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Alex Cabal
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<p>“I caught hold of his arm.</p>
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<p>“ ‘Don’t look it up,’ says I. ‘Marriage is a lottery anyway. I’m willing to take the risk about the license if you are.’</p>
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<p>“The consul went back to Hooligan Alley with me. Izzy called her ma to come in, but the old lady was picking a chicken in the patio and begged to be excused. So we stood up and the consul performed the ceremony.</p>
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<p>“That evening <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Bowers cooked a great supper of stewed goat, tamales, baked bananas, fricasseed red peppers and coffee. Afterward I sat in the rocking-chair by the front window, and she sat on the floor plunking at a guitar and happy, as she should be, as <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> William <abbr epub:type="z3998:personal-name" class="eoc">T. B.</abbr></p>
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<p>“That evening <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Bowers cooked a great supper of stewed goat, tamales, baked bananas, fricasseed red peppers and coffee. Afterward I sat in the rocking-chair by the front window, and she sat on the floor plunking at a guitar and happy, as she should be, as <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> William <abbr class="eoc" epub:type="z3998:personal-name">T. B.</abbr></p>
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<p>“All at once I sprang up in a hurry. I’d forgotten all about O’Connor. I asked Izzy to fix up a lot of truck for him to eat.</p>
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<p>“ ‘That big, oogly man,’ said Izzy. ‘But all right—he your friend.’</p>
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<p>“I pulled a rose out of a bunch in a jar, and took the grub-basket around to the jail. O’Connor ate like a wolf. Then he wiped his face with a banana peel and said: ‘Have you heard nothing from Dona Isabel yet?’</p>
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<p>“ ‘It’s going to be a fine evening,’ says I.</p>
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<p>“ ‘He’s coming,’ says she. ‘He’s going to tell you, this time, the story about the old negro and the green watermelons. It always comes after the one about the Yankees and the game rooster. There was another time,’ she goes on, ‘that you nearly got left—it was at Pulaski City.’</p>
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<p>“ ‘Yes,’ says I, ‘I remember. My foot slipped as I was jumping on the step, and I nearly tumbled off.’</p>
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<p>“ ‘I know,’ says she. ‘And—and I—<em>I was afraid you had, John <abbr epub:type="z3998:personal-name" class="eoc">A.</abbr> I was afraid you had.</em>’</p>
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<p>“ ‘I know,’ says she. ‘And—and I—<em>I was afraid you had, John <abbr class="eoc" epub:type="z3998:personal-name">A.</abbr> I was afraid you had.</em>’</p>
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<p>“And then she skips into the house through one of the big windows.”</p>
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</section>
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<section id="bestseller-4" epub:type="chapter">
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<p>“Because,” said Gladys firmly, speaking easily with great difficulty, “the progression and enlightenment that the woman of today possesses demand that the man shall bring to the marriage altar a heart and body as free from the debasing and hereditary iniquities that now no longer exist except in the chimerical imagination of enslaved custom.”</p>
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<p>“It is as I expected,” said Bertram, wiping his heated brow on the window curtain. “You have been reading books.”</p>
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<p>“Besides that,” continued Gladys, ignoring the deadly charge, “you have no money.”</p>
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<p>The blood of the Snoopers rose hastily and mantled the cheek of Bertram <abbr epub:type="z3998:personal-name" class="eoc">D.</abbr> He put on his coat and moved proudly to the door.</p>
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<p>The blood of the Snoopers rose hastily and mantled the cheek of Bertram <abbr class="eoc" epub:type="z3998:personal-name">D.</abbr> He put on his coat and moved proudly to the door.</p>
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<p>“Stay here till I return,” he said, “I will be back in fifteen years.”</p>
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<p>When he had finished speaking he ceased and left the room.</p>
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<p>When he had gone, Gladys felt an uncontrollable yearning take possession of her. She said slowly, rather to herself than for publication, “I wonder if there was any of that cold cabbage left from dinner.”</p>
