to the depot to keep an eye on the outfit and see that they didn’t locate any land or scare the cow ponies hitched in front of Murchison’s store or act otherwise unseemly. Luke was away after a gang of cattle thieves down on the Frio, and I always looked after the law and order when he wasn’t there.

“After dinner this boy comes out of the dining-room while the train was waiting, and prances up and down the platform ready to shoot all antelope, lions, or private citizens that might endeavour to molest or come too near him. He was a good-looking kid; only he was like all them tenderfoots⁠—he didn’t know a law-and-order town when he saw it.

diff --git a/src/epub/text/rus-in-urbe.xhtml b/src/epub/text/rus-in-urbe.xhtml index 77094d7..00cf762 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/rus-in-urbe.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/rus-in-urbe.xhtml @@ -11,8 +11,8 @@

Considering men in relation to money, there are three kinds whom I dislike: men who have more money than they can spend; men who have more money than they do spend; and men who spend more money than they have. Of the three varieties, I believe I have the least liking for the first. But, as a man, I liked Spencer Grenville North pretty well, although he had something like two or ten or thirty millions⁠—I’ve forgotten exactly how many.

I did not leave town that summer. I usually went down to a village on the south shore of Long Island. The place was surrounded by duck-farms, and the ducks and dogs and whippoorwills and rusty windmills made so much noise that I could sleep as peacefully as if I were in my own flat six doors from the elevated railroad in New York. But that summer I did not go. Remember that. One of my friends asked me why I did not. I replied:

“Because, old man, New York is the finest summer resort in the world.” You have heard that phrase before. But that is what I told him.

-

I was press-agent that year for Binkly & Bing, the theatrical managers and producers. Of course you know what a press-agent is. Well, he is not. That is the secret of being one.

-

Binkly was touring France in his new C. & N. Williamson car, and Bing had gone to Scotland to learn curling, which he seemed to associate in his mind with hot tongs rather than with ice. Before they left they gave me June and July, on salary, for my vacation, which act was in accord with their large spirit of liberality. But I remained in New York, which I had decided was the finest summer resort in⁠—

+

I was press-agent that year for Binkly & Bing, the theatrical managers and producers. Of course you know what a press-agent is. Well, he is not. That is the secret of being one.

+

Binkly was touring France in his new C. & N. Williamson car, and Bing had gone to Scotland to learn curling, which he seemed to associate in his mind with hot tongs rather than with ice. Before they left they gave me June and July, on salary, for my vacation, which act was in accord with their large spirit of liberality. But I remained in New York, which I had decided was the finest summer resort in⁠—

But I said that before.

On July the 10th, North came to town from his camp in the Adirondacks. Try to imagine a camp with sixteen rooms, plumbing, eiderdown quilts, a butler, a garage, solid silver plate, and a long-distance telephone. Of course it was in the woods⁠—if Mr. Pinchot wants to preserve the forests let him give every citizen two or ten or thirty million dollars, and the trees will all gather around the summer camps, as the Birnam woods came to Dunsinane, and be preserved.

North came to see me in my three rooms and bath, extra charge for light when used extravagantly or all night. He slapped me on the back (I would rather have my shins kicked any day), and greeted me with out-door obstreperousness and revolting good spirits. He was insolently brown and healthy-looking, and offensively well dressed.

@@ -48,10 +48,10 @@

“Then why, in the name of Pan and Apollo,” he asked, “have you been singing this deceitful pæan to summer in town?”

I suppose I looked my guilt.

“Ha,” said North, “I see. May I ask her name?”

-

“Annie Ashton,” said I, simply. “She played Nannette in Binkley & Bing’s production of ‘The Silver Cord.’ She is to have a better part next season.”

+

“Annie Ashton,” said I, simply. “She played Nannette in Binkley & Bing’s production of ‘The Silver Cord.’ She is to have a better part next season.”

“Take me to see her,” said North.

-

Miss Ashton lived with her mother in a small hotel. They were out of the West, and had a little money that bridged the seasons. As press-agent of Binkley & Bing I had tried to keep her before the public. As Robert James Vandiver I had hoped to withdraw her; for if ever one was made to keep company with said Vandiver and smell the salt breeze on the south shore of Long Island and listen to the ducks quack in the watches of the night, it was the Ashton set forth above.

-

But she had a soul above ducks⁠—above nightingales; aye, even above birds of paradise. She was very beautiful, with quiet ways, and seemed genuine. She had both taste and talent for the stage, and she liked to stay at home and read and make caps for her mother. She was unvaryingly kind and friendly with Binkley & Bing’s press-agent. Since the theatre had closed she had allowed Mr. Vandiver to call in an unofficial rôle. I had often spoken to her of my friend, Spencer Grenville North; and so, as it was early, the first turn of the vaudeville being not yet over, we left to find a telephone.

