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Alex Cabal
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<p>“Well, I suppose it means be jumped on with both of Uncle Sam’s feet.”</p>
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<p>“I’ll try to raise the money for you on time,” said Merwin, interested in his plaiting.</p>
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<p>“All right, Tom,” concluded Longley, as he turned toward the door; “I knew you would if you could.”</p>
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<p>Merwin threw down his whip and went to the only other bank in town, a private one, run by Cooper & Craig.</p>
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<p>Merwin threw down his whip and went to the only other bank in town, a private one, run by Cooper & Craig.</p>
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<p>“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.”</p>
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<p>Cooper began to cough.</p>
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<p>“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.”</p>
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<p><abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Cassidy slipped an arm around her chum. “You poor thing!” she said. “But everybody can’t have a husband like Jack. Marriage wouldn’t be no failure if they was all like him. These discontented wives you hear about—what they need is a man to come home and kick their slats in once a week, and then make it up in kisses, and chocolate creams. That’d give ’em some interest in life. What I want is a masterful man that slugs you when he’s jagged and hugs you when he ain’t jagged. Preserve me from the man that ain’t got the sand to do neither!”</p>
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<p><abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Fink sighed.</p>
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<p>The hallways were suddenly filled with sound. The door flew open at the kick of <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Cassidy. His arms were occupied with bundles. Mame flew and hung about his neck. Her sound eye sparkled with the love light that shines in the eye of the Maori maid when she recovers consciousness in the hut of the wooer who has stunned and dragged her there.</p>
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<p>“Hello, old girl!” shouted <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Cassidy. He shed his bundles and lifted her off her feet in a mighty hug. “I got tickets for Barnum & Bailey’s, and if you’ll bust the string of one of them bundles I guess you’ll find that silk waist—why, good evening, <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Fink—I didn’t see you at first. How’s old Mart coming along?”</p>
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<p>“Hello, old girl!” shouted <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Cassidy. He shed his bundles and lifted her off her feet in a mighty hug. “I got tickets for Barnum & Bailey’s, and if you’ll bust the string of one of them bundles I guess you’ll find that silk waist—why, good evening, <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Fink—I didn’t see you at first. How’s old Mart coming along?”</p>
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<p>“He’s very well, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Cassidy—thanks,” said <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Fink. “I must be going along up now. Mart’ll be home for supper soon. I’ll bring you down that pattern you wanted tomorrow, Mame.”</p>
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<p><abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Fink went up to her flat and had a little cry. It was a meaningless cry, the kind of cry that only a woman knows about, a cry from no particular cause, altogether an absurd cry; the most transient and the most hopeless cry in the repertory of grief. Why had Martin never thrashed her? He was as big and strong as Jack Cassidy. Did he not care for her at all? He never quarrelled; he came home and lounged about, silent, glum, idle. He was a fairly good provider, but he ignored the spices of life.</p>
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<p><abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Fink’s ship of dreams was becalmed. Her captain ranged between plum duff and his hammock. If only he would shiver his timbers or stamp his foot on the quarterdeck now and then! And she had thought to sail so merrily, touching at ports in the Delectable Isles! But now, to vary the figure, she was ready to throw up the sponge, tired out, without a scratch to show for all those tame rounds with her sparring partner. For one moment she almost hated Mame—Mame, with her cuts and bruises, her salve of presents and kisses; her stormy voyage with her fighting, brutal, loving mate.</p>
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<p>East is East, and West is San Francisco, according to Californians. Californians are a race of people; they are not merely inhabitants of a State. They are the Southerners of the West. Now, Chicagoans are no less loyal to their city; but when you ask them why, they stammer and speak of lake fish and the new Odd Fellows Building. But Californians go into detail.</p>
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<p>Of course they have, in the climate, an argument that is good for half an hour while you are thinking of your coal bills and heavy underwear. But as soon as they come to mistake your silence for conviction, madness comes upon them, and they picture the city of the Golden Gate as the Bagdad of the New World. So far, as a matter of opinion, no refutation is necessary. But, dear cousins all (from Adam and Eve descended), it is a rash one who will lay his finger on the map and say: “In this town there can be no romance—what could happen here?” Yes, it is a bold and a rash deed to challenge in one sentence history, romance, and Rand and McNally.</p>
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<blockquote>
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<p><b>Nashville</b>—A city, port of delivery, and the capital of the State of Tennessee, is on the Cumberland River and on the <abbr>N. C. & <abbr>St.</abbr> L.</abbr> and the <abbr>L. & N.</abbr> railroads. This city is regarded as the most important educational centre in the South.</p>
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<p><b>Nashville</b>—A city, port of delivery, and the capital of the State of Tennessee, is on the Cumberland River and on the <abbr>N. C. & <abbr>St.</abbr> L.</abbr> and the <abbr>L. & N.</abbr> railroads. This city is regarded as the most important educational centre in the South.</p>
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</blockquote>
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<p>I stepped off the train at 8 <abbr class="time eoc">a.m.</abbr> Having searched the thesaurus in vain for adjectives, I must, as a substitution, hie me to comparison in the form of a recipe.</p>
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<p>Take a London fog 30 parts; malaria 10 parts; gas leaks 20 parts; dewdrops gathered in a brick yard at sunrise, 25 parts; odor of honeysuckle 15 parts. Mix.</p>
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<p>The mixture will give you an approximate conception of a Nashville drizzle. It is not so fragrant as a mothball nor as thick as pea-soup; but ’tis enough—’twill serve.</p>
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<p>I went to a hotel in a tumbril. It required strong self-suppression for me to keep from climbing to the top of it and giving an imitation of Sidney Carton. The vehicle was drawn by beasts of a bygone era and driven by something dark and emancipated.</p>
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<p>I was sleepy and tired, so when I got to the hotel I hurriedly paid it the fifty cents it demanded (with approximate lagniappe, I assure you). I knew its habits; and I did not want to hear it prate about its old “marster” or anything that happened “befo’ de wah.”</p>
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<p>The hotel was one of the kind described as “renovated.” That means $20,000 worth of new marble pillars, tiling, electric lights and brass cuspidors in the lobby, and a new <abbr class="name">L.</abbr> & <abbr class="name">N.</abbr> time table and a lithograph of Lookout Mountain in each one of the great rooms above. The management was without reproach, the attention full of exquisite Southern courtesy, the service as slow as the progress of a snail and as good-humored as Rip Van Winkle. The food was worth traveling a thousand miles for. There is no other hotel in the world where you can get such chicken livers <span xml:lang="fr">en brochette</span>.</p>
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<p>The hotel was one of the kind described as “renovated.” That means $20,000 worth of new marble pillars, tiling, electric lights and brass cuspidors in the lobby, and a new <abbr class="name">L.</abbr> & <abbr class="name">N.</abbr> time table and a lithograph of Lookout Mountain in each one of the great rooms above. The management was without reproach, the attention full of exquisite Southern courtesy, the service as slow as the progress of a snail and as good-humored as Rip Van Winkle. The food was worth traveling a thousand miles for. There is no other hotel in the world where you can get such chicken livers <span xml:lang="fr">en brochette</span>.</p>
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<p>At dinner I asked a Negro waiter if there was anything doing in town. He pondered gravely for a minute, and then replied: “Well, boss, I don’t really reckon there’s anything at all doin’ after sundown.”</p>
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<p>Sundown had been accomplished; it had been drowned in the drizzle long before. So that spectacle was denied me. But I went forth upon the streets in the drizzle to see what might be there.</p>
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<blockquote>
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<p>There now! it’s over. Hardly had time to yawn, did you? I’ve seen biographies that—but let us dissemble.</p>
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<p>I want you to consider Jacob Spraggins, <abbr>Esq.</abbr>, after he had arrived at the seventh stage of his career. The stages meant are, first, humble origin; second, deserved promotion; third, stockholder; fourth, capitalist; fifth, trust magnate; sixth, rich malefactor; seventh, caliph; eighth, <i epub:type="z3998:grapheme">x</i>. The eighth stage shall be left to the higher mathematics.</p>
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<p>At fifty-five Jacob retired from active business. The income of a czar was still rolling in on him from coal, iron, real estate, oil, railroads, manufactories, and corporations, but none of it touched Jacob’s hands in a raw state. It was a sterilized increment, carefully cleaned and dusted and fumigated until it arrived at its ultimate stage of untainted, spotless checks in the white fingers of his private secretary. Jacob built a three-million-dollar palace on a corner lot fronting on Nabob Avenue, city of New Bagdad, and began to feel the mantle of the late <abbr class="name">H. A.</abbr> Rashid descending upon him. Eventually Jacob slipped the mantle under his collar, tied it in a neat four-in-hand, and became a licensed harrier of our Mesopotamian proletariat.</p>
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<p>When a man’s income becomes so large that the butcher actually sends him the kind of steak he orders, he begins to think about his soul’s salvation. Now, the various stages or classes of rich men must not be forgotten. The capitalist can tell you to a dollar the amount of his wealth. The trust magnate “estimates” it. The rich malefactor hands you a cigar and denies that he has bought the <abbr>P. D. & Q.</abbr> The caliph merely smiles and talks about Hammerstein and the musical lasses. There is a record of tremendous altercation at breakfast in a “Where-to-Dine-Well” tavern between a magnate and his wife, the rift within the loot being that the wife calculated their fortune at a figure $3,000,000 higher than did her future divorcé. Oh, well, I, myself, heard a similar quarrel between a man and his wife because he found fifty cents less in his pockets than he thought he had. After all, we are all human—Count Tolstoy, <abbr class="name">R.</abbr> Fitzsimmons, Peter Pan, and the rest of us.</p>
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<p>When a man’s income becomes so large that the butcher actually sends him the kind of steak he orders, he begins to think about his soul’s salvation. Now, the various stages or classes of rich men must not be forgotten. The capitalist can tell you to a dollar the amount of his wealth. The trust magnate “estimates” it. The rich malefactor hands you a cigar and denies that he has bought the <abbr>P. D. & Q.</abbr> The caliph merely smiles and talks about Hammerstein and the musical lasses. There is a record of tremendous altercation at breakfast in a “Where-to-Dine-Well” tavern between a magnate and his wife, the rift within the loot being that the wife calculated their fortune at a figure $3,000,000 higher than did her future divorcé. Oh, well, I, myself, heard a similar quarrel between a man and his wife because he found fifty cents less in his pockets than he thought he had. After all, we are all human—Count Tolstoy, <abbr class="name">R.</abbr> Fitzsimmons, Peter Pan, and the rest of us.</p>
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<p>Don’t lose heart because the story seems to be degenerating into a sort of moral essay for intellectual readers.</p>
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<p>There will be dialogue and stage business pretty soon.</p>
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<p>When Jacob first began to compare the eyes of needles with the camels in the zoo he decided upon organized charity. He had his secretary send a check for one million to the Universal Benevolent Association of the Globe. You may have looked down through a grating in front of a decayed warehouse for a nickel that you had dropped through. But that is neither here nor there. The Association acknowledged receipt of his favor of the 24th <abbr>ult.</abbr> with enclosure as stated. Separated by a double line, but still mighty close to the matter under the caption of “Oddities of the Day’s News” in an evening paper, Jacob Spraggins read that one “Jasper Spargyous” had “donated $100,000 to the <abbr>U.</abbr> <abbr>B.</abbr> <abbr>A.</abbr> of <abbr class="eoc">G.</abbr>” A camel may have a stomach for each day in the week; but I dare not venture to accord him whiskers, for fear of the Great Displeasure at Washington; but if he have whiskers, surely not one of them will seem to have been inserted in the eye of a needle by that effort of that rich man to enter the <abbr class="eoc">K. of H.</abbr> The right is reserved to reject any and all bids; signed, <abbr>S.</abbr> Peter, secretary and gatekeeper.</p>
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<p>“The Society for Providing Healthful Recreation for Working Girls wants $20,000 from you to lay out a golf course.”</p>
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<p>“Tell ’em to see an undertaker.”</p>
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<p>“Cut ’em all out,” went on Jacob. “I’ve quit being a good thing. I need every dollar I can scrape or save. I want you to write to the directors of every company that I’m interested in and recommend a 10 percent cut in salaries. And say—I noticed half a cake of soap lying in a corner of the hall as I came in. I want you to speak to the scrubwoman about waste. I’ve got no money to throw away. And say—we’ve got vinegar pretty well in hand, haven’t we?”</p>
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<p>“The Globe Spice & Seasons Company,” said secretary, “controls the market at present.”</p>
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<p>“The Globe Spice & Seasons Company,” said secretary, “controls the market at present.”</p>
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<p>“Raise vinegar two cents a gallon. Notify all our branches.”</p>
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<p>Suddenly Jacob Spraggins’s plump red face relaxed into a pulpy grin. He walked over to the secretary’s desk and showed a small red mark on his thick forefinger.</p>
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<p>“Bit it,” he said, “darned if he didn’t, and he ain’t had the tooth three weeks—Jaky McLeod, my Celia’s kid. He’ll be worth a hundred millions by the time he’s twenty-one if I can pile it up for him.”</p>
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<hr/>
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<p>I woke with stiff and cramped muscles from having slept long on the incommodious seat of a day coach. I leaned my head against the seat and tried to think. After a long time I said to myself: “I must have a name of some sort.” I searched my pockets. Not a card; not a letter; not a paper or monogram could I find. But I found in my coat pocket nearly $3,000 in bills of large denomination. “I must be someone, of course,” I repeated to myself, and began again to consider.</p>
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<p>The car was well crowded with men, among whom, I told myself, there must have been some common interest, for they intermingled freely, and seemed in the best good humor and spirits. One of them—a stout, spectacled gentleman enveloped in a decided odor of cinnamon and aloes—took the vacant half of my seat with a friendly nod, and unfolded a newspaper. In the intervals between his periods of reading, we conversed, as travelers will, on current affairs. I found myself able to sustain the conversation on such subjects with credit, at least to my memory. By and by my companion said:</p>
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<p>“You are one of us, of course. Fine lot of men the West sends in this time. I’m glad they held the convention in New York; I’ve never been East before. My name’s <abbr class="name">R. P.</abbr> Bolder—Bolder & Son, of Hickory Grove, Missouri.”</p>
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<p>“You are one of us, of course. Fine lot of men the West sends in this time. I’m glad they held the convention in New York; I’ve never been East before. My name’s <abbr class="name">R. P.</abbr> Bolder—Bolder & Son, of Hickory Grove, Missouri.”</p>
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<p>Though unprepared, I rose to the emergency, as men will when put to it. Now must I hold a christening, and be at once babe, parson and parent. My senses came to the rescue of my slower brain. The insistent odor of drugs from my companion supplied one idea; a glance at his newspaper, where my eye met a conspicuous advertisement, assisted me further.</p>
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<p>“My name,” said I, glibly, “is Edward Pinkhammer. I am a druggist, and my home is in Cornopolis, Kansas.”</p>
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<p>“I knew you were a druggist,” said my fellow traveler, affably. “I saw the callous spot on your right forefinger where the handle of the pestle rubs. Of course, you are a delegate to our National Convention.”</p>
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<p>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.</p>
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<p>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.</p>
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<hr/>