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<blockquote epub:type="epigraph">
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<p><b>Note.</b> 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 <span xml:lang="la">modus operandi</span> 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.</p>
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<cite epub:type="z3998:signature">
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<abbr epub:type="z3998:personal-name" class="eoc">O. H.</abbr>
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<abbr class="eoc" epub:type="z3998:personal-name">O. H.</abbr>
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</cite>
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</blockquote>
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</header>
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<p>“Go to the devil,” said <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Bloom, still pensive.</p>
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<p>And now, upon the left bank, they caught a glimpse of a white village, high up on the hills, smothered among green trees. That was Cold Branch—no boom town, but the slow growth of many years. Cold Branch lay on the edge of the grape and corn lands. The big country road ran just back of the heights. Cold Branch had nothing in common with the frisky ambition of Okochee with its impertinent lake.</p>
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<p>“Mac,” said <abbr epub:type="z3998:given-name">J.</abbr> Pinkney suddenly, “I want you to stop at Cold Branch. There’s a landing there that they made to use sometimes when the river was up.”</p>
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<p>“Can’t,” said the captain, grinning more broadly. “I’ve got the United States mails on board. Right today this boat’s in the government service. Do you want to have the poor old captain keelhauled by Uncle Sam? And the great city of Skyland, all disconsolate, waiting for its mail? I’m ashamed of your extravagance, <abbr epub:type="z3998:personal-name" class="eoc">J. P.</abbr>”</p>
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<p>“Can’t,” said the captain, grinning more broadly. “I’ve got the United States mails on board. Right today this boat’s in the government service. Do you want to have the poor old captain keelhauled by Uncle Sam? And the great city of Skyland, all disconsolate, waiting for its mail? I’m ashamed of your extravagance, <abbr class="eoc" epub:type="z3998:personal-name">J. P.</abbr>”</p>
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<p>“Mac,” almost whispered <abbr epub:type="z3998:given-name">J.</abbr> Pinkney, in his danger-line voice, “I looked into the engine room of the <i epub:type="se:name.vessel.ship">Dixie Belle</i> a while ago. Don’t you know of somebody that needs a new boiler? Cement and black Japan can’t hide flaws from me. And then, those shares of building and loan that you traded for repairs—they were all yours, of course. I hate to mention these things, but—”</p>
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<p>“Oh, come now, <abbr epub:type="z3998:given-name">J. P.</abbr>,” said the captain. “You know I was just fooling. I’ll put you off at Cold Branch, if you say so.”</p>
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<p>“The other passengers get off there, too,” said <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Bloom.</p>
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<p>“ ‘Listen,’ says Patrick Shane, with the sweat coming out on his brow. ‘I’m confidant with you, as you have, somehow, enlisted my regards. Did you ever,’ he says, ‘feel the avoirdupois power of gold—not the troy weight of it, but the sixteen-ounces-to-the-pound force of it?’</p>
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<p>“ ‘Never,’ says I. ‘I never take in any bad money.’</p>
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<p>“Shane drops down on the floor and throws his arms over the sacks of gold-dust.</p>
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<p>“ ‘I love it,’ says he. ‘I want to feel the touch of it day and night. It’s my pleasure in life. I come in this room, and I’m a king and a rich man. I’ll be a millionaire in another year. The pile’s getting bigger every month. I’ve got the whole tribe washing out the sands in the creeks. I’m the happiest man in the world, <abbr epub:type="z3998:personal-name" class="eoc">W. D.</abbr> I just want to be near this gold, and know it’s mine and it’s increasing every day. Now, you know,’ says he, ‘why my Indians wouldn’t buy your goods. They can’t. They bring all the dust to me. I’m their king. I’ve taught ’em not to desire or admire. You might as well shut up shop.’</p>
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<p>“ ‘I love it,’ says he. ‘I want to feel the touch of it day and night. It’s my pleasure in life. I come in this room, and I’m a king and a rich man. I’ll be a millionaire in another year. The pile’s getting bigger every month. I’ve got the whole tribe washing out the sands in the creeks. I’m the happiest man in the world, <abbr class="eoc" epub:type="z3998:personal-name">W. D.</abbr> I just want to be near this gold, and know it’s mine and it’s increasing every day. Now, you know,’ says he, ‘why my Indians wouldn’t buy your goods. They can’t. They bring all the dust to me. I’m their king. I’ve taught ’em not to desire or admire. You might as well shut up shop.’</p>