+

Miss Ashton lived with her mother in a small hotel. They were out of the West, and had a little money that bridged the seasons. As press-agent of Binkley & Bing I had tried to keep her before the public. As Robert James Vandiver I had hoped to withdraw her; for if ever one was made to keep company with said Vandiver and smell the salt breeze on the south shore of Long Island and listen to the ducks quack in the watches of the night, it was the Ashton set forth above.

+

But she had a soul above ducks⁠—above nightingales; aye, even above birds of paradise. She was very beautiful, with quiet ways, and seemed genuine. She had both taste and talent for the stage, and she liked to stay at home and read and make caps for her mother. She was unvaryingly kind and friendly with Binkley & Bing’s press-agent. Since the theatre had closed she had allowed Mr. Vandiver to call in an unofficial rôle. I had often spoken to her of my friend, Spencer Grenville North; and so, as it was early, the first turn of the vaudeville being not yet over, we left to find a telephone.

Miss Ashton would be very glad to see Mr. Vandiver and Mr. North.

We found her fitting a new cap on her mother. I never saw her look more charming.

North made himself disagreeably entertaining. He was a good talker, and had a way with him. Besides, he had two, ten, or thirty millions, I’ve forgotten which. I incautiously admired the mother’s cap, whereupon she brought out her store of a dozen or two, and I took a course in edgings and frills. Even though Annie’s fingers had pinked, or ruched, or hemmed, or whatever you do to ’em, they palled upon me. And I could hear North drivelling to Annie about his odious Adirondack camp.

@@ -65,7 +65,7 @@

“Look here, Bob,” he said, “I was going to tell you. I couldn’t help it. I’ll play fair with you, but I’m going in to win. She is the ‘one particular’ for me.”

“All right,” said I. “It’s a fair field. There are no rights for you to encroach upon.”

On Thursday afternoon Miss Ashton invited North and myself to have tea in her apartment. He was devoted, and she was more charming than usual. By avoiding the subject of caps I managed to get a word or two into and out of the talk. Miss Ashton asked me in a make-conversational tone something about the next season’s tour.

-

“Oh,” said I, “I don’t know about that. I’m not going to be with Binkley & Bing next season.”

+

“Oh,” said I, “I don’t know about that. I’m not going to be with Binkley & Bing next season.”

“Why, I thought,” said she, “that they were going to put the Number One road company under your charge. I thought you told me so.”

“They were,” said I, “but they won’t.. I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to the south shore of Long Island and buy a small cottage I know there on the edge of the bay. And I’ll buy a catboat and a rowboat and a shotgun and a yellow dog. I’ve got money enough to do it. And I’ll smell the salt wind all day when it blows from the sea and the pine odor when it blows from the land. And, of course, I’ll write plays until I have a trunk full of ’em on hand.

“And the next thing and the biggest thing I’ll do will be to buy that duck-farm next door. Few people understand ducks. I can watch ’em for hours. They can march better than any company in the National Guard, and they can play ‘follow my leader’ better than the entire Democratic party. Their voices don’t amount to much, but I like to hear ’em. They wake you up a dozen times a night, but there’s a homely sound about their quacking that is more musical to me than the cry of ‘Fresh strawber-rees!’ under your window in the morning when you want to sleep.

diff --git a/src/epub/text/seats-of-the-haughty.xhtml b/src/epub/text/seats-of-the-haughty.xhtml index 9a982ea..940d3b8 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/seats-of-the-haughty.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/seats-of-the-haughty.xhtml @@ -21,7 +21,7 @@

“ ‘Him?’ says the secretary. ‘Well, no. He’s got a big, fat wife in the harem named Bad Dora that he don’t like. I believe he intends to saddle her up and ride her up and down the boardwalk in the Bulbul Gardens a few times every day. You haven’t got a pair of extra-long spurs you could throw in on the deal, have you?’ Yes, sir; there’s mighty few real roughriders among the royal sports these days.”

As soon as Lucullus Polk got cool enough I picked him up, and with no greater effort than you would employ in persuading a drowning man to clutch a straw, I inveigled him into accompanying me to a cool corner in a dim café.

And it came to pass that man-servants set before us brewage; and Lucullus Polk spake unto me, relating the wherefores of his beleaguering the antechambers of the princes of the earth.

-

“Did you ever hear of the S.A. & A.P. Railroad in Texas? Well, that don’t stand for Samaritan Actor’s Aid Philanthropy. I was down that way managing a summer bunch of the gum and syntax-chewers that play the Idlewild Parks in the Western hamlets. Of course, we went to pieces when the soubrette ran away with a prominent barber of Beeville. I don’t know what became of the rest of the company. I believe there were some salaries due; and the last I saw of the troupe was when I told them that forty-three cents was all the treasury contained. I say I never saw any of them after that; but I heard them for about twenty minutes. I didn’t have time to look back. But after dark I came out of the woods and struck the S.A. & A.P. agent for means of transportation. He at once extended to me the courtesies of the entire railroad, kindly warning me, however, not to get aboard any of the rolling stock.

