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A Bird of Bagdad {#a-bird-of-bagdad type="title"}
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----------------
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Without a doubt much of the spirit and genius of the Caliph Harun Al Rashid descended to the Margrave August Michael von Paulsen Quigg.
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Quigg's restaurant is in Fourth Avenue---that street that the city seems to have forgotten in its growth. Fourth Avenue---born and bred in the Bowery---staggers northward full of good resolutions.
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Where it crosses Fourteenth Street it struts for a brief moment proudly in the glare of the museums and cheap theatres. It may yet become a fit mate for its highborn sister boulevard to the west, or its roaring, polyglot, broad-waisted cousin to the east. It passes Union Square; and here the hoofs of the dray horses seem to thunder in unison, recalling the tread of marching hosts---Hooray! But now come the silent and terrible mountains---buildings square as forts, high as the clouds, shutting out the sky, where thousands of slaves bend over desks all day. On the ground floors are only little fruit shops and laundries and book shops, where you see copies of "Littell's Living Age" and G. W. M. Reynold's novels in the windows. And next---poor Fourth Avenue!---the street glides into a medieval solitude. On each side are shops devoted to "Antiques."
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Let us say it is night. Men in rusty armor stand in the windows and menace the hurrying cars with raised, rusty iron gauntlets. Hauberks and helms, blunderbusses, Cromwellian breastplates, matchlocks, creeses, and the swords and daggers of an army of dead-and-gone gallants gleam dully in the ghostly light. Here and there from a corner saloon (lit with Jack-o'-lanterns or phosphorus), stagger forth shuddering, home-bound citizens, nerved by the tankards within to their fearsome journey adown that eldrich avenue lined with the bloodstained weapons of the fighting dead. What street could live enclosed by these mortuary relics, and trod by these spectral citizens in whose sunken hearts scarce one good whoop or tra-la-la remained?
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Not Fourth Avenue. Not after the tinsel but enlivening glories of the Little Rialto---not after the echoing drumbeats of Union Square. There need be no tears, ladies and gentlemen; 'tis but the suicide of a street. With a shriek and a crash Fourth Avenue dives headlong into the tunnel at Thirty-fourth and is never seen again.
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Near the sad scene of the thoroughfare's dissolution stood the modest restaurant of Quigg. It stands there yet if you care to view its crumbling redbrick front, its show window heaped with oranges, tomatoes, layer cakes, pies, canned asparagus---its papier-mâché lobster and two Maltese kittens asleep on a bunch of lettuce---if you care to sit at one of the little tables upon whose cloth has been traced in the yellowest of coffee stains the trail of the Japanese advance---to sit there with one eye on your umbrella and the other upon the bogus bottle from which you drop the counterfeit sauce foisted upon us by the cursed charlatan who assumes to be our dear old lord and friend, the "Nobleman in India."
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Quigg's title came through his mother. One of her ancestors was a Margravine of Saxony. His father was a Tammany brave. On account of the dilution of his heredity he found that he could neither become a reigning potentate nor get a job in the City Hall. So he opened a restaurant. He was a man full of thought and reading. The business gave him a living, though he gave it little attention. One side of his house bequeathed to him a poetic and romantic adventure. The other gave him the restless spirit that made him seek adventure. By day he was Quigg, the restaurateur. By night he was the Margrave---the Caliph---the Prince of Bohemia---going about the city in search of the odd, the mysterious, the inexplicable, the recondite.
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One night at 9, at which hour the restaurant closed, Quigg set forth upon his quest. There was a mingling of the foreign, the military and the artistic in his appearance as he buttoned his coat high up under his short-trimmed brown and gray beard and turned westward toward the more central life conduits of the city. In his pocket he had stored an assortment of cards, written upon, without which he never stirred out of doors. Each of those cards was good at his own restaurant for its face value. Some called simply for a bowl of soup or sandwiches and coffee; others entitled their bearer to one, two, three or more days of full meals; a few were for single regular meals; a very few were, in effect, meal tickets good for a week.
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Of riches and power Margrave Quigg had none; but he had a Caliph's heart---it may be forgiven him if his head fell short of the measure of Harun Al Rashid's. Perhaps some of the gold pieces in Bagdad had put less warmth and hope into the complainants among the bazaars than had Quigg's beef stew among the fishermen and one-eyed calenders of Manhattan.
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Continuing his progress in search of romance to divert him, or of distress that he might aid, Quigg became aware of a fast-gathering crowd that whooped and fought and eddied at a corner of Broadway and the crosstown street that he was traversing. Hurrying to the spot he beheld a young man of an exceedingly melancholy and preoccupied demeanor engaged in the pastime of casting silver money from his pockets in the middle of the street. With each motion of the generous one's hand the crowd huddled upon the falling largesse with yells of joy. Traffic was suspended. A policeman in the centre of the mob stooped often to the ground as he urged the blockaders to move on.
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The Margrave saw at a glance that here was food for his hunger after knowledge concerning abnormal working of the human heart. He made his way swiftly to the young man's side and took his arm. "Come with me at once," he said, in the low but commanding voice that his waiters had learned to fear.
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"Pinched," remarked the young man, looking up at him with expressionless eyes. "Pinched by a painless dentist. Take me away, flatty, and give me gas. Some lay eggs and some lay none. When is a hen?"
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Still deeply seized by some inward grief, but tractable, he allowed Quigg to lead him away and down the street to a little park.
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There, seated on a bench, he upon whom a corner of the great Caliph's mantle has descended, spake with kindness and discretion, seeking to know what evil had come upon the other, disturbing his soul and driving him to such ill-considered and ruinous waste of his substance and stores.
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"I was doing the Monte Cristo act as adapted by Pompton, NJ, wasn't I?" asked the young man.
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"You were throwing small coins into the street for the people to scramble after," said the Margrave.
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"That's it. You buy all the beer you can hold, and then you throw chicken feed to---Oh, curse that word chicken, and hens, feathers, roosters, eggs, and everything connected with it!"
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"Young sir," said the Margrave kindly, but with dignity, "though I do not ask your confidence, I invite it. I know the world and I know humanity. Man is my study, though I do not eye him as the scientist eyes a beetle or as the philanthropist gazes at the objects of his bounty---through a veil of theory and ignorance. It is my pleasure and distraction to interest myself in the peculiar and complicated misfortunes that life in a great city visits upon my fellow-men. You may be familiar with the history of that glorious and immortal ruler, the Caliph Harun Al Rashid, whose wise and beneficent excursions among his people in the city of Bagdad secured him the privilege of relieving so much of their distress. In my humble way I walk in his footsteps. I seek for romance and adventure in city streets---not in ruined castles or in crumbling palaces. To me the greatest marvels of magic are those that take place in men's hearts when acted upon by the furious and diverse forces of a crowded population. In your strange behavior this evening I fancy a story lurks. I read in your act something deeper than the wanton wastefulness of a spendthrift. I observe in your countenance the certain traces of consuming grief or despair. I repeat---I invite your confidence. I am not without some power to alleviate and advise. Will you not trust me?"
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"Gee, how you talk!" exclaimed the young man, a gleam of admiration supplanting for a moment the dull sadness of his eyes. "You've got the Astor Library skinned to a synopsis of preceding chapters. I mind that old Turk you speak of. I read 'The Arabian Nights' when I was a kid. He was a kind of Bill Devery and Charlie Schwab rolled into one. But, say, you might wave enchanted dishrags and make copper bottles smoke up coon giants all night without ever touching me. My case won't yield to that kind of treatment."
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"If I could hear your story," said the Margrave, with his lofty, serious smile.
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"I'll spiel it in about nine words," said the young man, with a deep sigh, "but I don't think you can help me any. Unless you're a peach at guessing it's back to the Bosphorus for you on your magic linoleum."
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The Story of the Young Man and the Harness Maker's Riddle
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"I work in Hildebrant's saddle and harness shop down in Grant Street. I've worked there five years. I get \$18 a week. That's enough to marry on, ain't it? Well, I'm not going to get married. Old Hildebrant is one of these funny Dutchmen---you know the kind---always getting off bum jokes. He's got about a million riddles and things that he faked from Rogers Brothers' great-grandfather. Bill Watson works there, too. Me and Bill have to stand for them chestnuts day after day. Why do we do it? Well, jobs ain't to be picked off every Anheuser bush---And then there's Laura.
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"What? The old man's daughter. Comes in the shop every day. About nineteen, and the picture of the blonde that sits on the palisades of the Rhine and charms the clam-diggers into the surf. Hair the color of straw matting, and eyes as black and shiny as the best harness blacking---think of that!
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"Me? Well, it's either me or Bill Watson. She treats us both equal. Bill is all to the psychopathic about her; and me?---well, you saw me plating the roadbed of the Great Maroon Way with silver tonight. That was on account of Laura. I was spiflicated, Your Highness, and I wot not of what I wouldst.
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"How? Why, old Hildebrandt says to me and Bill this afternoon: 'Boys, one riddle have I for you gehabt haben. A young man who cannot riddles antworten, he is not so good by business for ein family to provide---is not that---hein?' And he hands us a riddle---a conundrum, some calls it---and he chuckles interiorly and gives both of us till tomorrow morning to work out the answer to it. And he says whichever of us guesses the repartee end of it goes to his house o' Wednesday night to his daughter's birthday party. And it means Laura for whichever of us goes, for she's naturally aching for a husband, and it's either me or Bill Watson, for old Hildebrant likes us both, and wants her to marry somebody that'll carry on the business after he's stitched his last pair of traces.
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"The riddle? Why, it was this: 'What kind of a hen lays the longest? Think of that! What kind of a hen lays the longest? Ain't it like a Dutchman to risk a man's happiness on a fool proposition like that? Now, what's the use? What I don't know about hens would fill several incubators. You say you're giving imitations of the old Arab guy that gave away---libraries in Bagdad. Well, now, can you whistle up a fairy that'll solve this hen query, or not?"
