The ambulance removed the unconscious agent of Cupid. William and Violet remained after the crowd had dispersed. They were true Rubberers. People who leave the scene of an accident with the ambulance have not genuine caoutchouc in the cosmogony of their necks. The delicate, fine flavour of the affair is to be had only in the aftertaste—in gloating over the spot, in gazing fixedly at the houses opposite, in hovering there in a dream more exquisite than the opium-eater’s ecstasy. William Pry and Violet Seymour were connoisseurs in casualties. They knew how to extract full enjoyment from every incident.
Presently they looked at each other. Violet had a brown birthmark on her neck as large as a silver half-dollar. William fixed his eyes upon it. William Pry had inordinately bowed legs. Violet allowed her gaze to linger unswervingly upon them. Face to face they stood thus for moments, each staring at the other. Etiquette would not allow them to speak; but in the Caoutchouc City it is permitted to gaze without stint at the trees in the parks and at the physical blemishes of a fellow creature.
At length with a sigh they parted. But Cupid had been the driver of the brewery wagon, and the wheel that broke a leg united two fond hearts.
-The next meeting of the hero and heroine was in front of a board fence near Broadway. The day had been a disappointing one. There had been no fights on the street, children had kept from under the wheels of the street cars, cripples and fat men in negligee shirts were scarce; nobody seemed to be inclined to slip on banana peels or fall down with heart disease. Even the sport from Kokomo, Ind., who claims to be a cousin of ex-Mayor Low and scatters nickels from a cab window, had not put in his appearance. There was nothing to stare at, and William Pry had premonitions of ennui.
+The next meeting of the hero and heroine was in front of a board fence near Broadway. The day had been a disappointing one. There had been no fights on the street, children had kept from under the wheels of the street cars, cripples and fat men in negligee shirts were scarce; nobody seemed to be inclined to slip on banana peels or fall down with heart disease. Even the sport from Kokomo, Ind., who claims to be a cousin of ex-Mayor Low and scatters nickels from a cab window, had not put in his appearance. There was nothing to stare at, and William Pry had premonitions of ennui.
But he saw a large crowd scrambling and pushing excitedly in front of a billboard. Sprinting for it, he knocked down an old woman and a child carrying a bottle of milk, and fought his way like a demon into the mass of spectators. Already in the inner line stood Violet Seymour with one sleeve and two gold fillings gone, a corset steel puncture and a sprained wrist, but happy. She was looking at what there was to see. A man was painting upon the fence: “Eat Bricklets—They Fill Your Face.”
Violet blushed when she saw William Pry. William jabbed a lady in a black silk raglan in the ribs, kicked a boy in the shin, bit an old gentleman on the left ear and managed to crowd nearer to Violet. They stood for an hour looking at the man paint the letters. Then William’s love could be repressed no longer. He touched her on the arm.
“Come with me,” he said. “I know where there is a bootblack without an Adam’s apple.”
diff --git a/src/epub/text/a-conditional-pardon.xhtml b/src/epub/text/a-conditional-pardon.xhtml index 1a6441e..d604862 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/a-conditional-pardon.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/a-conditional-pardon.xhtml @@ -6,7 +6,7 @@ -The runaway couple had just returned, and she knelt at the old man’s feet and begged forgiveness.
“Yes, forgive us,” cried the newly wedded husband. “Forgive me for taking her away from you, but see, I have brought her back.”
diff --git a/src/epub/text/a-cosmopolite-in-a-cafe.xhtml b/src/epub/text/a-cosmopolite-in-a-cafe.xhtml index 3fd9660..a139794 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/a-cosmopolite-in-a-cafe.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/a-cosmopolite-in-a-cafe.xhtml @@ -6,7 +6,7 @@ -At midnight the café was crowded. By some chance the little table at which I sat had escaped the eye of incomers, and two vacant chairs at it extended their arms with venal hospitality to the influx of patrons.
And then a cosmopolite sat in one of them, and I was glad, for I held a theory that since Adam no true citizen of the world has existed. We hear of them, and we see foreign labels on much luggage, but we find travellers instead of cosmopolites.
diff --git a/src/epub/text/a-little-local-colour.xhtml b/src/epub/text/a-little-local-colour.xhtml index 16561b7..8bb56d2 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/a-little-local-colour.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/a-little-local-colour.xhtml @@ -34,7 +34,7 @@At Houston street we got off and walked.
“We are now on the famous Bowery,” said Rivington; “the Bowery celebrated in song and story.”
We passed block after block of “gents’ ” furnishing stores—the windows full of shirts with prices attached and cuffs inside. In other windows were neckties and no shirts. People walked up and down the sidewalks.
-“In some ways,” said I, “this reminds me of Kokomono, Ind., during the peach-crating season.”
+“In some ways,” said I, “this reminds me of Kokomono, Ind., during the peach-crating season.”
Rivington was nettled.
“Step into one of these saloons or vaudeville shows,” said he, “with a large roll of money, and see how quickly the Bowery will sustain its reputation.”
“You make impossible conditions,” said I, coldly.
diff --git a/src/epub/text/a-philistine-in-bohemia.xhtml b/src/epub/text/a-philistine-in-bohemia.xhtml index 8e1fc16..9de4f64 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/a-philistine-in-bohemia.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/a-philistine-in-bohemia.xhtml @@ -16,12 +16,12 @@In this mouldy old house Katy waxed plump and pert and wholesome and as beautiful and freckled as a tiger lily. She was the good fairy who was guilty of placing the damp clean towels and cracked pitchers of freshly laundered Croton in the lodgers’ rooms.
You are informed (by virtue of the privileges of astronomical discovery) that the star lodger’s name was Mr. Brunelli. His wearing a yellow tie and paying his rent promptly distinguished him from the other lodgers. His raiment was splendid, his complexion olive, his mustache fierce, his manners a prince’s, his rings and pins as magnificent as those of a traveling dentist.
He had breakfast served in his room, and he ate it in a red dressing gown with green tassels. He left the house at noon and returned at midnight. Those were mysterious hours, but there was nothing mysterious about Mrs. Dempsey’s lodgers except the things that were not mysterious. One of Mr. Kipling’s poems is addressed to “Ye who hold the unwritten clue to all save all unwritten things.” The same “readers” are invited to tackle the foregoing assertion.
-Mr. Brunelli, being impressionable and a Latin, fell to conjugating the verb “amare,” with Katy in the objective case, though not because of antipathy. She talked it over with her mother.
+Mr. Brunelli, being impressionable and a Latin, fell to conjugating the verb “amare,” with Katy in the objective case, though not because of antipathy. She talked it over with her mother.
“Sure, I like him,” said Katy. “He’s more politeness than twinty candidates for Alderman, and lie makes me feel like a queen whin he walks at me side. But what is he, I dinno? I’ve me suspicions. The marnin’ll coom whin he’ll throt out the picture av his baronial halls and ax to have the week’s rint hung up in the ice chist along wid all the rist of ’em.”
“ ’Tis thrue,” admitted Mrs. Dempsey, “that he seems to be a sort iv a Dago, and too coolchured in his spache for a rale gentleman. But ye may be misjudgin’ him. Ye should niver suspect any wan of bein’ of noble descint that pays cash and pathronizes the laundry rig’lar.”
“He’s the same thricks of spakin’ and blarneyin’ wid his hands,” sighed Katy, “as the Frinch nobleman at Mrs. Toole’s that ran away wid Mr. Toole’s Sunday pants and left the photograph of the Bastile, his grandfather’s chat-taw, as security for tin weeks’ rint.”
Mr. Brunelli continued his calorific wooing. Katy continued to hesitate. One day he asked her out to dine and she felt that a dénouement was in the air. While they are on their way, with Katy in her best muslin, you must take as an entr’acte a brief peep at New York’s Bohemia.
