“I’ll try to raise the money for you on time,” said Merwin, interested in his plaiting.
“All right, Tom,” concluded Longley, as he turned toward the door; “I knew you would if you could.”
- Merwin threw down his whip and went to the only other bank in town, a private one, run by Cooper & Craig.
+ Merwin threw down his whip and went to the only other bank in town, a private one, run by Cooper & Craig.
“Cooper,” he said, to the partner by that name, “I’ve got to have $10,000 today or tomorrow. I’ve got a house and lot there that’s worth about $6,000 and that’s all the actual collateral. But I’ve got a cattle deal on that’s sure to bring me in more than that much profit within a few days.”
Cooper began to cough.
“Now, for God’s sake don’t say no,” said Merwin. “I owe that much money on a call loan. It’s been called, and the man that called it is a man I’ve laid on the same blanket with in cow-camps and ranger-camps for ten years. He can call anything I’ve got. He can call the blood out of my veins and it’ll come. He’s got to have the money. He’s in a devil of a—Well, he needs the money, and I’ve got to get it for him. You know my word’s good, Cooper.”
diff --git a/src/epub/text/a-harlem-tragedy.xhtml b/src/epub/text/a-harlem-tragedy.xhtml
index c48fdb6..5e9a43a 100644
--- a/src/epub/text/a-harlem-tragedy.xhtml
+++ b/src/epub/text/a-harlem-tragedy.xhtml
@@ -30,7 +30,7 @@
The hallways were suddenly filled with sound. The door flew open at the kick of Mr. 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.
- 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
- 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 L. & N. 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 en brochette.
+ 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 L. & N. 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 en brochette.
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.”
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.
diff --git a/src/epub/text/a-night-in-new-arabia.xhtml b/src/epub/text/a-night-in-new-arabia.xhtml
index 5390ff7..e306413 100644
--- a/src/epub/text/a-night-in-new-arabia.xhtml
+++ b/src/epub/text/a-night-in-new-arabia.xhtml
@@ -23,7 +23,7 @@
There now! it’s over. Hardly had time to yawn, did you? I’ve seen biographies that—but let us dissemble.
I want you to consider Jacob Spraggins, Esq., 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, x. The eighth stage shall be left to the higher mathematics.
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 H. A. 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.
- 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 P. D. & Q. 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, R. Fitzsimmons, Peter Pan, and the rest of us.
+ 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 P. D. & Q. 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, R. Fitzsimmons, Peter Pan, and the rest of us.
Don’t lose heart because the story seems to be degenerating into a sort of moral essay for intellectual readers.
There will be dialogue and stage business pretty soon.
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 ult. 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 U. B. A. of G.” 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 K. of H. The right is reserved to reject any and all bids; signed, S. Peter, secretary and gatekeeper.
@@ -135,7 +135,7 @@
“The Society for Providing Healthful Recreation for Working Girls wants $20,000 from you to lay out a golf course.”
“Tell ’em to see an undertaker.”
“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?”
- “The Globe Spice & Seasons Company,” said secretary, “controls the market at present.”
+ “The Globe Spice & Seasons Company,” said secretary, “controls the market at present.”
“Raise vinegar two cents a gallon. Notify all our branches.”
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.
“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.”
diff --git a/src/epub/text/a-ramble-in-aphasia.xhtml b/src/epub/text/a-ramble-in-aphasia.xhtml
index 7901c09..c57a70c 100644
--- a/src/epub/text/a-ramble-in-aphasia.xhtml
+++ b/src/epub/text/a-ramble-in-aphasia.xhtml
@@ -20,7 +20,7 @@
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.
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:
- “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 R. P. Bolder—Bolder & Son, of Hickory Grove, Missouri.”
+ “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 R. P. Bolder—Bolder & Son, of Hickory Grove, Missouri.”
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.
“My name,” said I, glibly, “is Edward Pinkhammer. I am a druggist, and my home is in Cornopolis, Kansas.”