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When the young man ceased the Margrave arose and paced to and fro by the park bench for several minutes. Finally he sat again, and said, in grave and impressive tones:
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"I must confess, sir, that during the eight years that I have spent in search of adventure and in relieving distress I have never encountered a more interesting or a more perplexing case. I fear that I have overlooked hens in my researches and observations. As to their habits, their times and manner of laying, their many varieties and cross-breedings, their span of life, their---"
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"Oh, don't make an Ibsen drama of it!" interrupted the young man, flippantly. "Riddles---especially old Hildebrant's riddles---don't have to be worked out seriously. They are light themes such as Sim Ford and Harry Thurston Peck like to handle. But, somehow, I can't strike just the answer. Bill Watson may, and he may not. Tomorrow will tell. Well, Your Majesty, I'm glad anyhow that you butted in and whiled the time away. I guess Mr. Al Rashid himself would have bounced back if one of his constituents had conducted him up against this riddle. I'll say good night. Peace fo' yours, and what-you-may-call-its of Allah."
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The Margrave, still with a gloomy air, held out his hand.
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"I cannot express my regret," he said, sadly. "Never before have I found myself unable to assist in some way. 'What kind of a hen lays the longest?' It is a baffling problem. There is a hen, I believe, called the Plymouth Rock that---"
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"Cut it out," said the young man. "The Caliph trade is a mighty serious one. I don't suppose you'd even see anything funny in a preacher's defense of John D. Rockefeller. Well, good night, Your Nibs."
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From habit the Margrave began to fumble in his pockets. He drew forth a card and handed it to the young man.
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"Do me the favor to accept this, anyhow," he said. "The time may come when it might be of use to you."
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"Thanks!" said the young man, pocketing it carelessly. "My name is Simmons."
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Shame to him who would hint that the reader's interest shall altogether pursue the Margrave August Michael von Paulsen Quigg. I am indeed astray if my hand fail in keeping the way where my peruser's heart would follow. Then let us, on the morrow, peep quickly in at the door of Hildebrant, harness maker.
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Hildebrant's 200 pounds reposed on a bench, silver-buckling a raw leather martingale.
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Bill Watson came in first.
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"Vell," said Hildebrant, shaking all over with the vile conceit of the joke-maker, "haf you guessed him? 'Vat kind of a hen lays der longest?' "
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"Er---why, I think so," said Bill, rubbing a servile chin. "I think so, Mr. Hildebrant---the one that lives the longest---Is that right?"
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"Nein!" said Hildebrant, shaking his head violently. "You haf not guessed der answer."
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Bill passed on and donned a bed-tick apron and bachelorhood.
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In came the young man of the Arabian Night's fiasco---pale, melancholy, hopeless.
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"Vell," said Hildebrant, "haf you guessed him? 'Vat kind of a hen lays der longest?' "
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Simmons regarded him with dull savagery in his eye. Should he curse this mountain of pernicious humor---curse him and die? Why should---But there was Laura.
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Dogged, speechless, he thrust his hands into his coat pockets and stood. His hand encountered the strange touch of the Margrave's card. He drew it out and looked at it, as men about to be hanged look at a crawling fly. There was written on it in Quigg's bold, round hand: "Good for one roast chicken to bearer."
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Simmons looked up with a flashing eye.
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"A dead one!" said he.
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"Goot!" roared Hildebrant, rocking the table with giant glee. "Dot is right! You gome at mine house at 8 o'clock to der party."
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A Blackjack Bargainer {#a-blackjack-bargainer type="title"}
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The most disreputable thing in Yancey Goree's law office was Goree himself, sprawled in his creaky old armchair. The rickety little office, built of red brick, was set flush with the street---the main street of the town of Bethel.
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Bethel rested upon the foothills of the Blue Ridge. Above it the mountains were piled to the sky. Far below it the turbid Catawba gleamed yellow along its disconsolate valley.
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The June day was at its sultriest hour. Bethel dozed in the tepid shade. Trade was not. It was so still that Goree, reclining in his chair, distinctly heard the clicking of the chips in the grand-jury room, where the "courthouse gang" was playing poker. From the open back door of the office a well-worn path meandered across the grassy lot to the courthouse. The treading out of that path had cost Goree all he ever had---first inheritance of a few thousand dollars, next the old family home, and, latterly the last shreds of his self-respect and manhood. The "gang" had cleaned him out. The broken gambler had turned drunkard and parasite; he had lived to see this day come when the men who had stripped him denied him a seat at the game. His word was no longer to be taken. The daily bouts at cards had arranged itself accordingly, and to him was assigned the ignoble part of the onlooker. The sheriff, the county clerk, a sportive deputy, a gay attorney, and a chalk-faced man hailing "from the valley," sat at table, and the sheared one was thus tacitly advised to go and grow more wool.
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Soon wearying of his ostracism, Goree had departed for his office, muttering to himself as he unsteadily traversed the unlucky pathway. After a drink of corn whiskey from a demijohn under the table, he had flung himself into the chair, staring, in a sort of maudlin apathy, out at the mountains immersed in the summer haze. The little white patch he saw away up on the side of Blackjack was Laurel, the village near which he had been born and bred. There, also, was the birthplace of the feud between the Gorees and the Coltranes. Now no direct heir of the Gorees survived except this plucked and singed bird of misfortune. To the Coltranes, also, but one male supporter was left---Colonel Abner Coltrane, a man of substance and standing, a member of the State Legislature, and a contemporary with Goree's father. The feud had been a typical one of the region; it had left a red record of hate, wrong and slaughter.
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But Yancey Goree was not thinking of feuds. His befuddled brain was hopelessly attacking the problem of the future maintenance of himself and his favourite follies. Of late, old friends of the family had seen to it that he had whereof to eat and a place to sleep---but whiskey they would not buy for him, and he must have whiskey. His law business was extinct; no case had been entrusted to him in two years. He had been a borrower and a sponge, and it seemed that if he fell no lower it would be from lack of opportunity. One more chance---he was saying to himself---if he had one more stake at the game, he thought he could win; but he had nothing left to sell, and his credit was more than exhausted.
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He could not help smiling, even in his misery, as he thought of the man to whom, six months before, he had sold the old Goree homestead. There had come from "back yan' " in the mountains two of the strangest creatures, a man named Pike Garvey and his wife. "Back yan'," with a wave of the hand toward the hills, was understood among the mountaineers to designate the remotest fastnesses, the unplumbed gorges, the haunts of lawbreakers, the wolf's den, and the boudoir of the bear. In the cabin far up on Blackjack's shoulder, in the wildest part of these retreats, this odd couple had lived for twenty years. They had neither dog nor children to mitigate the heavy silence of the hills. Pike Garvey was little known in the settlements, but all who had dealt with him pronounced him "crazy as a loon." He acknowledged no occupation save that of a squirrel hunter, but he "moonshined" occasionally by way of diversion. Once the "revenues" had dragged him from his lair, fighting silently and desperately like a terrier, and he had been sent to state's prison for two years. Released, he popped back into his hole like an angry weasel.
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Fortune, passing over many anxious wooers, made a freakish flight into Blackjack's bosky pockets to smile upon Pike and his faithful partner.
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One day a party of spectacled, knickerbockered, and altogether absurd prospectors invaded the vicinity of the Garvey's cabin. Pike lifted his squirrel rifle off the hooks and took a shot at them at long range on the chance of their being revenues. Happily he missed, and the unconscious agents of good luck drew nearer, disclosing their innocence of anything resembling law or justice. Later on, they offered the Garveys an enormous quantity of ready, green, crisp money for their thirty-acre patch of cleared land, mentioning, as an excuse for such a mad action, some irrelevant and inadequate nonsense about a bed of mica underlying the said property.
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When the Garveys became possessed of so many dollars that they faltered in computing them, the deficiencies of life on Blackjack began to grow prominent. Pike began to talk of new shoes, a hogshead of tobacco to set in the corner, a new lock to his rifle; and, leading Martella to a certain spot on the mountainside, he pointed out to her how a small cannon---doubtless a thing not beyond the scope of their fortune in price---might be planted so as to command and defend the sole accessible trail to the cabin, to the confusion of revenues and meddling strangers forever.
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But Adam reckoned without his Eve. These things represented to him the applied power of wealth, but there slumbered in his dingy cabin an ambition that soared far above his primitive wants. Somewhere in Mrs. Garvey's bosom still survived a spot of femininity unstarved by twenty years of Blackjack. For so long a time the sounds in her ears had been the scaly-barks dropping in the woods at noon, and the wolves singing among the rocks at night, and it was enough to have purged her of vanities. She had grown fat and sad and yellow and dull. But when the means came, she felt a rekindled desire to assume the perquisites of her sex---to sit at tea tables; to buy futile things; to whitewash the hideous veracity of life with a little form and ceremony. So she coldly vetoed Pike's proposed system of fortifications, and announced that they would descend upon the world, and gyrate socially.
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And thus, at length, it was decided, and the thing done. The village of Laurel was their compromise between Mrs. Garvey's preference for one of the large valley towns and Pike's hankering for primeval solitudes. Laurel yielded a halting round of feeble social distractions comportable with Martella's ambitions, and was not entirely without recommendation to Pike, its contiguity to the mountains presenting advantages for sudden retreat in case fashionable society should make it advisable.
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Their descent upon Laurel had been coincident with Yancey Goree's feverish desire to convert property into cash, and they bought the old Goree homestead, paying four thousand dollars ready money into the spendthrift's shaking hands.
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Thus it happened that while the disreputable last of the Gorees sprawled in his disreputable office, at the end of his row, spurned by the cronies whom he had gorged, strangers dwelt in the halls of his fathers.
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A cloud of dust was rolling, slowly up the parched street, with something travelling in the midst of it. A little breeze wafted the cloud to one side, and a new, brightly painted carryall, drawn by a slothful gray horse, became visible. The vehicle deflected from the middle of the street as it neared Goree's office, and stopped in the gutter directly in front of his door.
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On the front seat sat a gaunt, tall man, dressed in black broadcloth, his rigid hands incarcerated in yellow kid gloves. On the back seat was a lady who triumphed over the June heat. Her stout form was armoured in a skintight silk dress of the description known as "changeable," being a gorgeous combination of shifting hues. She sat erect, waving a much-ornamented fan, with her eyes fixed stonily far down the street. However Martella Garvey's heart might be rejoicing at the pleasures of her new life, Blackjack had done his work with her exterior. He had carved her countenance to the image of emptiness and inanity; had imbued her with the stolidity of his crags, and the reserve of his hushed interiors. She always seemed to hear, whatever her surroundings were, the scaly-barks falling and pattering down the mountainside. She could always hear the awful silence of Blackjack sounding through the stillest of nights.