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<p>The morning train of the Mexican Central had that day been three hours late, thus failing to connect with the <abbr>I. & G. N.</abbr> on the other side of the river. Passengers for <i xml:lang="es">Los Estados Unidos</i> 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.</p>
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<p>The morning train of the Mexican Central had that day been three hours late, thus failing to connect with the <abbr>I. & G. N.</abbr> on the other side of the river. Passengers for <i xml:lang="es">Los Estados Unidos</i> 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.</p>
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<p>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.</p>
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<p>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!”</p>
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<p>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.</p>
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<p>“O-ho!” I said. “So you’ve taken time enough off from your plate-glass to have a romance?”</p>
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<p>“No, no,” said John. “No romance—nothing like that! But I’ll tell you about it.</p>
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<p>“I was on the southbound, going to Cincinnati, about eighteen months ago, when I saw, across the aisle, the finest-looking girl I’d ever laid eyes on. Nothing spectacular, you know, but just the sort you want for keeps. Well, I never was up to the flirtation business, either handkerchief, automobile, postage-stamp, or doorstep, and she wasn’t the kind to start anything. She read a book and minded her business, which was to make the world prettier and better just by residing on it. I kept on looking out of the side doors of my eyes, and finally the proposition got out of the Pullman class into a case of a cottage with a lawn and vines running over the porch. I never thought of speaking to her, but I let the plate-glass business go to smash for a while.</p>
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<p>“She changed cars at Cincinnati, and took a sleeper to Louisville over the <abbr>L. & N.</abbr> There she bought another ticket, and went on through Shelbyville, Frankfort, and Lexington. Along there I began to have a hard time keeping up with her. The trains came along when they pleased, and didn’t seem to be going anywhere in particular, except to keep on the track and the right of way as much as possible. Then they began to stop at junctions instead of towns, and at last they stopped altogether. I’ll bet Pinkerton would outbid the plate-glass people for my services any time if they knew how I managed to shadow that young lady. I contrived to keep out of her sight as much as I could, but I never lost track of her.</p>
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<p>“She changed cars at Cincinnati, and took a sleeper to Louisville over the <abbr>L. & N.</abbr> There she bought another ticket, and went on through Shelbyville, Frankfort, and Lexington. Along there I began to have a hard time keeping up with her. The trains came along when they pleased, and didn’t seem to be going anywhere in particular, except to keep on the track and the right of way as much as possible. Then they began to stop at junctions instead of towns, and at last they stopped altogether. I’ll bet Pinkerton would outbid the plate-glass people for my services any time if they knew how I managed to shadow that young lady. I contrived to keep out of her sight as much as I could, but I never lost track of her.</p>
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<p>“The last station she got off at was away down in Virginia, about six in the afternoon. There were about fifty houses and four hundred niggers in sight. The rest was red mud, mules, and speckled hounds.</p>
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<p>“A tall old man, with a smooth face and white hair, looking as proud as Julius Caesar and Roscoe Conkling on the same postcard, was there to meet her. His clothes were frazzled, but I didn’t notice that till later. He took her little satchel, and they started over the plank-walks and went up a road along the hill. I kept along a piece behind ’em, trying to look like I was hunting a garnet ring in the sand that my sister had lost at a picnic the previous Saturday.</p>
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<p>“They went in a gate on top of the hill. It nearly took my breath away when I looked up. Up there in the biggest grove I ever saw was a tremendous house with round white pillars about a thousand feet high, and the yard was so full of rosebushes and box-bushes and lilacs that you couldn’t have seen the house if it hadn’t been as big as the Capitol at Washington.</p>
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<p>For an answer I got up and began to do a polka step around the supper table. I am sure Louisa thought the trouble had driven me mad; and I think the children hoped it had, for they tore after me, yelling with glee and emulating my steps. I was now something like their old playmate as of yore.</p>
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<p>“The theatre for us tonight!” I shouted; “nothing less. And a late, wild, disreputable supper for all of us at the Palace Restaurant. Lumpty-diddle-de-dee-de-dum!”</p>
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<p>And then I explained my glee by declaring that I was now a partner in a prosperous undertaking establishment, and that written jokes might go hide their heads in sackcloth and ashes for all me.</p>
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<p>With the editor’s letter in her hand to justify the deed I had done, my wife could advance no objections save a few mild ones based on the feminine inability to appreciate a good thing such as the little back room of Peter Hef—no, of Heffelbower & <abbr>Co.</abbr>’s undertaking establishment.</p>
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<p>With the editor’s letter in her hand to justify the deed I had done, my wife could advance no objections save a few mild ones based on the feminine inability to appreciate a good thing such as the little back room of Peter Hef—no, of Heffelbower & <abbr>Co.</abbr>’s undertaking establishment.</p>
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<p>In conclusion, I will say that today you will find no man in our town as well liked, as jovial, and full of merry sayings as I. My jokes are again noised about and quoted; once more I take pleasure in my wife’s confidential chatter without a mercenary thought, while Guy and Viola play at my feet distributing gems of childish humor without fear of the ghastly tormentor who used to dog their steps, notebook in hand.</p>
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<p>Our business has prospered finely. I keep the books and look after the shop, while Peter attends to outside matters. He says that my levity and high spirits would simply turn any funeral into a regular Irish wake.</p>
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</article>
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<p>“Andy is walking up and down the room looking at his watch.</p>
|
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<p>“ ‘Well?’ he says.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Twenty-five hundred,’ says I. ‘Cash.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘We’ve got just eleven minutes,’ says Andy, ‘to catch the <abbr>B. & O.</abbr> westbound. Grab your baggage.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘We’ve got just eleven minutes,’ says Andy, ‘to catch the <abbr>B. & O.</abbr> westbound. Grab your baggage.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘What’s the hurry,’ says I. ‘It was a square deal. And even if it was only an imitation of the original carving it’ll take him some time to find it out. He seemed to be sure it was the genuine article.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘It was,’ says Andy. ‘It was his own. When I was looking at his curios yesterday he stepped out of the room for a moment and I pocketed it. Now, will you pick up your suitcase and hurry?’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Then,’ says I, ‘why was that story about finding another one in the pawn—’</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -10,7 +10,7 @@
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">Dicky</h2>
|
||||
<p>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.</p>
|
||||
<p>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.</p>
|
||||
<p>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 <i xml:lang="es">muy bueno</i> in the Cordilleras.</p>
|
||||
<p>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 <i xml:lang="es">muy bueno</i> in the Cordilleras.</p>
|
||||
<p>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.</p>
|
||||
<p>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.</p>
|
||||
<p>Atwood was gone—he of the hospitable back porch and ingenuous cunning. <abbr>Dr.</abbr> 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.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -10,13 +10,13 @@
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">Elsie in New York</h2>
|
||||
<p>No, bumptious reader, this story is not a continuation of the Elsie series. But if your Elsie had lived over here in our big city there might have been a chapter in her books not very different from this.</p>
|
||||
<p>Especially for the vagrant feet of youth are the roads of Manhattan beset “with pitfall and with gin.” But the civic guardians of the young have made themselves acquainted with the snares of the wicked, and most of the dangerous paths are patrolled by their agents, who seek to turn straying ones away from the peril that menaces them. And this will tell you how they guided my Elsie safely through all peril to the goal that she was seeking.</p>
|
||||
<p>Elsie’s father had been a cutter for Fox & Otter, cloaks and furs, on lower Broadway. He was an old man, with a slow and limping gait, so a pothunter of a newly licensed chauffeur ran him down one day when livelier game was scarce. They took the old man home, where he lay on his bed for a year and then died, leaving $2.50 in cash and a letter from <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Otter offering to do anything he could to help his faithful old employee. The old cutter regarded this letter as a valuable legacy to his daughter, and he put it into her hands with pride as the shears of the dread Cleaner and Repairer snipped off his thread of life.</p>
|
||||
<p>That was the landlord’s cue; and forth he came and did his part in the great eviction scene. There was no snowstorm ready for Elsie to steal out into, drawing her little red woollen shawl about her shoulders, but she went out, regardless of the unities. And as for the red shawl—back to Blaney with it! Elsie’s fall tan coat was cheap, but it had the style and fit of the best at Fox & Otter’s. And her lucky stars had given her good looks, and eyes as blue and innocent as the new shade of note paper, and she had $1 left of the $2.50. And the letter from <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Otter. Keep your eye on the letter from <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Otter. That is the clue. I desire that everything be made plain as we go. Detective stories are so plentiful now that they do not sell.</p>
|
||||
<p>Elsie’s father had been a cutter for Fox & Otter, cloaks and furs, on lower Broadway. He was an old man, with a slow and limping gait, so a pothunter of a newly licensed chauffeur ran him down one day when livelier game was scarce. They took the old man home, where he lay on his bed for a year and then died, leaving $2.50 in cash and a letter from <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Otter offering to do anything he could to help his faithful old employee. The old cutter regarded this letter as a valuable legacy to his daughter, and he put it into her hands with pride as the shears of the dread Cleaner and Repairer snipped off his thread of life.</p>
|
||||
<p>That was the landlord’s cue; and forth he came and did his part in the great eviction scene. There was no snowstorm ready for Elsie to steal out into, drawing her little red woollen shawl about her shoulders, but she went out, regardless of the unities. And as for the red shawl—back to Blaney with it! Elsie’s fall tan coat was cheap, but it had the style and fit of the best at Fox & Otter’s. And her lucky stars had given her good looks, and eyes as blue and innocent as the new shade of note paper, and she had $1 left of the $2.50. And the letter from <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Otter. Keep your eye on the letter from <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Otter. That is the clue. I desire that everything be made plain as we go. Detective stories are so plentiful now that they do not sell.</p>
|
||||
<p>And so we find Elsie, thus equipped, starting out in the world to seek her fortune. One trouble about the letter from <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Otter was that it did not bear the new address of the firm, which had moved about a month before. But Elsie thought she could find it. She had heard that policemen, when politely addressed, or thumbscrewed by an investigation committee, will give up information and addresses. So she boarded a downtown car at One Hundred and Seventy-seventh Street and rode south to Forty-second, which she thought must surely be the end of the island. There she stood against the wall undecided, for the city’s roar and dash was new to her. Up where she had lived was rural New York, so far out that the milkmen awaken you in the morning by the squeaking of pumps instead of the rattling of cans.</p>
|
||||
<p>A kind-faced, sunburned young man in a soft-brimmed hat went past Elsie into the Grand Central Depot. That was Hank Ross, of the Sunflower Ranch, in Idaho, on his way home from a visit to the East. Hank’s heart was heavy, for the Sunflower Ranch was a lonesome place, lacking the presence of a woman. He had hoped to find one during his visit who would congenially share his prosperity and home, but the girls of Gotham had not pleased his fancy. But, as he passed in, he noted, with a jumping of his pulses, the sweet, ingenuous face of Elsie and her pose of doubt and loneliness. With true and honest Western impulse he said to himself that here was his mate. He could love her, he knew; and he would surround her with so much comfort, and cherish her so carefully that she would be happy, and make two sunflowers grow on the ranch where there grew but one before.</p>
|
||||
<p>Hank turned and went back to her. Backed by his never before questioned honesty of purpose, he approached the girl and removed his soft-brimmed hat. Elsie had but time to sum up his handsome frank face with one shy look of modest admiration when a burly cop hurled himself upon the ranchman, seized him by the collar and backed him against the wall. Two blocks away a burglar was coming out of an apartment-house with a bag of silverware on his shoulder; but that is neither here nor there.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Carry on yez mashin’ tricks right before me eyes, will yez?” shouted the cop. “I’ll teach yez to speak to ladies on me beat that ye’re not acquainted with. Come along.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Elsie turned away with a sigh as the ranchman was dragged away. She had liked the effect of his light blue eyes against his tanned complexion. She walked southward, thinking herself already in the district where her father used to work, and hoping to find someone who could direct her to the firm of Fox & Otter.</p>
|
||||
<p>Elsie turned away with a sigh as the ranchman was dragged away. She had liked the effect of his light blue eyes against his tanned complexion. She walked southward, thinking herself already in the district where her father used to work, and hoping to find someone who could direct her to the firm of Fox & Otter.</p>
|
||||
<p>But did she want to find <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Otter? She had inherited much of the old cutter’s independence. How much better it would be if she could find work and support herself without calling on him for aid!</p>
|
||||
<p>Elsie saw a sign “Employment Agency” and went in. Many girls were sitting against the wall in chairs. Several well-dressed ladies were looking them over. One white-haired, kind-faced old lady in rustling black silk hurried up to Elsie.</p>
|
||||
<p>“My dear,” she said in a sweet, gentle voice, “are you looking for a position? I like your face and appearance so much. I want a young woman who will be half maid and half companion to me. You will have a good home and I will pay you $30 a month.”</p>
|
||||
@ -46,13 +46,13 @@
|
||||
<p>“The flesh-pots of Egypt,” exclaimed the reverend gentleman, uplifting his hands. “I beseech you, my child, to turn away from this place of sin and iniquity.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“But what will I do for a living?” asked Elsie. “I don’t care to sew for this musical comedy, if it’s as rank as you say it is; but I’ve got to have a job.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“The Lord will provide,” said the solemn man. “There is a free Bible class every Sunday afternoon in the basement of the cigar store next to the church. Peace be with you. Amen. Farewell.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Elsie went on her way. She was soon in the downtown district where factories abound. On a large brick building was a gilt sign, “Posey & Trimmer, Artificial Flowers.” Below it was hung a newly stretched canvas bearing the words, “Five hundred girls wanted to learn trade. Good wages from the start. Apply one flight up.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Elsie went on her way. She was soon in the downtown district where factories abound. On a large brick building was a gilt sign, “Posey & Trimmer, Artificial Flowers.” Below it was hung a newly stretched canvas bearing the words, “Five hundred girls wanted to learn trade. Good wages from the start. Apply one flight up.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Elsie started toward the door, near which were gathered in groups some twenty or thirty girls. One big girl with a black straw hat tipped down over her eyes stepped in front of her.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Say, you’se,” said the girl, “are you’se goin’ in there after a job?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Yes,” said Elsie; “I must have work.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Now don’t do it,” said the girl. “I’m chairman of our Scab Committee. There’s 400 of us girls locked out just because we demanded 50 cents a week raise in wages, and ice water, and for the foreman to shave off his mustache. You’re too nice a looking girl to be a scab. Wouldn’t you please help us along by trying to find a job somewhere else, or would you’se rather have your face pushed in?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I’ll try somewhere else,” said Elsie.</p>
|
||||
<p>She walked aimlessly eastward on Broadway, and there her heart leaped to see the sign, “Fox & Otter,” stretching entirely across the front of a tall building. It was as though an unseen guide had led her to it through the byways of her fruitless search for work.</p>
|
||||
<p>She walked aimlessly eastward on Broadway, and there her heart leaped to see the sign, “Fox & Otter,” stretching entirely across the front of a tall building. It was as though an unseen guide had led her to it through the byways of her fruitless search for work.</p>
|
||||