“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.”
diff --git a/src/epub/text/an-afternoon-miracle.xhtml b/src/epub/text/an-afternoon-miracle.xhtml
index 99c304d..e6d7d55 100644
--- a/src/epub/text/an-afternoon-miracle.xhtml
+++ b/src/epub/text/an-afternoon-miracle.xhtml
@@ -39,7 +39,7 @@
The Mexican had left behind him a wake of closed doors and an empty street, but now people were beginning to emerge from their places of refuge with assumed unconsciousness of anything having happened. Many citizens who knew the ranger pointed out to him with alacrity the course of Garcia’s retreat.
As Buckley swung along upon the trail he felt the beginning of the suffocating constriction about his throat, the cold sweat under the brim of his hat, the old, shameful, dreaded sinking of his heart as it went down, down, down in his bosom.
- The morning train of the Mexican Central had that day been three hours late, thus failing to connect with the I. & G. N. on the other side of the river. Passengers for Los Estados Unidos grumblingly sought entertainment in the little swaggering mongrel town of two nations, for, until the morrow, no other train would come to rescue them. Grumblingly, because two days later would begin the great fair and races in San Antone. Consider that at that time San Antone was the hub of the wheel of Fortune, and the names of its spokes were Cattle, Wool, Faro, Running Horses, and Ozone. In those times cattlemen played at crack-loo on the sidewalks with double-eagles, and gentlemen backed their conception of the fortuitous card with stacks limited in height only by the interference of gravity. Wherefore, thither journeyed the sowers and the reapers—they who stampeded the dollars, and they who rounded them up. Especially did the caterers to the amusement of the people haste to San Antone. Two greatest shows on earth were already there, and dozens of smallest ones were on the way.
+ The morning train of the Mexican Central had that day been three hours late, thus failing to connect with the I. & G. N. on the other side of the river. Passengers for Los Estados Unidos grumblingly sought entertainment in the little swaggering mongrel town of two nations, for, until the morrow, no other train would come to rescue them. Grumblingly, because two days later would begin the great fair and races in San Antone. Consider that at that time San Antone was the hub of the wheel of Fortune, and the names of its spokes were Cattle, Wool, Faro, Running Horses, and Ozone. In those times cattlemen played at crack-loo on the sidewalks with double-eagles, and gentlemen backed their conception of the fortuitous card with stacks limited in height only by the interference of gravity. Wherefore, thither journeyed the sowers and the reapers—they who stampeded the dollars, and they who rounded them up. Especially did the caterers to the amusement of the people haste to San Antone. Two greatest shows on earth were already there, and dozens of smallest ones were on the way.
On a side track near the mean little ’dobe depot stood a private car, left there by the Mexican train that morning and doomed by an ineffectual schedule to ignobly await, amid squalid surroundings, connection with the next day’s regular.
The car had been once a common day-coach, but those who had sat in it and gringed to the conductor’s hatband slips would never have recognised it in its transformation. Paint and gilding and certain domestic touches had liberated it from any suspicion of public servitude. The whitest of lace curtains judiciously screened its windows. From its fore end drooped in the torrid air the flag of Mexico. From its rear projected the Stars and Stripes and a busy stovepipe, the latter reinforcing in its suggestion of culinary comforts the general suggestion of privacy and ease. The beholder’s eye, regarding its gorgeous sides, found interest to culminate in a single name in gold and blue letters extending almost its entire length—a single name, the audacious privilege of royalty and genius. Doubly, then, was this arrogant nomenclature here justified; for the name was that of “Alvarita, Queen of the Serpent Tribe.” This, her car, was back from a triumphant tour of the principal Mexican cities, and now headed for San Antonio, where, according to promissory advertisement, she would exhibit her “Marvellous Dominion and Fearless Control over Deadly and Venomous Serpents, Handling them with Ease as they Coil and Hiss to the Terror of Thousands of Tongue-tied Tremblers!”
One hundred in the shade kept the vicinity somewhat depeopled. This quarter of the town was a ragged edge; its denizens the bubbling froth of five nations; its architecture tent, jacal, and ’dobe; its distractions the hurdy-gurdy and the informal contribution to the sudden stranger’s store of experience. Beyond this dishonourable fringe upon the old town’s jowl rose a dense mass of trees, surmounting and filling a little hollow. Through this bickered a small stream that perished down the sheer and disconcerting side of the great canon of the Rio Bravo del Norte.
diff --git a/src/epub/text/bestseller.xhtml b/src/epub/text/bestseller.xhtml
index f4a778d..f74ef65 100644
--- a/src/epub/text/bestseller.xhtml
+++ b/src/epub/text/bestseller.xhtml
@@ -45,7 +45,7 @@
“O-ho!” I said. “So you’ve taken time enough off from your plate-glass to have a romance?”