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Goree watched this solemn equipage, as it drove to his door, with only faint interest; but when the lank driver wrapped the reins about his whip, awkwardly descended, and stepped into the office, he rose unsteadily to receive him, recognizing Pike Garvey, the new, the transformed, the recently civilized.
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The mountaineer took the chair Goree offered him. They who cast doubts upon Garvey's soundness of mind had a strong witness in the man's countenance. His face was too long, a dull saffron in hue, and immobile as a statue's. Pale-blue, unwinking round eyes without lashes added to the singularity of his gruesome visage. Goree was at a loss to account for the visit.
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"Everything all right at Laurel, Mr. Garvey?" he inquired.
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"Everything all right, sir, and mighty pleased is Missis Garvey and me with the property. Missis Garvey likes yo' old place, and she likes the neighbourhood. Society is what she 'lows she wants, and she is gettin' of it. The Rogerses, the Hapgoods, the Pratts and the Troys hev been to see Missis Garvey, and she hev et meals to most of thar houses. The best folks hev axed her to differ'nt kinds of doin's. I cyan't say, Mr. Goree, that sech things suits me---fur me, give me them thar." Garvey's huge, yellow-gloved hand flourished in the direction of the mountains. "That's whar I b'long, 'mongst the wild honey bees and the b'ars. But that ain't what I come fur to say, Mr. Goree. Thar's somethin' you got what me and Missis Garvey wants to buy."
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"Buy!" echoed Goree. "From me?" Then he laughed harshly. "I reckon you are mistaken about that. I reckon you are mistaken about that. I sold out to you, as you yourself expressed it, 'lock, stock and barrel.' There isn't even a ramrod left to sell."
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"You've got it; and we 'uns want it. 'Take the money,' says Missis Garvey, 'and buy it fa'r and squar'.' "
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Goree shook his head. "The cupboard's bare," he said.
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"We've riz," pursued the mountaineer, undeflected from his object, "a heap. We was pore as possums, and now we could hev folks to dinner every day. We been recognized, Missis Garvey says, by the best society. But there's somethin' we need we ain't got. She says it ought to been put in the 'ventory ov the sale, but it tain't thar. 'Take the money, then,' says she, 'and buy it fa'r and squar'.' "
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"Out with it," said Goree, his racked nerves growing impatient.
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Garvey threw his slouch hat upon the table, and leaned forward, fixing his unblinking eyes upon Goree's.
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"There's a old feud," he said distinctly and slowly, " 'tween you 'uns and the Coltranes."
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Goree frowned ominously. To speak of his feud to a feudist is a serious breach of the mountain etiquette. The man from "back yan' " knew it as well as the lawyer did.
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"Na offense," he went on "but purely in the way of business. Missis Garvey hev studied all about feuds. Most of the quality folks in the mountains hev 'em. The Settles and the Goforths, the Rankins and the Boyds, the Silers and the Galloways, hev all been cyarin' on feuds f'om twenty to a hundred year. The last man to drap was when yo' uncle, Jedge Paisley Goree, 'journed co't and shot Len Coltrane f'om the bench. Missis Garvey and me, we come f'om the po' white trash. Nobody wouldn't pick a feud with we 'uns, no mo'n with a fam'ly of tree-toads. Quality people everywhar, says Missis Garvey, has feuds. We 'uns ain't quality, but we're buyin' into it as fur as we can. 'Take the money, then,' says Missis Garvey, 'and buy Mr. Goree's feud, fa'r and squar'.' "
|
||||
|
||||
The squirrel hunter straightened a leg half across the room, drew a roll of bills from his pocket, and threw them on the table.
|
||||
|
||||
"Thar's two hundred dollars, Mr. Goree; what you would call a fa'r price for a feud that's been 'lowed to run down like yourn hev. Thar's only you left to cyar' on yo' side of it, and you'd make mighty po' killin'. I'll take it off yo' hands, and it'll set me and Missis Garvey up among the quality. Thar's the money."
|
||||
|
||||
The little roll of currency on the table slowly untwisted itself, writhing and jumping as its folds relaxed. In the silence that followed Garvey's last speech the rattling of the poker chips in the courthouse could be plainly heard. Goree knew that the sheriff had just won a pot, for the subdued whoop with which he always greeted a victory floated across the square upon the crinkly heat waves. Beads of moisture stood on Goree's brow. Stooping, he drew the wicker-covered demijohn from under the table, and filled a tumbler from it.
|
||||
|
||||
"A little corn liquor, Mr. Garvey? Of course you are joking about---what you spoke of? Opens quite a new market, doesn't it? Feuds. Prime, two-fifty to three. Feuds, slightly damaged---two hundred, I believe you said, Mr. Garvey?"
|
||||
|
||||
Goree laughed self-consciously.
|
||||
|
||||
The mountaineer took the glass Goree handed him, and drank the whisky without a tremor of the lids of his staring eyes. The lawyer applauded the feat by a look of envious admiration. He poured his own drink, and took it like a drunkard, by gulps, and with shudders at the smell and taste.
|
||||
|
||||
"Two hundred," repeated Garvey. "Thar's the money."
|
||||
|
||||
A sudden passion flared up in Goree's brain. He struck the table with his fist. One of the bills flipped over and touched his hand. He flinched as if something had stung him.
|
||||
|
||||
"Do you come to me," he shouted, "seriously with such a ridiculous, insulting, darned-fool proposition?"
|
||||
|
||||
"It's fa'r and squar'," said the squirrel hunter, but he reached out his hand as if to take back the money; and then Goree knew that his own flurry of rage had not been from pride or resentment, but from anger at himself, knowing that he would set foot in the deeper depths that were being opened to him. He turned in an instant from an outraged gentleman to an anxious chafferer recommending his goods.
|
||||
|
||||
"Don't be in a hurry, Garvey," he said, his face crimson and his speech thick. "I accept your p-p-proposition, though it's dirt cheap at two hundred. A t-trade's all right when both p-purchaser and b-buyer are s-satisfied. Shall I w-wrap it up for you, Mr. Garvey?"
|
||||
|
||||
Garvey rose, and shook out his broadcloth. "Missis Garvey will be pleased. You air out of it, and it stands Coltrane and Garvey. Just a scrap ov writin', Mr. Goree, you bein' a lawyer, to show we traded."
|
||||
|
||||
Goree seized a sheet of paper and a pen. The money was clutched in his moist hand. Everything else suddenly seemed to grow trivial and light.
|
||||
|
||||
"Bill of sale, by all means. 'Right, title, and interest in and to' ... 'forever warrant and---' No, Garvey, we'll have to leave out that 'defend,' " said Goree with a loud laugh. "You'll have to defend this title yourself."
|
||||
|
||||
The mountaineer received the amazing screed that the lawyer handed him, folded it with immense labour, and laced it carefully in his pocket.
|
||||
|
||||
Goree was standing near the window. "Step here," he said, raising his finger, "and I'll show you your recently purchased enemy. There he goes, down the other side of the street."
|
||||
|
||||
The mountaineer crooked his long frame to look through the window in the direction indicated by the other. Colonel Abner Coltrane, an erect, portly gentleman of about fifty, wearing the inevitable long, double-breasted frock coat of the Southern lawmaker, and an old high silk hat, was passing on the opposite sidewalk. As Garvey looked, Goree glanced at his face. If there be such a thing as a yellow wolf, here was its counterpart. Garvey snarled as his unhuman eyes followed the moving figure, disclosing long, amber-coloured fangs.
|
||||
|
||||
"Is that him? Why, that's the man who sent me to the pen'tentiary once!"
|
||||
|
||||
"He used to be district attorney," said Goree carelessly. "And, by the way, he's a first-class shot."
|
||||
|
||||
"I kin hit a squirrel's eye at a hundred yard," said Garvey. "So that thar's Coltrane! I made a better trade than I was thinkin'. I'll take keer ov this feud, Mr. Goree, better'n you ever did!"
|
||||
|
||||
He moved toward the door, but lingered there, betraying a slight perplexity.
|
||||
|
||||
"Anything else today?" inquired Goree with frothy sarcasm. "Any family traditions, ancestral ghosts, or skeletons in the closet? Prices as low as the lowest."
|
||||
|
||||
"Thar was another thing," replied the unmoved squirrel hunter, "that Missis Garvey was thinkin' of. 'Tain't so much in my line as t'other, but she wanted partic'lar that I should inquire, and ef you was willin', 'pay fur it,' she says, 'fa'r and squar'.' Thar's a buryin' groun', as you know, Mr. Goree, in the yard of yo' old place, under the cedars. Them that lies thar is yo' folks what was killed by the Coltranes. The monyments has the names on 'em. Missis Garvey says a fam'ly buryin' groun' is a sho' sign of quality. She says ef we git the feud, thar's somethin' else ought to go with it. The names on them monyments is 'Goree,' but they can be changed to ourn by---"
|
||||
|
||||
"Go! Go!" screamed Goree, his face turning purple. He stretched out both hands toward the mountaineer, his fingers hooked and shaking. "Go, you ghoul! Even a Ch-Chinaman protects the g-graves of his ancestors---go!"
|
||||
|
||||
The squirrel hunter slouched out of the door to his carryall. While he was climbing over the wheel Goree was collecting, with feverish celerity, the money that had fallen from his hand to the floor. As the vehicle slowly turned about, the sheep, with a coat of newly grown wool, was hurrying, in indecent haste, along the path to the courthouse.
|
||||
|
||||
At three o'clock in the morning they brought him back to his office, shorn and unconscious. The sheriff, the sportive deputy, the county clerk, and the gay attorney carried him, the chalk-faced man "from the valley" acting as escort.
|
||||
|
||||
"On the table," said one of them, and they deposited him there among the litter of his unprofitable books and papers.
|
||||
|
||||
"Yance thinks a lot of a pair of deuces when he's liquored up," sighed the sheriff reflectively.
|
||||
|
||||
"Too much," said the gay attorney. "A man has no business to play poker who drinks as much as he does. I wonder how much he dropped tonight."
|
||||
|
||||
"Close to two hundred. What I wonder is whar he got it. Yance ain't had a cent fur over a month, I know."
|
||||
|
||||
"Struck a client, maybe. Well, let's get home before daylight. He'll be all right when he wakes up, except for a sort of beehive about the cranium."