<p>She hurried into the store and sent in to <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Otter by a clerk her name and the letter he had written her father. She was shown directly into his private office.</p>
|
||||
<p><abbr>Mr.</abbr> Otter arose from his desk as Elsie entered and took both hands with a hearty smile of welcome. He was a slightly corpulent man of nearly middle age, a little bald, gold spectacled, polite, well dressed, radiating.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Well, well, and so this is Beatty’s little daughter! Your father was one of our most efficient and valued employees. He left nothing? Well, well. I hope we have not forgotten his faithful services. I am sure there is a vacancy now among our models. Oh, it is easy work—nothing easier.”</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -8,7 +8,7 @@
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<article id="girl" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">“Girl”</h2>
|
||||
<p>In gilt letters on the ground glass of the door of room <abbr>No.</abbr> 962 were the words: “Robbins & Hartley, Brokers.” The clerks had gone. It was past five, and with the solid tramp of a drove of prize Percherons, scrub-women were invading the cloud-capped twenty-story office building. A puff of red-hot air flavoured with lemon peelings, soft-coal smoke and train oil came in through the half-open windows.</p>
|
||||
<p>In gilt letters on the ground glass of the door of room <abbr>No.</abbr> 962 were the words: “Robbins & Hartley, Brokers.” The clerks had gone. It was past five, and with the solid tramp of a drove of prize Percherons, scrub-women were invading the cloud-capped twenty-story office building. A puff of red-hot air flavoured with lemon peelings, soft-coal smoke and train oil came in through the half-open windows.</p>
|
||||
<p>Robbins, fifty, something of an overweight beau, and addicted to first nights and hotel palm-rooms, pretended to be envious of his partner’s commuter’s joys.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Going to be something doing in the humidity line tonight,” he said. “You out-of-town chaps will be the people, with your katydids and moonlight and long drinks and things out on the front porch.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Hartley, twenty-nine, serious, thin, good-looking, nervous, sighed and frowned a little.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -8,7 +8,7 @@
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<article id="hearts-and-hands" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">Hearts and Hands</h2>
|
||||
<p>At Denver there was an influx of passengers into the coaches on the eastbound <abbr>B. & M.</abbr> express. In one coach there sat a very pretty young woman dressed in elegant taste and surrounded by all the luxurious comforts of an experienced traveler. Among the newcomers were two young men, one of handsome presence with a bold, frank countenance and manner; the other a ruffled, glum-faced person, heavily built and roughly dressed. The two were handcuffed together.</p>
|
||||
<p>At Denver there was an influx of passengers into the coaches on the eastbound <abbr>B. & M.</abbr> express. In one coach there sat a very pretty young woman dressed in elegant taste and surrounded by all the luxurious comforts of an experienced traveler. Among the newcomers were two young men, one of handsome presence with a bold, frank countenance and manner; the other a ruffled, glum-faced person, heavily built and roughly dressed. The two were handcuffed together.</p>
|
||||
<p>As they passed down the aisle of the coach the only vacant seat offered was a reversed one facing the attractive young woman. Here the linked couple seated themselves. The young woman’s glance fell upon them with a distant, swift disinterest; then with a lovely smile brightening her countenance and a tender pink tingeing her rounded cheeks, she held out a little gray-gloved hand. When she spoke her voice, full, sweet, and deliberate, proclaimed that its owner was accustomed to speak and be heard.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Well, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Easton, if you <em>will</em> make me speak first, I suppose I must. Don’t you ever recognize old friends when you meet them in the West?”</p>
|
||||
<p>The younger man roused himself sharply at the sound of her voice, seemed to struggle with a slight embarrassment which he threw off instantly, and then clasped her fingers with his left hand.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -69,7 +69,7 @@
|
||||
<p>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.</p>
|
||||
<p>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 <abbr>et al.</abbr> 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.</p>
|
||||
<p>I will give one instance to support my statement that the surprise is the best card in playing for a holdup.</p>
|
||||
<p>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 <abbr>M. K. & T.</abbr> flyer on a certain night at the station of Pryor Creek, in Indian Territory.</p>
|
||||
<p>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 <abbr>M. K. & T.</abbr> flyer on a certain night at the station of Pryor Creek, in Indian Territory.</p>
|
||||
<p>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.</p>
|
||||
<p>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!”</p>
|
||||
<p>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.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -39,9 +39,9 @@
|
||||
<p>That town of Mountain Valley wasn’t going. About a dozen people permeated along the sidewalks; but what you saw mostly was rain-barrels and roosters, and boys poking around with sticks in piles of ashes made by burning the scenery of Uncle Tom shows.</p>
|
||||
<p>And just then there passes down on the other side of the street a high man in a long black coat and a beaver hat. All the people in sight bowed, and some crossed the street to shake hands with him; folks came out of stores and houses to holler at him; women leaned out of windows and smiled; and all the kids stopped playing to look at him. Our landlord stepped out on the porch and bent himself double like a carpenter’s rule, and sung out, “Good morning, Colonel,” when he was a dozen yards gone by.</p>
|
||||
<p>“And is that Alexander, pa?” says Caligula to the landlord; “and why is he called great?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“That, gentlemen,” says the landlord, “is no less than Colonel Jackson <abbr class="name">T.</abbr> Rockingham, the president of the Sunrise & Edenville Tap Railroad, mayor of Mountain Valley, and chairman of the Perry County board of immigration and public improvements.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“That, gentlemen,” says the landlord, “is no less than Colonel Jackson <abbr class="name">T.</abbr> Rockingham, the president of the Sunrise & Edenville Tap Railroad, mayor of Mountain Valley, and chairman of the Perry County board of immigration and public improvements.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Been away a good many years, hasn’t he?” I asked.</p>
|
||||
<p>“No, sir; Colonel Rockingham is going down to the post-office for his mail. His fellow-citizens take pleasure in greeting him thus every morning. The colonel is our most prominent citizen. Besides the height of the stock of the Sunrise & Edenville Tap Railroad, he owns a thousand acres of that land across the creek. Mountain Valley delights, sir, to honor a citizen of such worth and public spirit.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“No, sir; Colonel Rockingham is going down to the post-office for his mail. His fellow-citizens take pleasure in greeting him thus every morning. The colonel is our most prominent citizen. Besides the height of the stock of the Sunrise & Edenville Tap Railroad, he owns a thousand acres of that land across the creek. Mountain Valley delights, sir, to honor a citizen of such worth and public spirit.”</p>
|
||||
<p>For an hour that afternoon Caligula sat on the back of his neck on the porch and studied a newspaper, which was unusual in a man who despised print. When he was through he took me to the end of the porch among the sunlight and drying dishtowels. I knew that Caligula had invented a new graft. For he chewed the ends of his mustache and ran the left catch of his suspenders up and down, which was his way.</p>
|
||||
<p>“What is it now?” I asks. “Just so it ain’t floating mining stocks or raising Pennsylvania pinks, we’ll talk it over.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Pennsylvania pinks? Oh, that refers to a coin-raising scheme of the Keystoners. They burn the soles of old women’s feet to make them tell where their money’s hid.”</p>
|
||||
@ -60,7 +60,7 @@
|
||||
<section id="hostages-to-momus-3" epub:type="chapter">
|
||||
<h3 epub:type="z3998:roman">III</h3>
|
||||
<p>Me and Caligula spent the next three days investigating the bunch of mountains into which we proposed to kidnap Colonel Jackson <abbr class="name">T.</abbr> Rockingham. We finally selected an upright slice of topography covered with bushes and trees that you could only reach by a secret path that we cut out up the side of it. And the only way to reach the mountain was to follow up the bend of a branch that wound among the elevations.</p>
|
||||
<p>Then I took in hand an important subdivision of the proceedings. I went up to Atlanta on the train and laid in a two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar supply of the most gratifying and efficient lines of grub that money could buy. I always was an admirer of viands in their more palliative and revised stages. Hog and hominy are not only inartistic to my stomach, but they give indigestion to my moral sentiments. And I thought of Colonel Jackson <abbr class="name">T.</abbr> Rockingham, president of the Sunrise & Edenville Tap Railroad, and how he would miss the luxury of his home fare as is so famous among wealthy Southerners. So I sunk half of mine and Caligula’s capital in as elegant a layout of fresh and canned provisions as Burdick Harris or any other professional kidnappee ever saw in a camp.</p>
|
||||
<p>Then I took in hand an important subdivision of the proceedings. I went up to Atlanta on the train and laid in a two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar supply of the most gratifying and efficient lines of grub that money could buy. I always was an admirer of viands in their more palliative and revised stages. Hog and hominy are not only inartistic to my stomach, but they give indigestion to my moral sentiments. And I thought of Colonel Jackson <abbr class="name">T.</abbr> Rockingham, president of the Sunrise & Edenville Tap Railroad, and how he would miss the luxury of his home fare as is so famous among wealthy Southerners. So I sunk half of mine and Caligula’s capital in as elegant a layout of fresh and canned provisions as Burdick Harris or any other professional kidnappee ever saw in a camp.</p>
|
||||
<p>I put another hundred in a couple of cases of Bordeaux, two quarts of cognac, two hundred Havana regalias with gold bands, and a camp stove and stools and folding cots. I wanted Colonel Rockingham to be comfortable; and I hoped after he gave up the ten thousand dollars he would give me and Caligula as good a name for gentlemen and entertainers as the Greek man did the friend of his that made the United States his bill collector against Africa.</p>
|
||||
<p>When the goods came down from Atlanta, we hired a wagon, moved them up on the little mountain, and established camp. And then we laid for the colonel.</p>
|
||||
<p>We caught him one morning about two miles out from Mountain Valley, on his way to look after some of his burnt umber farm land. He was an elegant old gentleman, as thin and tall as a trout rod, with frazzled shirt-cuffs and specs on a black string. We explained to him, brief and easy, what we wanted; and Caligula showed him, careless, the handle of his forty-five under his coat.</p>
|
||||
@ -95,7 +95,7 @@
|
||||
<p>About four o’clock in the afternoon, Caligula, who was acting as lookout, calls to me:</p>
|
||||
<p>“I have to report a white shirt signalling on the starboard bow, sir.”</p>
|
||||
<p>I went down the mountain and brought back a fat, red man in an alpaca coat and no collar.</p>
|
||||
<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>“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">V.P.</abbr> arrives. This is a private rehearsal, and we don’t want any roadside speculators selling tickets.”</p>
|
||||
@ -109,7 +109,7 @@
|
||||
<p>While he is talking, two men crawl from under the bushes into camp, and Caligula, with no white flag to disinter him from his plain duty, draws his gun. But again Colonel Rockingham intervenes and introduces <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Jones and <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Batts, engineer and fireman of train number forty-two.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Excuse us,” says Batts, “but me and Jim have hunted squirrels all over this mounting, and we don’t need no white flag. Was that straight, colonel, about the plum pudding and pineapples and real store cigars?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Towel on a fishing-pole in the offing!” howls Caligula. “Suppose it’s the firing line of the freight conductors and brakeman.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“My last trip down,” says I, wiping off my face. “If the <abbr>S. & E. T.</abbr> wants to run an excursion up here just because we kidnapped their president, let ’em. We’ll put out our sign. ‘The Kidnapper’s Café and Trainmen’s Home.’ ”</p>
|
||||
<p>“My last trip down,” says I, wiping off my face. “If the <abbr>S. & E. T.</abbr> wants to run an excursion up here just because we kidnapped their president, let ’em. We’ll put out our sign. ‘The Kidnapper’s Café and Trainmen’s Home.’ ”</p>
|
||||
<p>This time I caught Major Tallahassee Tucker by his own confession, and I felt easier. I asked him into the creek, so I could drown him if he happened to be a track-walker or caboose porter. All the way up the mountain he driveled to me about asparagus on toast, a thing that his intelligence in life had skipped.</p>
|
||||
<p>Up above I got his mind segregated from food and asked if he had raised the ransom.</p>
|
||||
<p>“My dear sir,” says he, “I succeeded in negotiating a loan on thirty thousand dollars’ worth of the bonds of our railroad, and—”</p>
|
||||
@ -118,14 +118,14 @@
|
||||
<p>“He says,” I answered, “that he succeeded in negotiating the loan.”</p>
|
||||
<p>If any cooks ever earned ten thousand dollars in twelve hours, me and Caligula did that day. At six o’clock we spread the top of the mountain with as fine a dinner as the personnel of any railroad ever engulfed. We opened all the wine, and we concocted entrées and <span xml:lang="fr">pièces de résistance</span>, and stirred up little savory <span xml:lang="fr">chef de cuisines</span> and organized a mass of grub such as has been seldom instigated out of canned and bottled goods. The railroad gathered around it, and the wassail and diversions was intense.</p>
|
||||
<p>After the feast me and Caligula, in the line of business, takes Major Tucker to one side and talks ransom. The major pulls out an agglomeration of currency about the size of the price of a town lot in the suburbs of Rabbitville, Arizona, and makes this outcry.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Gentlemen,” says he, “the stock of the Sunrise & Edenville railroad has depreciated some. The best I could do with thirty thousand dollars’ worth of the bonds was to secure a loan of eighty-seven dollars and fifty cents. On the farming lands of Colonel Rockingham, Judge Pendergast was able to obtain, on a ninth mortgage, the sum of fifty dollars. You will find the amount, one hundred and thirty-seven fifty, correct.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Gentlemen,” says he, “the stock of the Sunrise & Edenville railroad has depreciated some. The best I could do with thirty thousand dollars’ worth of the bonds was to secure a loan of eighty-seven dollars and fifty cents. On the farming lands of Colonel Rockingham, Judge Pendergast was able to obtain, on a ninth mortgage, the sum of fifty dollars. You will find the amount, one hundred and thirty-seven fifty, correct.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“A railroad president,” said I, looking this Tucker in the eye, “and the owner of a thousand acres of land; and yet—”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Gentlemen,” says Tucker, “The railroad is ten miles long. There don’t any train run on it except when the crew goes out in the pines and gathers enough lightwood knots to get up steam. A long time ago, when times was good, the net earnings used to run as high as eighteen dollars a week. Colonel Rockingham’s land has been sold for taxes thirteen times. There hasn’t been a peach crop in this part of Georgia for two years. The wet spring killed the watermelons. Nobody around here has money enough to buy fertilizer; and land is so poor the corn crop failed and there wasn’t enough grass to support the rabbits. All the people have had to eat in this section for over a year is hog and hominy, and—”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Pick,” interrupts Caligula, mussing up his red hair, “what are you going to do with that chickenfeed?”</p>
|
||||
<p>I hands the money back to Major Tucker; and then I goes over to Colonel Rockingham and slaps him on the back.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Colonel,” says I, “I hope you’ve enjoyed our little joke. We don’t want to carry it too far. Kidnappers! Well, wouldn’t it tickle your uncle? My name’s Rhinegelder, and I’m a nephew of Chauncey Depew. My friend’s a second cousin of the editor of <i epub:type="se:name.publication.magazine">Puck</i>. So you can see. We are down South enjoying ourselves in our humorous way. Now, there’s two quarts of cognac to open yet, and then the joke’s over.”</p>
|
||||
<p>What’s the use to go into details? One or two will be enough. I remember Major Tallahassee Tucker playing on a jew’sharp, and Caligula waltzing with his head on the watch pocket of a tall baggage-master. I hesitate to refer to the cakewalk done by me and <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Patterson <abbr class="name">G.</abbr> Coble with Colonel Jackson <abbr class="name">T.</abbr> Rockingham between us.</p>
|
||||
<p>And even on the next morning, when you wouldn’t think it possible, there was a consolation for me and Caligula. We knew that Raisuli himself never made half the hit with Burdick Harris that we did with the Sunrise & Edenville Tap Railroad.</p>
|
||||
<p>And even on the next morning, when you wouldn’t think it possible, there was a consolation for me and Caligula. We knew that Raisuli himself never made half the hit with Burdick Harris that we did with the Sunrise & Edenville Tap Railroad.</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -44,7 +44,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“And so this inhabitant of the second city in the world reposes himself and begins to snore, while I sit there musing over things and wishing I was back in the West, where you could always depend on a customer fighting to keep his money hard enough to let your conscience take it from him.</p>
|
||||