“No, no,” said John. “No romance—nothing like that! But I’ll tell you about it.
“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.
- “She changed cars at Cincinnati, and took a sleeper to Louisville over the L. & N. 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.
+ “She changed cars at Cincinnati, and took a sleeper to Louisville over the L. & N. 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.
“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.
“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.
“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.
diff --git a/src/epub/text/confessions-of-a-humorist.xhtml b/src/epub/text/confessions-of-a-humorist.xhtml
index 75e7d31..7e64fad 100644
--- a/src/epub/text/confessions-of-a-humorist.xhtml
+++ b/src/epub/text/confessions-of-a-humorist.xhtml
@@ -81,7 +81,7 @@
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.
“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!”
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.
- 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 & Co.’s undertaking establishment.
+ 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 & Co.’s undertaking establishment.
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.
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.
diff --git a/src/epub/text/conscience-in-art.xhtml b/src/epub/text/conscience-in-art.xhtml
index 312ee94..ef192df 100644
--- a/src/epub/text/conscience-in-art.xhtml
+++ b/src/epub/text/conscience-in-art.xhtml
@@ -85,7 +85,7 @@
“Andy is walking up and down the room looking at his watch.
“ ‘Well?’ he says.
“ ‘Twenty-five hundred,’ says I. ‘Cash.’
- “ ‘We’ve got just eleven minutes,’ says Andy, ‘to catch the B. & O. westbound. Grab your baggage.’
+ “ ‘We’ve got just eleven minutes,’ says Andy, ‘to catch the B. & O. westbound. Grab your baggage.’
“ ‘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.’
“ ‘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?’
“ ‘Then,’ says I, ‘why was that story about finding another one in the pawn—’
diff --git a/src/epub/text/dicky.xhtml b/src/epub/text/dicky.xhtml
index 624065a..c1c2894 100644
--- a/src/epub/text/dicky.xhtml
+++ b/src/epub/text/dicky.xhtml
@@ -10,7 +10,7 @@
Dicky
There is little consecutiveness along the Spanish Main. Things happen there intermittently. Even Time seems to hang his scythe daily on the branch of an orange tree while he takes a siesta and a cigarette.
After the ineffectual revolt against the administration of President Losada, the country settled again into quiet toleration of the abuses with which he had been charged. In Coralio old political enemies went arm-in-arm, lightly eschewing for the time all differences of opinion.
- The failure of the art expedition did not stretch the cat-footed Keogh upon his back. The ups and downs of Fortune made smooth travelling for his nimble steps. His blue pencil stub was at work again before the smoke of the steamer on which White sailed had cleared away from the horizon. He had but to speak a word to Geddie to find his credit negotiable for whatever goods he wanted from the store of Brannigan & Company. On the same day on which White arrived in New York Keogh, at the rear of a train of five pack mules loaded with hardware and cutlery, set his face toward the grim, interior mountains. There the Indian tribes wash gold dust from the auriferous streams; and when a market is brought to them trading is brisk and muy bueno in the Cordilleras.
+ The failure of the art expedition did not stretch the cat-footed Keogh upon his back. The ups and downs of Fortune made smooth travelling for his nimble steps. His blue pencil stub was at work again before the smoke of the steamer on which White sailed had cleared away from the horizon. He had but to speak a word to Geddie to find his credit negotiable for whatever goods he wanted from the store of Brannigan & Company. On the same day on which White arrived in New York Keogh, at the rear of a train of five pack mules loaded with hardware and cutlery, set his face toward the grim, interior mountains. There the Indian tribes wash gold dust from the auriferous streams; and when a market is brought to them trading is brisk and muy bueno in the Cordilleras.