|
||||
|
||||
The gang slipped away through the early morning twilight. The next eye to gaze upon the miserable Goree was the orb of day. He peered through the uncurtained window, first deluging the sleeper in a flood of faint gold, but soon pouring upon the mottled red of his flesh a searching, white, summer heat. Goree stirred, half unconsciously, among the table's debris, and turned his face from the window. His movement dislodged a heavy law book, which crashed upon the floor. Opening his eyes, he saw, bending over him, a man in a black frock coat. Looking higher, he discovered a well-worn silk hat, and beneath it the kindly, smooth face of Colonel Abner Coltrane.
|
||||
|
||||
A little uncertain of the outcome, the colonel waited for the other to make some sign of recognition. Not in twenty years had male members of these two families faced each other in peace. Goree's eyelids puckered as he strained his blurred sight toward this visitor, and then he smiled serenely.
|
||||
|
||||
"Have you brought Stella and Lucy over to play?" he said calmly.
|
||||
|
||||
"Do you know me, Yancey?" asked Coltrane.
|
||||
|
||||
"Of course I do. You brought me a whip with a whistle in the end."
|
||||
|
||||
So he had---twenty-four years ago; when Yancey's father was his best friend.
|
||||
|
||||
Goree's eyes wandered about the room. The colonel understood. "Lie still, and I'll bring you some," said he. There was a pump in the yard at the rear, and Goree closed his eyes, listening with rapture to the click of its handle, and the bubbling of the falling stream. Coltrane brought a pitcher of the cool water, and held it for him to drink. Presently Goree sat up---a most forlorn object, his summer suit of flax soiled and crumpled, his discreditable head tousled and unsteady. He tried to wave one of his hands toward the colonel.
|
||||
|
||||
"Ex-excuse---everything, will you?" he said. "I must have drunk too much whiskey last night, and gone to bed on the table." His brows knitted into a puzzled frown.
|
||||
|
||||
"Out with the boys awhile?" asked Coltrane kindly.
|
||||
|
||||
"No, I went nowhere. I haven't had a dollar to spend in the last two months. Struck the demijohn too often, I reckon, as usual."
|
||||
|
||||
Colonel Coltrane touched him on the shoulder.
|
||||
|
||||
"A little while ago, Yancey," he began, "you asked me if I had brought Stella and Lucy over to play. You weren't quite awake then, and must have been dreaming you were a boy again. You are awake now, and I want you to listen to me. I have come from Stella and Lucy to their old playmate, and to my old friend's son. They know that I am going to bring you home with me, and you will find them as ready with a welcome as they were in the old days. I want you to come to my house and stay until you are yourself again, and as much longer as you will. We heard of your being down in the world, and in the midst of temptation, and we agreed that you should come over and play at our house once more. Will you come, my boy? Will you drop our old family trouble and come with me?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Trouble!" said Goree, opening his eyes wide. "There was never any trouble between us that I know of. I'm sure we've always been the best friends. But, good Lord, Colonel, how could I go to your home as I am---a drunken wretch, a miserable, degraded spendthrift and gambler---"
|
||||
|
||||
He lurched from the table into his armchair, and began to weep maudlin tears, mingled with genuine drops of remorse and shame. Coltrane talked to him persistently and reasonably, reminding him of the simple mountain pleasures of which he had once been so fond, and insisting upon the genuineness of the invitation.
|
||||
|
||||
Finally he landed Goree by telling him he was counting upon his help in the engineering and transportation of a large amount of felled timber from a high mountainside to a waterway. He knew that Goree had once invented a device for this purpose---a series of slides and chutes upon which he had justly prided himself. In an instant the poor fellow, delighted at the idea of his being of use to anyone, had paper spread upon the table, and was drawing rapid but pitifully shaky lines in demonstration of what he could and would do.
|
||||
|
||||
The man was sickened of the husks; his prodigal heart was turning again toward the mountains. His mind was yet strangely clogged, and his thoughts and memories were returning to his brain one by one, like carrier pigeons over a stormy sea. But Coltrane was satisfied with the progress he had made.
|
||||
|
||||
Bethel received the surprise of its existence that afternoon when a Coltrane and a Goree rode amicably together through the town. Side by side they rode, out from the dusty streets and gaping townspeople, down across the creek bridge, and up toward the mountain. The prodigal had brushed and washed and combed himself to a more decent figure, but he was unsteady in the saddle, and he seemed to be deep in the contemplation of some vexing problem. Coltrane left him in his mood, relying upon the influence of changed surroundings to restore his equilibrium.
|
||||
|
||||
Once Goree was seized with a shaking fit, and almost came to a collapse. He had to dismount and rest at the side of the road. The colonel, foreseeing such a condition, had provided a small flask of whisky for the journey but when it was offered to him Goree refused it almost with violence, declaring he would never touch it again. By and by he was recovered, and went quietly enough for a mile or two. Then he pulled up his horse suddenly, and said:
|
||||
|
||||
"I lost two hundred dollars last night, playing poker. Now, where did I get that money?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Take it easy, Yancey. The mountain air will soon clear it up. We'll go fishing, first thing, at the Pinnacle Falls. The trout are jumping there like bullfrogs. We'll take Stella and Lucy along, and have a picnic on Eagle Rock. Have you forgotten how a hickory-cured-ham sandwich tastes, Yancey, to a hungry fisherman?"
|
||||
|
||||
Evidently the colonel did not believe the story of his lost wealth; so Goree retired again into brooding silence.
|
||||
|
||||
By late Afternoon they had travelled ten of the twelve miles between Bethel and Laurel. Half a mile this side of Laurel lay the old Goree place; a mile or two beyond the village lived the Coltranes. The road was now steep and laborious, but the compensations were many. The tilted aisles of the forest were opulent with leaf and bird and bloom. The tonic air put to shame the pharmacopaeia. The glades were dark with mossy shade, and bright with shy rivulets winking from the ferns and laurels. On the lower side they viewed, framed in the near foliage, exquisite sketches of the far valley swooning in its opal haze.
|
||||
|
||||
Coltrane was pleased to see that his companion was yielding to the spell of the hills and woods. For now they had but to skirt the base of Painter's Cliff; to cross Elder Branch and mount the hill beyond, and Goree would have to face the squandered home of his fathers. Every rock he passed, every tree, every foot of the rocky way, was familiar to him. Though he had forgotten the woods, they thrilled him like the music of "Home, Sweet Home."
|
||||
|
||||
They rounded the cliff, descended into Elder Branch, and paused there to let the horses drink and splash in the swift water. On the right was a rail fence that cornered there, and followed the road and stream. Enclosed by it was the old apple orchard of the home place; the house was yet concealed by the brow of the steep hill. Inside and along the fence, pokeberries, elders, sassafras, and sumac grew high and dense. At a rustle of their branches, both Goree and Coltrane glanced up, and saw a long, yellow, wolfish face above the fence, staring at them with pale, unwinking eyes. The head quickly disappeared; there was a violent swaying of the bushes, and an ungainly figure ran up through the apple orchard in the direction of the house, zigzagging among the trees.
|
||||
|
||||
"That's Garvey," said Coltrane; "the man you sold out to. There's no doubt but he's considerably cracked. I had to send him up for moonshining once, several years ago, in spite of the fact that I believed him irresponsible. Why, what's the matter, Yancey?"
|
||||
|
||||
Goree was wiping his forehead, and his face had lost its colour. "Do I look queer, too?" he asked, trying to smile. "I'm just remembering a few more things." Some of the alcohol had evaporated from his brain. "I recollect now where I got that two hundred dollars."
|
||||
|
||||
"Don't think of it," said Coltrane cheerfully. "Later on we'll figure it all out together."
|
||||
|
||||
They rode out of the branch, and when they reached the foot of the hill Goree stopped again.
|
||||
|
||||
"Did you ever suspect I was a very vain kind of fellow, Colonel?" he asked. "Sort of foolish proud about appearances?"
|
||||
|
||||
The colonel's eyes refused to wander to the soiled, sagging suit of flax and the faded slouch hat.
|
||||
|
||||
"It seems to me," he replied, mystified, but humouring him, "I remember a young buck about twenty, with the tightest coat, the sleekest hair, and the prancingest saddle horse in the Blue Ridge."
|
||||
|
||||
"Right you are," said Goree eagerly. "And it's in me yet, though it don't show. Oh, I'm as vain as a turkey gobbler, and as proud as Lucifer. I'm going to ask you to indulge this weakness of mine in a little matter."
|
||||
|
||||
"Speak out, Yancey. We'll create you Duke of Laurel and Baron of Blue Ridge, if you choose; and you shall have a feather out of Stella's peacock's tail to wear in your hat."
|
||||
|
||||
"I'm in earnest. In a few minutes we'll pass the house up there on the hill where I was born, and where my people have lived for nearly a century. Strangers live there now---and look at me! I am about to show myself to them ragged and poverty-stricken, a wastrel and a beggar. Colonel Coltrane, I'm ashamed to do it. I want you to let me wear your coat and hat until we are out of sight beyond. I know you think it a foolish pride, but I want to make as good a showing as I can when I pass the old place."
|
||||
|
||||
"Now, what does this mean?" said Coltrane to himself, as he compared his companion's sane looks and quiet demeanour with his strange request. But he was already unbuttoning the coat, assenting readily, as if the fancy were in no wise to be considered strange.
|
||||
|
||||
The coat and hat fitted Goree well. He buttoned the former about him with a look of satisfaction and dignity. He and Coltrane were nearly the same size---rather tall, portly, and erect. Twenty-five years were between them, but in appearance they might have been brothers. Goree looked older than his age; his face was puffy and lined; the colonel had the smooth, fresh complexion of a temperate liver. He put on Goree's disreputable old flax coat and faded slouch hat.
|
||||
|
||||
"Now," said Goree, taking up the reins, "I'm all right. I want you to ride about ten feet in the rear as we go by, Colonel, so that they can get a good look at me. They'll see I'm no back number yet, by any means. I guess I'll show up pretty well to them once more, anyhow. Let's ride on."
|
||||
|
||||
He set out up the hill at a smart trot, the colonel following, as he had been requested.
|
||||
|
||||
Goree sat straight in the saddle, with head erect, but his eyes were turned to the right, sharply scanning every shrub and fence and hiding-place in the old homestead yard. Once he muttered to himself, "Will the crazy fool try it, or did I dream half of it?"