-’Tonio’s restaurant is in Bohemia. The very location of it is secret. If you wish to know where it is ask the first person you meet. He will tell you in a whisper. ’Tonio discountenances custom; he keeps his house-front black and forbidding; he gives you a pretty bad dinner; he locks his door at the dining hour; but he knows spaghetti as the boardinghouse knows cold veal; and—he has deposited many dollars in a certain Banco di—something with many gold vowels in the name on its windows.
+’Tonio’s restaurant is in Bohemia. The very location of it is secret. If you wish to know where it is ask the first person you meet. He will tell you in a whisper. ’Tonio discountenances custom; he keeps his house-front black and forbidding; he gives you a pretty bad dinner; he locks his door at the dining hour; but he knows spaghetti as the boardinghouse knows cold veal; and—he has deposited many dollars in a certain Banco di ⸻ something with many gold vowels in the name on its windows.
To this restaurant Mr. Brunelli conducted Katy. The house was dark and the shades were lowered; but Mr. Brunelli touched an electric button by the basement door, and they were admitted.
Along a long, dark, narrow hallway they went and then through a shining and spotless kitchen that opened directly upon a back yard.
The walls of houses hemmed three sides of the yard; a high, board fence, surrounded by cats, the other. A wash of clothes was suspended high upon a line stretched from diagonal corners. Those were property clothes, and were never taken in by ’Tonio. They were there that wits with defective pronunciation might make puns in connection with the ragout.
diff --git a/src/epub/text/a-professional-secret.xhtml b/src/epub/text/a-professional-secret.xhtml index ce82d9a..44b94a0 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/a-professional-secret.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/a-professional-secret.xhtml @@ -1,7 +1,7 @@ -“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.”
“Are all these men druggists?” I asked, wonderingly.
-“They are. This car came through from the West. And they’re your old-time druggists, too—none of your patent tablet-and-granule pharmashootists that use slot machines instead of a prescription desk. We percolate our own paregoric and roll our own pills, and we ain’t above handling a few garden seeds in the spring, and carrying a side line of confectionery and shoes. I tell you Hampinker, I’ve got an idea to spring on this convention—new ideas is what they want. Now, you know the shelf bottles of tartar emetic and Rochelle salt Ant. et Pot. Tart. and Sod. et Pot. Tart.—one’s poison, you know, and the other’s harmless. It’s easy to mistake one label for the other. Where do druggists mostly keep ’em? Why, as far apart as possible, on different shelves. That’s wrong. I say keep ’em side by side, so when you want one you can always compare it with the other and avoid mistakes. Do you catch the idea?”
+“They are. This car came through from the West. And they’re your old-time druggists, too—none of your patent tablet-and-granule pharmashootists that use slot machines instead of a prescription desk. We percolate our own paregoric and roll our own pills, and we ain’t above handling a few garden seeds in the spring, and carrying a side line of confectionery and shoes. I tell you Hampinker, I’ve got an idea to spring on this convention—new ideas is what they want. Now, you know the shelf bottles of tartar emetic and Rochelle salt Ant. et Pot. Tart. and Sod. et Pot. Tart.—one’s poison, you know, and the other’s harmless. It’s easy to mistake one label for the other. Where do druggists mostly keep ’em? Why, as far apart as possible, on different shelves. That’s wrong. I say keep ’em side by side, so when you want one you can always compare it with the other and avoid mistakes. Do you catch the idea?”
“It seems to me a very good one,” I said.
“All right! When I spring it on the convention you back it up. We’ll make some of these Eastern orange-phosphate-and-massage-cream professors that think they’re the only lozenges in the market look like hypodermic tablets.”
“If I can be of any aid,” I said, warming, “the two bottles of—er—”
diff --git a/src/epub/text/a-sacrifice-hit.xhtml b/src/epub/text/a-sacrifice-hit.xhtml index 7b24d16..0c909e0 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/a-sacrifice-hit.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/a-sacrifice-hit.xhtml @@ -14,21 +14,20 @@When a batch of MSS. is received the editor stuffs every one of his pockets full of them and distributes them as he goes about during the day. The office employees, the hall porter, the janitor, the elevator man, messenger boys, the waiters at the café where the editor has luncheon, the man at the newsstand where he buys his evening paper, the grocer and milkman, the guard on the 5:30 uptown elevated train, the ticket-chopper at Sixty ⸻th street, the cook and maid at his home—these are the readers who pass upon MSS. sent in to the Hearthstone Magazine. If his pockets are not entirely emptied by the time he reaches the bosom of his family the remaining ones are handed over to his wife to read after the baby goes to sleep. A few days later the editor gathers in the MSS. during his regular rounds and considers the verdict of his assorted readers.
This system of making up a magazine has been very successful; and the circulation, paced by the advertising rates, is making a wonderful record of speed.
The Hearthstone Company also publishes books, and its imprint is to be found on several successful works—all recommended, says the editor, by the Hearthstone’s army of volunteer readers. Now and then (according to talkative members of the editorial staff) the Hearthstone has allowed manuscripts to slip through its fingers on the advice of its heterogeneous readers, that afterward proved to be famous sellers when brought out by other houses.
-For instance (the gossips say), “The Rise and Fall of Silas Latham” was unfavourably passed upon by the elevator-man; the office-boy unanimously rejected “The Boss”; “In the Bishop’s Carriage” was contemptuously looked upon by the streetcar conductor; “The Deliverance” was turned down by a clerk in the subscription department whose wife’s mother had just begun a two-months’ visit at his home; “The Queen’s Quair” came back from the janitor with the comment: “So is the book.”
+For instance (the gossips say), The Rise and Fall of Silas Latham was unfavourably passed upon by the elevator-man; the office-boy unanimously rejected The Boss; In the Bishop’s Carriage was contemptuously looked upon by the streetcar conductor; The Deliverance was turned down by a clerk in the subscription department whose wife’s mother had just begun a two-months’ visit at his home; The Queen’s Quair came back from the janitor with the comment: “So is the book.”
But nevertheless the Hearthstone adheres to its theory and system, and it will never lack volunteer readers; for each one of the widely scattered staff, from the young lady stenographer in the editorial office to the man who shovels in coal (whose adverse decision lost to the Hearthstone Company the manuscript of “The Under World”), has expectations of becoming editor of the magazine some day.
-This method of the Hearthstone was well known to Allen Slayton when he wrote his novelette entitled “Love Is All.” Slayton had hung about the editorial offices of all the magazines so persistently that he was acquainted with the inner workings of everyone in Gotham.
+This method of the Hearthstone was well known to Allen Slayton when he wrote his novelette entitled Love Is All. Slayton had hung about the editorial offices of all the magazines so persistently that he was acquainted with the inner workings of everyone in Gotham.
He knew not only that the editor of the Hearthstone handed his MSS. around among different types of people for reading, but that the stories of sentimental love-interest went to Miss Puffkin, the editor’s stenographer. Another of the editor’s peculiar customs was to conceal invariably the name of the writer from his readers of MSS. so that a glittering name might not influence the sincerity of their reports.
-Slayton made “Love Is All” the effort of his life. He gave it six months of the best work of his heart and brain. It was a pure love-story, fine, elevated, romantic, passionate—a prose poem that set the divine blessing of love (I am transposing from the manuscript) high above all earthly gifts and honours, and listed it in the catalogue of heaven’s choicest rewards. Slayton’s literary ambition was intense. He would have sacrificed all other worldly possessions to have gained fame in his chosen art. He would almost have cut off his right hand, or have offered himself to the knife of the appendicitis fancier to have realized his dream of seeing one of his efforts published in the Hearthstone.
-Slayton finished “Love Is All,” and took it to the Hearthstone in person. The office of the magazine was in a large, conglomerate building, presided under by a janitor.
+Slayton made Love Is All the effort of his life. He gave it six months of the best work of his heart and brain. It was a pure love-story, fine, elevated, romantic, passionate—a prose poem that set the divine blessing of love (I am transposing from the manuscript) high above all earthly gifts and honours, and listed it in the catalogue of heaven’s choicest rewards. Slayton’s literary ambition was intense. He would have sacrificed all other worldly possessions to have gained fame in his chosen art. He would almost have cut off his right hand, or have offered himself to the knife of the appendicitis fancier to have realized his dream of seeing one of his efforts published in the Hearthstone.