<p>“At half-past 5 Andy comes in and sees the sleeping form.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘I’ve been over to Trenton,’ says Andy, pulling a document out of his pocket. ‘I think I’ve got this matter fixed up all right, Jeff. Look at that.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“I open the paper and see that it is a corporation charter issued by the State of New Jersey to ‘The Peters & Tucker Consolidated and Amalgamated Aerial Franchise Development Company, Limited.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“I open the paper and see that it is a corporation charter issued by the State of New Jersey to ‘The Peters & Tucker Consolidated and Amalgamated Aerial Franchise Development Company, Limited.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘It’s to buy up rights of way for airship lines,’ explained Andy. ‘The Legislature wasn’t in session, but I found a man at a postcard stand in the lobby that kept a stock of charters on hand. There are 100,000 shares,’ says Andy, ‘expected to reach a par value of $1. I had one blank certificate of stock printed.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“Andy takes out the blank and begins to fill it in with a fountain pen.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘The whole bunch,’ says he, ‘goes to our friend in dreamland for $5,000. Did you learn his name?’</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -56,7 +56,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“ ‘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.</p>
|
||||
<p>“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.</p>
|
||||
<p>“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.</p>
|
||||
<p>“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 <abbr class="eoc">I. & G. N.</abbr> 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.</p>
|
||||
<p>“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 <abbr class="eoc">I. & G. N.</abbr> 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.</p>
|
||||
<p>“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.</p>
|
||||
<p>“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.</p>
|
||||
<p>“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.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -14,7 +14,7 @@
|
||||
<p>But the canvas of my imagination, when it came to limning the Man About Town, was blank. I fancied that he had a detachable sneer (like the smile of the Cheshire cat) and attached cuffs; and that was all. Whereupon I asked a newspaper reporter about him.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Why,” said he, “a ‘Man About Town’ is something between a ‘rounder’ and a ‘clubman.’ He isn’t exactly—well, he fits in between <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Fish’s receptions and private boxing bouts. He doesn’t—well, he doesn’t belong either to the Lotus Club or to the Jerry McGeogheghan Galvanised Iron Workers’ Apprentices’ Left Hook Chowder Association. I don’t exactly know how to describe him to you. You’ll see him everywhere there’s anything doing. Yes, I suppose he’s a type. Dress clothes every evening; knows the ropes; calls every policeman and waiter in town by their first names. No; he never travels with the hydrogen derivatives. You generally see him alone or with another man.”</p>
|
||||
<p>My friend the reporter left me, and I wandered further afield. By this time the 3126 electric lights on the Rialto were alight. People passed, but they held me not. Paphian eyes rayed upon me, and left me unscathed. Diners, heimgangers, shop-girls, confidence men, panhandlers, actors, highwaymen, millionaires and outlanders hurried, skipped, strolled, sneaked, swaggered and scurried by me; but I took no note of them. I knew them all; I had read their hearts; they had served. I wanted my Man About Town. He was a type, and to drop him would be an error—a typograph—but no! let us continue.</p>
|
||||
<p>Let us continue with a moral digression. To see a family reading the Sunday paper gratifies. The sections have been separated. Papa is earnestly scanning the page that pictures the young lady exercising before an open window, and bending—but there, there! Mamma is interested in trying to guess the missing letters in the word N_w Yo_k. The oldest girls are eagerly perusing the financial reports, for a certain young man remarked last Sunday night that he had taken a flyer in <abbr class="eoc">Q., X. & Z.</abbr> Willie, the eighteen-year-old son, who attends the New York public school, is absorbed in the weekly article describing how to make over an old skirt, for he hopes to take a prize in sewing on graduation day.</p>
|
||||
<p>Let us continue with a moral digression. To see a family reading the Sunday paper gratifies. The sections have been separated. Papa is earnestly scanning the page that pictures the young lady exercising before an open window, and bending—but there, there! Mamma is interested in trying to guess the missing letters in the word N_w Yo_k. The oldest girls are eagerly perusing the financial reports, for a certain young man remarked last Sunday night that he had taken a flyer in <abbr class="eoc">Q., X. & Z.</abbr> Willie, the eighteen-year-old son, who attends the New York public school, is absorbed in the weekly article describing how to make over an old skirt, for he hopes to take a prize in sewing on graduation day.</p>
|
||||
<p>Grandma is holding to the comic supplement with a two-hours’ grip; and little Tottie, the baby, is rocking along the best she can with the real estate transfers. This view is intended to be reassuring, for it is desirable that a few lines of this story be skipped. For it introduces strong drink.</p>
|
||||
<p>I went into a café to—and while it was being mixed I asked the man who grabs up your hot Scotch spoon as soon as you lay it down what he understood by the term, epithet, description, designation, characterisation or appellation, <abbr>viz.</abbr>: a “Man About Town.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Why,” said he, carefully, “it means a fly guy that’s wise to the all-night push—see? It’s a hot sport that you can’t bump to the rail anywhere between the Flatirons—see? I guess that’s about what it means.”</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -47,7 +47,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“I guess you are all right,” said the pencil dealer, “to ride in a cab by daylight. Take a look at that, if you like.”</p>
|
||||
<p>He drew a small book from his coat pocket and held it out. Gillian opened it and saw that it was a bank deposit book. It showed a balance of $1,785 to the blind man’s credit.</p>
|
||||
<p>Gillian returned the book and got into the cab.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I forgot something,” he said. “You may drive to the law offices of Tolman & Sharp, at ⸻ Broadway.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I forgot something,” he said. “You may drive to the law offices of Tolman & Sharp, at ⸻ Broadway.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Lawyer Tolman looked at him hostilely and inquiringly through his gold-rimmed glasses.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I beg your pardon,” said Gillian, cheerfully, “but may I ask you a question? It is not an impertinent one, I hope. Was Miss Hayden left anything by my uncle’s will besides the ring and the $10?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Nothing,” said <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Tolman.</p>
|
||||
@ -64,14 +64,14 @@
|
||||
<p>Gillian made out his account of his expenditure of the thousand dollars in these words:</p>
|
||||
<p>“Paid by the black sheep, Robert Gillian, $1,000 on account of the eternal happiness, owed by Heaven to the best and dearest woman on earth.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Gillian slipped his writing into an envelope, bowed and went his way.</p>
|
||||
<p>His cab stopped again at the offices of Tolman & Sharp.</p>
|
||||
<p>His cab stopped again at the offices of Tolman & Sharp.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I have expended the thousand dollars,” he said cheerily, to Tolman of the gold glasses, “and I have come to render account of it, as I agreed. There is quite a feeling of summer in the air—do you not think so, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Tolman?” He tossed a white envelope on the lawyer’s table. “You will find there a memorandum, sir, of the <span xml:lang="la">modus operandi</span> of the vanishing of the dollars.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Without touching the envelope, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Tolman went to a door and called his partner, Sharp. Together they explored the caverns of an immense safe. Forth they dragged, as trophy of their search a big envelope sealed with wax. This they forcibly invaded, and wagged their venerable heads together over its contents. Then Tolman became spokesman.</p>
|
||||
<p>“<abbr>Mr.</abbr> Gillian,” he said, formally, “there was a codicil to your uncle’s will. It was entrusted to us privately, with instructions that it be not opened until you had furnished us with a full account of your handling of the $1,000 bequest in the will. As you have fulfilled the conditions, my partner and I have read the codicil. I do not wish to encumber your understanding with its legal phraseology, but I will acquaint you with the spirit of its contents.</p>
|
||||
<p>“In the event that your disposition of the $1,000 demonstrates that you possess any of the qualifications that deserve reward, much benefit will accrue to you. <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Sharp and I are named as the judges, and I assure you that we will do our duty strictly according to justice—with liberality. We are not at all unfavorably disposed toward you, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Gillian. But let us return to the letter of the codicil. If your disposal of the money in question has been prudent, wise, or unselfish, it is in our power to hand you over bonds to the value of $50,000, which have been placed in our hands for that purpose. But if—as our client, the late <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Gillian, explicitly provides—you have used this money as you have money in the past, I quote the late <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Gillian—in reprehensible dissipation among disreputable associates—the $50,000 is to be paid to Miriam Hayden, ward of the late <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Gillian, without delay. Now, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Gillian, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Sharp and I will examine your account in regard to the $1,000. You submit it in writing, I believe. I hope you will repose confidence in our decision.”</p>
|
||||
<p><abbr>Mr.</abbr> Tolman reached for the envelope. Gillian was a little the quicker in taking it up. He tore the account and its cover leisurely into strips and dropped them into his pocket.</p>
|
||||
<p>“It’s all right,” he said, smilingly. “There isn’t a bit of need to bother you with this. I don’t suppose you’d understand these itemized bets, anyway. I lost the thousand dollars on the races. Good day to you, gentlemen.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Tolman & Sharp shook their heads mournfully at each other when Gillian left, for they heard him whistling gayly in the hallway as he waited for the elevator.</p>
|
||||
<p>Tolman & Sharp shook their heads mournfully at each other when Gillian left, for they heard him whistling gayly in the hallway as he waited for the elevator.</p>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -28,7 +28,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“Ther only so’ce ov amusement ther po’ gal’s got,” said Sam aloud, with a sob, which unaccustomed sound caused Mexico to shy a bit. “A-livin’ with a sore-headed kiote like me—a low-down skunk that ought to be licked to death with a saddle cinch—a-cookin’ and a-washin’ and a-livin’ on mutton and beans and me abusin’ her fur takin’ a squint or two in a little book!”</p>
|
||||
<p>He thought of Marthy as she had been when he first met her in Dogtown—smart, pretty, and saucy—before the sun had turned the roses in her cheeks brown and the silence of the chaparral had tamed her ambitions.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Ef I ever speaks another hard word to ther little gal,” muttered Sam, “or fails in the love and affection that’s coming to her in the deal, I hopes a wildcat’ll t’ar me to pieces.”</p>
|
||||
<p>He knew what he would do. He would write to Garcia & Jones, his San Antonio merchants where he bought his supplies and sold his wool, and have them send down a big box of novels and reading matter for Marthy. Things were going to be different. He wondered whether a little piano could be placed in one of the rooms of the ranch house without the family having to move out of doors.</p>
|
||||
<p>He knew what he would do. He would write to Garcia & Jones, his San Antonio merchants where he bought his supplies and sold his wool, and have them send down a big box of novels and reading matter for Marthy. Things were going to be different. He wondered whether a little piano could be placed in one of the rooms of the ranch house without the family having to move out of doors.</p>
|
||||
<p>In nowise calculated to allay his self-reproach was the thought that Marthy and Randy would have to pass the night alone. In spite of their bickerings, when night came Marthy was wont to dismiss her fears of the country, and rest her head upon Sam’s strong arm with a sigh of peaceful content and dependence. And were her fears so groundless? Sam thought of roving, marauding Mexicans, of stealthy cougars that sometimes invaded the ranches, of rattlesnakes, centipedes, and a dozen possible dangers. Marthy would be frantic with fear. Randy would cry, and call for dada to come.</p>
|
||||
<p>Still the interminable succession of stretches of brush, cactus, and mesquite. Hollow after hollow, slope after slope—all exactly alike—all familiar by constant repetition, and yet all strange and new. If he could only arrive <em>somewhere</em>.</p>
|
||||
<p>The straight line is Art. Nature moves in circles. A straightforward man is more an artificial product than a diplomatist is. Men lost in the snow travel in exact circles until they sink, exhausted, as their footprints have attested. Also, travellers in philosophy and other mental processes frequently wind up at their starting-point.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -11,8 +11,8 @@
|
||||
<p>Considering men in relation to money, there are three kinds whom I dislike: men who have more money than they can spend; men who have more money than they do spend; and men who spend more money than they have. Of the three varieties, I believe I have the least liking for the first. But, as a man, I liked Spencer Grenville North pretty well, although he had something like two or ten or thirty millions—I’ve forgotten exactly how many.</p>
|
||||
<p>I did not leave town that summer. I usually went down to a village on the south shore of Long Island. The place was surrounded by duck-farms, and the ducks and dogs and whippoorwills and rusty windmills made so much noise that I could sleep as peacefully as if I were in my own flat six doors from the elevated railroad in New York. But that summer I did not go. Remember that. One of my friends asked me why I did not. I replied:</p>
|
||||
<p>“Because, old man, New York is the finest summer resort in the world.” You have heard that phrase before. But that is what I told him.</p>
|
||||
<p>I was press-agent that year for Binkly & Bing, the theatrical managers and producers. Of course you know what a press-agent is. Well, he is not. That is the secret of being one.</p>
|
||||
<p>Binkly was touring France in his new <abbr>C. & N.</abbr> Williamson car, and Bing had gone to Scotland to learn curling, which he seemed to associate in his mind with hot tongs rather than with ice. Before they left they gave me June and July, on salary, for my vacation, which act was in accord with their large spirit of liberality. But I remained in New York, which I had decided was the finest summer resort in—</p>
|
||||
<p>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.</p>
|
||||
<p>Binkly was touring France in his new <abbr>C. & N.</abbr> Williamson car, and Bing had gone to Scotland to learn curling, which he seemed to associate in his mind with hot tongs rather than with ice. Before they left they gave me June and July, on salary, for my vacation, which act was in accord with their large spirit of liberality. But I remained in New York, which I had decided was the finest summer resort in—</p>
|
||||
<p>But I said that before.</p>
|
||||
<p>On July the 10th, North came to town from his camp in the Adirondacks. Try to imagine a camp with sixteen rooms, plumbing, eiderdown quilts, a butler, a garage, solid silver plate, and a long-distance telephone. Of course it was in the woods—if <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Pinchot wants to preserve the forests let him give every citizen two or ten or thirty million dollars, and the trees will all gather around the summer camps, as the Birnam woods came to Dunsinane, and be preserved.</p>
|
||||
<p>North came to see me in my three rooms and bath, extra charge for light when used extravagantly or all night. He slapped me on the back (I would rather have my shins kicked any day), and greeted me with outdoor obstreperousness and revolting good spirits. He was insolently brown and healthy-looking, and offensively well dressed.</p>
|
||||
@ -48,10 +48,10 @@
|
||||
<p>“Then why, in the name of Pan and Apollo,” he asked, “have you been singing this deceitful paean to summer in town?”</p>
|
||||
<p>I suppose I looked my guilt.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Ha,” said North, “I see. May I ask her name?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“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.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“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.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Take me to see her,” said North.</p>
|
||||
<p>Miss Ashton lived with her mother in a small hotel. They were out of the West, and had a little money that bridged the seasons. As press-agent of Binkley & Bing I had tried to keep her before the public. As Robert James Vandiver I had hoped to withdraw her; for if ever one was made to keep company with said Vandiver and smell the salt breeze on the south shore of Long Island and listen to the ducks quack in the watches of the night, it was the Ashton set forth above.</p>
|
||||
<p>But she had a soul above ducks—above nightingales; aye, even above birds of paradise. She was very beautiful, with quiet ways, and seemed genuine. She had both taste and talent for the stage, and she liked to stay at home and read and make caps for her mother. She was unvaryingly kind and friendly with Binkley & Bing’s press-agent. Since the theatre had closed she had allowed <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Vandiver to call in an unofficial role. I had often spoken to her of my friend, Spencer Grenville North; and so, as it was early, the first turn of the vaudeville being not yet over, we left to find a telephone.</p>
|
||||
<p>Miss Ashton 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.</p>
|
||||
<p>But she had a soul above ducks—above nightingales; aye, even above birds of paradise. She was very beautiful, with quiet ways, and seemed genuine. She had both taste and talent for the stage, and she liked to stay at home and read and make caps for her mother. She was unvaryingly kind and friendly with Binkley & Bing’s press-agent. Since the theatre had closed she had allowed <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Vandiver to call in an unofficial role. I had often spoken to her of my friend, Spencer Grenville North; and so, as it was early, the first turn of the vaudeville being not yet over, we left to find a telephone.</p>
|
||||
<p>Miss Ashton would be very glad to see <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Vandiver and <abbr>Mr.</abbr> North.</p>
|
||||