|
||||
|
||||
It was when he came opposite the little family burying ground that he saw what he had been looking for---a puff of white smoke, coming from the thick cedars in one corner. He toppled so slowly to the left that Coltrane had time to urge his horse to that side, and catch him with one arm.
|
||||
|
||||
The squirrel hunter had not overpraised his aim. He had sent the bullet where he intended, and where Goree had expected that it would pass---through the breast of Colonel Abner Coltrane's black frock coat.
|
||||
|
||||
Goree leaned heavily against Coltrane, but he did not fall. The horses kept pace, side by side, and the Colonel's arm kept him steady. The little white houses of Laurel shone through the trees, half a mile away. Goree reached out one hand and groped until it rested upon Coltrane's fingers, which held his bridle.
|
||||
|
||||
"Good friend," he said, and that was all.
|
||||
|
||||
Thus did Yancey Goree, as he rode past his old home, make, considering all things, the best showing that was in his power.
|
||||
94
src/epub/text/a-call-loan.md
Normal file
94
src/epub/text/a-call-loan.md
Normal file
@ -0,0 +1,94 @@
|
||||
A Call Loan {#a-call-loan type="title"}
|
||||
-----------
|
||||
|
||||
In those days the cattlemen were the anointed. They were the grandees of the grass, kings of the kine, lords of the lea, barons of beef and bone. They might have ridden in golden chariots had their tastes so inclined. The cattleman was caught in a stampede of dollars. It seemed to him that he had more money than was decent. But when he had bought a watch with precious stones set in the case so large that they hurt his ribs, and a California saddle with silver nails and Angora skin *suaderos*, and ordered everybody up to the bar for whisky---what else was there for him to spend money for?
|
||||
|
||||
Not so circumscribed in expedient for the reduction of surplus wealth were those lairds of the lariat who had womenfolk to their name. In the breast of the rib-sprung sex the genius of purse lightening may slumber through years of inopportunity, but never, my brothers, does it become extinct.
|
||||
|
||||
So, out of the chaparral came Long Bill Longley from the Bar Circle Branch on the Frio---a wife-driven man---to taste the urban joys of success. Something like half a million dollars he had, with an income steadily increasing.
|
||||
|
||||
Long Bill was a graduate of the camp and trail. Luck and thrift, a cool head, and a telescopic eye for mavericks had raised him from cowboy to be a cowman. Then came the boom in cattle, and Fortune, stepping gingerly among the cactus thorns, came and emptied her cornucopia at the doorstep of the ranch.
|
||||
|
||||
In the little frontier city of Chaparosa, Longley built a costly residence. Here he became a captive, bound to the chariot of social existence. He was doomed to become a leading citizen. He struggled for a time like a mustang in his first corral, and then he hung up his quirt and spurs. Time hung heavily on his hands. He organised the First National Bank of Chaparosa, and was elected its president.
|
||||
|
||||
One day a dyspeptic man, wearing double-magnifying glasses, inserted an official-looking card between the bars of the cashier's window of the First National Bank. Five minutes later the bank force was dancing at the beck and call of a national bank examiner.
|
||||
|
||||
This examiner, Mr. J. Edgar Todd, proved to be a thorough one.
|
||||
|
||||
At the end of it all the examiner put on his hat, and called the president, Mr. William R. Longley, into the private office.
|
||||
|
||||
"Well, how do you find things?" asked Longley, in his slow, deep tones. "Any brands in the roundup you didn't like the looks of?"
|
||||
|
||||
"The bank checks up all right, Mr. Longley," said Todd; "and I find your loans in very good shape---with one exception. You are carrying one very bad bit of paper---one that is so bad that I have been thinking that you surely do not realise the serious position it places you in. I refer to a call loan of \$10,000 made to Thomas Merwin. Not only is the amount in excess of the maximum sum the bank can loan any individual legally, but it is absolutely without endorsement or security. Thus you have doubly violated the national banking laws, and have laid yourself open to criminal prosecution by the Government. A report of the matter to the Comptroller of the Currency---which I am bound to make---would, I am sure, result in the matter being turned over to the Department of Justice for action. You see what a serious thing it is."
|
||||
|
||||
Bill Longley was leaning his lengthy, slowly moving frame back in his swivel chair. His hands were clasped behind his head, and he turned a little to look the examiner in the face. The examiner was surprised to see a smile creep about the rugged mouth of the banker, and a kindly twinkle in his light-blue eyes. If he saw the seriousness of the affair, it did not show in his countenance.
|
||||
|
||||
"Of course, you don't know Tom Merwin," said Longley, almost genially. "Yes, I know about that loan. It hasn't any security except Tom Merwin's word. Somehow, I've always found that when a man's word is good it's the best security there is. Oh, yes, I know the Government doesn't think so. I guess I'll see Tom about that note."
|
||||
|
||||
Mr. Todd's dyspepsia seemed to grow suddenly worse. He looked at the chaparral banker through his double-magnifying glasses in amazement.
|
||||
|
||||
"You see," said Longley, easily explaining the thing away, "Tom heard of 2000 head of two-year-olds down near Rocky Ford on the Rio Grande that could be had for \$8 a head. I reckon 'twas one of old Leandro Garcia's outfits that he had smuggled over, and he wanted to make a quick turn on 'em. Those cattle are worth \$15 on the hoof in Kansas City. Tom knew it and I knew it. He had \$6,000, and I let him have the \$10,000 to make the deal with. His brother Ed took 'em on to market three weeks ago. He ought to be back 'most any day now with the money. When he comes Tom'll pay that note."
|
||||
|
||||
The bank examiner was shocked. It was, perhaps, his duty to step out to the telegraph office and wire the situation to the Comptroller. But he did not. He talked pointedly and effectively to Longley for three minutes. He succeeded in making the banker understand that he stood upon the border of a catastrophe. And then he offered a tiny loophole of escape.
|
||||
|
||||
"I am going to Hilldale's tonight," he told Longley, "to examine a bank there. I will pass through Chaparosa on my way back. At twelve o'clock tomorrow I shall call at this bank. If this loan has been cleared out of the way by that time it will not be mentioned in my report. If not---I will have to do my duty."
|
||||
|
||||
With that the examiner bowed and departed.
|
||||
|
||||
The President of the First National lounged in his chair half an hour longer, and then he lit a mild cigar, and went over to Tom Merwin's house. Merwin, a ranchman in brown duck, with a contemplative eye, sat with his feet upon a table, plaiting a rawhide quirt.
|
||||
|
||||
"Tom," said Longley, leaning against the table, "you heard anything from Ed yet?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Not yet," said Merwin, continuing his plaiting. "I guess Ed'll be along back now in a few days."
|
||||
|
||||
"There was a bank examiner," said Longley, "nosing around our place today, and he bucked a sight about that note of yours. You know I know it's all right, but the thing *is* against the banking laws. I was pretty sure you'd have paid it off before the bank was examined again, but the son-of-a-gun slipped in on us, Tom. Now, I'm short of cash myself just now, or I'd let you have the money to take it up with. I've got till twelve o'clock tomorrow, and then I've got to show the cash in place of that note or---"
|
||||
|
||||
"Or what, Bill?" asked Merwin, as Longley hesitated.
|
||||
|
||||
"Well, I suppose it means be jumped on with both of Uncle Sam's feet."
|
||||
|
||||
"I'll try to raise the money for you on time," said Merwin, interested in his plaiting.
|
||||
|
||||
"All right, Tom," concluded Longley, as he turned toward the door; "I knew you would if you could."
|
||||
|
||||
Merwin threw down his whip and went to the only other bank in town, a private one, run by Cooper & Craig.
|
||||
|
||||
"Cooper," he said, to the partner by that name, "I've got to have \$10,000 today or tomorrow. I've got a house and lot there that's worth about \$6,000 and that's all the actual collateral. But I've got a cattle deal on that's sure to bring me in more than that much profit within a few days."
|
||||
|
||||
Cooper began to cough.
|
||||
|
||||
"Now, for God's sake don't say no," said Merwin. "I owe that much money on a call loan. It's been called, and the man that called it is a man I've laid on the same blanket with in cow-camps and ranger-camps for ten years. He can call anything I've got. He can call the blood out of my veins and it'll come. He's got to have the money. He's in a devil of a---Well, he needs the money, and I've got to get it for him. You know my word's good, Cooper."
|
||||
|
||||
"No doubt of it," assented Cooper, urbanely, "but I've a partner, you know. I'm not free in making loans. And even if you had the best security in your hands, Merwin, we couldn't accommodate you in less than a week. We're just making a shipment of \$15,000 to Myer Brothers in Rockdell, to buy cotton with. It goes down on the narrow-gauge tonight. That leaves our cash quite short at present. Sorry we can't arrange it for you."
|
||||
|
||||
Merwin went back to his little bare office and plaited at his quirt again. About four o'clock in the afternoon he went to the First National Bank and leaned over the railing of Longley's desk.
|
||||
|
||||
"I'll try to get that money for you tonight---I mean tomorrow, Bill."
|
||||
|
||||
"All right, Tom," said Longley quietly.
|
||||
|
||||
At nine o'clock that night Tom Merwin stepped cautiously out of the small frame house in which he lived. It was near the edge of the little town, and few citizens were in the neighbourhood at that hour. Merwin wore two six-shooters in a belt, and a slouch hat. He moved swiftly down a lonely street, and then followed the sandy road that ran parallel to the narrow-gauge track until he reached the water-rank, two miles below the town. There Tom Merwin stopped, tied a black silk handkerchief about the lower part of his face, and pulled his hat down low.
|
||||
|
||||
In ten minutes the night train for Rockdell pulled up at the tank, having come from Chaparosa.
|
||||
|
||||
With a gun in each hand Merwin raised himself from behind a clump of chaparral and started for the engine. But before he had taken three steps, two long, strong arms clasped him from behind, and he was lifted from his feet and thrown, face downward upon the grass. There was a heavy knee pressing against his back, and an iron hand grasping each of his wrists. He was held thus, like a child, until the engine had taken water, and until the train had moved, with accelerating speed, out of sight. Then he was released, and rose to his feet to face Bill Longley.