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<p>“ ‘I’ll tell you what you are,’ says I. ‘You’re a plain, contemptible miser. You preach supply and you forget demand. Now, supply,’ I goes on, ‘is never anything but supply. On the contrary,’ says I, ‘demand is a much broader syllogism and assertion. Demand includes the rights of our women and children, and charity and friendship, and even a little begging on the street corners. They’ve both got to harmonize equally. And I’ve got a few things up my commercial sleeve yet,’ says I, ‘that may jostle your preconceived ideas of politics and economy.’</p>
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<p>“The next morning I had McClintock bring up another mule-load of goods to the plaza and open it up. The people gathered around the same as before.</p>
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<p>“I got out the finest line of necklaces, bracelets, hair-combs, and earrings that I carried, and had the women put ’em on. And then I played trumps.</p>
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<p>Young Howard Pilkins, the millionaire, got his money ornithologically. He was a shrewd judge of storks, and got in on the ground floor at the residence of his immediate ancestors, the Pilkins Brewing Company. For his mother was a partner in the business. Finally old man Pilkins died from a torpid liver, and then <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Pilkins died from worry on account of torpid delivery-wagons—and there you have young Howard Pilkins with 4,000,000; and a good fellow at that. He was an agreeable, modestly arrogant young man, who implicitly believed that money could buy anything that the world had to offer. And Bagdad-on-the-Subway for a long time did everything possible to encourage his belief.</p>
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<p>But the Rattrap caught him at last; he heard the spring snap, and found his heart in a wire cage regarding a piece of cheese whose other name was Alice von der Ruysling.</p>
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<p>The Von der Ruyslings still live in that little square about which so much has been said, and in which so little has been done. Today you hear of <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Tilden’s underground passage, and you hear <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Gould’s elevated passage, and that about ends the noise in the world made by Gramercy Square. But once it was different. The Von der Ruyslings live there yet, and they received <em>the first key ever made to Gramercy Park</em>.</p>
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<p>You shall have no description of Alice <abbr class="name eoc">v. d. R.</abbr> Just call up in your mind the picture of your own Maggie or Vera or Beatrice, straighten her nose, soften her voice, tone her down and then tone her up, make her beautiful and unattainable—and you have a faint dry-point etching of Alice. The family owned a crumbly brick house and a coachman named Joseph in a coat of many colours, and a horse so old that he claimed to belong to the order of the <i xml:lang="la">Perissodactyla</i>, and had toes instead of hoofs. In the year 1898 the family had to buy a new set of harness for the Perissodactyl. Before using it they made Joseph smear it over with a mixture of ashes and soot. It was the Von der Ruysling family that bought the territory between the Bowery and East River and Rivington Street and the Statue of Liberty, in the year 1649, from an Indian chief for a quart of passementerie and a pair of Turkey-red portières designed for a Harlem flat. I have always admired that Indian’s perspicacity and good taste. All this is merely to convince you that the Von der Ruyslings were exactly the kind of poor aristocrats that turn down their noses at people who have money. Oh, well, I don’t mean that; I mean people who have <em>just</em> money.</p>
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<p>One evening Pilkins went down to the red brick house in Gramercy Square, and made what he thought was a proposal to Alice <abbr class="name eoc">v. d. R.</abbr> Alice, with her nose turned down, and thinking of his money, considered it a proposition, and refused it and him. Pilkins, summoning all his resources as any good general would have done, made an indiscreet references to the advantages that his money would provide. That settled it. The lady turned so cold that Walter Wellman himself would have waited until spring to make a dash for her in a dogsled.</p>