<p>We found her fitting a new cap on her mother. I never saw her look more charming.</p>
|
||||
<p>North made himself disagreeably entertaining. He was a good talker, and had a way with him. Besides, he had two, ten, or thirty millions, I’ve forgotten which. I incautiously admired the mother’s cap, whereupon she brought out her store of a dozen or two, and I took a course in edgings and frills. Even though Annie’s fingers had pinked, or ruched, or hemmed, or whatever you do to ’em, they palled upon me. And I could hear North drivelling to Annie about his odious Adirondack camp.</p>
|
||||
@ -65,7 +65,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“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.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“All right,” said I. “It’s a fair field. There are no rights for you to encroach upon.”</p>
|
||||
<p>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.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Oh,” said I, “I don’t know about that. I’m not going to be with Binkley & Bing next season.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Oh,” said I, “I don’t know about that. I’m not going to be with Binkley & Bing next season.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“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.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“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.</p>
|
||||
<p>“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.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -21,7 +21,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“ ‘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.”</p>
|
||||
<p>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.</p>
|
||||
<p>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.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Did you ever hear of the <abbr class="initialism">S.A.</abbr> & <abbr class="initialism">A.P.</abbr> 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 <abbr class="initialism">S.A.</abbr> & <abbr class="initialism">A.P.</abbr> 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.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Did you ever hear of the <abbr class="initialism">S.A.</abbr> & <abbr class="initialism">A.P.</abbr> 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 <abbr class="initialism">S.A.</abbr> & <abbr class="initialism">A.P.</abbr> 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.</p>
|
||||
<p>“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.</p>
|
||||
<p>“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 <abbr>St.</abbr> Louis tailor-made, blue-and-green plaid suit, and an eighteen-carat 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.</p>
|
||||
<p>“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.</p>
|
||||
@ -35,10 +35,10 @@
|
||||
<p>“ ‘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.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“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.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Was I on to the opportunity? Listen.</p>
|
||||
<p>“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 <abbr>St.</abbr> 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 <abbr class="initialism">S.A.</abbr> & <abbr class="initialism">A.P.</abbr> Think of having seventy-five thousand dollars and trying to avoid the disgrace of dying rich in a town like that!</p>
|
||||
<p>“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 <abbr>St.</abbr> 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 <abbr class="initialism">S.A.</abbr> & <abbr class="initialism">A.P.</abbr> Think of having seventy-five thousand dollars and trying to avoid the disgrace of dying rich in a town like that!</p>
|
||||
<p>“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.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘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.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“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 <abbr class="initialism">S.A.</abbr> & <abbr class="initialism">A.P.</abbr>, and we hike in a northwesterly direction on our circuitous route to the spice gardens of the Yankee Orient.</p>
|
||||
<p>“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 <abbr class="initialism">S.A.</abbr> & <abbr class="initialism">A.P.</abbr>, and we hike in a northwesterly direction on our circuitous route to the spice gardens of the Yankee Orient.</p>
|
||||
<p>“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 <i xml:lang="es">suaderos</i> to be shipped down to the ranch. From there we made a big jump to <abbr>St.</abbr> Louis. We got there in time for dinner; and I put our thumbprints on the register of the most expensive hotel in the city.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘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.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘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 nosebags crammed with all the Chief Deveries de cuisine. Object is no expense. Now, show us.’</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -26,7 +26,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“Dod gast it, colonel,” said the young man, “I’m in the same fix. I’m just getting back from Kansas City, where I sold a drove of two-year-olds, and I haven’t had time to do anything with the money. You beat me on the amount, though; I ain’t got but $900.”</p>
|
||||
<p>The well-dressed gentleman took a large roll of bills from his pocket, skinned off one with which to pay for his supper, and returned the rest carefully to the inside pocket of his coat.</p>
|
||||
<p>“We seem to be about in the same situation, indeed,” he said. “I very much dislike to carry so much money on my person all night. Suppose we form a mutual protection society, and in the meantime walk about and see what sights there are to be seen in town.”</p>
|
||||
<p>At first the young man appeared suddenly suspicious at this proposition, and became coldly reserved, but gradually thawed under the frank and unassuming politeness of the well-dressed man, and when that gentleman insisted upon paying for both suppers, his doubts seemed to vanish, and he became not only confidential, but actually loquacious. He informed the well-dressed man that his name was Simmons, that he owned a nice little ranch in Encinal County, and that this was his first trip out of Texas. The well-dressed man said his name was Clancy, called “Captain” by his friends, that he lived in Dallas, and was a member of the Young Men’s Christian Association at that place. He handed <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Simmons a card on which was printed “Captain Richard Saxon Clancy,” and below was scribbled somewhat hastily in pencil, “With <abbr>M. K. & T. Ry.</abbr> <abbr>Co.</abbr>”</p>
|
||||
<p>At first the young man appeared suddenly suspicious at this proposition, and became coldly reserved, but gradually thawed under the frank and unassuming politeness of the well-dressed man, and when that gentleman insisted upon paying for both suppers, his doubts seemed to vanish, and he became not only confidential, but actually loquacious. He informed the well-dressed man that his name was Simmons, that he owned a nice little ranch in Encinal County, and that this was his first trip out of Texas. The well-dressed man said his name was Clancy, called “Captain” by his friends, that he lived in Dallas, and was a member of the Young Men’s Christian Association at that place. He handed <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Simmons a card on which was printed “Captain Richard Saxon Clancy,” and below was scribbled somewhat hastily in pencil, “With <abbr>M. K. & T. Ry.</abbr> <abbr>Co.</abbr>”</p>
|
||||
<hr/>
|
||||
<p>“Now,” said <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Simmons, when they had finished supper, “I’m sorter shy about proposin’ it, you bein’ a stranger, but I’m in for havin’ a glass of beer. If you don’t like the scheme, why, excuse me, and don’t think hard of me for suggestin’ it.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Captain Chancy smiled indulgently. “Have a care,” he said, in a sprightly bantering tone. “Remember, you and I must take care of ourselves tonight. I am responsible to the railroad company for the funds I have, and besides, I rarely ever touch beer—well, I guess one glass won’t hurt me.”</p>
|
||||
@ -98,7 +98,7 @@
|
||||
<p><abbr>Mr.</abbr> Simmons seemed to play a very loose game, and his luck began to desert him. He lost a large portion of his winnings on an ace full, and had several fine hands beaten. In a little while his velvet was gone and the next hand lost him all his little capital. He grew more deeply flushed, and his round light eyes shone with an excited stare. He once more opened the black carpet bag, took out his pocket knife and put both hands inside. The captain heard him cut the string of the package and out came the hands grasping a mass of fives, tens and twenties. The carpet bag still kept its place in his lap.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Bring ’sh s’m beer,” said <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Simmons, loudly. “Jolly f’ler ze captain. Play’m all night ’f wanter. ’M a little full, but bes’ checker ’n poker player ’n Encinal County. Deal ’em.”</p>
|
||||
<hr/>
|
||||
<p>Captain Richard Saxon Clancy, paymaster (?) of the <abbr>M. K. & T.</abbr> Railway Company, drew himself together, his time had come. The manna was about to descend. The pigeon was already fluttering in his talons. The victim was in exactly the right stage of drunkenness; enough to be reckless and not too observant, but not too much so to prevent his playing the game.</p>
|
||||
<p>Captain Richard Saxon Clancy, paymaster (?) of the <abbr>M. K. & T.</abbr> Railway Company, drew himself together, his time had come. The manna was about to descend. The pigeon was already fluttering in his talons. The victim was in exactly the right stage of drunkenness; enough to be reckless and not too observant, but not too much so to prevent his playing the game.</p>
|
||||
<p>The captain coughed rather loudly. One or two men strolled in from the other room and watched the game silently. The captain coughed again. A pale young man with gloomy eyes and an unhealthy-looking face lounged around somewhat back of <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Simmons’ chair, and listlessly looked on. Every time a hand was dealt or a draw made, he would scratch his ear, touch his nose, pull his mustache or play with a button on his vest. It was strange to see how much the captain watched this young man, who certainly had nothing to do with the game.</p>
|
||||
<p>Still the captain won. When <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Simmons won a pot it was sure to be a small one.</p>
|
||||
<p>The captain thought the time ripe for his <span xml:lang="fr">coup de grâce</span>. He struck the bell, and the waiter came.</p>
|
||||
@ -118,7 +118,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“Don’t make any mistake,” he said. There was a blue gleam in his eyes exactly the color of the shining metal of his weapon.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Gentlemen,” he said, “I invite you all when in New York to call at my joint, at 2508 Bowery. Ask for Diamond Joe, and you’ll see me. I’m going into Mexico for two weeks to see after my mining plants and I’ll be at home any time after then. Upstairs, 2508 Bowery; don’t forget the number. I generally make my traveling expenses as I go. Good night.”</p>
|
||||
<p><abbr>Mr.</abbr> Simmons backed quickly out and disappeared.</p>
|
||||
<p>Five minutes later Captain Richard Saxon Clancy, paymaster (?) for the <abbr>M. K. & T.</abbr> Railway Company, and member (?) of the Dallas Young Men’s Christian Association, alias “Jimmy,” stood at a corner bar and said: “Whiskey, old man, and—say get a bigger glass than that, will you? I need it.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Five minutes later Captain Richard Saxon Clancy, paymaster (?) for the <abbr>M. K. & T.</abbr> Railway Company, and member (?) of the Dallas Young Men’s Christian Association, alias “Jimmy,” stood at a corner bar and said: “Whiskey, old man, and—say get a bigger glass than that, will you? I need it.”</p>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
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</html>
|
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|
||||
@ -14,7 +14,7 @@
|
||||
<p>Now, few of us know the real life of the stage people. If we did, the profession might be more overcrowded than it is. We look askance at the players with an eye full of patronizing superiority—and we go home and practise all sorts of elocution and gestures in front of our looking glasses.</p>
|
||||
<p>Latterly there has been much talk of the actor people in a new light. It seems to have been divulged that instead of being motoring bacchanalians and diamond-hungry <i xml:lang="fr">loreleis</i> they are businesslike folk, students and ascetics with childer and homes and libraries, owning real estate, and conducting their private affairs in as orderly and unsensational a manner as any of us good citizens who are bound to the chariot wheels of the gas, rent, coal, ice, and wardmen.</p>
|
||||
<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 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">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>
|
||||
@ -37,7 +37,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“Miss Cherry,” said Bob Hart in his smooth, serious tones, “you’re in on your own terms. I’ve got ‘strictly business’ pasted in my hat and stenciled on my makeup box. When I dream of nights I always see a five-room bungalow on the north shore of Long Island, with a Jap cooking clam broth and duckling in the kitchen, and me with the title deeds to the place in my pongee coat pocket, swinging in a hammock on the side porch, reading Stanley’s <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Explorations into Africa</i>. And nobody else around. You never was interested in Africa, was you, Miss Cherry?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Not any,” said Cherry. “What I’m going to do with my money is to bank it. You can get four percent on deposits. Even at the salary I’ve been earning, I’ve figured out that in ten years I’d have an income of about $50 a month just from the interest alone. Well, I might invest some of the principal in a little business—say, trimming hats or a beauty parlor, and make more.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Well,” said Hart, “You’ve got the proper idea all right, all right, anyhow. There are mighty few actors that amount to anything at all who couldn’t fix themselves for the wet days to come if they’d save their money instead of blowing it. I’m glad you’ve got the correct business idea of it, Miss Cherry. I think the same way; and I believe this sketch will more than double what both of us earn now when we get it shaped up.”</p>
|
||||
<p>The subsequent history of <i epub:type="se:name.publication.play">Mice Will Play</i> is the history of all successful writings for the stage. Hart & Cherry cut it, pieced it, remodeled it, performed surgical operations on the dialogue and business, changed the lines, restored ’em, added more, cut ’em out, renamed it, gave it back the old name, rewrote it, substituted a dagger for the pistol, restored the pistol—put the sketch through all the known processes of condensation and improvement.</p>
|
||||
<p>The subsequent history of <i epub:type="se:name.publication.play">Mice Will Play</i> is the history of all successful writings for the stage. Hart & Cherry cut it, pieced it, remodeled it, performed surgical operations on the dialogue and business, changed the lines, restored ’em, added more, cut ’em out, renamed it, gave it back the old name, rewrote it, substituted a dagger for the pistol, restored the pistol—put the sketch through all the known processes of condensation and improvement.</p>
|
||||
<p>They rehearsed it by the old-fashioned boardinghouse clock in the rarely used parlor until its warning click at five minutes to the hour would occur every time exactly half a second before the click of the unloaded revolver that Helen Grimes used in rehearsing the thrilling climax of the sketch.</p>
|
||||
<p>Yes, that was a thriller and a piece of excellent work. In the act a real .32-caliber revolver was used loaded with a real cartridge. Helen Grimes, who is a Western girl of decidedly Buffalo Billish skill and daring, is tempestuously in love with Frank Desmond, the private secretary and confidential prospective son-in-law of her father, “Arapahoe” Grimes, quarter-million-dollar cattle king, owning a ranch that, judging by the scenery, is in either the Bad Lands or Amagansett, <abbr class="postal eoc">L. I.</abbr> Desmond (in private life <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Bob Hart) wears puttees and Meadow Brook Hunt riding trousers, and gives his address as New York, leaving you to wonder why he comes to the Bad Lands or Amagansett (as the case may be) and at the same time to conjecture mildly why a cattleman should want puttees about his ranch with a secretary in ’em.</p>
|
||||
<p>Well, anyhow, you know as well as I do that we all like that kind of play, whether we admit it or not—something along in between <i epub:type="se:name.publication.play">Bluebeard, <abbr>Jr.</abbr></i>, and <i epub:type="se:name.publication.play">Cymbeline</i> played in the Russian.</p>
|
||||
@ -60,17 +60,17 @@
|
||||
<p>“Right,” said Bob. “It’s business with me. You’ve got your scheme for banking yours; and I dream every night of that bungalow with the Jap cook and nobody around to raise trouble. Anything to enlarge the net receipts will engage my attention.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Come inside just a few minutes,” repeated Cherry, deeply thoughtful. “I’ve got a proposition to make to you that will reduce our expenses a lot and help you work out your own future and help me work out mine—and all on business principles.”</p>
|
||||
<p><i epub:type="se:name.publication.play">Mice Will Play</i> had a tremendously successful run in New York for ten weeks—rather neat for a vaudeville sketch—and then it started on the circuits. Without following it, it may be said that it was a solid drawing card for two years without a sign of abated popularity.</p>
|
||||
<p>Sam Packard, manager of one of Keetor’s New York houses, said of Hart & Cherry:</p>
|
||||
<p>Sam Packard, manager of one of Keetor’s New York houses, said of Hart & Cherry:</p>
|
||||
<p>“As square and high-toned a little team as ever came over the circuit. It’s a pleasure to read their names on the booking list. Quiet, hard workers, no Johnny and Mabel nonsense, on the job to the minute, straight home after their act, and each of ’em as gentlemanlike as a lady. I don’t expect to handle any attractions that give me less trouble or more respect for the profession.”</p>
|
||||
<p>And now, after so much cracking of a nutshell, here is the kernel of the story:</p>
|
||||
<p>At the end of its second season <i epub:type="se:name.publication.play">Mice Will Play</i> came back to New York for another run at the roof gardens and summer theatres. There was never any trouble in booking it at the top-notch price. Bob Hart had his bungalow nearly paid for, and Cherry had so many savings-deposit bank books that she had begun to buy sectional bookcases on the instalment plan to hold them.</p>
|
||||
<p>I tell you these things to assure you, even if you can’t believe it, that many, very many of the stage people are workers with abiding ambitions—just the same as the man who wants to be president, or the grocery clerk who wants a home in Flatbush, or a lady who is anxious to flop out of the Count-pan into the Prince-fire. And I hope I may be allowed to say, without chipping into the contribution basket, that they often move in a mysterious way their wonders to perform.</p>