In Coralio Time folded his wings and paced wearily along his drowsy path. They who had most cheered the torpid hours were gone. Clancy had sailed on a Spanish barque for Colon, contemplating a cut across the isthmus and then a further voyage to end at Calao, where the fighting was said to be on. Geddie, whose quiet and genial nature had once served to mitigate the frequent dull reaction of lotus eating, was now a home-man, happy with his bright orchid, Paula, and never even dreaming of or regretting the unsolved, sealed and monogramed Bottle whose contents, now inconsiderable, were held safely in the keeping of the sea.
Well may the Walrus, most discerning and eclectic of beasts, place sealing-wax midway on his programme of topics that fall pertinent and diverting upon the ear.
Atwood was gone—he of the hospitable back porch and ingenuous cunning. Dr. Gregg, with his trepanning story smouldering within him, was a whiskered volcano, always showing signs of imminent eruption, and was not to be considered in the ranks of those who might contribute to the amelioration of ennui. The new consul’s note chimed with the sad sea waves and the violent tropical greens—he had not a bar of Scheherezade or of the Round Table in his lute. Goodwin was employed with large projects: what time he was loosed from them found him at his home, where he loved to be. Therefore it will be seen that there was a dearth of fellowship and entertainment among the foreign contingent of Coralio.
diff --git a/src/epub/text/elsie-in-new-york.xhtml b/src/epub/text/elsie-in-new-york.xhtml
index 2ea4c89..f984d48 100644
--- a/src/epub/text/elsie-in-new-york.xhtml
+++ b/src/epub/text/elsie-in-new-york.xhtml
@@ -10,13 +10,13 @@
Elsie in New York
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.
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.
- 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 Mr. 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.
- 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 Mr. Otter. Keep your eye on the letter from Mr. 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.
+ 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 Mr. 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.
+ 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 Mr. Otter. Keep your eye on the letter from Mr. 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.
And so we find Elsie, thus equipped, starting out in the world to seek her fortune. One trouble about the letter from Mr. 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.
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.
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.
“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.”
- 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.
+ 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.
But did she want to find Mr. 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!
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.
“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.”
@@ -46,13 +46,13 @@
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
- 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.”
+ 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.”
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.
“Say, you’se,” said the girl, “are you’se goin’ in there after a job?”
“Yes,” said Elsie; “I must have work.”
“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?”
“I’ll try somewhere else,” said Elsie.
- 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.
+ 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.
She hurried into the store and sent in to Mr. Otter by a clerk her name and the letter he had written her father. She was shown directly into his private office.
Mr. 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.
“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.”
diff --git a/src/epub/text/girl.xhtml b/src/epub/text/girl.xhtml
index 6e04da3..71a570a 100644
--- a/src/epub/text/girl.xhtml
+++ b/src/epub/text/girl.xhtml
@@ -8,7 +8,7 @@
“Girl”
- In gilt letters on the ground glass of the door of room No. 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.
+ In gilt letters on the ground glass of the door of room No. 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.
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.
“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.”
Hartley, twenty-nine, serious, thin, good-looking, nervous, sighed and frowned a little.
diff --git a/src/epub/text/hearts-and-hands.xhtml b/src/epub/text/hearts-and-hands.xhtml
index f8a93d1..23b7f0a 100644
--- a/src/epub/text/hearts-and-hands.xhtml
+++ b/src/epub/text/hearts-and-hands.xhtml
@@ -8,7 +8,7 @@
Hearts and Hands
- At Denver there was an influx of passengers into the coaches on the eastbound B. & M. 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.
+ At Denver there was an influx of passengers into the coaches on the eastbound B. & M. 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.
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.
“Well, Mr. Easton, if you will make me speak first, I suppose I must. Don’t you ever recognize old friends when you meet them in the West?”