+Slayton finished Love Is All, and took it to the Hearthstone in person. The office of the magazine was in a large, conglomerate building, presided under by a janitor.
As the writer stepped inside the door on his way to the elevator a potato masher flew through the hall, wrecking Slayton’s hat, and smashing the glass of the door. Closely following in the wake of the utensil flew the janitor, a bulky, unwholesome man, suspenderless and sordid, panic-stricken and breathless. A frowsy, fat woman with flying hair followed the missile. The janitor’s foot slipped on the tiled floor, he fell in a heap with an exclamation of despair. The woman pounced upon him and seized his hair. The man bellowed lustily.
Her vengeance wreaked, the virago rose and stalked triumphant as Minerva, back to some cryptic domestic retreat at the rear. The janitor got to his feet, blown and humiliated.
“This is married life,” he said to Slayton, with a certain bruised humour. “That’s the girl I used to lay awake of nights thinking about. Sorry about your hat, mister. Say, don’t snitch to the tenants about this, will yer? I don’t want to lose me job.”
-Slayton took the elevator at the end of the hall and went up to the offices of the Hearthstone. He left the MS. of “Love Is All” with the editor, who agreed to give him an answer as to its availability at the end of a week.
+Slayton took the elevator at the end of the hall and went up to the offices of the Hearthstone. He left the MS. of Love Is All with the editor, who agreed to give him an answer as to its availability at the end of a week.
Slayton formulated his great winning scheme on his way down. It struck him with one brilliant flash, and he could not refrain from admiring his own genius in conceiving the idea. That very night he set about carrying it into execution.
Miss Puffkin, the Hearthstone stenographer, boarded in the same house with the author. She was an oldish, thin, exclusive, languishing, sentimental maid; and Slayton had been introduced to her some time before.
-The writer’s daring and self-sacrificing project was this: He knew that the editor of the Hearthstone relied strongly upon Miss Puffkin’s judgment in the manuscript of romantic and sentimental fiction. Her taste represented the immense average of mediocre women who devour novels and stories of that type. The central idea and keynote of “Love Is All” was love at first sight—the enrapturing,
-irresistible, soul-thrilling feeling that compels a man or a woman to recognize his or her spirit-mate as soon as heart speaks to heart. Suppose he should impress this divine truth upon Miss Puffkin personally!—would she not surely endorse her new and rapturous sensations by recommending highly to the editor of the Hearthstone the novelette “Love Is All”?
-Slayton thought so. And that night he took Miss Puffkin to the theatre. The next night he made vehement love to her in the dim parlour of the boardinghouse. He quoted freely from “Love Is All”; and he wound up with Miss Puffkin’s head on his shoulder, and visions of literary fame dancing in his head.
+The writer’s daring and self-sacrificing project was this: He knew that the editor of the Hearthstone relied strongly upon Miss Puffkin’s judgment in the manuscript of romantic and sentimental fiction. Her taste represented the immense average of mediocre women who devour novels and stories of that type. The central idea and keynote of Love Is All was love at first sight—the enrapturing, irresistible, soul-thrilling feeling that compels a man or a woman to recognize his or her spirit-mate as soon as heart speaks to heart. Suppose he should impress this divine truth upon Miss Puffkin personally!—would she not surely endorse her new and rapturous sensations by recommending highly to the editor of the Hearthstone the novelette Love Is All?
+Slayton thought so. And that night he took Miss Puffkin to the theatre. The next night he made vehement love to her in the dim parlour of the boardinghouse. He quoted freely from Love Is All; and he wound up with Miss Puffkin’s head on his shoulder, and visions of literary fame dancing in his head.
But Slayton did not stop at lovemaking. This, he said to himself, was the turning point of his life; and, like a true sportsman, he “went the limit.” On Thursday night he and Miss Puffkin walked over to the Big Church in the Middle of the Block and were married.
Brave Slayton! Châteaubriand died in a garret, Byron courted a widow, Keats starved to death, Poe mixed his drinks, De Quincey hit the pipe, Ade lived in Chicago, James kept on doing it, Dickens wore white socks, De Maupassant wore a straitjacket, Tom Watson became a Populist, Jeremiah wept, all these authors did these things for the sake of literature, but thou didst cap them all; thou marriedst a wife for to carve for thyself a niche in the temple of fame!
On Friday morning Mrs. Slayton said she would go over to the Hearthstone office, hand in one or two manuscripts that the editor had given to her to read, and resign her position as stenographer.
@@ -42,7 +41,7 @@Slayton stood, dazed. “Can you tell me,” he stammered, “whether or no Miss Puff—that is my—I mean Miss Puffkin—handed in a novelette this morning that she had been asked to read?”
“Sure she did,” answered the office boy wisely. “I heard the old man say that Miss Puffkin said it was a daisy. The name of it was, ‘Married for the Mazuma, or a Working Girl’s Triumph.’ ”
“Say, you!” said the office boy confidentially, “your name’s Slayton, ain’t it? I guess I mixed cases on you without meanin’ to do it. The boss give me some manuscript to hand around the other day and I got the ones for Miss Puffkin and the janitor mixed. I guess it’s all right, though.”
-And then Slayton looked closer and saw on the cover of his manuscript, under the title “Love Is All,” the janitor’s comment scribbled with a piece of charcoal:
+And then Slayton looked closer and saw on the cover of his manuscript, under the title Love Is All, the janitor’s comment scribbled with a piece of charcoal:
“The ⸻ you say!”
“All right,” said Joe, reaching for the blue scalloped vegetable dish. “But I hate for you to be giving lessons. It isn’t Art. But you’re a trump and a dear to do it.”
“When one loves one’s Art no service seems too hard,” said Delia.
“Magister praised the sky in that sketch I made in the park,” said Joe. “And Tinkle gave me permission to hang two of them in his window. I may sell one if the right kind of a moneyed idiot sees them.”
-“I’m sure you will,” said Delia, sweetly. “And now let’s be thankful for Gen. Pinkney and this veal roast.”
+“I’m sure you will,” said Delia, sweetly. “And now let’s be thankful for Gen. Pinkney and this veal roast.”
During all of the next week the Larrabees had an early breakfast. Joe was enthusiastic about some morning-effect sketches he was doing in Central Park, and Delia packed him off breakfasted, coddled, praised and kissed at 7 o’clock. Art is an engaging mistress. It was most times 7 o’clock when he returned in the evening.
At the end of the week Delia, sweetly proud but languid, triumphantly tossed three five-dollar bills on the 8×10 (inches) centre table of the 8×10 (feet) flat parlour.
“Sometimes,” she said, a little wearily, “Clementina tries me. I’m afraid she doesn’t practise enough, and I have to tell her the same things so often. And then she always dresses entirely in white, and that does get monotonous. But Gen. Pinkney is the dearest old man! I wish you could know him, Joe. He comes in sometimes when I am with Clementina at the piano—he is a widower, you know—and stands there pulling his white goatee. ‘And how are the semiquavers and the demisemiquavers progressing?’ he always asks.
diff --git a/src/epub/text/a-tempered-wind.xhtml b/src/epub/text/a-tempered-wind.xhtml index 99bd5a6..fc54214 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/a-tempered-wind.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/a-tempered-wind.xhtml @@ -102,7 +102,7 @@“Me?” says I. “You ought to know me, Buck. I didn’t know who was buying the stock.”
“All right,” says Buck. And then he goes through the inside door into the main office and looks at the gang trying to squeeze through the railing. Atterbury and his hat was gone. And Buck makes ’em a short speech.
“All you lambs get in line. You’re going to get your wool back. Don’t shove so. Get in a line—a line—not in a pile. Lady, will you please stop bleating? Your money’s waiting for you. Here, sonny, don’t climb over that railing; your dimes are safe. Don’t cry, sis; you ain’t out a cent. Get in line, I say. Here, Pick, come and straighten ’em out and let ’em through and out by the other door.”