+

“Did you ever hear of the S.A. & A.P. Railroad in Texas? Well, that don’t stand for Samaritan Actor’s Aid Philanthropy. I was down that way managing a summer bunch of the gum and syntax-chewers that play the Idlewild Parks in the Western hamlets. Of course, we went to pieces when the soubrette ran away with a prominent barber of Beeville. I don’t know what became of the rest of the company. I believe there were some salaries due; and the last I saw of the troupe was when I told them that forty-three cents was all the treasury contained. I say I never saw any of them after that; but I heard them for about twenty minutes. I didn’t have time to look back. But after dark I came out of the woods and struck the S.A. & A.P. agent for means of transportation. He at once extended to me the courtesies of the entire railroad, kindly warning me, however, not to get aboard any of the rolling stock.

“About ten the next morning I steps off the ties into a village that calls itself Atascosa City. I bought a thirty-cent breakfast and a ten-cent cigar, and stood on the Main Street jingling the three pennies in my pocket⁠—dead broke. A man in Texas with only three cents in his pocket is no better off than a man that has no money and owes two cents.

“One of luck’s favourite tricks is to soak a man for his last dollar so quick that he don’t have time to look it. There I was in a swell St. Louis tailor-made, blue-and-green plaid suit, and an eighteen-narat sulphate-of-copper scarf-pin, with no hope in sight except the two great Texas industries, the cotton fields and grading new railroads. I never picked cotton, and I never cottoned to a pick, so the outlook had ultramarine edges.

“All of a sudden, while I was standing on the edge of the wooden sidewalk, down out of the sky falls two fine gold watches in the middle of the street. One hits a chunk of mud and sticks. The other falls hard and flies open, making a fine drizzle of little springs and screws and wheels. I looks up for a balloon or an airship; but not seeing any, I steps off the sidewalk to investigate.

@@ -35,10 +35,10 @@

“ ‘You must have knocked around a right smart,’ goes on this oil Grease-us. ‘I shouldn’t be surprised if you have saw towns more livelier than what Atascosa City is. Sometimes it seems to me that there ought to be some more ways of having a good time than there is here, ‘specially when you’ve got plenty of money and don’t mind spending it.’

“Then this Mother Cary’s chick of the desert sits down by me and we hold a conversationfest. It seems that he was money-poor. He’d lived in ranch camps all his life; and he confessed to me that his supreme idea of luxury was to ride into camp, tired out from a roundup, eat a peck of Mexican beans, hobble his brains with a pint of raw whisky, and go to sleep with his boots for a pillow. When this barge-load of unexpected money came to him and his pink but perky partner, George, and they hied themselves to this clump of outhouses called Atascosa City, you know what happened to them. They had money to buy anything they wanted; but they didn’t know what to want. Their ideas of spendthriftiness were limited to three⁠—whisky, saddles, and gold watches. If there was anything else in the world to throw away fortunes on, they had never heard about it. So, when they wanted to have a hot time, they’d ride into town and get a city directory and stand in front of the principal saloon and call up the population alphabetically for free drinks. Then they would order three or four new California saddles from the storekeeper, and play crack-loo on the sidewalk with twenty-dollar gold pieces. Betting who could throw his gold watch the farthest was an inspiration of George’s; but even that was getting to be monotonous.

“Was I on to the opportunity? Listen.

-

“In thirty minutes I had dashed off a word picture of metropolitan joys that made life in Atascosa City look as dull as a trip to Coney Island with your own wife. In ten minutes more we shook hands on an agreement that I was to act as his guide, interpreter and friend in and to the aforesaid wassail and amenity. And Solomon Mills, which was his name, was to pay all expenses for a month. At the end of that time, if I had made good as director-general of the rowdy life, he was to pay me one thousand dollars. And then, to clinch the bargain, we called the roll of Atascosa City and put all of its citizens except the ladies and minors under the table, except one man named Horace Westervelt St. Clair. Just for that we bought a couple of hatfuls of cheap silver watches and egged him out of town with ’em. We wound up by dragging the harness-maker out of bed and setting him to work on three new saddles; and then we went to sleep across the railroad track at the depot, just to annoy the S.A. & A.P. Think of having seventy-yive thousand dollars and trying to avoid the disgrace of dying rich in a town like that!

+

“In thirty minutes I had dashed off a word picture of metropolitan joys that made life in Atascosa City look as dull as a trip to Coney Island with your own wife. In ten minutes more we shook hands on an agreement that I was to act as his guide, interpreter and friend in and to the aforesaid wassail and amenity. And Solomon Mills, which was his name, was to pay all expenses for a month. At the end of that time, if I had made good as director-general of the rowdy life, he was to pay me one thousand dollars. And then, to clinch the bargain, we called the roll of Atascosa City and put all of its citizens except the ladies and minors under the table, except one man named Horace Westervelt St. Clair. Just for that we bought a couple of hatfuls of cheap silver watches and egged him out of town with ’em. We wound up by dragging the harness-maker out of bed and setting him to work on three new saddles; and then we went to sleep across the railroad track at the depot, just to annoy the S.A. & A.P. Think of having seventy-yive thousand dollars and trying to avoid the disgrace of dying rich in a town like that!