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.
diff --git a/src/epub/text/holding-up-a-train.xhtml b/src/epub/text/holding-up-a-train.xhtml
index 6c79909..ecbf2da 100644
--- a/src/epub/text/holding-up-a-train.xhtml
+++ b/src/epub/text/holding-up-a-train.xhtml
@@ -69,7 +69,7 @@
But, in my opinion, the main condition that makes train robbing easy is the element of surprise in connection with the imagination of the passengers. If you have ever seen a horse that has eaten loco weed you will understand what I mean when I say that the passengers get locoed. That horse gets the awfullest imagination on him in the world. You can’t coax him to cross a little branch stream two feet wide. It looks as big to him as the Mississippi River. That’s just the way with the passenger. He thinks there are a hundred men yelling and shooting outside, when maybe there are only two or three. And the muzzle of a forty-five looks like the entrance to a tunnel. The passenger is all right, although he may do mean little tricks, like hiding a wad of money in his shoe and forgetting to dig-up until you jostle his ribs some with the end of your six-shooter; but there’s no harm in him.
As to the train crew, we never had any more trouble with them than if they had been so many sheep. I don’t mean that they are cowards; I mean that they have got sense. They know they’re not up against a bluff. It’s the same way with the officers. I’ve seen secret service men, marshals, and railroad detectives fork over their change as meek as Moses. I saw one of the bravest marshals I ever knew hide his gun under his seat and dig up along with the rest while I was taking toll. He wasn’t afraid; he simply knew that we had the drop on the whole outfit. Besides, many of those officers have families and they feel that they oughtn’t to take chances; whereas death has no terrors for the man who holds up a train. He expects to get killed some day, and he generally does. My advice to you, if you should ever be in a holdup, is to line up with the cowards and save your bravery for an occasion when it may be of some benefit to you. Another reason why officers are backward about mixing things with a train robber is a financial one. Every time there is a scrimmage and somebody gets killed, the officers lose money. If the train robber gets away they swear out a warrant against John Doe et al. and travel hundreds of miles and sign vouchers for thousands on the trail of the fugitives, and the Government foots the bills. So, with them, it is a question of mileage rather than courage.
I will give one instance to support my statement that the surprise is the best card in playing for a holdup.
- Along in ’92 the Daltons were cutting out a hot trail for the officers down in the Cherokee Nation, Those were their lucky days, and they got so reckless and sandy, that they used to announce before hand what job they were going to undertake. Once they gave it out that they were going to hold up the M. K. & T. flyer on a certain night at the station of Pryor Creek, in Indian Territory.
+ Along in ’92 the Daltons were cutting out a hot trail for the officers down in the Cherokee Nation, Those were their lucky days, and they got so reckless and sandy, that they used to announce before hand what job they were going to undertake. Once they gave it out that they were going to hold up the M. K. & T. flyer on a certain night at the station of Pryor Creek, in Indian Territory.
That night the railroad company got fifteen deputy marshals in Muscogee and put them on the train. Beside them they had fifty armed men hid in the depot at Pryor Creek.
When the Katy Flyer pulled in not a Dalton showed up. The next station was Adair, six miles away. When the train reached there, and the deputies were having a good time explaining what they would have done to the Dalton gang if they had turned up, all at once it sounded like an army firing outside. The conductor and brakeman came running into the car yelling, “Train robbers!”
Some of those deputies lit out of the door, hit the ground, and kept on running. Some of them hid their Winchesters under the seats. Two of them made a fight and were both killed.
diff --git a/src/epub/text/hostages-to-momus.xhtml b/src/epub/text/hostages-to-momus.xhtml
index 66df091..d59b477 100644
--- a/src/epub/text/hostages-to-momus.xhtml
+++ b/src/epub/text/hostages-to-momus.xhtml
@@ -39,9 +39,9 @@
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.
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.
“And is that Alexander, pa?” says Caligula to the landlord; “and why is he called great?”
- “That, gentlemen,” says the landlord, “is no less than Colonel Jackson T. 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.”
+ “That, gentlemen,” says the landlord, “is no less than Colonel Jackson T. 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.”
“Been away a good many years, hasn’t he?” I asked.
- “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.”
+ “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.”
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.
“What is it now?” I asks. “Just so it ain’t floating mining stocks or raising Pennsylvania pinks, we’ll talk it over.”
“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.”
@@ -60,7 +60,7 @@
III
Me and Caligula spent the next three days investigating the bunch of mountains into which we proposed to kidnap Colonel Jackson T. 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.
- 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 T. 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.
+ 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 T. 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.
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.