-Buck takes off his coat, pushes his silk hat on the back of his head, and lights up a reina victoria. He sets at the table with the boodle before him, all done up in neat packages. I gets the stockholders strung out and marches ’em, single file, through from the main room; and the reporter man passes ’em out of the side door into the hall again. As they go by, Buck takes up the stock and the Gold Bonds, paying ’em cash, dollar for dollar, the same as they paid in. The shareholders of the Golconda Gold Bond and Investment Company can’t hardly believe it. They almost grabs the money out of Buck’s hands. Some of the women keep on crying, for it’s a custom of the sex to cry when they have sorrow, to weep when they have joy, and to shed tears whenever they find themselves without either.
+Buck takes off his coat, pushes his silk hat on the back of his head, and lights up a reina victoria. He sets at the table with the boodle before him, all done up in neat packages. I gets the stockholders strung out and marches ’em, single file, through from the main room; and the reporter man passes ’em out of the side door into the hall again. As they go by, Buck takes up the stock and the Gold Bonds, paying ’em cash, dollar for dollar, the same as they paid in. The shareholders of the Golconda Gold Bond and Investment Company can’t hardly believe it. They almost grabs the money out of Buck’s hands. Some of the women keep on crying, for it’s a custom of the sex to cry when they have sorrow, to weep when they have joy, and to shed tears whenever they find themselves without either.
The old women’s fingers shake when they stuff the skads in the bosom of their rusty dresses. The factory girls just stoop over and flap their dry goods a second, and you hear the elastic go “pop” as the currency goes down in the ladies’ department of the “Old Domestic Lisle-Thread Bank.”
Some of the stockholders that had been doing the Jeremiah act the loudest outside had spasms of restored confidence and wanted to leave the money invested. “Salt away that chicken feed in your duds, and skip along,” says Buck. “What business have you got investing in bonds? The teapot or the crack in the wall behind the clock for your hoard of pennies.”
When the pretty girl in the red shawl cashes in Buck hands her an extra twenty.
diff --git a/src/epub/text/babes-in-the-jungle.xhtml b/src/epub/text/babes-in-the-jungle.xhtml index eb6a64e..ee86560 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/babes-in-the-jungle.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/babes-in-the-jungle.xhtml @@ -17,7 +17,7 @@“Well, no,” says Silver; “you needn’t back Epidermis to win today. I’ve only been here a month. But I’m ready to begin; and the members of Willie Manhattan’s Sunday School class, each of whom has volunteered to contribute a portion of cuticle toward this rehabilitation, may as well send their photos to the Evening Daily.
“I’ve been studying the town,” says Silver, “and reading the papers every day, and I know it as well as the cat in the City Hall knows an O’Sullivan. People here lie down on the floor and scream and kick when you are the least bit slow about taking money from them. Come up in my room and I’ll tell you. We’ll work the town together, Billy, for the sake of old times.”
Silver takes me up in a hotel. He has a quantity of irrelevant objects lying about.
-“There’s more ways of getting money from these metropolitan hayseeds,” says Silver, “than there is of cooking rice in Charleston, SC They’ll bite at anything. The brains of most of ’em commute. The wiser they are in intelligence the less perception of cognizance they have. Why, didn’t a man the other day sell J. P. Morgan an oil portrait of Rockefeller, Jr., for Andrea del Sarto’s celebrated painting of the young Saint John!
+“There’s more ways of getting money from these metropolitan hayseeds,” says Silver, “than there is of cooking rice in Charleston, SC. They’ll bite at anything. The brains of most of ’em commute. The wiser they are in intelligence the less perception of cognizance they have. Why, didn’t a man the other day sell J. P. Morgan an oil portrait of Rockefeller, Jr., for Andrea del Sarto’s celebrated painting of the young Saint John!
“You see that bundle of printed stuff in the corner, Billy? That’s gold mining stock. I started out one day to sell that, but I quit it in two hours. Why? Got arrested for blocking the street. People fought to buy it. I sold the policeman a block of it on the way to the station-house, and then I took it off the market. I don’t want people to give me their money. I want some little consideration connected with the transaction to keep my pride from being hurt. I want ’em to guess the missing letter in Chic—go, or draw to a pair of nines before they pay me a cent of money.
“Now there’s another little scheme that worked so easy I had to quit it. You see that bottle of blue ink on the table? I tattooed an anchor on the back of my hand and went to a bank and told ’em I was Admiral Dewey’s nephew. They offered to cash my draft on him for a thousand, but I didn’t know my uncle’s first name. It shows, though, what an easy town it is. As for burglars, they won’t go in a house now unless there’s a hot supper ready and a few college students to wait on ’em. They’re slugging citizens all over the upper part of the city and I guess, taking the town from end to end, it’s a plain case of assault and Battery.”
“Monty,” says I, when Silver had slacked, up, “you may have Manhattan correctly discriminated in your perorative, but I doubt it. I’ve only been in town two hours, but it don’t dawn upon me that it’s ours with a cherry in it. There ain’t enough rus in urbe about it to suit me. I’d be a good deal much better satisfied if the citizens had a straw or more in their hair, and run more to velveteen vests and buckeye watch charms. They don’t look easy to me.”
@@ -40,7 +40,7 @@Before we could answer, Mr. Morgan hammers on the floor with his cane and begins to walk up and down, swearing in a loud tone of voice.
“They have been pounding your stocks today on the Street, Pierpont?” asks Klein, smiling.
“Stocks! No!” roars Mr. Morgan. “It’s that picture I sent an agent to Europe to buy. I just thought about it. He cabled me today that it ain’t to be found in all Italy. I’d pay $50,000 tomorrow for that picture—yes, $75,000. I give the agent à la carte in purchasing it. I cannot understand why the art galleries will allow a De Vinchy to—”
-“Why, Mr. Morgan,” says klein; “I thought you owned all of the De Vinchy paintings.”
+“Why, Mr. Morgan,” says Klein; “I thought you owned all of the De Vinchy paintings.”
“What is the picture like, Mr. Morgan?” asks Silver. “It must be as big as the side of the Flatiron Building.”
“I’m afraid your art education is on the bum, Mr. Silver,” says Morgan. “The picture is 27 inches by 42; and it is called ‘Love’s Idle Hour.’ It represents a number of cloak models doing the two-step on the bank of a purple river. The cablegram said it might have been brought to this country. My collection will never be complete without that picture. Well, so long, gents; us financiers must keep early hours.”
Mr. Morgan and Klein went away together in a cab. Me and Silver talked about how simple and unsuspecting great people was; and Silver said what a shame it would be to try to rob a man like Mr. Morgan; and I said I thought it would be rather imprudent, myself. Klein proposes a stroll after dinner; and me and him and Silver walks down toward Seventh Avenue to see the sights. Klein sees a pair of cuff links that instigate his admiration in a pawnshop window, and we all go in while he buys ’em.
diff --git a/src/epub/text/between-rounds.xhtml b/src/epub/text/between-rounds.xhtml index 574a064..d33710d 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/between-rounds.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/between-rounds.xhtml @@ -11,7 +11,7 @@The May moon shone bright upon the private boardinghouse of Mrs. Murphy. By reference to the almanac a large amount of territory will be discovered upon which its rays also fell. Spring was in its heydey, with hay fever soon to follow. The parks were green with new leaves and buyers for the Western and Southern trade. Flowers and summer-resort agents were blowing; the air and answers to Lawson were growing milder; hand-organs, fountains and pinochle were playing everywhere.
The windows of Mrs. Murphy’s boardinghouse were open. A group of boarders were seated on the high stoop upon round, flat mats like German pancakes.
In one of the second-floor front windows Mrs. McCaskey awaited her husband. Supper was cooling on the table. Its heat went into Mrs. McCaskey.