“The next day George, who was married or something, started back to the ranch. Me and Solly, as I now called him, prepared to shake off our moth balls and wing our way against the arc-lights of the joyous and tuneful East.

“ ‘No way-stops,’ says I to Solly, ‘except long enough to get you barbered and haberdashed. This is no Texas feet shampetter,’ says I, ‘where you eat chili-concarne-con-huevos and then holler “Whoopee!” across the plaza. We’re now going against the real high life. We’re going to mingle with the set that carries a Spitz, wears spats, and hits the ground in high spots.’

-

“Solly puts six thousand dollars in century bills in one pocket of his brown ducks, and bills of lading for ten thousand dollars on Eastern banks in another. Then I resume diplomatic relations with the S.A. & A.P., and we hike in a northwesterly direction on our circuitous route to the spice gardens of the Yankee Orient.

+

“Solly puts six thousand dollars in century bills in one pocket of his brown ducks, and bills of lading for ten thousand dollars on Eastern banks in another. Then I resume diplomatic relations with the S.A. & A.P., and we hike in a northwesterly direction on our circuitous route to the spice gardens of the Yankee Orient.

“We stopped in San Antonio long enough for Solly to buy some clothes, and eight rounds of drinks for the guests and employees of the Menger Hotel, and order four Mexican saddles with silver trimmings and white Angora suaderos to be shipped down to the ranch. From there we made a big jump to St. Louis. We got there in time for dinner; and I put our thumbprints on the register of the most expensive hotel in the city.

“ ‘Now,’ says I to Solly, with a wink at myself, ‘here’s the first dinner-station we’ve struck where we can get a real good plate of beans.’ And while he was up in his room trying to draw water out of the gas-pipe, I got one finger in the buttonhole of the head waiter’s Tuxedo, drew him apart, inserted a two-dollar bill, and closed him up again.

“ ‘Frankoyse,’ says I, ‘I have a pal here for dinner that’s been subsisting for years on cereals and short stogies. You see the chef and order a dinner for us such as you serve to Dave Francis and the general passenger agent of the Iron Mountain when they eat here. We’ve got more than Bernhardt’s tent full of money; and we want the nose-eags crammed with all the Chief Deveries de cuisine. Object is no expense. Now, show us.’

diff --git a/src/epub/text/the-hiding-of-black-bill.xhtml b/src/epub/text/the-hiding-of-black-bill.xhtml index 92c6644..fe5c653 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/the-hiding-of-black-bill.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/the-hiding-of-black-bill.xhtml @@ -43,7 +43,7 @@

“So Ogden digs up a deck of cards, and we play casino. After five days and nights of my sheep-camp it was like a toot on Broadway. When I caught big casino I felt as excited as if I had made a million in Trinity. And when H. O. loosened up a little and told the story about the lady in the Pullman car I laughed for five minutes.

“That showed what a comparative thing life is. A man may see so much that he’d be bored to turn his head to look at a $3,000,000 fire or Joe Weber or the Adriatic Sea. But let him herd sheep for a spell, and you’ll see him splitting his ribs laughing at ‘Curfew Shall Not Ring To-night,’ or really enjoying himself playing cards with ladies.

“By-and-by Ogden gets out a decanter of Bourbon, and then there is a total eclipse of sheep.

-

“ ‘Do you remember reading in the papers, about a month ago,’ says he, ‘about a train hold-up on the M. K. & T.? The express agent was shot through the shoulder and about $15,000 in currency taken. And it’s said that only one man did the job.’

+

“ ‘Do you remember reading in the papers, about a month ago,’ says he, ‘about a train hold-up on the M. K. & T.? The express agent was shot through the shoulder and about $15,000 in currency taken. And it’s said that only one man did the job.’

“ ‘Seems to me I do,’ says I. ‘But such things happen so often they don’t linger long in the human Texas mind. Did they overtake, overhaul, seize, or lay hands upon the despoiler?’

“ ‘He escaped,’ says Ogden. ‘And I was just reading in a paper to-day that the officers have tracked him down into this part of the country. It seems the bills the robber got were all the first issue of currency to the Second National Bank of Espinosa City. And so they’ve followed the trail where they’ve been spent, and it leads this way.’

“Ogden pours out some more Bourbon, and shoves me the bottle.

diff --git a/src/epub/text/the-higher-abdication.xhtml b/src/epub/text/the-higher-abdication.xhtml index b4e0e1c..549b829 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/the-higher-abdication.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/the-higher-abdication.xhtml @@ -11,7 +11,7 @@

Curly the tramp sidled toward the free-lunch counter. He caught a fleeting glance from the bartender’s eye, and stood still, trying to look like a business man who had just dined at the Menger and was waiting for a friend who had promised to pick him up in his motor car. Curly’s histrionic powers were equal to the impersonation; but his makeup was wanting.