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.
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.
@@ -95,7 +95,7 @@
About four o’clock in the afternoon, Caligula, who was acting as lookout, calls to me:
“I have to report a white shirt signalling on the starboard bow, sir.”
I went down the mountain and brought back a fat, red man in an alpaca coat and no collar.
- “Gentlemen,” says Colonel Rockingham, “allow me to introduce my brother, Captain Duval C. Rockingham, vice-president of the Sunrise & Edenville Tap Railroad.”
+ “Gentlemen,” says Colonel Rockingham, “allow me to introduce my brother, Captain Duval C. Rockingham, vice-president of the Sunrise & Edenville Tap Railroad.”
“Otherwise the King of Morocco,” says I. “I reckon you don’t mind my counting the ransom, just as a business formality.”
“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?”
“Mr. Vice-President,” says I, “you’ll oblige us by remaining here till the second V.P. arrives. This is a private rehearsal, and we don’t want any roadside speculators selling tickets.”
@@ -109,7 +109,7 @@
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 Mr. Jones and Mr. Batts, engineer and fireman of train number forty-two.
“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?”
“Towel on a fishing-pole in the offing!” howls Caligula. “Suppose it’s the firing line of the freight conductors and brakeman.”
- “My last trip down,” says I, wiping off my face. “If the S. & E. T. 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.’ ”
+ “My last trip down,” says I, wiping off my face. “If the S. & E. T. 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.’ ”
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.
Up above I got his mind segregated from food and asked if he had raised the ransom.
“My dear sir,” says he, “I succeeded in negotiating a loan on thirty thousand dollars’ worth of the bonds of our railroad, and—”
@@ -118,14 +118,14 @@
“He says,” I answered, “that he succeeded in negotiating the loan.”
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 pièces de résistance, and stirred up little savory chef de cuisines 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.
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.
- “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.”
+ “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.”
“A railroad president,” said I, looking this Tucker in the eye, “and the owner of a thousand acres of land; and yet—”
“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—”
“Pick,” interrupts Caligula, mussing up his red hair, “what are you going to do with that chickenfeed?”
I hands the money back to Major Tucker; and then I goes over to Colonel Rockingham and slaps him on the back.
“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 Puck. 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.”
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 Mr. Patterson G. Coble with Colonel Jackson T. Rockingham between us.
- 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.
+ 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.
diff --git a/src/epub/text/innocents-of-broadway.xhtml b/src/epub/text/innocents-of-broadway.xhtml
index 5b7b538..82ef6d0 100644
--- a/src/epub/text/innocents-of-broadway.xhtml
+++ b/src/epub/text/innocents-of-broadway.xhtml
@@ -44,7 +44,7 @@
“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.
“At half-past 5 Andy comes in and sees the sleeping form.
“ ‘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.’
- “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.’
+ “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.’
“ ‘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.’
“Andy takes out the blank and begins to fill it in with a fountain pen.
“ ‘The whole bunch,’ says he, ‘goes to our friend in dreamland for $5,000. Did you learn his name?’
diff --git a/src/epub/text/law-and-order.xhtml b/src/epub/text/law-and-order.xhtml
index f71f3bc..58ca1b7 100644
--- a/src/epub/text/law-and-order.xhtml
+++ b/src/epub/text/law-and-order.xhtml
@@ -56,7 +56,7 @@
“ ‘You don’t understand,’ says Luke. ‘I’m tired of space and horizons and territory and distances and things like that. What I want is reasonable contraction. I want a yard with a fence around it that you can go out and set on after supper and listen to whip-poor-wills,’ says Luke.
“That’s the kind of a man he was. He was homelike, although he’d had bad luck in such investments. But he never talked about them times on the ranch. It seemed like he’d forgotten about it. I wondered how, with his ideas of yards and chickens and notions of latticework, he’d seemed to have got out of his mind that kid of his that had been taken away from him, unlawful, in spite of his decree of court. But he wasn’t a man you could ask about such things as he didn’t refer to in his own conversation.