-At nine Mr. McCaskey came. He carried his coat on his arm and his pipe in his teeth; and he apologised for disturbing the boarders on the steps as he selected spots of stone between them on which to set his size 9, width Ds.
+At nine Mr. McCaskey came. He carried his coat on his arm and his pipe in his teeth; and he apologised for disturbing the boarders on the steps as he selected spots of stone between them on which to set his size 9, width Ds.
As he opened the door of his room he received a surprise. Instead of the usual stove-lid or potato-masher for him to dodge, came only words.
Mr. McCaskey reckoned that the benign May moon had softened the breast of his spouse.
“I heard ye,” came the oral substitutes for kitchenware. “Ye can apollygise to riffraff of the streets for settin’ yer unhandy feet on the tails of their frocks, but ye’d walk on the neck of yer wife the length of a clothesline without so much as a ‘Kiss me fut,’ and I’m sure it’s that long from rubberin’ out the windy for ye and the victuals cold such as there’s money to buy after drinkin’ up yer wages at Gallegher’s every Saturday evenin’, and the gas man here twice today for his.”
diff --git a/src/epub/text/christmas-by-injunction.xhtml b/src/epub/text/christmas-by-injunction.xhtml index 8e62eec..65795ac 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/christmas-by-injunction.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/christmas-by-injunction.xhtml @@ -14,13 +14,13 @@Three hours after the presentation ceremonies Cherokee’s claim played out. He had located a pocket instead of a vein. He abandoned it and staked others one by one. Luck had kissed her hand to him. Never afterward did he turn up enough dust in Yellowhammer to pay his bar bill. But his thousand invited guests were mostly prospering, and Cherokee smiled and congratulated them.
Yellowhammer was made up of men who took off their hats to a smiling loser; so they invited Cherokee to say what he wanted.
“Me?” said Cherokee, “oh, grubstakes will be about the thing. I reckon I’ll prospect along up in the Mariposas. If I strike it up there I will most certainly let you all know about the facts. I never was any hand to hold out cards on my friends.”
-In May Cherokee packed his burro and turned its thoughtful, mouse-eoloured forehead to the north. Many citizens escorted him to the undefined limits of Yellowhammer and bestowed upon him shouts of commendation and farewells. Five pocket flasks without an air bubble between contents and cork were forced upon him; and he was bidden to consider Yellowhammer in perpetual commission for his bed, bacon and eggs, and hot water for shaving in the event that luck did not see fit to warm her hands by his campfire in the Mariposas.
+In May Cherokee packed his burro and turned its thoughtful, mouse-coloured forehead to the north. Many citizens escorted him to the undefined limits of Yellowhammer and bestowed upon him shouts of commendation and farewells. Five pocket flasks without an air bubble between contents and cork were forced upon him; and he was bidden to consider Yellowhammer in perpetual commission for his bed, bacon and eggs, and hot water for shaving in the event that luck did not see fit to warm her hands by his campfire in the Mariposas.
The name of the father of Yellowhammer was given him by the gold hunters in accordance with their popular system of nomenclature. It was not necessary for a citizen to exhibit his baptismal certificate in order to acquire a cognomen. A man’s name was his personal property. For convenience in calling him up to the bar and in designating him among other blue-shirted bipeds, a temporary appellation, title, or epithet was conferred upon him by the public. Personal peculiarities formed the source of the majority of such informal baptisms. Many were easily dubbed geographically from the regions from which they confessed to have hailed. Some announced themselves to be “Thompsons,” and “Adamses,” and the like, with a brazenness and loudness that cast a cloud upon their titles. A few vaingloriously and shamelessly uncovered their proper and indisputable names. This was held to be unduly arrogant, and did not win popularity. One man who said he was Chesterton L. C. Belmont, and proved it by letters, was given till sundown to leave the town. Such names as “Shorty,” “Bowlegs,” “Texas,” “Lazy Bill,” “Thirsty Rogers,” “Limping Riley,” “The Judge,” and “California Ed” were in favour. Cherokee derived his title from the fact that he claimed to have lived for a time with that tribe in the Indian Nation.
On the twentieth day of December Baldy, the mail rider, brought Yellowhammer a piece of news.
“What do I see in Albuquerque,” said Baldy, to the patrons of the bar, “but Cherokee all embellished and festooned up like the Czar of Turkey, and lavishin’ money in bulk. Him and me seen the elephant and the owl, and we had specimens of this seidlitz powder wine; and Cherokee he audits all the bills, COD. His pockets looked like a pool table’s after a fifteen-ball run.
“Cherokee must have struck pay ore,” remarked California Ed. “Well, he’s white. I’m much obliged to him for his success.”
“Seems like Cherokee would ramble down to Yellowhammer and see his friends,” said another, slightly aggrieved. “But that’s the way. Prosperity is the finest cure there is for lost forgetfulness.”
-“You wait,” said Baldy; “I’m comin’ to that. Cherokee strikes a three-eoot vein up in the Mariposas that assays a trip to Europe to the ton, and he closes it out to a syndicate outfit for a hundred thousand hasty dollars in cash. Then he buys himself a baby sealskin overcoat and a red sleigh, and what do you think he takes it in his head to do next?”
+“You wait,” said Baldy; “I’m comin’ to that. Cherokee strikes a three-foot vein up in the Mariposas that assays a trip to Europe to the ton, and he closes it out to a syndicate outfit for a hundred thousand hasty dollars in cash. Then he buys himself a baby sealskin overcoat and a red sleigh, and what do you think he takes it in his head to do next?”
“Chuck-a-luck,” said Texas, whose ideas of recreation were the gamester’s.
“Come and Kiss Me, Ma Honey,” sang Shorty, who carried tintypes in his pocket and wore a red necktie while working on his claim.
“Bought a saloon?” suggested Thirsty Rogers.
@@ -58,7 +58,7 @@“There’s a woman that’s just took charge of the railroad eatin’ house down at Granite Junction. I hear she’s got a little boy. Maybe she might let him go.”
Trinidad pulled up his mules at Granite Junction at five o’clock in the afternoon. The train had just departed with its load of fed and appeased passengers.
On the steps of the eating house they found a thin and glowering boy of ten smoking a cigarette. The dining-room had been left in chaos by the peripatetic appetites. A youngish woman reclined, exhausted, in a chair. Her face wore sharp lines of worry. She had once possessed a certain style of beauty that would never wholly leave her and would never wholly return. Trinidad set forth his mission.
-“I’d count it a mercy if you’d take Bobby for a while,” she said, wearily. “I’m on the go from morning till night, and I don’t have time to ‘tend to him. He’s learning bad habits from the men. It’ll be the only chance he’ll have to get any Christmas.”
+“I’d count it a mercy if you’d take Bobby for a while,” she said, wearily. “I’m on the go from morning till night, and I don’t have time to ’tend to him. He’s learning bad habits from the men. It’ll be the only chance he’ll have to get any Christmas.”
The men went outside and conferred with Bobby. Trinidad pictured the glories of the Christmas tree and presents in lively colours.
“And, moreover, my young friend,” added the Judge, “Santa Claus himself will personally distribute the offerings that will typify the gifts conveyed by the shepherds of Bethlehem to—”
“Aw, come off,” said the boy, squinting his small eyes. “I ain’t no kid. There ain’t any Santa Claus. It’s your folks that buys toys and sneaks ’em in when you’re asleep. And they make marks in the soot in the chimney with the tongs to look like Santa’s sleigh tracks.”
diff --git a/src/epub/text/conscience-in-art.xhtml b/src/epub/text/conscience-in-art.xhtml index fa67a93..113e51c 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/conscience-in-art.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/conscience-in-art.xhtml @@ -37,7 +37,9 @@And then, as suddenly as the dreadful genie arose in vapor from the copper vase of the fisherman, arose in that room the formidable shape of the New England Conscience. The terrible thing that Medora had done was revealed to her in its full enormity. She had sat in the presence of the ungodly and looked upon the wine both when it was red and effervescent.