The bartender rounded the bar in a casual way, looking up at the ceiling as though he was pondering some intricate problem of kalsomining, and then fell upon Curly so suddenly that the roadster had no excuses ready. Irresistibly, but so composedly that it seemed almost absendmindedness on his part, the dispenser of drinks pushed Curly to the swinging doors and kicked him out, with a nonchalance that almost amounted to sadness. That was the way of the Southwest.

Curly arose from the gutter leisurely. He felt no anger or resentment toward his ejector. Fifteen years of tramphood spent out of the twenty-two years of his life had hardened the fibres of his spirit. The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune fell blunted from the buckler of his armoured pride. With especial resignation did he suffer contumely and injury at the hands of bartenders. Naturally, they were his enemies; and unnaturally, they were often his friends. He had to take his chances with them. But he had not yet learned to estimate these cool, languid, Southwestern knights of the bungstarter, who had the manners of an Earl of Pawtucket, and who, when they disapproved of your presence, moved you with the silence and despatch of a chess automaton advancing a pawn.

-

Curly stood for a few moments in the narrow, mesquite-paved street. San Antonio puzzled and disturbed him. Three days he had been a non-naying guest of the town, having dropped off there from a box car of an I. & G.N. freight, because Greaser Johnny had told him in Des Moines that the Alamo City was manna fallen, gathered, cooked, and served free with cream and sugar. Curly had found the tip partly a good one. There was hospitality in plenty of a careless, liberal, irregular sort. But the town itself was a weight upon his spirits after his experience with the rushing, businesslike, systematised cities of the North and East. Here he was often flung a dollar, but too frequently a good-natured kick would follow it. Once a band of hilarious cowboys had roped him on Military Plaza and dragged him across the black soil until no respectable ragbag would have stood sponsor for his clothes. The winding, doubling streets, leading nowhere, bewildered him. And then there was a little river, crooked as a pothook, that crawled through the middle of the town, crossed by a hundred little bridges so nearly alike that they got on Curly’s nerves. And the last bartender wore a number nine shoe.

+

Curly stood for a few moments in the narrow, mesquite-paved street. San Antonio puzzled and disturbed him. Three days he had been a non-naying guest of the town, having dropped off there from a box car of an I. & G.N. freight, because Greaser Johnny had told him in Des Moines that the Alamo City was manna fallen, gathered, cooked, and served free with cream and sugar. Curly had found the tip partly a good one. There was hospitality in plenty of a careless, liberal, irregular sort. But the town itself was a weight upon his spirits after his experience with the rushing, businesslike, systematised cities of the North and East. Here he was often flung a dollar, but too frequently a good-natured kick would follow it. Once a band of hilarious cowboys had roped him on Military Plaza and dragged him across the black soil until no respectable ragbag would have stood sponsor for his clothes. The winding, doubling streets, leading nowhere, bewildered him. And then there was a little river, crooked as a pothook, that crawled through the middle of the town, crossed by a hundred little bridges so nearly alike that they got on Curly’s nerves. And the last bartender wore a number nine shoe.

The saloon stood on a corner. The hour was eight o’clock. Homefarers and outgoers jostled Curly on the narrow stone sidewalk. Between the buildings to his left he looked down a cleft that proclaimed itself another thoroughfare. The alley was dark except for one patch of light. Where there was light there were sure to be human beings. Where there were human beings after nightfall in San Antonio there might be food, and there was sure to be drink. So Curly headed for the light.

The illumination came from Schwegel’s Café. On the sidewalk in front of it Curly picked up an old envelope. It might have contained a check for a million. It was empty; but the wanderer read the address, “Mr. Otto Schwegel,” and the name of the town and State. The postmark was Detroit.

Curly entered the saloon. And now in the light it could be perceived that he bore the stamp of many years of vagabondage. He had none of the tidiness of the calculating and shrewd professional tramp. His wardrobe represented the cast-off specimens of half a dozen fashions and eras. Two factories had combined their efforts in providing shoes for his feet. As you gazed at him there passed through your mind vague impressions of mummies, wax figures, Russian exiles, and men lost on desert islands. His face was covered almost to his eyes with a curly brown beard that he kept trimmed short with a pocketknife, and that had furnished him with his nom de route. Light-blue eyes, full of sullenness, fear, cunning, impudence, and fawning, witnessed the stress that had been laid upon his soul.

diff --git a/src/epub/text/the-moment-of-victory.xhtml b/src/epub/text/the-moment-of-victory.xhtml index a96e1db..ece2837 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/the-moment-of-victory.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/the-moment-of-victory.xhtml @@ -14,7 +14,7 @@

“Well, Ben,” said I, with judicial seriousness, “I think we might safely limit the number of motives of a man who seeks fame to three⁠—to ambition, which is a desire for popular applause; to avarice, which looks to the material side of success; and to love of some woman whom he either possesses or desires to possess.”