|
||||
|
||||
"The case never needed to be fixed up this way, Tom," said Longley. "I saw Cooper this evening, and he told me what you and him talked about. Then I went down to your house tonight and saw you come out with your guns on, and I followed you. Let's go back, Tom."
|
||||
|
||||
They walked away together, side by side.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Twas the only chance I saw," said Merwin presently. "You called your loan, and I tried to answer you. Now, what'll you do, Bill, if they sock it to you?"
|
||||
|
||||
"What would you have done if they'd socked it to you?" was the answer Longley made.
|
||||
|
||||
"I never thought I'd lay in a bush to stick up a train," remarked Merwin; "but a call loan's different. A call's a call with me. We've got twelve hours yet, Bill, before this spy jumps onto you. We've got to raise them spondulicks somehow. Maybe we can---Great Sam Houston! do you hear that?"
|
||||
|
||||
Merwin broke into a run, and Longley kept with him, hearing only a rather pleasing whistle somewhere in the night rendering the lugubrious air of "The Cowboy's Lament."
|
||||
|
||||
"It's the only tune he knows," shouted Merwin, as he ran. "I'll bet---"
|
||||
|
||||
They were at the door of Merwin's house. He kicked it open and fell over an old valise lying in the middle of the floor. A sunburned, firm-jawed youth, stained by travel, lay upon the bed puffing at a brown cigarette.
|
||||
|
||||
"What's the word, Ed?" gasped Merwin.
|
||||
|
||||
"So, so," drawled that capable youngster. "Just got in on the 9:30. Sold the bunch for fifteen, straight. Now, buddy, you want to quit kickin' a valise around that's got \$29,000 in greenbacks in its in'ards."
|
||||
102
src/epub/text/a-chaparral-christmas-gift.md
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102
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|
||||
A Chaparral Christmas Gift {#a-chaparral-christmas-gift type="title"}
|
||||
--------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
The original cause of the trouble was about twenty years in growing.
|
||||
|
||||
At the end of that time it was worth it.
|
||||
|
||||
Had you lived anywhere within fifty miles of Sundown Ranch you would have heard of it. It possessed a quantity of jet-black hair, a pair of extremely frank, deep-brown eyes and a laugh that rippled across the prairie like the sound of a hidden brook. The name of it was Rosita McMullen; and she was the daughter of old man McMullen of the Sundown Sheep Ranch.
|
||||
|
||||
There came riding on red roan steeds---or, to be more explicit, on a paint and a flea-bitten sorrel---two wooers. One was Madison Lane, and the other was the Frio Kid. But at that time they did not call him the Frio Kid, for he had not earned the honours of special nomenclature. His name was simply Johnny McRoy.
|
||||
|
||||
It must not be supposed that these two were the sum of the agreeable Rosita's admirers. The bronchos of a dozen others champed their bits at the long hitching rack of the Sundown Ranch. Many were the sheeps'-eyes that were cast in those savannas that did not belong to the flocks of Dan McMullen. But of all the cavaliers, Madison Lane and Johnny McRoy galloped far ahead, wherefore they are to be chronicled.
|
||||
|
||||
Madison Lane, a young cattleman from the Nueces country, won the race. He and Rosita were married one Christmas day. Armed, hilarious, vociferous, magnanimous, the cowmen and the sheepmen, laying aside their hereditary hatred, joined forces to celebrate the occasion.
|
||||
|
||||
Sundown Ranch was sonorous with the cracking of jokes and sixshooters, the shine of buckles and bright eyes, the outspoken congratulations of the herders of kine.
|
||||
|
||||
But while the wedding feast was at its liveliest there descended upon it Johnny McRoy, bitten by jealousy, like one possessed.
|
||||
|
||||
"I'll give you a Christmas present," he yelled, shrilly, at the door, with his .45 in his hand. Even then he had some reputation as an offhand shot.
|
||||
|
||||
His first bullet cut a neat underbit in Madison Lane's right ear. The barrel of his gun moved an inch. The next shot would have been the bride's had not Carson, a sheepman, possessed a mind with triggers somewhat well oiled and in repair. The guns of the wedding party had been hung, in their belts, upon nails in the wall when they sat at table, as a concession to good taste. But Carson, with great promptness, hurled his plate of roast venison and frijoles at McRoy, spoiling his aim. The second bullet, then, only shattered the white petals of a Spanish dagger flower suspended two feet above Rosita's head.
|
||||
|
||||
The guests spurned their chairs and jumped for their weapons. It was considered an improper act to shoot the bride and groom at a wedding. In about six seconds there were twenty or so bullets due to be whizzing in the direction of Mr. McRoy.
|
||||
|
||||
"I'll shoot better next time," yelled Johnny; "and there'll be a next time." He backed rapidly out the door.
|
||||
|
||||
Carson, the sheepman, spurred on to attempt further exploits by the success of his plate-throwing, was first to reach the door. McRoy's bullet from the darkness laid him low.
|
||||
|
||||
The cattlemen then swept out upon him, calling for vengeance, for, while the slaughter of a sheepman has not always lacked condonement, it was a decided misdemeanour in this instance. Carson was innocent; he was no accomplice at the matrimonial proceedings; nor had anyone heard him quote the line "Christmas comes but once a year" to the guests.
|
||||
|
||||
But the sortie failed in its vengeance. McRoy was on his horse and away, shouting back curses and threats as he galloped into the concealing chaparral.
|
||||
|
||||
That night was the birthnight of the Frio Kid. He became the "bad man" of that portion of the State. The rejection of his suit by Miss McMullen turned him to a dangerous man. When officers went after him for the shooting of Carson, he killed two of them, and entered upon the life of an outlaw. He became a marvellous shot with either hand. He would turn up in towns and settlements, raise a quarrel at the slightest opportunity, pick off his man and laugh at the officers of the law. He was so cool, so deadly, so rapid, so inhumanly bloodthirsty that none but faint attempts were ever made to capture him. When he was at last shot and killed by a little one-armed Mexican who was nearly dead himself from fright, the Frio Kid had the deaths of eighteen men on his head. About half of these were killed in fair duels depending upon the quickness of the draw. The other half were men whom he assassinated from absolute wantonness and cruelty.
|
||||
|
||||
Many tales are told along the border of his impudent courage and daring. But he was not one of the breed of desperadoes who have seasons of generosity and even of softness. They say he never had mercy on the object of his anger. Yet at this and every Christmastide it is well to give each one credit, if it can be done, for whatever speck of good he may have possessed. If the Frio Kid ever did a kindly act or felt a throb of generosity in his heart it was once at such a time and season, and this is the way it happened.
|
||||
|
||||
------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
One who has been crossed in love should never breathe the odour from the blossoms of the ratama tree. It stirs the memory to a dangerous degree.
|
||||
|
||||
One December in the Frio country there was a ratama tree in full bloom, for the winter had been as warm as springtime. That way rode the Frio Kid and his satellite and co-murderer, Mexican Frank. The kid reined in his mustang, and sat in his saddle, thoughtful and grim, with dangerously narrowing eyes. The rich, sweet scent touched him somewhere beneath his ice and iron.
|
||||
|
||||
"I don't know what I've been thinking about, Mex," he remarked in his usual mild drawl, "to have forgot all about a Christmas present I got to give. I'm going to ride over tomorrow night and shoot Madison Lane in his own house. He got my girl---Rosita would have had me if he hadn't cut into the game. I wonder why I happened to overlook it up to now?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Ah, shucks, Kid," said Mexican, "don't talk foolishness. You know you can't get within a mile of Mad Lane's house tomorrow night. I see old man Allen day before yesterday, and he says Mad is going to have Christmas doings at his house. You remember how you shot up the festivities when Mad was married, and about the threats you made? Don't you suppose Mad Lane'll kind of keep his eye open for a certain Mr. Kid? You plumb make me tired, Kid, with such remarks."
|
||||
|
||||
"I'm going," repeated the Frio Kid, without heat, "to go to Madison Lane's Christmas doings, and kill him. I ought to have done it a long time ago. Why, Mex, just two weeks ago I dreamed me and Rosita was married instead of her and him; and we was living in a house, and I could see her smiling at me, and---oh! h⸺l, Mex, he got her; and I'll get him---yes, sir, on Christmas Eve he got her, and then's when I'll get him."
|
||||
|
||||
"There's other ways of committing suicide," advised Mexican. "Why don't you go and surrender to the sheriff?"
|
||||
|
||||
"I'll get him," said the Kid.
|
||||
|
||||
Christmas Eve fell as balmy as April. Perhaps there was a hint of faraway frostiness in the air, but it tingles like seltzer, perfumed faintly with late prairie blossoms and the mesquite grass.
|
||||
|
||||
When night came the five or six rooms of the ranch-house were brightly lit. In one room was a Christmas tree, for the Lanes had a boy of three, and a dozen or more guests were expected from the nearer ranches.
|
||||
|
||||
At nightfall Madison Lane called aside Jim Belcher and three other cowboys employed on his ranch.
|
||||
|
||||
"Now, boys," said Lane, "keep your eyes open. Walk around the house and watch the road well. All of you know the 'Frio Kid,' as they call him now, and if you see him, open fire on him without asking any questions. I'm not afraid of his coming around, but Rosita is. She's been afraid he'd come in on us every Christmas since we were married."
|
||||
|
||||
The guests had arrived in buckboards and on horseback, and were making themselves comfortable inside.
|
||||
|
||||
The evening went along pleasantly. The guests enjoyed and praised Rosita's excellent supper, and afterward the men scattered in groups about the rooms or on the broad "gallery," smoking and chatting.
|
||||
|
||||
The Christmas tree, of course, delighted the youngsters, and above all were they pleased when Santa Claus himself in magnificent white beard and furs appeared and began to distribute the toys.
|
||||
|
||||
"It's my papa," announced Billy Sampson, aged six. "I've seen him wear 'em before."
|
||||
|
||||
Berkly, a sheepman, an old friend of Lane, stopped Rosita as she was passing by him on the gallery, where he was sitting smoking.
|
||||
|
||||
"Well, Mrs. Lane," said he, "I suppose by this Christmas you've gotten over being afraid of that fellow McRoy, haven't you? Madison and I have talked about it, you know."
|
||||
|
||||
"Very nearly," said Rosita, smiling, "but I am still nervous sometimes. I shall never forget that awful time when he came so near to killing us."
|
||||
|
||||
"He's the most cold-hearted villain in the world," said Berkly. "The citizens all along the border ought to turn out and hunt him down like a wolf."
|
||||
|
||||
"He has committed awful crimes," said Rosita, "but---I---don't---know. I think there is a spot of good somewhere in everybody. He was not always bad---that I know."
|
||||
|
||||
Rosita turned into the hallway between the rooms. Santa Claus, in muffling whiskers and furs, was just coming through.
|
||||
|
||||
"I heard what you said through the window, Mrs. Lane," he said. "I was just going down in my pocket for a Christmas present for your husband. But I've left one for you, instead. It's in the room to your right."