|
||||
<p>But, listen.</p>
|
||||
<p>At the first performance of <i epub:type="se:name.publication.play">Mice Will Play</i> in New York at the Westphalia (no hams alluded to) Theatre, Winona Cherry was nervous. When she fired at the photograph of the Eastern beauty on the mantel, the bullet, instead of penetrating the photo and then striking the disk, went into the lower left side of Bob Hart’s neck. Not expecting to get it there, Hart collapsed neatly, while Cherry fainted in a most artistic manner.</p>
|
||||
<p>The audience, surmising that they viewed a comedy instead of a tragedy in which the principals were married or reconciled, applauded with great enjoyment. The Cool Head, who always graces such occasions, rang the curtain down, and two platoons of scene shifters respectively and more or less respectfully removed Hart & Cherry from the stage. The next turn went on, and all went as merry as an alimony bell.</p>
|
||||
<p>The audience, surmising that they viewed a comedy instead of a tragedy in which the principals were married or reconciled, applauded with great enjoyment. The Cool Head, who always graces such occasions, rang the curtain down, and two platoons of scene shifters respectively and more or less respectfully removed Hart & Cherry from the stage. The next turn went on, and all went as merry as an alimony bell.</p>
|
||||
<p>The stage hands found a young doctor at the stage entrance who was waiting for a patient with a decoction of <abbr>Am. B’ty</abbr> roses. The doctor examined Hart carefully and laughed heartily.</p>
|
||||
<p>“No headlines for you, Old Sport,” was his diagnosis. “If it had been two inches to the left it would have undermined the carotid artery as far as the Red Front Drug Store in Flatbush and Back Again. As it is, you just get the property man to bind it up with a flounce torn from any one of the girls’ Valenciennes and go home and get it dressed by the parlor-floor practitioner on your block, and you’ll be all right. Excuse me; I’ve got a serious case outside to look after.”</p>
|
||||
<p>After that, Bob Hart looked up and felt better. And then to where he lay came Vincente, the Tramp Juggler, great in his line. Vincente, a solemn man from Brattleboro, Vt., named Sam Griggs at home, sent toys and maple sugar home to two small daughters from every town he played. Vincente had moved on the same circuits with Hart & Cherry, and was their peripatetic friend.</p>
|
||||
<p>After that, Bob Hart looked up and felt better. And then to where he lay came Vincente, the Tramp Juggler, great in his line. Vincente, a solemn man from Brattleboro, Vt., named Sam Griggs at home, sent toys and maple sugar home to two small daughters from every town he played. Vincente had moved on the same circuits with Hart & Cherry, and was their peripatetic friend.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Bob,” said Vincente in his serious way, “I’m glad it’s no worse. The little lady is wild about you.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Who?” asked Hart.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Cherry,” said the juggler. “We didn’t know how bad you were hurt; and we kept her away. It’s taking the manager and three girls to hold her.”</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -8,29 +8,29 @@
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<article id="the-buyer-from-cactus-city" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">The Buyer from Cactus City</h2>
|
||||
<p>It is well that hay fever and colds do not obtain in the healthful vicinity of Cactus City, Texas, for the dry goods emporium of Navarro & Platt, situated there, is not to be sneezed at.</p>
|
||||
<p>Twenty thousand people in Cactus City scatter their silver coin with liberal hands for the things that their hearts desire. The bulk of this semiprecious metal goes to Navarro & Platt. Their huge brick building covers enough ground to graze a dozen head of sheep. You can buy of them a rattlesnake-skin necktie, an automobile or an eighty-five dollar, latest style, ladies’ tan coat in twenty different shades. Navarro & Platt first introduced pennies west of the Colorado River. They had been ranchmen with business heads, who saw that the world did not necessarily have to cease its revolutions after free grass went out.</p>
|
||||
<p>It is well that hay fever and colds do not obtain in the healthful vicinity of Cactus City, Texas, for the dry goods emporium of Navarro & Platt, situated there, is not to be sneezed at.</p>
|
||||
<p>Twenty thousand people in Cactus City scatter their silver coin with liberal hands for the things that their hearts desire. The bulk of this semiprecious metal goes to Navarro & Platt. Their huge brick building covers enough ground to graze a dozen head of sheep. You can buy of them a rattlesnake-skin necktie, an automobile or an eighty-five dollar, latest style, ladies’ tan coat in twenty different shades. Navarro & Platt first introduced pennies west of the Colorado River. They had been ranchmen with business heads, who saw that the world did not necessarily have to cease its revolutions after free grass went out.</p>
|
||||
<p>Every Spring, Navarro, senior partner, fifty-five, half Spanish, cosmopolitan, able, polished, had “gone on” to New York to buy goods. This year he shied at taking up the long trail. He was undoubtedly growing older; and he looked at his watch several times a day before the hour came for his siesta.</p>
|
||||
<p>“John,” he said, to his junior partner, “you shall go on this year to buy the goods.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Platt looked tired.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I’m told,” said he, “that New York is a plumb dead town; but I’ll go. I can take a whirl in San Antone for a few days on my way and have some fun.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Two weeks later a man in a Texas full dress suit—black frock coat, broad-brimmed soft white hat, and lay-down collar 3–4 inch high, with black, wrought iron necktie—entered the wholesale cloak and suit establishment of Zizzbaum & Son, on lower Broadway.</p>
|
||||
<p>Two weeks later a man in a Texas full dress suit—black frock coat, broad-brimmed soft white hat, and lay-down collar 3–4 inch high, with black, wrought iron necktie—entered the wholesale cloak and suit establishment of Zizzbaum & Son, on lower Broadway.</p>
|
||||
<p>Old Zizzbaum had the eye of an osprey, the memory of an elephant and a mind that unfolded from him in three movements like the puzzle of the carpenter’s rule. He rolled to the front like a brunette polar bear, and shook Platt’s hand.</p>
|
||||
<p>“And how is the good <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Navarro in Texas?” he said. “The trip was too long for him this year, so? We welcome <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Platt instead.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“A bull’s eye,” said Platt, “and I’d give forty acres of unirrigated Pecos County land to know how you did it.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I knew,” grinned Zizzbaum, “just as I know that the rainfall in El Paso for the year was 28.5 inches, or an increase of 15 inches, and that therefore Navarro & Platt will buy a $15,000 stock of suits this spring instead of $10,000, as in a dry year. But that will be tomorrow. There is first a cigar in my private office that will remove from your mouth the taste of the ones you smuggle across the Rio Grande and like—because they are smuggled.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I knew,” grinned Zizzbaum, “just as I know that the rainfall in El Paso for the year was 28.5 inches, or an increase of 15 inches, and that therefore Navarro & Platt will buy a $15,000 stock of suits this spring instead of $10,000, as in a dry year. But that will be tomorrow. There is first a cigar in my private office that will remove from your mouth the taste of the ones you smuggle across the Rio Grande and like—because they are smuggled.”</p>
|
||||
<p>It was late in the afternoon and business for the day had ended, Zizzbaum left Platt with a half-smoked cigar, and came out of the private office to Son, who was arranging his diamond scarfpin before a mirror, ready to leave.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Abey,” he said, “you will have to take <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Platt around tonight and show him things. They are customers for ten years. <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Navarro and I we played chess every moment of spare time when he came. That is good, but <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Platt is a young man and this is his first visit to New York. He should amuse easily.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“All right,” said Abey, screwing the guard tightly on his pin. “I’ll take him on. After he’s seen the Flatiron and the head waiter at the Hotel Astor and heard the phonograph play ‘Under the Old Apple Tree’ it’ll be half past ten, and <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Texas will be ready to roll up in his blanket. I’ve got a supper engagement at 11:30, but he’ll be all to the <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Winslow before then.”</p>
|
||||
<p>The next morning at 10 Platt walked into the store ready to do business. He had a bunch of hyacinths pinned on his lapel. Zizzbaum himself waited on him. Navarro & Platt were good customers, and never failed to take their discount for cash.</p>
|
||||
<p>The next morning at 10 Platt walked into the store ready to do business. He had a bunch of hyacinths pinned on his lapel. Zizzbaum himself waited on him. Navarro & Platt were good customers, and never failed to take their discount for cash.</p>
|
||||
<p>“And what did you think of our little town?” asked Zizzbaum, with the fatuous smile of the Manhattanite.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I shouldn’t care to live in it,” said the Texan. “Your son and I knocked around quite a little last night. You’ve got good water, but Cactus City is better lit up.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“We’ve got a few lights on Broadway, don’t you think, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Platt?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“And a good many shadows,” said Platt. “I think I like your horses best. I haven’t seen a crow-bait since I’ve been in town.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Zizzbaum led him upstairs to show the samples of suits.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Ask Miss Asher to come,” he said to a clerk.</p>
|
||||
<p>Miss Asher came, and Platt, of Navarro & Platt, felt for the first time the wonderful bright light of romance and glory descend upon him. He stood still as a granite cliff above the canyon of the Colorado, with his wide-open eyes fixed upon her. She noticed his look and flushed a little, which was contrary to her custom.</p>
|
||||
<p>Miss Asher was the crack model of Zizzbaum & Son. She was of the blond type known as “medium,” and her measurements even went the required 38–25–42 standard a little better. She had been at Zizzbaum’s two years, and knew her business. Her eye was bright, but cool; and had she chosen to match her gaze against the optic of the famed basilisk, that fabulous monster’s gaze would have wavered and softened first. Incidentally, she knew buyers.</p>
|
||||
<p>Miss Asher came, and Platt, of Navarro & Platt, felt for the first time the wonderful bright light of romance and glory descend upon him. He stood still as a granite cliff above the canyon of the Colorado, with his wide-open eyes fixed upon her. She noticed his look and flushed a little, which was contrary to her custom.</p>
|
||||
<p>Miss Asher was the crack model of Zizzbaum & Son. She was of the blond type known as “medium,” and her measurements even went the required 38–25–42 standard a little better. She had been at Zizzbaum’s two years, and knew her business. Her eye was bright, but cool; and had she chosen to match her gaze against the optic of the famed basilisk, that fabulous monster’s gaze would have wavered and softened first. Incidentally, she knew buyers.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Now, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Platt,” said Zizzbaum, “I want you to see these princess gowns in the light shades. They will be the thing in your climate. This first, if you please, Miss Asher.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Swiftly in and out of the dressing-room the prize model flew, each time wearing a new costume and looking more stunning with every change. She posed with absolute self-possession before the stricken buyer, who stood, tongue-tied and motionless, while Zizzbaum orated oilily of the styles. On the model’s face was her faint, impersonal professional smile that seemed to cover something like weariness or contempt.</p>
|
||||
<p>When the display was over Platt seemed to hesitate. Zizzbaum was a little anxious, thinking that his customer might be inclined to try elsewhere. But Platt was only looking over in his mind the best building sites in Cactus City, trying to select one on which to build a house for his wife-to-be—who was just then in the dressing-room taking off an evening gown of lavender and tulle.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -31,7 +31,7 @@
|
||||
<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">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>“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>
|
||||
<p>“In about two weeks the professors got the students disarmed and herded into classes. I don’t believe there’s any pleasure equal to being a philanthropist. Me and Andy bought high silk hats and pretended to dodge the two reporters of the Floresville Gazette. The paper had a man to kodak us whenever we appeared on the street, and ran our pictures every week over the column headed ‘Educational Notes.’ Andy lectured twice a week at the University; and afterward I would rise and tell a humorous story. Once the Gazette printed my pictures with Abe Lincoln on one side and Marshall <abbr class="name">P.</abbr> Wilder on the other.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -12,7 +12,7 @@
|
||||
<p>Metes and bounds have been assigned to it. I know. Realists have prated of “from Fourteenth to Forty-second,” and “as far west as” <abbr>etc.</abbr>, but the larger meaning of the word remains with me.</p>
|
||||
<p>Confirmation of my interpretation of the famous slaughterhouse noun-adjective came to me from Bill Jeremy, a friend out of the West. Bill lives in a town on the edge of the prairie-dog country. At times Bill yearns to maintain the tradition that “ginger shall be hot i’ the mouth.” He brought his last yearning to New York. And it devolved upon me. You know what that means.</p>
|
||||
<p>I took Bill to see the cavity that has been drilled in the city’s tooth, soon to be filled with the new gold subway; and the Eden Musée, and the Flatiron and the crack in the front windowpane of Russell Sage’s house, and the old man that threw the stone that did it when he was a boy—and I asked Bill what he thought of New York.</p>
|
||||
<p>“You may mean well,” said Bill, with gentle reproach, “but you’ve got in a groove. You thought I was underwear buyer for the Blue-Front Dry Goods Emporium of Pine Knob, <abbr class="postal">NC</abbr>, didn’t you? Or the junior partner of Slowcoach & Green, of Geegeewocomee, State of Goobers, come on for the fall stock of jeans, lingerie, and whetstones? Don’t treat me like a business friend.</p>
|
||||
<p>“You may mean well,” said Bill, with gentle reproach, “but you’ve got in a groove. You thought I was underwear buyer for the Blue-Front Dry Goods Emporium of Pine Knob, <abbr class="postal">NC</abbr>, didn’t you? Or the junior partner of Slowcoach & Green, of Geegeewocomee, State of Goobers, come on for the fall stock of jeans, lingerie, and whetstones? Don’t treat me like a business friend.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Do you suppose the wild, insensate longing I feel for metropolitan gayety is going to be satisfied by waxworks and razorback architecture? Now you get out the old envelope with the itinerary on it, and cross out the Brooklyn Bridge and the cab that Morgan rides home in and the remaining objects of interest, for I am going it alone. The Tenderloin, well done, is what I shall admire for to see.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Bill Jeremy has a way of doing as he says he will. So I did not urge upon him the bridge, or Carnegie Hall or the great Tomb—wonders that the unselfish New Yorker reserves, unseen, for his friends.</p>
|
||||
<p>That evening Bill descended, unprotected, upon the Tenderloin. The next day he came and put his feet upon my desk and told me about it.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -31,7 +31,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Shucks, now,’ says I, in the mountain idiom, ‘don’t tell me there’s a man in Mount Nebo as bad as that.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Worse,’ says the storekeeper. ‘He steals hogs.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“I think I will look up this <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Tatum; so a day or two after the constable turned him out I got acquainted with him and invited him out on the edge of town to sit on a log and talk business.</p>
|
||||
<p>“What I wanted was a partner with a natural rural makeup to play a part in some little one-act outrages that I was going to book with the Pitfall & Gin circuit in some of the Western towns; and this <abbr class="name">R.</abbr> Tatum was born for the role as sure as nature cast Fairbanks for the stuff that kept Eliza from sinking into the river.</p>
|
||||
<p>“What I wanted was a partner with a natural rural makeup to play a part in some little one-act outrages that I was going to book with the Pitfall & Gin circuit in some of the Western towns; and this <abbr class="name">R.</abbr> Tatum was born for the role as sure as nature cast Fairbanks for the stuff that kept Eliza from sinking into the river.</p>
|
||||
<p>“He was about the size of a first baseman; and he had ambiguous blue eyes like the china dog on the mantelpiece that Aunt Harriet used to play with when she was a child. His hair waved a little bit like the statue of the dinkus-thrower at the Vacation in Rome, but the color of it reminded you of the ‘Sunset in the Grand Canon, by an American Artist,’ that they hang over the stovepipe holes in the salongs. He was the Reub, without needing a touch. You’d have known him for one, even if you’d seen him on the vaudeville stage with one cotton suspender and a straw over his ear.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I told him what I wanted, and found him ready to jump at the job.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Overlooking such a trivial little peccadillo as the habit of manslaughter,’ says I, ‘what have you accomplished in the way of indirect brigandage or nonactionable thriftiness that you could point to, with or without pride, as an evidence of your qualifications for the position?’</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -17,7 +17,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“Charming widow, beautiful, home loving, 32 years, possessing $3,000 cash and owning valuable country property, would remarry. Would prefer a poor man with affectionate disposition to one with means, as she realizes that the solid virtues are oftenest to be found in the humble walks of life. No objection to elderly man or one of homely appearance if faithful and true and competent to manage property and invest money with judgment. Address, with particulars.</p>