Ben pondered over my words while a mocking-bird on the top of a mesquite by the porch trilled a dozen bars.

“I reckon,” said he, “that your diagnosis about covers the case according to the rules laid down in the copy-books and historical readers. But what I had in my mind was the case of Willie Robbins, a person I used to know. I’ll tell you about him before I close up the store, if you don’t mind listening.

-

“Willie was one of our social set up in San Augustine. I was clerking there then for Brady & Murchison, wholesale dry-goods and ranch supplies. Willie and I belonged to the same german club and athletic association and military company. He played the triangle in our serenading and quartet crowd that used to ring the welkin three nights a week somewhere in town.

+

“Willie was one of our social set up in San Augustine. I was clerking there then for Brady & Murchison, wholesale dry-goods and ranch supplies. Willie and I belonged to the same german club and athletic association and military company. He played the triangle in our serenading and quartet crowd that used to ring the welkin three nights a week somewhere in town.

“Willie jibed with his name considerable. He weighed about as much as a hundred pounds of veal in his summer suitings, and he had a ‘Where-is-Mary?’ expression on his features so plain that you could almost see the wool growing on him.

“And yet you couldn’t fence him away from the girls with barbed wire. You know that kind of young fellows⁠—a kind of a mixture of fools and angels⁠—they rush in and fear to tread at the same time; but they never fail to tread when they get the chance. He was always on hand when ‘a joyful occasion was had,’ as the morning paper would say, looking as happy as a king full, and at the same time as uncomfortable as a raw oyster served with sweet pickles. He danced like he had hind hobbles on; and he had a vocabulary of about three hundred and fifty words that he made stretch over four germans a week, and plagiarized from to get him through two ice-cream suppers and a Sunday-night call. He seemed to me to be a sort of a mixture of Maltese kitten, sensitive plant, and a member of a stranded ‘Two Orphans’ company.

“I’ll give you an estimate of his physiological and pictorial make-up, and then I’ll stick spurs into the sides of my narrative.

@@ -28,7 +28,7 @@

“I looked around at Willie after Myra had gone. He had a kind of a lily-white look on him which seemed to show that her remark had, as you might say, disrupted his soul. I never noticed anything in what she said that sounded particularly destructive to a man’s ideas of self-consciousness; but he was set back to an extent you could scarcely imagine.

“After we went down-stairs with our clean collars on, Willie never went near Myra again that night. After all, he seemed to be a diluted kind of a skim-milk sort of a chap, and I never wondered that Joe Granberry beat him out.

“The next day the battleship Maine was blown up, and then pretty soon somebody⁠—I reckon it was Joe Bailey, or Ben Tillman, or maybe the Government⁠—declared war against Spain.

-

“Well, everybody south of Mason & Hamlin’s line knew that the North by itself couldn’t whip a whole country the size of Spain. So the Yankees commenced to holler for help, and the Johnny Rebs answered the call. ‘We’re coming, Father William, a hundred thousand strong⁠—and then some,’ was the way they sang it. And the old party lines drawn by Sherman’s march and the Kuklux and nine-cent cotton and the Jim Crow street-car ordinances faded away. We became one undivided. country, with no North, very little East, a good-sized chunk of West, and a South that loomed up as big as the first foreign label on a new eight-dollar suit-case.

+

“Well, everybody south of Mason & Hamlin’s line knew that the North by itself couldn’t whip a whole country the size of Spain. So the Yankees commenced to holler for help, and the Johnny Rebs answered the call. ‘We’re coming, Father William, a hundred thousand strong⁠—and then some,’ was the way they sang it. And the old party lines drawn by Sherman’s march and the Kuklux and nine-cent cotton and the Jim Crow street-car ordinances faded away. We became one undivided. country, with no North, very little East, a good-sized chunk of West, and a South that loomed up as big as the first foreign label on a new eight-dollar suit-case.

“Of course the dogs of war weren’t a complete pack without a yelp from the San Augustine Rifles, Company D, of the Fourteenth Texas Regiment. Our company was among the first to land in Cuba and strike terror into the hearts of the foe. I’m not going to give you a history of the war, I’m just dragging it in to fill out my story about Willie Robbins, just as the Republican party dragged it in to help out the election in 1898.

“If anybody ever had heroitis, it was that Willie Robbins. From the minute he set foot on the soil of the tyrants of Castile he seemed to engulf danger as a cat laps up cream. He certainly astonished every man in our company, from the captain up. You’d have expected him to gravitate naturally to the job of an orderly to the colonel, or typewriter in the commissary⁠—but not any. He created the part of the flaxen-haired boy hero who lives and gets back home with the goods, instead of dying with an important despatch in his hands at his colonel’s feet.