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<p>You shall have no description of Alice <abbr class="eoc" epub:type="z3998:surname">v. d. R.</abbr> Just call up in your mind the picture of your own Maggie or Vera or Beatrice, straighten her nose, soften her voice, tone her down and then tone her up, make her beautiful and unattainable—and you have a faint dry-point etching of Alice. The family owned a crumbly brick house and a coachman named Joseph in a coat of many colours, and a horse so old that he claimed to belong to the order of the <i xml:lang="la">Perissodactyla</i>, and had toes instead of hoofs. In the year 1898 the family had to buy a new set of harness for the Perissodactyl. Before using it they made Joseph smear it over with a mixture of ashes and soot. It was the Von der Ruysling family that bought the territory between the Bowery and East River and Rivington Street and the Statue of Liberty, in the year 1649, from an Indian chief for a quart of passementerie and a pair of Turkey-red portières designed for a Harlem flat. I have always admired that Indian’s perspicacity and good taste. All this is merely to convince you that the Von der Ruyslings were exactly the kind of poor aristocrats that turn down their noses at people who have money. Oh, well, I don’t mean that; I mean people who have <em>just</em> money.</p>
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<p>One evening Pilkins went down to the red brick house in Gramercy Square, and made what he thought was a proposal to Alice <abbr class="eoc" epub:type="z3998:surname">v. d. R.</abbr> Alice, with her nose turned down, and thinking of his money, considered it a proposition, and refused it and him. Pilkins, summoning all his resources as any good general would have done, made an indiscreet references to the advantages that his money would provide. That settled it. The lady turned so cold that Walter Wellman himself would have waited until spring to make a dash for her in a dogsled.</p>
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<p>But Pilkins was something of a sport himself. You can’t fool all the millionaires every time the ball drops on the Western Union Building.</p>
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<p>“If, at any time,” he said to <abbr class="name">A. v. d. R.</abbr>, “you feel that you would like to reconsider your answer, send me a rose like that.”</p>
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<p>“If, at any time,” he said to <abbr epub:type="z3998:personal-name">A. v. d. R.</abbr>, “you feel that you would like to reconsider your answer, send me a rose like that.”</p>
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<p>Pilkins audaciously touched a <span xml:lang="fr">Jacque</span> rose that she wore loosely in her hair.</p>
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<p>“Very well,” said she. “And when I do, you will understand by it that either you or I have learned something new about the purchasing power of money. You’ve been spoiled, my friend. No, I don’t think I could marry you. Tomorrow I will send you back the presents you have given me.”</p>
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<p>“Presents!” said Pilkins in surprise. “I never gave you a present in my life. I would like to see a full-length portrait of the man that you would take a present from. Why, you never would let me send you flowers or candy or even art calendars.”</p>
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<p>“You’ve forgotten,” said Alice <abbr class="name">v. d. R.</abbr>, with a little smile. “It was a long time ago when our families were neighbours. You were seven, and I was trundling my doll on the sidewalk. You have me a little gray, hairy kitten, with shoe-buttony eyes. Its head came off and it was full of candy. You paid five cents for it—you told me so. I haven’t the candy to return to you—I hadn’t developed a conscience at three, so I ate it. But I have the kitten yet, and I will wrap it up neatly tonight and send it to you tomorrow.”</p>
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<p>Beneath the lightness of Alice <abbr class="name">v. d. R.</abbr>’s talk the steadfastness of her rejection showed firm and plain. So there was nothing left for him but to leave the crumbly red brick house, and be off with his abhorred millions.</p>
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<p>“You’ve forgotten,” said Alice <abbr epub:type="z3998:personal-name">v. d. R.</abbr>, with a little smile. “It was a long time ago when our families were neighbours. You were seven, and I was trundling my doll on the sidewalk. You have me a little gray, hairy kitten, with shoe-buttony eyes. Its head came off and it was full of candy. You paid five cents for it—you told me so. I haven’t the candy to return to you—I hadn’t developed a conscience at three, so I ate it. But I have the kitten yet, and I will wrap it up neatly tonight and send it to you tomorrow.”</p>
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<p>Beneath the lightness of Alice <abbr epub:type="z3998:personal-name">v. d. R.</abbr>’s talk the steadfastness of her rejection showed firm and plain. So there was nothing left for him but to leave the crumbly red brick house, and be off with his abhorred millions.</p>
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<p>On his way back, Pilkins walked through Madison Square. The hour hand of the clock hung about eight; the air was stingingly cool, but not at the freezing point. The dim little square seemed like a great, cold, unroofed room, with its four walls of houses, spangled with thousands of insufficient lights. Only a few loiterers were huddled here and there on the benches.</p>