“I reckon he’d put all his emotions and ideas into being sheriff. I’ve read in books about men that was disappointed in these poetic and fine-haired and high-collared affairs with ladies renouncing truck of that kind and wrapping themselves up into some occupation like painting pictures, or herding sheep, or science, or teaching school—something to make ’em forget. Well, I guess that was the way with Luke. But, as he couldn’t paint pictures, he took it out in rounding up horse thieves and in making Mojada County a safe place to sleep in if you was well armed and not afraid of requisitions or tarantulas.
- “One day there passes through Bildad a bunch of these money investors from the East, and they stopped off there, Bildad being the dinner station on the I. & G. N. They was just coming back from Mexico looking after mines and such. There was five of ’em—four solid parties, with gold watch chains, that would grade up over two hundred pounds on the hoof, and one kid about seventeen or eighteen.
+ “One day there passes through Bildad a bunch of these money investors from the East, and they stopped off there, Bildad being the dinner station on the I. & G. N. They was just coming back from Mexico looking after mines and such. There was five of ’em—four solid parties, with gold watch chains, that would grade up over two hundred pounds on the hoof, and one kid about seventeen or eighteen.
“This youngster had on one of them cowboy suits such as tenderfoots bring West with ’em; and you could see he was aching to wing a couple of Indians or bag a grizzly or two with the little pearl-handled gun he had buckled around his waist.
“I walked down to the depot to keep an eye on the outfit and see that they didn’t locate any land or scare the cow ponies hitched in front of Murchison’s store or act otherwise unseemly. Luke was away after a gang of cattle thieves down on the Frio, and I always looked after the law and order when he wasn’t there.
“After dinner this boy comes out of the dining-room while the train was waiting, and prances up and down the platform ready to shoot all antelope, lions, or private citizens that might endeavour to molest or come too near him. He was a good-looking kid; only he was like all them tenderfoots—he didn’t know a law-and-order town when he saw it.
diff --git a/src/epub/text/man-about-town.xhtml b/src/epub/text/man-about-town.xhtml
index 9c2d41f..0a6821a 100644
--- a/src/epub/text/man-about-town.xhtml
+++ b/src/epub/text/man-about-town.xhtml
@@ -14,7 +14,7 @@
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.
“Why,” said he, “a ‘Man About Town’ is something between a ‘rounder’ and a ‘clubman.’ He isn’t exactly—well, he fits in between Mrs. 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.”
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.
- 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 Q., X. & Z. 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.
+ 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 Q., X. & Z. 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.
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.
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, viz.: a “Man About Town.”
“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.”
diff --git a/src/epub/text/one-thousand-dollars.xhtml b/src/epub/text/one-thousand-dollars.xhtml
index 83e2321..8083d1c 100644
--- a/src/epub/text/one-thousand-dollars.xhtml
+++ b/src/epub/text/one-thousand-dollars.xhtml
@@ -47,7 +47,7 @@
“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.”
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.
Gillian returned the book and got into the cab.
- “I forgot something,” he said. “You may drive to the law offices of Tolman & Sharp, at ⸻ Broadway.”
+ “I forgot something,” he said. “You may drive to the law offices of Tolman & Sharp, at ⸻ Broadway.”
Lawyer Tolman looked at him hostilely and inquiringly through his gold-rimmed glasses.
“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?”
“Nothing,” said Mr. Tolman.
@@ -64,14 +64,14 @@
Gillian made out his account of his expenditure of the thousand dollars in these words:
“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.”
Gillian slipped his writing into an envelope, bowed and went his way.
- His cab stopped again at the offices of Tolman & Sharp.
+ His cab stopped again at the offices of Tolman & Sharp.
“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, Mr. Tolman?” He tossed a white envelope on the lawyer’s table. “You will find there a memorandum, sir, of the modus operandi of the vanishing of the dollars.”
Without touching the envelope, Mr. 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.
“Mr. 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.
“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. Mr. 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, Mr. 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 Mr. Gillian, explicitly provides—you have used this money as you have money in the past, I quote the late Mr. Gillian—in reprehensible dissipation among disreputable associates—the $50,000 is to be paid to Miriam Hayden, ward of the late Mr. Gillian, without delay. Now, Mr. Gillian, Mr. 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.”
Mr. 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.
“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.”
- 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.
+ 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.