At midnight she wrote this letter:
-“Mr. Beriah Hoskins, Harmony, Vermont.
-“Dear Sir: Henceforth, consider me as dead to you forever. I have loved you too well to blight your career by bringing into it my guilty and sin-stained life. I have succumbed to the insidious wiles of this wicked world and have been drawn into the vortex of Bohemia. There is scarcely any depth of glittering iniquity that I have not sounded. It is hopeless to combat my decision. There is no rising from the depths to which I have sunk. Endeavor to forget me. I am lost forever in the fair but brutal maze of awful Bohemia. Farewell.
-Once Your Medora.”
+Mr. Beriah Hoskins, Harmony, Vermont.
+Dear Sir: Henceforth, consider me as dead to you forever. I have loved you too well to blight your career by bringing into it my guilty and sin-stained life. I have succumbed to the insidious wiles of this wicked world and have been drawn into the vortex of Bohemia. There is scarcely any depth of glittering iniquity that I have not sounded. It is hopeless to combat my decision. There is no rising from the depths to which I have sunk. Endeavor to forget me. I am lost forever in the fair but brutal maze of awful Bohemia. Farewell.
+Once Your Medora.
On the next day Medora formed her resolutions. Beelzebub, flung from heaven, was no more cast down. Between her and the apple blossoms of Harmony there was a fixed gulf. Flaming cherubim warded her from the gates of her lost paradise. In one evening, by the aid of Binkley and Mumm, Bohemia had gathered her into its awful midst.
There remained to her but one thing—a life of brilliant, but irremediable error. Vermont was a shrine that she never would dare to approach again. But she would not sink—there were great and compelling ones in history upon whom she would model her meteoric career—Camille, Lola Montez, Royal Mary, Zaza—such a name as one of these would that of Medora Martin be to future generations.
diff --git a/src/epub/text/hearts-and-crosses.xhtml b/src/epub/text/hearts-and-crosses.xhtml index 563ed21..13f81ed 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/hearts-and-crosses.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/hearts-and-crosses.xhtml @@ -16,11 +16,11 @@“What?” asked Webb, with a hopeful look in his pale-blue eyes.
“You’re a prince-consort.”
“Go easy,” said Webb. “I never blackguarded you none.”
-“It’s a title,” explained Baldy, “up among the picture-cards; but it don’t take no tricks. I’ll tell you, Webb. It’s a brand they’re got for certain animals in Europe. Say that you or me or one of them Dutch dukes marries in a royal family. Well, by and by our wife gets to be queen. Are we king? Not in a million years. At the coronation ceremonies we march between little casino and the Ninth Grand Custodian of the Royal Hall Bedchamber. The only use we are is to appear in photographs, and accept the responsibility for the heir-rpparent. That ain’t any square deal. Yes, sir, Webb, you’re a prince-eonsort; and if I was you, I’d start a interregnum or a habeus corpus or somethin’; and I’d be king if I had to turn from the bottom of the deck.”
+“It’s a title,” explained Baldy, “up among the picture-cards; but it don’t take no tricks. I’ll tell you, Webb. It’s a brand they’re got for certain animals in Europe. Say that you or me or one of them Dutch dukes marries in a royal family. Well, by and by our wife gets to be queen. Are we king? Not in a million years. At the coronation ceremonies we march between little casino and the Ninth Grand Custodian of the Royal Hall Bedchamber. The only use we are is to appear in photographs, and accept the responsibility for the heir-apparent. That ain’t any square deal. Yes, sir, Webb, you’re a prince-consort; and if I was you, I’d start a interregnum or a habeas corpus or somethin’; and I’d be king if I had to turn from the bottom of the deck.”
Baldy emptied his glass to the ratification of his Warwick pose.
“Baldy,” said Webb, solemnly, “me and you punched cows in the same outfit for years. We been runnin’ on the same range, and ridin’ the same trails since we was boys. I wouldn’t talk about my family affairs to nobody but you. You was line-rider on the Nopalito Ranch when I married Santa McAllister. I was foreman then; but what am I now? I don’t amount to a knot in a stake rope.”
“When old McAllister was the cattle king of West Texas,” continued Baldy with Satanic sweetness, “you was some tallow. You had as much to say on the ranch as he did.”
-“I did,” admitted Webb, “up to the time he found out I was tryin’ to get my rope over Santa’s head. Then he kept me out on the range as far from the ranch-house as he could. When the old man died they commenced to call Santa the ‘cattle queen.’ I’m boss of the cattle—that’s all. She ‘tends to all the business; she handles all the money; I can’t sell even a beef-steer to a party of campers, myself. Santa’s the ‘queen’; and I’m Mr. Nobody.”
+“I did,” admitted Webb, “up to the time he found out I was tryin’ to get my rope over Santa’s head. Then he kept me out on the range as far from the ranch-house as he could. When the old man died they commenced to call Santa the ‘cattle queen.’ I’m boss of the cattle—that’s all. She ’tends to all the business; she handles all the money; I can’t sell even a beef-steer to a party of campers, myself. Santa’s the ‘queen’; and I’m Mr. Nobody.”
“I’d be king if I was you,” repeated Baldy Woods, the royalist. “When a man marries a queen he ought to grade up with her—on the hoof—dressed—dried—corned—any old way from the chaparral to the packing-gouse. Lots of folks thinks it’s funny, Webb, that you don’t have the say-so on the Nopalito. I ain’t reflectin’ none on Miz Yeager—she’s the finest little lady between the Rio Grande and next Christmas—but a man ought to be boss of his own camp.”
The smooth, brown face of Yeager lengthened to a mask of wounded melancholy. With that expression, and his rumpled yellow hair and guileless blue eyes, he might have been likened to a schoolboy whose leadership had been usurped by a youngster of superior strength. But his active and sinewy seventy-two inches, and his girded revolvers forbade the comparison.
“What was that you called me, Baldy?” he asked. “What kind of a concert was it?”
@@ -31,15 +31,15 @@The two compañeros mounted their ponies and trotted away from the little railroad settlement, where they had foregathered in the thirsty morning.
At Dry Lake, where their routes diverged, they reined up for a parting cigarette. For miles they had ridden in silence save for the soft drum of the ponies’ hoofs on the matted mesquite grass, and the rattle of the chaparral against their wooden stirrups. But in Texas discourse is seldom continuous. You may fill in a mile, a meal, and a murder between your paragraphs without detriment to your thesis. So, without apology, Webb offered an addendum to the conversation that had begun ten miles away.
“You remember, yourself, Baldy, that there was a time when Santa wasn’t quite so independent. You remember the days when old McAllister was keepin’ us apart, and how she used to send me the sign that she wanted to see me? Old man Mac promised to make me look like a colander if I ever come in gunshot of the ranch. You remember the sign she used to send, Baldy—the heart with a cross inside of it?”
-“Me?” cried Baldy, with intoxicated archness. “You old sugar-stealing coyote! Don’t I remember! Why, you dad-blamed old long-horned turtle-eove, the boys in camp was all cognoscious about them hiroglyphs. The ‘gizzard-and-crossbones’ we used to call it. We used to see ’em on truck that was sent out from the ranch. They was marked in charcoal on the sacks of flour and in lead-pencil on the newspapers. I see one of ’em once chalked on the back of a new cook that old man McAllister sent out from the ranch—danged if I didn’t.”
+“Me?” cried Baldy, with intoxicated archness. “You old sugar-stealing coyote! Don’t I remember! Why, you dad-blamed old long-horned turtle-dove, the boys in camp was all cognoscious about them hiroglyphs. The ‘gizzard-and-crossbones’ we used to call it. We used to see ’em on truck that was sent out from the ranch. They was marked in charcoal on the sacks of flour and in lead-pencil on the newspapers. I see one of ’em once chalked on the back of a new cook that old man McAllister sent out from the ranch—danged if I didn’t.”