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<p>But suddenly Pilkins came upon a youth sitting brave and, as if conflicting with summer sultriness, coatless, his white shirtsleeves conspicuous in the light from the globe of an electric. Close to his side was a girl, smiling, dreamy, happy. Around her shoulders was, palpably, the missing coat of the cold-defying youth. It appeared to be a modern panorama of the Babes in the Wood, revised and brought up to date, with the exception that the robins hadn’t turned up yet with the protecting leaves.</p>
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<p>With delight the money-caliphs view a situation that they think is relievable while you wait.</p>
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<p>“ ‘Designate,’ says he. ‘Are you the guinea pigs for the Asiatic python or the alfalfa for the sacred buffalo?’</p>
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<p>“ ‘Neither,’ says I. ‘I’ve got Beppo, the educated hog, in a sack in that wagon. I found him rooting up the flowers in my front yard this morning. I’ll take the five thousand dollars in large bills, if it’s handy.’</p>
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<p>“George <abbr epub:type="z3998:given-name">B.</abbr> hustles out of his tent, and asks me to follow. We went into one of the sideshows. In there was a jet black pig with a pink ribbon around his neck lying on some hay and eating carrots that a man was feeding to him.</p>
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<p>“ ‘Hey, Mac,’ calls <abbr epub:type="z3998:personal-name" class="eoc">G. B.</abbr> ‘Nothing wrong with the worldwide this morning, is there?’</p>
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<p>“ ‘Hey, Mac,’ calls <abbr class="eoc" epub:type="z3998:personal-name">G. B.</abbr> ‘Nothing wrong with the worldwide this morning, is there?’</p>
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<p>“ ‘Him? No,’ says the man. ‘He’s got an appetite like a chorus girl at 1 <abbr class="time eoc">a.m.</abbr>’</p>
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<p>“ ‘How’d you get this pipe?’ says Tapley to me. ‘Eating too many pork chops last night?’</p>
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<p>“I pulls out the paper and shows him the ad.</p>
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<p>I sat and read that book for four hours. All the wonders of education was compressed in it. I forgot the snow, and I forgot that me and old Idaho was on the outs. He was sitting still on a stool reading away with a kind of partly soft and partly mysterious look shining through his tanbark whiskers.</p>
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<p>“Idaho,” says I, “what kind of a book is yours?”</p>
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<p>Idaho must have forgot, too, for he answered moderate, without any slander or malignity.</p>
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<p>“Why,” says he, “this here seems to be a volume by Homer <abbr epub:type="z3998:personal-name" class="eoc">K. M.</abbr>”</p>
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<p>“Why,” says he, “this here seems to be a volume by Homer <abbr class="eoc" epub:type="z3998:personal-name">K. M.</abbr>”</p>
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<p>“Homer <abbr epub:type="z3998:given-name">K. M.</abbr> what?” I asks.</p>
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<p>“Why, just Homer <abbr epub:type="z3998:given-name">K. M.</abbr>,” says he.</p>
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<p>“You’re a liar,” says I, a little riled that Idaho should try to put me up a tree. “No man is going ’round signing books with his initials. If it’s Homer <abbr epub:type="z3998:given-name">K. M.</abbr> Spoopendyke, or Homer <abbr epub:type="z3998:given-name">K. M.</abbr> McSweeney, or Homer <abbr epub:type="z3998:given-name">K. M.</abbr> Jones, why don’t you say so like a man instead of biting off the end of it like a calf chewing off the tail of a shirt on a clothesline?”</p>
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<p>“I put it to you straight, Sandy,” says Idaho, quiet. “It’s a poem book,” says he, “by Homer <abbr epub:type="z3998:personal-name" class="eoc">K. M.</abbr> I couldn’t get colour out of it at first, but there’s a vein if you follow it up. I wouldn’t have missed this book for a pair of red blankets.”</p>
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<p>“I put it to you straight, Sandy,” says Idaho, quiet. “It’s a poem book,” says he, “by Homer <abbr class="eoc" epub:type="z3998:personal-name">K. M.</abbr> I couldn’t get colour out of it at first, but there’s a vein if you follow it up. I wouldn’t have missed this book for a pair of red blankets.”</p>
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<p>“You’re welcome to it,” says I. “What I want is a disinterested statement of facts for the mind to work on, and that’s what I seem to find in the book I’ve drawn.”</p>