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh, thank you, kind Santa Claus," said Rosita, brightly.
|
||||
|
||||
Rosita went into the room, while Santa Claus stepped into the cooler air of the yard.
|
||||
|
||||
She found no one in the room but Madison.
|
||||
|
||||
"Where is my present that Santa said he left for me in here?" she asked.
|
||||
|
||||
"Haven't seen anything in the way of a present," said her husband, laughing, "unless he could have meant me."
|
||||
|
||||
------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
The next day Gabriel Radd, the foreman of the X O Ranch, dropped into the post-office at Loma Alta.
|
||||
|
||||
"Well, the Frio Kid's got his dose of lead at last," he remarked to the postmaster.
|
||||
|
||||
"That so? How'd it happen?"
|
||||
|
||||
"One of old Sanchez's Mexican sheep herders did it!---think of it! the Frio Kid killed by a sheep herder! The Greaser saw him riding along past his camp about twelve o'clock last night, and was so skeered that he up with a Winchester and let him have it. Funniest part of it was that the Kid was dressed all up with white Angora-skin whiskers and a regular Santy Claus rig-out from head to foot. Think of the Frio Kid playing Santy!"
|
||||
142
src/epub/text/a-chaparral-prince.md
Normal file
142
src/epub/text/a-chaparral-prince.md
Normal file
@ -0,0 +1,142 @@
|
||||
A Chaparral Prince {#a-chaparral-prince type="title"}
|
||||
------------------
|
||||
|
||||
Nine o'clock at last, and the drudging toil of the day was ended. Lena climbed to her room in the third half-story of the Quarrymen's Hotel. Since daylight she had slaved, doing the work of a full-grown woman, scrubbing the floors, washing the heavy ironstone plates and cups, making the beds, and supplying the insatiate demands for wood and water in that turbulent and depressing hostelry.
|
||||
|
||||
The din of the day's quarrying was over---the blasting and drilling, the creaking of the great cranes, the shouts of the foremen, the backing and shifting of the flatcars hauling the heavy blocks of limestone. Down in the hotel office three or four of the labourers were growling and swearing over a belated game of checkers. Heavy odours of stewed meat, hot grease, and cheap coffee hung like a depressing fog about the house.
|
||||
|
||||
Lena lit the stump of a candle and sat limply upon her wooden chair. She was eleven years old, thin and ill-nourished. Her back and limbs were sore and aching. But the ache in her heart made the biggest trouble. The last straw had been added to the burden upon her small shoulders. They had taken away Grimm. Always at night, however tired she might be, she had turned to Grimm for comfort and hope. Each time had Grimm whispered to her that the prince or the fairy would come and deliver her out of the wicked enchantment. Every night she had taken fresh courage and strength from Grimm.
|
||||
|
||||
To whatever tale she read she found an analogy in her own condition. The woodcutter's lost child, the unhappy goose girl, the persecuted stepdaughter, the little maiden imprisoned in the witch's hut---all these were but transparent disguises for Lena, the overworked kitchenmaid in the Quarrymen's Hotel. And always when the extremity was direst came the good fairy or the gallant prince to the rescue.
|
||||
|
||||
So, here in the ogre's castle, enslaved by a wicked spell, Lena had leaned upon Grimm and waited, longing for the powers of goodness to prevail. But on the day before Mrs. Maloney had found the book in her room and had carried it away, declaring sharply that it would not do for servants to read at night; they lost sleep and did not work briskly the next day. Can one only eleven years old, living away from one's mamma, and never having any time to play, live entirely deprived of Grimm? Just try it once and you will see what a difficult thing it is.
|
||||
|
||||
Lena's home was in Texas, away up among the little mountains on the Pedernales River, in a little town called Fredericksburg. They are all German people who live in Fredericksburg. Of evenings they sit at little tables along the sidewalk and drink beer and play pinochle and scat. They are very thrifty people.
|
||||
|
||||
Thriftiest among them was Peter Hildesmuller, Lena's father. And that is why Lena was sent to work in the hotel at the quarries, thirty miles away. She earned three dollars every week there, and Peter added her wages to his well-guarded store. Peter had an ambition to become as rich as his neighbour, Hugo Heffelbauer, who smoked a meerschaum pipe three feet long and had wiener schnitzel and hassenpfeffer for dinner every day in the week. And now Lena was quite old enough to work and assist in the accumulation of riches. But conjecture, if you can, what it means to be sentenced at eleven years of age from a home in the pleasant little Rhine village to hard labour in the ogre's castle, where you must fly to serve the ogres, while they devour cattle and sheep, growling fiercely as they stamp white limestone dust from their great shoes for you to sweep and scour with your weak, aching fingers. And then---to have Grimm taken away from you!
|
||||
|
||||
Lena raised the lid of an old empty case that had once contained canned corn and got out a sheet of paper and a piece of pencil. She was going to write a letter to her mamma. Tommy Ryan was going to post it for her at Ballinger's. Tommy was seventeen, worked in the quarries, went home to Ballinger's every night, and was now waiting in the shadows under Lena's window for her to throw the letter out to him. That was the only way she could send a letter to Fredericksburg. Mrs. Maloney did not like for her to write letters.
|
||||
|
||||
The stump of the candle was burning low, so Lena hastily bit the wood from around the lead of her pencil and began. This is the letter she wrote:
|
||||
|
||||
> [Dearest Mamma:]{type="z3998:salutation"}---I want so much to see > you. And Gretel and Claus and Heinrich and little Adolf. I am so > tired. I want to see you. Today I was slapped by Mrs. Maloney and had > no supper. I could not bring in enough wood, for my hand hurt. She > took my book yesterday. I mean "Grimm's Fairy Tales," which Uncle Leo > gave me. It did not hurt anyone for me to read the book. I try to work > as well as I can, but there is so much to do. I read only a little bit > every night. Dear mamma, I shall tell you what I am going to do. > Unless you send for me tomorrow to bring me home I shall go to a deep > place I know in the river and drown. It is wicked to drown, I suppose, > but I wanted to see you, and there is no one else. I am very tired, > and Tommy is waiting for the letter. You will excuse me, mamma, if I > do it. [Your respectful and loving > daughter,]{type="z3998:valediction"} [Lena]{type="z3998:signature"}.
|
||||
|
||||
Tommy was still waiting faithfully when the letter was concluded, and when Lena dropped it out she saw him pick it up and start up the steep hillside. Without undressing she blew out the candle and curled herself upon the mattress on the floor.
|
||||
|
||||
At 10:30 o'clock old man Ballinger came out of his house in his stocking feet and leaned over the gate, smoking his pipe. He looked down the big road, white in the moonshine, and rubbed one ankle with the toe of his other foot. It was time for the Fredericksburg mail to come pattering up the road.
|
||||
|
||||
Old man Ballinger had waited only a few minutes when he heard the lively hoofbeats of Fritz's team of little black mules, and very soon afterward his covered spring wagon stood in front of the gate. Fritz's big spectacles flashed in the moonlight and his tremendous voice shouted a greeting to the postmaster of Ballinger's. The mail-carrier jumped out and took the bridles from the mules, for he always fed them oats at Ballinger's.
|
||||
|
||||
While the mules were eating from their feed bags old man Ballinger brought out the mail sack and threw it into the wagon.
|
||||
|
||||
Fritz Bergmann was a man of three sentiments---or to be more accurate---four, the pair of mules deserving to be reckoned individually. Those mules were the chief interest and joy of his existence. Next came the Emperor of Germany and Lena Hildesmuller.
|
||||
|
||||
"Tell me," said Fritz, when he was ready to start, "contains the sack a letter to Frau Hildesmuller from the little Lena at the quarries? One came in the last mail to say that she is a little sick, already. Her mamma is very anxious to hear again."
|
||||
|
||||
"Yes," said old man Ballinger, "thar's a letter for Mrs. Helterskelter, or some sich name. Tommy Ryan brung it over when he come. Her little gal workin' over thar, you say?"
|
||||
|
||||
"In the hotel," shouted Fritz, as he gathered up the lines; "eleven years old and not bigger as a frankfurter. The close-fist of a Peter Hildesmuller!---some day I shall with a big club pound that man's [dummkopf]{lang="de"}---all in and out the town. Perhaps in this letter Lena will say that she is yet feeling better. So, her mamma will be glad. [Auf wiedersehen]{lang="de"}, Herr Ballinger---your feets will take cold out in the night air."
|
||||
|
||||
"So long, Fritzy," said old man Ballinger. "You got a nice cool night for your drive."
|
||||
|
||||
Up the road went the little black mules at their steady trot, while Fritz thundered at them occasional words of endearment and cheer.
|
||||
|
||||
These fancies occupied the mind of the mail-carrier until he reached the big post oak forest, eight miles from Ballinger's. Here his ruminations were scattered by the sudden flash and report of pistols and a whooping as if from a whole tribe of Indians. A band of galloping centaurs closed in around the mail wagon. One of them leaned over the front wheel, covered the driver with his revolver, and ordered him to stop. Others caught at the bridles of Donder and Blitzen.
|
||||
|
||||
"Donnerwetter!" shouted Fritz, with all his tremendous voice---"*wass ist* Release your hands from dose mules. Ve vas der United States mail!"
|
||||
|
||||
"Hurry up, Dutch!" drawled a melancholy voice. "Don't you know when you're in a stickup? Reverse your mules and climb out of the cart."
|
||||
|
||||
It is due to the breadth of Hondo Bill's demerit and the largeness of his achievements to state that the holding up of the Fredericksburg mail was not perpetrated by way of an exploit. As the lion while in the pursuit of prey commensurate to his prowess might set a frivolous foot upon a casual rabbit in his path, so Hondo Bill and his gang had swooped sportively upon the pacific transport of Meinherr Fritz.