“Our company got into a section of Cuban scenery where one of the messiest and most unsung portions of the campaign occurred. We were out every day capering around in the bushes, and having little skirmishes with the Spanish troops that looked more like kind of tired-out feuds than anything else. The war was a joke to us, and of no interest to them. We never could see it any other way than as a howling farce-comedy that the San Augustine Rifles were actually fighting to uphold the Stars and Stripes. And the blamed little señors didn’t get enough pay to make them care whether they were patriots or traitors. Now and then somebody would get killed. It seemed like a waste of life to me. I was at Coney Island when I went to New York once, and one of them down-hill skidding apparatuses they call ‘roller-coasters’ flew the track and killed a man in a brown sack-suit. Whenever the Spaniards shot one of our men, it struck me as just about as unnecessary and regrettable as that was.

diff --git a/src/epub/text/the-rose-of-dixie.xhtml b/src/epub/text/the-rose-of-dixie.xhtml index 5f8bf82..58cc56c 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/the-rose-of-dixie.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/the-rose-of-dixie.xhtml @@ -27,7 +27,7 @@

“Sure,” said Thacker. “But a dollar is a dollar anywhere, North, South, or West⁠—whether you’re buying codfish, goober peas, or Rocky Ford cantaloupes. Now, I’ve been looking over your November number. I see one here on your desk. You don’t mind running over it with me?

“Well, your leading article is all right. A good write-up of the cotton-belt with plenty of photographs is a winner any time. New York is always interested in the cotton crop. And this sensational account of the Hatfield-McCoy feud, by a schoolmate of a niece of the Governor of Kentucky, isn’t such a bad idea. It happened so long ago that most people have forgotten it. Now, here’s a poem three pages long called ‘The Tyrant’s Foot,’ by Lorella Lascelles. I’ve pawed around a good deal over manuscripts, but I never saw her name on a rejection slip.”

“Miss Lascelles,” said the editor, “is one of our most widely recognized Southern poetesses. She is closely related to the Alabama Lascelles family, and made with her own hands the silken Confederate banner that was presented to the governor of that state at his inauguration.”

-

“But why,” persisted Thacker, “is the poem illustrated with a view of the M. & O. Railroad freight depot at Tuscaloosa?”

+

“But why,” persisted Thacker, “is the poem illustrated with a view of the M. & O. Railroad freight depot at Tuscaloosa?”

“The illustration,” said the colonel, with dignity, “shows a corner of the fence surrounding the old homestead where Miss Lascelles was born.”

“All right,” said Thacker. “I read the poem, but I couldn’t tell whether it was about the depot of the battle of Bull Run. Now, here’s a short story called ‘Rosies’ Temptation,’ by Fosdyke Piggott. It’s rotten. What is a Piggott, anyway?”

“Mr. Piggott,” said the editor, “is a brother of the principal stockholder of the magazine.”

@@ -37,7 +37,7 @@

“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.”

“Look out for the copyright laws,” said Thacker, flippantly. Who’s Bessie Belleclair, who contributes the essay on the newly completed water-works plant in Milledgeville?”

“The name, sir,” said Colonel Telfair, “is the nom de guerre 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.

-

“Now, see here, Colonel,” said Thacker, throwing down the magazine, “this won’t do. You can’t successfully run a magazine for one particular section of the country. You’ve got to make a universal appeal. Look how the Northern publications have catered to the South and encouraged the Southern writers. And you’ve got to go far and wide for your contributors. You’ve got to buy stuff according to its quality without any regard to the pedigree of the author. Now, I’ll bet a quart of ink that this Southern parlor organ you’ve been running has never played a note that originated above Mason & Hamlin’s line. Am I right?”

+

“Now, see here, Colonel,” said Thacker, throwing down the magazine, “this won’t do. You can’t successfully run a magazine for one particular section of the country. You’ve got to make a universal appeal. Look how the Northern publications have catered to the South and encouraged the Southern writers. And you’ve got to go far and wide for your contributors. You’ve got to buy stuff according to its quality without any regard to the pedigree of the author. Now, I’ll bet a quart of ink that this Southern parlor organ you’ve been running has never played a note that originated above Mason & Hamlin’s line. Am I right?”

“I have carefully and conscientiously rejected all contributions from that section of the country⁠—if I understand your figurative language aright,” replied the colonel.

“All right. Now I’ll show you something.”

Thacker reached for his thick manila envelope and dumped a mass of typewritten manuscript on the editors desk.

diff --git a/src/epub/text/the-unprofitable-servant.xhtml b/src/epub/text/the-unprofitable-servant.xhtml index 49ea6ef..c8ac503 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/the-unprofitable-servant.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/the-unprofitable-servant.xhtml @@ -67,7 +67,7 @@

“All right,” said Mac. “I take it as an honor, of course, for you to notice my hopping around. Of course I’d like to do something in a professional line. Of course I can sing a little and do card tricks and Irish and German comedy stuff, and of course I’m not so bad on the trapeze and comic bicycle stunts and Hebrew monologues and⁠—”

“One moment,” interrupted Del Delano, “before we begin. I said you couldn’t dance. Well, that wasn’t quite right. You’ve only got two or three bad tricks in your method. You’re handy with your feet, and you belong at the top, where I am. I’ll put you there. I’ve got six weeks continuous in New York; and in four I can shape up your style till the booking agents will fight one another to get you. And I’ll do it, too. I’m of, from, and for the West Side. ‘Del Delano’ looks good on billboards, but the family name’s Crowley. Now, Mackintosh⁠—McGowan, I mean⁠—you’ve got your chance⁠—fifty times a better one than I had.”