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<p>“What you’ve got,” says Idaho, “is statistics, the lowest grade of information that exists. They’ll poison your mind. Give me old <abbr epub:type="z3998:given-name">K. M.</abbr>’s system of surmises. He seems to be a kind of a wine agent. His regular toast is ‘nothing doing,’ and he seems to have a grouch, but he keeps it so well lubricated with booze that his worst kicks sound like an invitation to split a quart. But it’s poetry,” says Idaho, “and I have sensations of scorn for that truck of yours that tries to convey sense in feet and inches. When it comes to explaining the instinct of philosophy through the art of nature, old <abbr epub:type="z3998:given-name">K. M.</abbr> has got your man beat by drills, rows, paragraphs, chest measurement, and average annual rainfall.”</p>
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<p>So that’s the way me and Idaho had it. Day and night all the excitement we got was studying our books. That snowstorm sure fixed us with a fine lot of attainments apiece. By the time the snow melted, if you had stepped up to me suddenly and said: “Sanderson Pratt, what would it cost per square foot to lay a roof with twenty by twenty-yight tin at nine dollars and fifty cents per box?” I’d have told you as quick as light could travel the length of a spade handle at the rate of one hundred and ninety-two thousand miles per second. How many can do it? You wake up ’most any man you know in the middle of the night, and ask him quick to tell you the number of bones in the human skeleton exclusive of the teeth, or what percentage of the vote of the Nebraska Legislature overrules a veto. Will he tell you? Try him and see.</p>
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<p>“It’s right plausible of you, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Pratt,” says <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Sampson, “to take up the curmudgeons in your friend’s behalf; but it don’t alter the fact that he has made proposals to me sufficiently obnoxious to ruffle the ignominy of any lady.”</p>
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<p>“Why, now, now, now!” says I. “Old Idaho do that! I could believe it of myself, sooner. I never knew but one thing to deride in him; and a blizzard was responsible for that. Once while we was snowbound in the mountains he became a prey to a kind of spurious and uneven poetry, which may have corrupted his demeanour.”</p>
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<p>“It has,” says <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Sampson. “Ever since I knew him he has been reciting to me a lot of irreligious rhymes by some person he calls Ruby Ott, and who is no better than she should be, if you judge by her poetry.”</p>
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<p>“Then Idaho has struck a new book,” says I, “for the one he had was by a man who writes under the <span xml:lang="fr">nom de plume</span> of <abbr epub:type="z3998:personal-name" class="eoc">K. M.</abbr>”</p>
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<p>“Then Idaho has struck a new book,” says I, “for the one he had was by a man who writes under the <span xml:lang="fr">nom de plume</span> of <abbr class="eoc" epub:type="z3998:personal-name">K. M.</abbr>”</p>
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<p>“He’d better have stuck to it,” says <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Sampson, “whatever it was. And today he caps the vortex. I get a bunch of flowers from him, and on ’em is pinned a note. Now, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Pratt, you know a lady when you see her; and you know how I stand in Rosa society. Do you think for a moment that I’d skip out to the woods with a man along with a jug of wine and a loaf of bread, and go singing and cavorting up and down under the trees with him? I take a little claret with my meals, but I’m not in the habit of packing a jug of it into the brush and raising Cain in any such style as that. And of course he’d bring his book of verses along, too. He said so. Let him go on his scandalous picnics alone! Or let him take his Ruby Ott with him. I reckon she wouldn’t kick unless it was on account of there being too much bread along. And what do you think of your gentleman friend now, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Pratt?”</p>
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<p>“Well, ’m,” says I, “it may be that Idaho’s invitation was a kind of poetry, and meant no harm. Maybe it belonged to the class of rhymes they call figurative. They offend law and order, but they get sent through the mails on the grounds that they mean something that they don’t say. I’d be glad on Idaho’s account if you’d overlook it,” says I, “and let us extricate our minds from the low regions of poetry to the higher planes of fact and fancy. On a beautiful afternoon like this, <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Sampson,” I goes on, “we should let our thoughts dwell accordingly. Though it is warm here, we should remember that at the equator the line of perpetual frost is at an altitude of fifteen thousand feet. Between the latitudes of forty degrees and forty-nine degrees it is from four thousand to nine thousand feet.”</p>