“Santa’s father,” explained Webb gently, “got her to promise that she wouldn’t write to me or send me any word. That heart-and-cross sign was her scheme. Whenever she wanted to see me in particular she managed to put that mark on somethin’ at the ranch that she knew I’d see. And I never laid eyes on it but what I burnt the wind for the ranch the same night. I used to see her in that coma mott back of the little horse-corral.”
“We knowed it,” chanted Baldy; “but we never let on. We was all for you. We knowed why you always kept that fast paint in camp. And when we see that gizzard-and-crossbones figured out on the truck from the ranch we knowed old Pinto was goin’ to eat up miles that night instead of grass. You remember Scurry—that educated horse-wrangler we had—the college fellow that tangle-foot drove to the range? Whenever Scurry saw that come-meet-your-honey brand on anything from the ranch, he’d wave his hand like that, and say, ‘Our friend Lee Andrews will again swim the Hell’s point tonight.’ ”
“The last time Santa sent me the sign,” said Webb, “was once when she was sick. I noticed it as soon as I hit camp, and I galloped Pinto forty mile that night. She wasn’t at the coma mott. I went to the house; and old McAllister met me at the door. ‘Did you come here to get killed?’ says he; ‘I’ll disoblige you for once. I just started a Mexican to bring you. Santa wants you. Go in that room and see her. And then come out here and see me.’
-“Santa was lyin’ in bed pretty sick. But she gives out a kind of a smile, and her hand and mine lock horns, and I sets down by the bed—mud and spurs and chaps and all. ‘I’ve heard you ridin’ across the grass for hours, Webb,’ she says. ‘I was sure you’d come. You saw the sign?’ she whispers. ‘The minute I hit camp,’ says I. ”Twas marked on the bag of potatoes and onions.’ ‘They’re always together,’ says she, soft like—‘always together in life.’ ‘They go well together,’ I says, ‘in a stew.’ ‘I mean hearts and crosses,’ says Santa. ‘Our sign—to love and to suffer—that’s what they mean.’
+“Santa was lyin’ in bed pretty sick. But she gives out a kind of a smile, and her hand and mine lock horns, and I sets down by the bed—mud and spurs and chaps and all. ‘I’ve heard you ridin’ across the grass for hours, Webb,’ she says. ‘I was sure you’d come. You saw the sign?’ she whispers. ‘The minute I hit camp,’ says I. ‘ ’Twas marked on the bag of potatoes and onions.’ ‘They’re always together,’ says she, soft like—‘always together in life.’ ‘They go well together,’ I says, ‘in a stew.’ ‘I mean hearts and crosses,’ says Santa. ‘Our sign—to love and to suffer—that’s what they mean.’
“And there was old Doc Musgrove amusin’ himself with whisky and a palm-leaf fan. And by and by Santa goes to sleep; and Doc feels her forehead; and he says to me: ‘You’re not such a bad febrifuge. But you’d better slide out now; for the diagnosis don’t call for you in regular doses. The little lady’ll be all right when she wakes up.’
“I seen old McAllister outside. ‘She’s asleep,’ says I. ‘And now you can start in with your colander-work. Take your time; for I left my gun on my saddle-horn.’
“Old Mac laughs, and he says to me: ‘Pumpin’ lead into the best ranch-hoss in West Texas don’t seem to me good business policy. I don’t know where I could get as good a one. It’s the son-in-law idea, Webb, that makes me admire for to use you as a target. You ain’t my idea for a member of the family. But I can use you on the Nopalito if you’ll keep outside of a radius with the ranch-house in the middle of it. You go upstairs and lay down on a cot, and when you get some sleep we’ll talk it over.’ ”
-Baldy Woods pulled down his hat, and uncurled his leg from his saddle-eorn. Webb shortened his rein, and his pony danced, anxious to be off. The two men shook hands with Western ceremony.
+Baldy Woods pulled down his hat, and uncurled his leg from his saddle-horn. Webb shortened his rein, and his pony danced, anxious to be off. The two men shook hands with Western ceremony.
“Adios, Baldy,” said Webb, “I’m glad I seen you and had this talk.”
With a pounding rush that sounded like the rise of a covey of quail, the riders sped away toward different points of the compass. A hundred yards on his route Baldy reined in on the top of a bare knoll, and emitted a yell. He swayed on his horse; had he been on foot, the earth would have risen and conquered him; but in the saddle he was a master of equilibrium, and laughed at whisky, and despised the centre of gravity.
Webb turned in his saddle at the signal.
@@ -83,8 +83,9 @@Mrs. Yeager—The Nopalito Ranch: Dear Madam: I am instructed by the owners of the Rancho Seco to purchase 100 head of two and three-year-old cows of the Sussex breed owned by you. If you can fill the order please deliver the cattle to the bearer; and a check will be forwarded to you at once.
Business is business, even—very scantily did it escape being written “especially”—in a kingdom.
diff --git a/src/epub/text/his-pension.xhtml b/src/epub/text/his-pension.xhtml index 6e3e241..41785ad 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/his-pension.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/his-pension.xhtml @@ -6,7 +6,7 @@ -“Speaking of the $140,000,000 paid out yearly by the government in pensions,” said a prominent member of Hood’s brigade to the Post’s representative, “I am told that a man in Indiana applied for a pension last month on account of a surgical operation he had performed on him during the war. And what do you suppose that surgical operation was?”
“Haven’t the least idea.”
diff --git a/src/epub/text/holding-up-a-train.xhtml b/src/epub/text/holding-up-a-train.xhtml index a4e2dd1..e3603b8 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/holding-up-a-train.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/holding-up-a-train.xhtml @@ -11,7 +11,11 @@Note. The man who told me these things was for several years an outlaw in the Southwest and a follower of the pursuit he so frankly describes. His description of the modus operandi should prove interesting, his counsel of value to the potential passenger in some future “holdup,” while his estimate of the pleasures of train robbing will hardly induce anyone to adopt it as a profession. I give the story in almost exactly his own words.
- O. H. + + + O. H. + +
Most people would say, if their opinion was asked for, that holding up a train would be a hard job. Well, it isn’t; it’s easy. I have contributed some to the uneasiness of railroads and the insomnia of express companies, and the most trouble I ever had about a holdup was in being swindled by unscrupulous people while spending the money I got. The danger wasn’t anything to speak of, and we didn’t mind the trouble.
diff --git a/src/epub/text/how-it-started.xhtml b/src/epub/text/how-it-started.xhtml index 6745009..1edeb3f 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/how-it-started.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/how-it-started.xhtml @@ -13,8 +13,7 @@“It’s an old feud of several years’ standing,” said the old resident, “between the editor and the Judkins family. About every two months they get to shooting at one another. Everybody in town knows about it. This is the way it started. The Judkinses live in another town, and one time a good-looking young lady of the family came here on a visit to a Mrs. Brown. Mrs. Brown gave her a big party—a regular high-toned affair, to get the young men acquainted with her. One young fellow fell in love with her, and sent a little poem to our paper, the Observer. This is the way it read:
- To Miss Judkins -
+ To Miss Judkins
(Visiting Mrs. T. Montcalm Brown.)@@ -42,8 +41,7 @@
“Then the editor himself got hold of it. He is heavily interested in our new electric light plant, and his blue pencil jumped on the line ‘While bright the gaslight shone’ in a hurry. Later on one of the printers came in and grabbed a lot of copy, and this poem was among it. You know what printers will do if you give them a chance, so here is the way the poem came out in the paper:
- To Miss Judkins -
+ To Miss Judkins
(Visiting Mrs. T. Montcalm Brown.)diff --git a/src/epub/text/man-about-town.xhtml b/src/epub/text/man-about-town.xhtml index 858253d..75066ad 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/man-about-town.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/man-about-town.xhtml @@ -12,7 +12,7 @@
It took me two weeks to find out what women carry in dress suit cases. And then I began to ask why a mattress is made in two pieces. This serious query was at first received with suspicion because it sounded like a conundrum. I was at last assured that its double form of construction was designed to make lighter the burden of woman, who makes up beds. I was so foolish as to persist, begging to know why, then, they were not made in two equal pieces; whereupon I was shunned.