“I’d be a shine to turn it down,” said Mac. “And I hope you understand I appreciate it. Me and my cousin Cliff McGowan was thinking of getting a tryout at Creary’s on amateur night a month from tomorrow.”

-

“Good stuff!” said Delano. “I got mine there. Junius T. Rollins, the booker for Kuhn & Dooley, jumped on the stage and engaged me after my dance. And the boards were an inch deep in nickels and dimes and quarters. There wasn’t but nine penny pieces found in the lot.”

+

“Good stuff!” said Delano. “I got mine there. Junius T. Rollins, the booker for Kuhn & Dooley, jumped on the stage and engaged me after my dance. And the boards were an inch deep in nickels and dimes and quarters. There wasn’t but nine penny pieces found in the lot.”

“I ought to tell you,” said Mac, after two minutes of pensiveness, “that my cousin Cliff can beat me dancing. We’ve always been what you might call pals. If you’d take him up instead of me, now, it might be better. He’s invented a lot of steps that I can’t cut.”

“Forget it,” said Delano. “Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays of every week from now till amateur night, a month off, I’ll coach you. I’ll make you as good as I am; and nobody could do more for you. My act’s over every night at 10:15. Half an hour later I’ll take you up and drill you till twelve. I’ll put you at the top of the bunch, right where I am. You’ve got talent. Your style’s bum; but you’ve got the genius. You let me manage it. I’m from the West Side myself, and I’d rather see one of the same gang win out before I would an East-Sider, or any of the Flatbush or Hackensack Meadow kind of butt-iners. I’ll see that Junius Rollins is present on your Friday night; and if he don’t climb over the footlights and offer you fifty a week as a starter, I’ll let you draw it down from my own salary every Monday night. Now, am I talking on the level or am I not?”

Amateur night at Creary’s Eighth Avenue Theatre is cut by the same pattern as amateur nights elsewhere. After the regular performance the humblest talent may, by previous arrangement with the management, make its debut upon the public stage. Ambitious non-professionals, mostly self-instructed, display their skill and powers of entertainment along the broadest lines. They may sing, dance, mimic, juggle, contort, recite, or disport themselves along any of the ragged boundary lines of Art. From the ranks of these anxious tyros are chosen the professionals that adorn or otherwise make conspicuous the full-blown stage. Press-agents delight in recounting to open-mouthed and close-eared reporters stories of the humble beginnings of the brilliant stars whose orbits they control.

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Thimble, Thimble

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These are the directions for finding the office of Carteret & Carteret, Mill Supplies and Leather Belting:

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You follow the Broadway trail down until you pass the Crosstown Line, the Bread Line, and the Dead Line, and come to the Big Cañons of the Moneygrubber Tribe. Then you turn to the left, to the right, dodge a push-cart and the tongue of a two-ton four-horse dray and hop, skip, and jump to a granite ledge on the side of a twenty-one-story synthetic mountain of stone and iron. In the twelfth story is the office of Carteret & 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 Mr. Frank Stockton, as you will conclude.

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These are the directions for finding the office of Carteret & Carteret, Mill Supplies and Leather Belting:

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You follow the Broadway trail down until you pass the Crosstown Line, the Bread Line, and the Dead Line, and come to the Big Cañons of the Moneygrubber Tribe. Then you turn to the left, to the right, dodge a push-cart and the tongue of a two-ton four-horse dray and hop, skip, and jump to a granite ledge on the side of a twenty-one-story synthetic mountain of stone and iron. In the twelfth story is the office of Carteret & 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 Mr. Frank Stockton, as you will conclude.

First, biography (but pared to the quick) must intervene. I am for the inverted sugar-coated quinine pill⁠—the bitter on the outside.

The Carterets were, or was (Columbia College professors please rule), an old Virginia family. Long time ago the gentlemen of the family had worn lace ruffles and carried tinless foils and owned plantations and had slaves to burn. But the war had greatly reduced their holdings. (Of course you can perceive at once that this flavor has been shoplifted from Mr. F. Hopkinson Smith, in spite of the “et” after “Carter.”) Well, anyhow:

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 Mayflower and became a Pilgrim Father. You’ve seen his picture on the covers of the Thanksgiving magazines, hunting turkeys in the deep snow with a blunderbuss. Blandford Carteret, the other brother, crossed the pond in his own brigantine, landed on the Virginia coast, and became an F. F. V. John became distinguished for piety and shrewdness in business; Blandford for his pride, juleps; marksmanship, and vast slave-cultivated plantations.