|
||||
<footer>
|
||||
<p>Lonely,</p>
|
||||
<p class="signature">Care of Peters & Tucker, agents, Cairo, Ill.</p>
|
||||
<p class="signature">Care of Peters & Tucker, agents, Cairo, Ill.</p>
|
||||
</footer>
|
||||
</blockquote>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘So far, so pernicious,’ says I, when we had finished the literary concoction. ‘And now,’ says I, ‘where is the lady.’</p>
|
||||
@ -41,7 +41,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“With that one ad Andy and me put in twelve hours a day answering letters.</p>
|
||||
<p>“About one hundred a day was what came in. I never knew there was so many large hearted but indigent men in the country who were willing to acquire a charming widow and assume the burden of investing her money.</p>
|
||||
<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>“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">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>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -12,7 +12,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“I know,” said Jeff Peters. “I’ve read in history and mythology about Joan of Arc and <abbr>Mme.</abbr> Yale and <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Caudle and Eve and other noted females of the past. But, in my opinion, the woman of today is of little use in politics or business. What’s she best in, anyway?—men make the best cooks, milliners, nurses, housekeepers, stenographers, clerks, hairdressers and launderers. About the only job left that a woman can beat a man in is female impersonator in vaudeville.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I would have thought,” said I, “that occasionally, anyhow, you would have found the wit and intuition of woman valuable to you in your lines of—er—business.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Now, wouldn’t you,” said Jeff, with an emphatic nod—“wouldn’t you have imagined that? But a woman is an absolutely unreliable partner in any straight swindle. She’s liable to turn honest on you when you are depending upon her the most. I tried ’em once.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Bill Humble, an old friend of mine in the Territories, conceived the illusion that he wanted to be appointed United States Marshall. At that time me and Andy was doing a square, legitimate business of selling walking canes. If you unscrewed the head of one and turned it up to your mouth a half pint of good rye whiskey would go trickling down your throat to reward you for your act of intelligence. The deputies was annoying me and Andy some, and when Bill spoke to me about his officious aspirations, I saw how the appointment as Marshall might help along the firm of Peters & Tucker.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Bill Humble, an old friend of mine in the Territories, conceived the illusion that he wanted to be appointed United States Marshall. At that time me and Andy was doing a square, legitimate business of selling walking canes. If you unscrewed the head of one and turned it up to your mouth a half pint of good rye whiskey would go trickling down your throat to reward you for your act of intelligence. The deputies was annoying me and Andy some, and when Bill spoke to me about his officious aspirations, I saw how the appointment as Marshall might help along the firm of Peters & Tucker.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Jeff,’ says Bill to me, ‘you are a man of learning and education, besides having knowledge and information concerning not only rudiments but facts and attainments.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘I do,’ says I, ‘and I have never regretted it. I am not one,’ says I, ‘who would cheapen education by making it free. Tell me,’ says I, ‘which is of the most value to mankind, literature or horse racing?’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Why—er—, playing the po—I mean, of course, the poets and the great writers have got the call, of course,’ says Bill.</p>
|
||||
@ -36,7 +36,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“ ‘A woman like that,’ says Andy, ‘ought to lead a man to the highest positions of opulence and fame.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘I misdoubt,’ says I, ‘if any woman ever helped a man to secure a job any more than to have his meals ready promptly and spread a report that the other candidate’s wife had once been a shoplifter. They are no more adapted for business and politics,’ says I, ‘than Algernon Charles Swinburne is to be floor manager at one of Chuck Connor’s annual balls. I know,’ says I to Andy, ‘that sometimes a woman seems to step out into the kalsomine light as the charge d’affaires of her man’s political job. But how does it come out? Say, they have a neat little berth somewhere as foreign consul of record to Afghanistan or lockkeeper on the Delaware and Raritan Canal. One day this man finds his wife putting on her overshoes and three months supply of bird seed into the canary’s cage. “Sioux Falls?” he asks with a kind of hopeful light in his eye. “No, Arthur,” says she, “Washington. We’re wasted here,” says she. “You ought to be Toady Extraordinary to the Court of <abbr>St.</abbr> Bridget or Head Porter of the Island of Porto Rico. I’m going to see about it.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Then this lady,’ I says to Andy, ‘moves against the authorities at Washington with her baggage and munitions, consisting of five dozen indiscriminating letters written to her by a member of the Cabinet when she was 15; a letter of introduction from King Leopold to the Smithsonian Institution, and a pink silk costume with canary colored spats.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Well and then what?’ I goes. ‘She has the letters printed in the evening papers that match her costume, she lectures at an informal tea given in the palm room of the <abbr>B. & O.</abbr> Depot and then calls on the President. The ninth Assistant Secretary of Commerce and Labor, the first aide-de-camp of the Blue Room and an unidentified colored man are waiting there to grasp her by the hands—and feet. They carry her out to <abbr class="compass">S. W.</abbr> <abbr>B.</abbr> street and leave her on a cellar door. That ends it. The next time we hear of her she is writing postcards to the Chinese Minister asking him to get Arthur a job in a tea store.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Well and then what?’ I goes. ‘She has the letters printed in the evening papers that match her costume, she lectures at an informal tea given in the palm room of the <abbr>B. & O.</abbr> Depot and then calls on the President. The ninth Assistant Secretary of Commerce and Labor, the first aide-de-camp of the Blue Room and an unidentified colored man are waiting there to grasp her by the hands—and feet. They carry her out to <abbr class="compass">S. W.</abbr> <abbr>B.</abbr> street and leave her on a cellar door. That ends it. The next time we hear of her she is writing postcards to the Chinese Minister asking him to get Arthur a job in a tea store.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Then,’ says Andy, ‘you don’t think <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Avery will land the Marshalship for Bill?’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘I do not,’ says I. ‘I do not wish to be a septic, but I doubt if she can do as well as you and me could have done.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘I don’t agree with you,’ says Andy. ‘I’ll bet you she does. I’m proud of having a higher opinion of the talent and the powers of negotiation of ladies.’</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -43,7 +43,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“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 <abbr class="name">H. O.</abbr> loosened up a little and told the story about the lady in the Pullman car I laughed for five minutes.</p>
|
||||
<p>“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 Tonight,’ or really enjoying himself playing cards with ladies.</p>
|
||||
<p>“By-and-by Ogden gets out a decanter of Bourbon, and then there is a total eclipse of sheep.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Do you remember reading in the papers, about a month ago,’ says he, ‘about a train holdup on the <abbr>M. K. & T.</abbr>? 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.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Do you remember reading in the papers, about a month ago,’ says he, ‘about a train holdup on the <abbr>M. K. & T.</abbr>? 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.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘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?’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘He escaped,’ says Ogden. ‘And I was just reading in a paper today 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.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“Ogden pours out some more Bourbon, and shoves me the bottle.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -11,7 +11,7 @@
|
||||
<p>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.</p>
|
||||
<p>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.</p>
|
||||
<p>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.</p>
|
||||
<p>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-paying guest of the town, having dropped off there from a box car of an <abbr>I. & G. N.</abbr> 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.</p>
|
||||
<p>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-paying guest of the town, having dropped off there from a box car of an <abbr>I. & G. N.</abbr> 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.</p>
|
||||
<p>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.</p>
|
||||
<p>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, “<abbr>Mr.</abbr> Otto Schwegel,” and the name of the town and state. The postmark was Detroit.</p>
|
||||
<p>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 <i xml:lang="fr">nom de route</i>. Light-blue eyes, full of sullenness, fear, cunning, impudence, and fawning, witnessed the stress that had been laid upon his soul.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -22,7 +22,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“The Peaviners took me by surprise and Bill by the bridle and began a conversation that wasn’t entirely disassociated with the subject of fruit trees. A committee of ’em ran some trace-chains through the armholes of my vest, and escorted me through their gardens and orchards.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Their fruit trees hadn’t lived up to their labels. Most of ’em had turned out to be persimmons and dogwoods, with a grove or two of blackjacks and poplars. The only one that showed any signs of bearing anything was a fine young cottonwood that had put forth a hornet’s nest and half of an old corset-cover.</p>
|
||||
<p>“The Peaviners protracted our fruitless stroll to the edge of town. They took my watch and money on account; and they kept Bill and the wagon as hostages. They said the first time one of them dogwood trees put forth an Amsden’s June peach I might come back and get my things. Then they took off the trace chains and jerked their thumbs in the direction of the Rocky Mountains; and I struck a Lewis and Clark lope for the swollen rivers and impenetrable forests.</p>
|
||||
<p>“When I regained intellectualness I found myself walking into an unidentified town on the <abbr>A., T. & S. F.</abbr> railroad. The Peaviners hadn’t left anything in my pockets except a plug of chewing—they wasn’t after my life—and that saved it. I bit off a chunk and sits down on a pile of ties by the track to recogitate my sensations of thought and perspicacity.</p>
|
||||
<p>“When I regained intellectualness I found myself walking into an unidentified town on the <abbr>A., T. & S. F.</abbr> railroad. The Peaviners hadn’t left anything in my pockets except a plug of chewing—they wasn’t after my life—and that saved it. I bit off a chunk and sits down on a pile of ties by the track to recogitate my sensations of thought and perspicacity.</p>
|
||||
<p>“And then along comes a fast freight which slows up a little at the town; and off of it drops a black bundle that rolls for twenty yards in a cloud of dust and then gets up and begins to spit soft coal and interjections. I see it is a young man broad across the face, dressed more for Pullmans than freights, and with a cheerful kind of smile in spite of it all that made Phoebe Snow’s job look like a chimney-sweep’s.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Fall off?’ says I.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Nunk,’ says he. ‘Got off. Arrived at my destination. What town is this?’</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -14,7 +14,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“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.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Ben pondered over my words while a mockingbird on the top of a mesquite by the porch trilled a dozen bars.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I reckon,” said he, “that your diagnosis about covers the case according to the rules laid down in the copybooks 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.</p>
|
||||
<p>“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.</p>
|
||||
<p>“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.</p>
|
||||
<p>“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.</p>
|
||||
<p>“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.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I’ll give you an estimate of his physiological and pictorial makeup, and then I’ll stick spurs into the sides of my narrative.</p>
|
||||
@ -28,7 +28,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“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.</p>
|
||||
<p>“After we went downstairs 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.</p>
|
||||
<p>“The next day the battleship <i epub:type="se:name.vessel.ship">Maine</i> 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.</p>
|
||||
<p>“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 streetcar 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 suitcase.</p>
|
||||
<p>“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 streetcar 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 suitcase.</p>
|
||||
<p>“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.</p>
|
||||
<p>“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.</p>
|
||||
<p>“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 downhill 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.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -19,7 +19,7 @@
|
||||
<p>He gave the sweets to the youngster, and had the satisfaction of perceiving that confidence was established. After that it was easy to obtain leadership of the expedition; to take the investment by the hand and lead it to a nice drug store he knew of in the same block. There Chicken, with a parental air, passed over the dollar and called for the medicine, while the boy crunched his candy, glad to be relieved of the responsibility of the purchase. And then the successful investor, searching his pockets, found an overcoat button—the extent of his winter trousseau—and, wrapping it carefully, placed the ostensible change in the pocket of confiding juvenility. Setting the youngster’s face homeward, and patting him benevolently on the back—for Chicken’s heart was as soft as those of his feathered namesakes—the speculator quit the market with a profit of 1,700 percent on his invested capital.</p>
|
||||
<p>Two hours later an Iron Mountain freight engine pulled out of the railroad yards, Texas bound, with a string of empties. In one of the cattle cars, half buried in excelsior, Chicken lay at ease. Beside him in his nest was a quart bottle of very poor whisky and a paper bag of bread and cheese. <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Ruggles, in his private car, was on his trip south for the winter season.</p>
|
||||
<p>For a week that car was trundled southward, shifted, laid over, and manipulated after the manner of rolling stock, but Chicken stuck to it, leaving it only at necessary times to satisfy his hunger and thirst. He knew it must go down to the cattle country, and San Antonio, in the heart of it, was his goal. There the air was salubrious and mild; the people indulgent and long-suffering. The bartenders there would not kick him. If he should eat too long or too often at one place they would swear at him as if by rote and without heat. They swore so drawlingly, and they rarely paused short of their full vocabulary, which was copious, so that Chicken had often gulped a good meal during the process of the vituperative prohibition. The season there was always springlike; the plazas were pleasant at night, with music and gaiety; except during the slight and infrequent cold snaps one could sleep comfortably out of doors in case the interiors should develop inhospitability.</p>
|
||||
<p>At Texarkana his car was switched to the <abbr>I. & G. N.</abbr> Then still southward it trailed until, at length, it crawled across the Colorado bridge at Austin, and lined out, straight as an arrow, for the run to San Antonio.</p>
|
||||
<p>At Texarkana his car was switched to the <abbr>I. & G. N.</abbr> Then still southward it trailed until, at length, it crawled across the Colorado bridge at Austin, and lined out, straight as an arrow, for the run to San Antonio.</p>
|
||||
<p>When the freight halted at that town Chicken was fast asleep. In ten minutes the train was off again for Laredo, the end of the road. Those empty cattle cars were for distribution along the line at points from which the ranches shipped their stock.</p>
|
||||
<p>When Chicken awoke his car was stationary. Looking out between the slats he saw it was a bright, moonlit night. Scrambling out, he saw his car with three others abandoned on a little siding in a wild and lonesome country. A cattle pen and chute stood on one side of the track. The railroad bisected a vast, dim ocean of prairie, in the midst of which Chicken, with his futile rolling stock, was as completely stranded as was Robinson with his landlocked boat.</p>
|
||||
<p>A white post stood near the rails. Going up to it, Chicken read the letters at the top, <abbr>S.</abbr> <abbr>A.</abbr> 90. Laredo was nearly as far to the south. He was almost a hundred miles from any town. Coyotes began to yelp in the mysterious sea around him. Chicken felt lonesome. He had lived in Boston without an education, in Chicago without nerve, in Philadelphia without a sleeping place, in New York without a pull, and in Pittsburg sober, and yet he had never felt so lonely as now.</p>
|
||||
@ -53,7 +53,7 @@
|
||||
<p>Later on, a deputation waited on Bud. They stood on one leg, chewed mesquite twigs and circumlocuted, for they hated to hurt his feelings. Bud foresaw their business, and made it easy for them. Bigger risks and larger profits was what they wanted.</p>
|
||||
<p>The suggestion of Piggy’s about holding up a train had fired their imagination and increased their admiration for the dash and boldness of the instigator. They were such simple, artless, and custom-bound bush-rangers that they had never before thought of extending their habits beyond the running off of livestock and the shooting of such of their acquaintances as ventured to interfere.</p>
|
||||
<p>Bud acted “on the level,” agreeing to take a subordinate place in the gang until Black Eagle should have been given a trial as leader.</p>
|
||||