The third draught that I craved from the fount of knowledge was enlightenment concerning the character known as A Man About Town. He was more vague in my mind than a type should be. We must have a concrete idea of anything, even if it be an imaginary idea, before we can comprehend it. Now, I have a mental picture of John Doe that is as clear as a steel engraving. His eyes are weak blue; he wears a brown vest and a shiny black serge coat. He stands always in the sunshine chewing something; and he keeps half-shutting his pocket knife and opening it again with his thumb. And, if the Man Higher Up is ever found, take my assurance for it, he will be a large, pale man with blue wristlets showing under his cuffs, and he will be sitting to have his shoes polished within sound of a bowling alley, and there will be somewhere about him turquoises.
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’ 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.”
+“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.
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.
diff --git a/src/epub/text/new-york-by-camp-fire-light.xhtml b/src/epub/text/new-york-by-camp-fire-light.xhtml index 9e6eb77..ec02247 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/new-york-by-camp-fire-light.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/new-york-by-camp-fire-light.xhtml @@ -6,7 +6,7 @@ -+ diff --git a/src/epub/text/sound-and-fury.xhtml b/src/epub/text/sound-and-fury.xhtml index 28d19c7..da2d8b3 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/sound-and-fury.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/sound-and-fury.xhtml @@ -227,7 +227,9 @@ New York by Camp Fire Light
Away out in the Creek Nation we learned things about New York.
We were on a hunting trip, and were camped one night on the bank of a little stream. Bud Kingsbury was our skilled hunter and guide, and it was from his lips that we had explanations of Manhattan and the queer folks that inhabit it. Bud had once spent a month in the metropolis, and a week or two at other times, and he was pleased to discourse to us of what he had seen.
diff --git a/src/epub/text/one-thousand-dollars.xhtml b/src/epub/text/one-thousand-dollars.xhtml index 615335e..aeeabf8 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/one-thousand-dollars.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/one-thousand-dollars.xhtml @@ -12,7 +12,7 @@Young Gillian gave a decidedly amused laugh as he fingered the thin package of new fifty-dollar notes.
“It’s such a confoundedly awkward amount,” he explained, genially, to the lawyer. “If it had been ten thousand a fellow might wind up with a lot of fireworks and do himself credit. Even fifty dollars would have been less trouble.”
“You heard the reading of your uncle’s will,” continued Lawyer Tolman, professionally dry in his tones. “I do not know if you paid much attention to its details. I must remind you of one. You are required to render to us an account of the manner of expenditure of this $1,000 as soon as you have disposed of it. The will stipulates that. I trust that you will so far comply with the late Mr. Gillian’s wishes.”
-“You may depend upon it,” said the young man.% politely, “in spite of the extra expense it will entail. I may have to engage a secretary. I was never good at accounts.”
+“You may depend upon it,” said the young man, politely, “in spite of the extra expense it will entail. I may have to engage a secretary. I was never good at accounts.”
Gillian went to his club. There he hunted out one whom he called Old Bryson.
Old Bryson was calm and forty and sequestered. He was in a corner reading a book, and when he saw Gillian approaching he sighed, laid down his book and took off his glasses.
“Old Bryson, wake up,” said Gillian. “I’ve a funny story to tell you.”
diff --git a/src/epub/text/reconciliation.xhtml b/src/epub/text/reconciliation.xhtml index e14c8dc..470ee46 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/reconciliation.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/reconciliation.xhtml @@ -1,7 +1,7 @@ -Reconciliation +Reconciliation: A One-Act Drama @@ -48,7 +48,9 @@He -Smack. Smack! ++ Smack. Smack! + She @@ -64,7 +66,9 @@Both -Smack! ++ Smack! + - He @@ -119,7 +123,9 @@After reaching the sidewalk I wonder if Colonel Ingersoll is right when he says suicide is no sin! Curtain
++ Curtain +
- Exit Miss Lore. ++ Exit Miss Lore. + Asbestos Curtain
diff --git a/src/epub/text/springtime-a-la-carte.xhtml b/src/epub/text/springtime-a-la-carte.xhtml index 1b119eb..e4e4674 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/springtime-a-la-carte.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/springtime-a-la-carte.xhtml @@ -39,7 +39,7 @@But what a witch is Spring! Into the great cold city of stone and iron a message had to be sent. There was none to convey it but the little hardy courier of the fields with his rough green coat and modest air. He is a true soldier of fortune, this dent-de-lion—this lion’s tooth, as the French chefs call him. Flowered, he will assist at lovemaking, wreathed in my lady’s nut-brown hair; young and callow and unblossomed, he goes into the boiling pot and delivers the word of his sovereign mistress.
By and by Sarah forced back her tears. The cards must be written. But, still in a faint, golden glow from her dandeleonine dream, she fingered the typewriter keys absently for a little while, with her mind and heart in the meadow lane with her young farmer. But soon she came swiftly back to the rockbound lanes of Manhattan, and the typewriter began to rattle and jump like a strikebreaker’s motor car.
At 6 o’clock the waiter brought her dinner and carried away the typewritten bill of fare. When Sarah ate she set aside, with a sigh, the dish of dandelions with its crowning ovarious accompaniment. As this dark mass had been transformed from a bright and love-endorsed flower to be an ignominious vegetable, so had her summer hopes wilted and perished. Love may, as Shakespeare said, feed on itself: but Sarah could not bring herself to eat the dandelions that had graced, as ornaments, the first spiritual banquet of her heart’s true affection.
-At 7:30 the couple in the next room began to quarrel: the man in the room above sought for A on his flute; the gas went a little lower; three coal wagons started to unload—the only sound of which the phonograph is jealous; cats on the back fences slowly retreated toward Mukden. By these signs Sarah knew that it was time for her to read. She got out “The Cloister and the Hearth,” the best non-selling book of the month, settled her feet on her trunk, and began to wander with Gerard.
+At 7:30 the couple in the next room began to quarrel: the man in the room above sought for A on his flute; the gas went a little lower; three coal wagons started to unload—the only sound of which the phonograph is jealous; cats on the back fences slowly retreated toward Mukden. By these signs Sarah knew that it was time for her to read. She got out The Cloister and the Hearth, the best non-selling book of the month, settled her feet on her trunk, and began to wander with Gerard.
The front door bell rang. The landlady answered it. Sarah left Gerard and Denys treed by a bear and listened. Oh, yes; you would, just as she did!
And then a strong voice was heard in the hall below, and Sarah jumped for her door, leaving the book on the floor and the first round easily the bear’s. You have guessed it. She reached the top of the stairs just as her farmer came up, three at a jump, and reaped and garnered her, with nothing left for the gleaners.
“Why haven’t you written—oh, why?” cried Sarah.
@@ -51,11 +51,11 @@“I dropped into that Home Restaurant next door this evening,” said he. “I don’t care who knows it; I like a dish of some kind of greens at this time of the year. I ran my eye down that nice typewritten bill of fare looking for something in that line. When I got below cabbage I turned my chair over and hollered for the proprietor. He told me where you lived.”
“I remember,” sighed Sarah, happily. “That was dandelions below cabbage.”
“I’d know that cranky capital W ’way above the line that your typewriter makes anywhere in the world,” said Franklin.
-“Why, there’s no W in dandelions,” said Sarah, in surprise.
+“Why, there’s no W in dandelions,” said Sarah, in surprise.
The young man drew the bill of fare from his pocket, and pointed to a line.
Sarah recognised the first card she had typewritten that afternoon. There was still the rayed splotch in the upper right-hand corner where a tear had fallen. But over the spot where one should have read the name of the meadow plant, the clinging memory of their golden blossoms had allowed her fingers to strike strange keys.
Between the red cabbage and the stuffed green peppers was the item:
-“Dearest Walter, with hard-boiled egg..”
+“Dearest Walter, with hard-boiled egg.”