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<p>“Oh, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Pratt,” says <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Sampson, “it’s such a comfort to hear you say them beautiful facts after getting such a jar from that minx of a Ruby’s poetry!”</p>
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@ -21,7 +21,7 @@
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<p>“You are Phineas <abbr epub:type="z3998:given-name">C.</abbr> Gooch, attorney-at-law?” said the visitor, his tone of voice and inflection making his words at once a question, an assertion and an accusation.</p>
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<p>Before committing himself by a reply, the lawyer estimated his possible client in one of his brief but shrewd and calculating glances.</p>
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<p>The man was of the emphatic type—large-sized, active, bold and debonair in demeanour, vain beyond a doubt, slightly swaggering, ready and at ease. He was well-clothed, but with a shade too much ornateness. He was seeking a lawyer; but if that fact would seem to saddle him with troubles they were not patent in his beaming eye and courageous air.</p>
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<p>“My name is Gooch,” at length the lawyer admitted. Upon pressure he would also have confessed to the Phineas <abbr epub:type="z3998:personal-name" class="eoc">C.</abbr> But he did not consider it good practice to volunteer information. “I did not receive your card,” he continued, by way of rebuke, “so I—”</p>
|
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<p>“My name is Gooch,” at length the lawyer admitted. Upon pressure he would also have confessed to the Phineas <abbr class="eoc" epub:type="z3998:personal-name">C.</abbr> But he did not consider it good practice to volunteer information. “I did not receive your card,” he continued, by way of rebuke, “so I—”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I know you didn’t,” remarked the visitor, coolly; “And you won’t just yet. Light up?” He threw a leg over an arm of his chair, and tossed a handful of rich-hued cigars upon the table. Lawyer Gooch knew the brand. He thawed just enough to accept the invitation to smoke.</p>
|
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<p>“You are a divorce lawyer,” said the cardless visitor. This time there was no interrogation in his voice. Nor did his words constitute a simple assertion. They formed a charge—a denunciation—as one would say to a dog: “You are a dog.” Lawyer Gooch was silent under the imputation.</p>
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<p>“You handle,” continued the visitor, “all the various ramifications of busted-up connubiality. You are a surgeon, we might saw, who extracts Cupid’s darts when he shoots ’em into the wrong parties. You furnish patent, incandescent lights for premises where the torch of Hymen has burned so low you can’t light a cigar at it. Am I right, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Gooch?”</p>
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|
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@ -12,7 +12,7 @@
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<p>He looked about for a place to throw the bottle, but the back door was locked, and he tried unsuccessfully to raise the window that overlooked the alley. The colonel’s wife, wondering why he was so long in coming, opened the door and surprised him, so that scarcely thinking what he was doing he thrust the flask under his coat tail into his hip pocket.</p>
|
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<p>“Why don’t you come on?” asked his wife. “Didn’t you find the letter?”</p>
|
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<p>He couldn’t do anything but go with her. He should have produced the bottle right there, and explained the situation, but he neglected his opportunity. He went on down Main Street with his family, with the pint flask feeling as big as a keg in his pocket. He was afraid some of them would notice it bulging under his coat, so he lagged somewhat in the rear. When he entered his pew at church and sat down there was a sharp crack, and the odor of mean whisky began to work its way around the church. The colonel saw several people elevate their noses and look inquiringly around, and he turned as red as a beet. He heard a female voice in the pew behind him whisper loudly:</p>
|
||||
<p>“Old Colonel <abbr class="name">J</abbr> is drunk again. They say he is hardly ever sober now, and some people say he beats his wife nearly every day.”</p>
|
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<p>“Old Colonel <abbr epub:type="z3998:surname">J</abbr> is drunk again. They say he is hardly ever sober now, and some people say he beats his wife nearly every day.”</p>
|
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<p>The colonel recognized the voice of one of the most notorious female gossipers in Houston. He turned around and glared at her. She then whispered a little louder:</p>
|
||||
<p>“Look at him. He really looks dangerous. And to come to church that way, too!”</p>
|
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<hr/>
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