<p>After a great deal of consultation, studying of timetables, and discussion of the country’s topography, the time and place for carrying out their new enterprise was decided upon. At that time there was a feedstuff famine in Mexico and a cattle famine in certain parts of the United States, and there was a brisk international trade. Much money was being shipped along the railroads that connected the two republics. It was agreed that the most promising place for the contemplated robbery was at Espina, a little station on the <abbr>I. & G. N.</abbr>, about forty miles north of Laredo. The train stopped there one minute; the country around was wild and unsettled; the station consisted of but one house in which the agent lived.</p>
|
||||
<p>After a great deal of consultation, studying of timetables, and discussion of the country’s topography, the time and place for carrying out their new enterprise was decided upon. At that time there was a feedstuff famine in Mexico and a cattle famine in certain parts of the United States, and there was a brisk international trade. Much money was being shipped along the railroads that connected the two republics. It was agreed that the most promising place for the contemplated robbery was at Espina, a little station on the <abbr>I. & G. N.</abbr>, about forty miles north of Laredo. The train stopped there one minute; the country around was wild and unsettled; the station consisted of but one house in which the agent lived.</p>
|
||||
<p>Black Eagle’s band set out, riding by night. Arriving in the vicinity of Espina they rested their horses all day in a thicket a few miles distant.</p>
|
||||
<p>The train was due at Espina at 10:30 <abbr class="time">p.m.</abbr> They could rob the train and be well over the Mexican border with their booty by daylight the next morning.</p>
|
||||
<p>To do Black Eagle justice, he exhibited no signs of flinching from the responsible honours that had been conferred upon him.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -11,7 +11,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“Eighty-first Street—let ’em out, please,” yelled the shepherd in blue.</p>
|
||||
<p>A flock of citizen sheep scrambled out and another flock scrambled aboard. Ding-ding! The cattle cars of the Manhattan Elevated rattled away, and John Perkins drifted down the stairway of the station with the released flock.</p>
|
||||
<p>John walked slowly toward his flat. Slowly, because in the lexicon of his daily life there was no such word as “perhaps.” There are no surprises awaiting a man who has been married two years and lives in a flat. As he walked John Perkins prophesied to himself with gloomy and downtrodden cynicism the foregone conclusions of the monotonous day.</p>
|
||||
<p>Katy would meet him at the door with a kiss flavored with cold cream and butterscotch. He would remove his coat, sit upon a macadamized lounge and read, in the evening paper, of Russians and Japs slaughtered by the deadly linotype. For dinner there would be pot roast, a salad flavored with a dressing warranted not to crack or injure the leather, stewed rhubarb and the bottle of strawberry marmalade blushing at the certificate of chemical purity on its label. After dinner Katy would show him the new patch in her crazy quilt that the iceman had cut for her off the end of his four-in-hand. At half-past seven they would spread newspapers over the furniture to catch the pieces of plastering that fell when the fat man in the flat overhead began to take his physical culture exercises. Exactly at eight Hickey & Mooney, of the vaudeville team (unbooked) in the flat across the hall, would yield to the gentle influence of delirium tremens and begin to overturn chairs under the delusion that Hammerstein was pursuing them with a five-hundred-dollar-a-week contract. Then the gent at the window across the air-shaft would get out his flute; the nightly gas leak would steal forth to frolic in the highways; the dumbwaiter would slip off its trolley; the janitor would drive <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Zanowitski’s five children once more across the Yalu, the lady with the champagne shoes and the Skye terrier would trip downstairs and paste her Thursday name over her bell and letter-box—and the evening routine of the Frogmore flats would be under way.</p>
|
||||
<p>Katy would meet him at the door with a kiss flavored with cold cream and butterscotch. He would remove his coat, sit upon a macadamized lounge and read, in the evening paper, of Russians and Japs slaughtered by the deadly linotype. For dinner there would be pot roast, a salad flavored with a dressing warranted not to crack or injure the leather, stewed rhubarb and the bottle of strawberry marmalade blushing at the certificate of chemical purity on its label. After dinner Katy would show him the new patch in her crazy quilt that the iceman had cut for her off the end of his four-in-hand. At half-past seven they would spread newspapers over the furniture to catch the pieces of plastering that fell when the fat man in the flat overhead began to take his physical culture exercises. Exactly at eight Hickey & Mooney, of the vaudeville team (unbooked) in the flat across the hall, would yield to the gentle influence of delirium tremens and begin to overturn chairs under the delusion that Hammerstein was pursuing them with a five-hundred-dollar-a-week contract. Then the gent at the window across the air-shaft would get out his flute; the nightly gas leak would steal forth to frolic in the highways; the dumbwaiter would slip off its trolley; the janitor would drive <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Zanowitski’s five children once more across the Yalu, the lady with the champagne shoes and the Skye terrier would trip downstairs and paste her Thursday name over her bell and letter-box—and the evening routine of the Frogmore flats would be under way.</p>
|
||||
<p>John Perkins knew these things would happen. And he knew that at a quarter past eight he would summon his nerve and reach for his hat, and that his wife would deliver this speech in a querulous tone:</p>
|
||||
<p>“Now, where are you going, I’d like to know, John Perkins?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Thought I’d drop up to McCloskey’s,” he would answer, “and play a game or two of pool with the fellows.”</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -16,7 +16,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“ ‘The Latin races,’ says Henry, explaining easy in the idioms he learned at college, ‘are peculiarly adapted to be victims of the phonograph. They have the artistic temperament. They yearn for music and color and gaiety. They give wampum to the hand-organ man and the four-legged chicken in the tent when they’re months behind with the grocery and the breadfruit tree.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Then,’ says I, ‘we’ll export canned music to the Latins; but I’m mindful of <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Julius Caesar’s account of ’em where he says: “<i xml:lang="la">Omnia Gallia in tres partes divisa est</i>”; which is the same as to say, “We will need all of our gall in devising means to tree them parties.” ’</p>
|
||||
<p>“I hated to make a show of education; but I was disinclined to be overdone in syntax by a mere Indian, a member of a race to which we owe nothing except the land on which the United States is situated.</p>
|
||||
<p>“We bought a fine phonograph in Texarkana—one of the best make—and half a trunkful of records. We packed up, and took the <abbr>T. & P.</abbr> for New Orleans. From that celebrated centre of molasses and disfranchised coon songs we took a steamer for South America.</p>
|
||||
<p>“We bought a fine phonograph in Texarkana—one of the best make—and half a trunkful of records. We packed up, and took the <abbr>T. & P.</abbr> for New Orleans. From that celebrated centre of molasses and disfranchised coon songs we took a steamer for South America.</p>
|
||||
<p>“We landed at Solitas, forty miles up the coast from here. ’Twas a palatable enough place to look at. The houses were clean and white; and to look at ’em stuck around among the scenery they reminded you of hard-boiled eggs served with lettuce. There was a block of skyscraper mountains in the suburbs; and they kept pretty quiet, like they had crept up there and were watching the town. And the sea was remarking ‘Sh-sh-sh’ on the beach; and now and then a ripe coconut would drop kerblip in the sand; and that was all there was doing. Yes, I judge that town was considerably on the quiet. I judge that after Gabriel quits blowing his horn, and the car starts, with Philadelphia swinging to the last strap, and Pine Gully, Arkansas, hanging onto the rear step, this town of Solitas will wake up and ask if anybody spoke.</p>
|
||||
<p>“The captain went ashore with us, and offered to conduct what he seemed to like to call the obsequies. He introduced Henry and me to the United States Consul, and a roan man, the head of the Department of Mercenary and Licentious Dispositions, the way it read upon his sign.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘I touch here again a week from today,’ says the captain.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -36,9 +36,9 @@
|
||||
<p>Truly Bob Tidball was never to “hit the breeze” again. The deadly .45 of the false friend cracked and filled the gorge with a roar that the walls hurled back with indignant echoes. And Bolivar, unconscious accomplice, swiftly bore away the last of the holders-up of the “Sunset Express,” not put to the stress of “carrying double.”</p>
|
||||
<p>But as “Shark” Dodson galloped away the woods seemed to fade from his view; the revolver in his right hand turned to the curved arm of a mahogany chair; his saddle was strangely upholstered, and he opened his eyes and saw his feet, not in stirrups, but resting quietly on the edge of a quartered-oak desk.</p>
|
||||
<hr/>
|
||||
<p>I am telling you that Dodson, of the firm of Dodson & Decker, Wall Street brokers, opened his eyes. Peabody, the confidential clerk, was standing by his chair, hesitating to speak. There was a confused hum of wheels below, and the sedative buzz of an electric fan.</p>
|
||||
<p>I am telling you that Dodson, of the firm of Dodson & Decker, Wall Street brokers, opened his eyes. Peabody, the confidential clerk, was standing by his chair, hesitating to speak. There was a confused hum of wheels below, and the sedative buzz of an electric fan.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Ahem! Peabody,” said Dodson, blinking. “I must have fallen asleep. I had a most remarkable dream. What is it, Peabody?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“<abbr>Mr.</abbr> Williams, sir, of Tracy & Williams, is outside. He has come to settle his deal in <abbr class="initialism eoc">XYX</abbr>. The market caught him short, sir, if you remember.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“<abbr>Mr.</abbr> Williams, sir, of Tracy & Williams, is outside. He has come to settle his deal in <abbr class="initialism eoc">XYX</abbr>. The market caught him short, sir, if you remember.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Yes, I remember. What is <abbr class="initialism">XYZ</abbr> quoted at today, Peabody?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“One eighty-five, sir.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Then that’s his price.”</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -27,7 +27,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“Sure,” said Thacker. “But a dollar is a dollar anywhere, North, South, or West—whether you’re buying codfish, goober peas, or Rocky Ford cantaloupes. Now, I’ve been looking over your November number. I see one here on your desk. You don’t mind running over it with me?</p>
|
||||
<p>“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.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“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.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“But why,” persisted Thacker, “is the poem illustrated with a view of the <abbr>M. & O.</abbr> Railroad freight depot at Tuscaloosa?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“But why,” persisted Thacker, “is the poem illustrated with a view of the <abbr>M. & O.</abbr> Railroad freight depot at Tuscaloosa?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“The illustration,” said the colonel, with dignity, “shows a corner of the fence surrounding the old homestead where Miss Lascelles was born.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“All right,” said Thacker. “I read the poem, but I couldn’t tell whether it was about the depot or the battle of Bull Run. Now, here’s a short story called ‘Rosies’ Temptation,’ by Fosdyke Piggott. It’s rotten. What is a Piggott, anyway?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“<abbr>Mr.</abbr> Piggott,” said the editor, “is a brother of the principal stockholder of the magazine.”</p>
|
||||
@ -37,7 +37,7 @@
|
||||
<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>
|
||||
<p>“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?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“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?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I have carefully and conscientiously rejected all contributions from that section of the country—if I understand your figurative language aright,” replied the colonel.</p>
|
||||
<p>“All right. Now I’ll show you something.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Thacker reached for his thick manila envelope and dumped a mass of typewritten manuscript on the editors desk.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -67,7 +67,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“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—”</p>
|
||||
<p>“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.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“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.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Good stuff!” said Delano. “I got mine there. Junius <abbr class="name">T.</abbr> 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.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Good stuff!” said Delano. “I got mine there. Junius <abbr class="name">T.</abbr> 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.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“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.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“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?”</p>
|
||||
<p>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.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -8,8 +8,8 @@
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<article id="thimble-thimble" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">Thimble, Thimble</h2>
|
||||
<p>These are the directions for finding the office of Carteret & Carteret, Mill Supplies and Leather Belting:</p>
|
||||
<p>You follow the Broadway trail down until you pass the Crosstown Line, the Bread Line, and the Dead Line, and come to the Big 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>These are the directions for finding the office of Carteret & Carteret, Mill Supplies and Leather Belting:</p>
|
||||
<p>You follow the Broadway trail down until you pass the Crosstown Line, the Bread Line, and the Dead Line, and come to the Big 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 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>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -35,10 +35,10 @@
|
||||
<p>Madame Beaumont wore the same beautiful evening gown that she had worn each day at dinner. She seemed thoughtful. Near her hand on the table lay a small chatelaine purse. After she had eaten her ice she opened the purse and took out a one-dollar bill.</p>
|
||||
<p>“<abbr>Mr.</abbr> Farrington,” she said, with the smile that had won the Hotel Lotus, “I want to tell you something. I’m going to leave before breakfast in the morning, because I’ve got to go back to my work. I’m behind the hosiery counter at Casey’s Mammoth Store, and my vacation’s up at eight o’clock tomorrow. That paper-dollar is the last cent I’ll see till I draw my eight dollars salary next Saturday night. You’re a real gentleman, and you’ve been good to me, and I wanted to tell you before I went.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I’ve been saving up out of my wages for a year just for this vacation. I wanted to spend one week like a lady if I never do another one. I wanted to get up when I please instead of having to crawl out at seven every morning; and I wanted to live on the best and be waited on and ring bells for things just like rich folks do. Now I’ve done it, and I’ve had the happiest time I ever expect to have in my life. I’m going back to my work and my little hall bedroom satisfied for another year. I wanted to tell you about it, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Farrington, because I—I thought you kind of liked me, and I—I liked you. But, oh, I couldn’t help deceiving you up till now, for it was all just like a fairy tale to me. So I talked about Europe and the things I’ve read about in other countries, and made you think I was a great lady.</p>
|
||||
<p>“This dress I’ve got on—it’s the only one I have that’s fit to wear—I bought from O’Dowd & Levinsky on the instalment plan.</p>
|
||||
<p>“This dress I’ve got on—it’s the only one I have that’s fit to wear—I bought from O’Dowd & Levinsky on the instalment plan.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Seventy-five dollars is the price, and it was made to measure. I paid $10 down, and they’re to collect $1 a week till it’s paid for. That’ll be about all I have to say, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Farrington, except that my name is Mamie Siviter instead of Madame Beaumont, and I thank you for your attentions. This dollar will pay the instalment due on the dress tomorrow. I guess I’ll go up to my room now.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Harold Farrington listened to the recital of the Lotus’s loveliest guest with an impassive countenance. When she had concluded he drew a small book like a checkbook from his coat pocket. He wrote upon a blank form in this with a stub of pencil, tore out the leaf, tossed it over to his companion and took up the paper dollar.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I’ve got to go to work, too, in the morning,” he said, “and I might as well begin now. There’s a receipt for the dollar instalment. I’ve been a collector for O’Dowd & Levinsky for three years. Funny, ain’t it, that you and me both had the same idea about spending our vacation? I’ve always wanted to put up at a swell hotel, and I saved up out of my twenty per, and did it. Say, Mame, how about a trip to Coney Saturday night on the boat—what?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I’ve got to go to work, too, in the morning,” he said, “and I might as well begin now. There’s a receipt for the dollar instalment. I’ve been a collector for O’Dowd & Levinsky for three years. Funny, ain’t it, that you and me both had the same idea about spending our vacation? I’ve always wanted to put up at a swell hotel, and I saved up out of my twenty per, and did it. Say, Mame, how about a trip to Coney Saturday night on the boat—what?”</p>
|
||||
<p>The face of the pseudo Madame Héloise D’Arcy Beaumont beamed.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Oh, you bet I’ll go, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Farrington. The store closes at twelve on Saturdays. I guess Coney’ll be all right even if we did spend a week with the swells.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Below the balcony the sweltering city growled and buzzed in the July night. Inside the Hotel Lotus the tempered, cool shadows reigned, and the solicitous waiter single-footed near the low windows, ready at a nod to serve Madame and her escort.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
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