|
||||
|
||||
The real work of their sinister night ride was over. Fritz and his mail bag and his mules came as gentle relaxation, grateful after the arduous duties of their profession. Twenty miles to the southeast stood a train with a killed engine, hysterical passengers and a looted express and mail car. That represented the serious occupation of Hondo Bill and his gang. With a fairly rich prize of currency and silver the robbers were making a wide detour to the west through the less populous country, intending to seek safety in Mexico by means of some fordable spot on the Rio Grande. The booty from the train had melted the desperate bushrangers to jovial and happy skylarkers.
|
||||
|
||||
Trembling with outraged dignity and no little personal apprehension, Fritz climbed out to the road after replacing his suddenly removed spectacles. The band had dismounted and were singing, capering, and whooping, thus expressing their satisfied delight in the life of a jolly outlaw. Rattlesnake Rogers, who stood at the heads of the mules, jerked a little too vigorously at the rein of the tender-mouthed Donder, who reared and emitted a loud, protesting snort of pain. Instantly Fritz, with a scream of anger, flew at the bulky Rogers and began to assiduously pummel that surprised freebooter with his fists.
|
||||
|
||||
"Villain!" shouted Fritz, "dog, bigstiff! Dot mule he has a soreness by his mouth. I vill knock off your shoulders mit your head---robbermans!"
|
||||
|
||||
"Yi-yi!" howled Rattlesnake, roaring with laughter and ducking his head, "somebody git this here sour-krout off'n me!"
|
||||
|
||||
One of the band yanked Fritz back by the coattail, and the woods rang with Rattlesnake's vociferous comments.
|
||||
|
||||
"The dog-goned little wienerwurst," he yelled, amiably. "He's not so much of a skunk, for a Dutchman. Took up for his animile plum quick, didn't he? I like to see a man like his hoss, even if it is a mule. The dad-blamed little Limburger he went for me, didn't he! Whoa, now, muley---I ain't a-goin' to hurt your mouth agin any more."
|
||||
|
||||
Perhaps the mail would not have been tampered with had not Ben Moody, the lieutenant, possessed certain wisdom that seemed to promise more spoils.
|
||||
|
||||
"Say, Cap," he said, addressing Hondo Bill, "there's likely to be good pickings in these mail sacks. I've done some hoss tradin' with these Dutchmen around Fredericksburg, and I know the style of the varmints. There's big money goes through the mails to that town. Them Dutch risk a thousand dollars sent wrapped in a piece of paper before they'd pay the banks to handle the money."
|
||||
|
||||
Hondo Bill, six feet two, gentle of voice and impulsive in action, was dragging the sacks from the rear of the wagon before Moody had finished his speech. A knife shone in his hand, and they heard the ripping sound as it bit through the tough canvas. The outlaws crowded around and began tearing open letters and packages, enlivening their labours by swearing affably at the writers, who seemed to have conspired to confute the prediction of Ben Moody. Not a dollar was found in the Fredericksburg mail.
|
||||
|
||||
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," said Hondo Bill to the mail-larrier in solemn tones, "to be packing around such a lot of old, trashy paper as this. What d'you mean by it, anyhow? Where do you Dutchers keep your money at?"
|
||||
|
||||
The Ballinger mail sack opened like a cocoon under Hondo's knife. It contained but a handful of mail. Fritz had been fuming with terror and excitement until this sack was reached. He now remembered Lena's letter. He addressed the leader of the band, asking that that particular missive be spared.
|
||||
|
||||
"Much obliged, Dutch," he said to the disturbed carrier. "I guess that's the letter we want. Got spondulicks in it, ain't it? Here she is. Make a light, boys."
|
||||
|
||||
Hondo found and tore open the letter to Mrs. Hildesmuller. The others stood about, lighting twisted up letters one from another. Hondo gazed with mute disapproval at the single sheet of paper covered with the angular German script.
|
||||
|
||||
"Whatever is this you've humbugged us with, Dutchy? You call this here a valuable letter? That's a mighty low-down trick to play on your friends what come along to help you distribute your mail."
|
||||
|
||||
"That's Chiny writin'," said Sandy Grundy, peering over Hondo's shoulder.
|
||||
|
||||
"You're off your kazip," declared another of the gang, an effective youth, covered with silk handkerchiefs and nickel plating. "That's shorthand. I see 'em do it once in court."
|
||||
|
||||
"Ach, no, no, no---dot is German," said Fritz. "It is no more as a little girl writing a letter to her mamma. One poor little girl, sick and vorking hard avay from home. Ach! it is a shame. Good Mr. Robberman, you vill please let me have dot letter?"
|
||||
|
||||
"What the devil do you take us for, old Pretzels?" said Hondo with sudden and surprising severity. "You ain't presumin' to insinuate that we gents ain't possessed of sufficient politeness for to take an interest in the miss's health, are you? Now, you go on, and you read that scratchin' out loud and in plain United States language to this here company of educated society."
|
||||
|
||||
Hondo twirled his six-shooter by its trigger guard and stood towering above the little German, who at once began to read the letter, translating the simple words into English. The gang of rovers stood in absolute silence, listening intently.
|
||||
|
||||
"How old is that kid?" asked Hondo when the letter was done.
|
||||
|
||||
"Eleven," said Fritz.
|
||||
|
||||
"And where is she at?"
|
||||
|
||||
"At dose rock quarries---working. *Ach, mein Gott*---little Lena, she speak of drowning. I do not know if she vill do it, but if she shall I schwear I vill dot Peter Hildesmuller shoot mit a gun."
|
||||
|
||||
"You Dutchers," said Hondo Bill, his voice swelling with fine contempt, "make me plenty tired. Hirin' out your kids to work when they ought to be playin' dolls in the sand. You're a hell of a sect of people. I reckon we'll fix your clock for a while just to show what we think of your old cheesy nation. Here, boys!"
|
||||
|
||||
Hondo Bill parleyed aside briefly with his band, and then they seized Fritz and conveyed him off the road to one side. Here they bound him fast to a tree with a couple of lariats. His team they tied to another tree nearby.
|
||||
|
||||
"We ain't going to hurt you bad," said Hondo reassuringly. " 'Twon't hurt you to be tied up for a while. We will now pass you the time of day, as it is up to us to depart. Ausgespielt---nixcumrous, Dutchy. Don't get any more impatience."
|
||||
|
||||
Fritz heard a great squeaking of saddles as the men mounted their horses. Then a loud yell and a great clatter of hoofs as they galloped pell-mell back along the Fredericksburg road.
|
||||
|
||||
For more than two hours Fritz sat against his tree, tightly but not painfully bound. Then from the reaction after his exciting adventure he sank into slumber. How long he slept he knew not, but he was at last awakened by a rough shake. Hands were untying his ropes. He was lifted to his feet, dazed, confused in mind, and weary of body. Rubbing his eyes, he looked and saw that he was again in the midst of the same band of terrible bandits. They shoved him up to the seat of his wagon and placed the lines in his hands.
|
||||
|
||||
"Hit it out for home, Dutch," said Hondo Bill's voice commandingly. "You've given us lots of trouble and we're pleased to see the back of your neck. Spiel! Zwei bier! Vamoose!"
|
||||
|
||||
Hondo reached out and gave Blitzen a smart cut with his quirt.
|
||||
|
||||
The little mules sprang ahead, glad to be moving again. Fritz urged them along, himself dizzy and muddled over his fearful adventure.
|
||||
|
||||
According to schedule time, he should have reached Fredericksburg at daylight. As it was, he drove down the long street of the town at eleven o'clock a.m. He had to pass Peter Hildesmuller's house on his way to the post-office. He stopped his team at the gate and called. But Frau Hildesmuller was watching for him. Out rushed the whole family of Hildesmullers.
|
||||
|
||||
Frau Hildesmuller, fat and flushed, inquired if he had a letter from Lena, and then Fritz raised his voice and told the tale of his adventure. He told the contents of that letter that the robber had made him read, and then Frau Hildesmuller broke into wild weeping. Her little Lena drown herself! Why had they sent her from home? What could be done? Perhaps it would be too late by the time they could send for her now. Peter Hildesmuller dropped his meerschaum on the walk and it shivered into pieces.
|
||||
|
||||
"Woman!" he roared at his wife, "why did you let that child go away? It is your fault if she comes home to us no more."
|
||||
|
||||
Everyone knew that it was Peter Hildesmuller's fault, so they paid no attention to his words.
|
||||
|
||||
A moment afterward a strange, faint voice was heard to call: "Mamma!" Frau Hildesmuller at first thought it was Lena's spirit calling, and then she rushed to the rear of Fritz's covered wagon, and, with a loud shriek of joy, caught up Lena herself, covering her pale little face with kisses and smothering her with hugs. Lena's eyes were heavy with the deep slumber of exhaustion, but she smiled and lay close to the one she had longed to see. There among the mail sacks, covered in a nest of strange blankets and comforters, she had lain asleep until wakened by the voices around her.
|
||||
|
||||
Fritz stared at her with eyes that bulged behind his spectacles.
|
||||
|
||||
"*Gott in Himmel!*" he shouted. "How did you get in that wagon? Am I going crazy as well as to be murdered and hanged by robbers this day?"
|
||||
|
||||
"You brought her to us, Fritz," cried Frau Hildesmuller. "How can we ever thank you enough?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Tell mamma how you came in Fritz's wagon," said Frau Hildesmuller.
|
||||
|
||||
"I don't know," said Lena. "But I know how I got away from the hotel. The Prince brought me."
|
||||
|
||||
"By the Emperor's crown!" shouted Fritz, "we are all going crazy."
|
||||
|
||||
"I always knew he would come," said Lena, sitting down on her bundle of bedclothes on the sidewalk. "Last night he came with his armed knights and captured the ogre's castle. They broke the dishes and kicked down the doors. They pitched Mr. Maloney into a barrel of rain water and threw flour all over Mrs. Maloney. The workmen in the hotel jumped out of the windows and ran into the woods when the knights began firing their guns. They wakened me up and I peeped down the stair. And then the Prince came up and wrapped me in the bedclothes and carried me out. He was so tall and strong and fine. His face was as rough as a scrubbing brush, and he talked soft and kind and smelled of schnapps. He took me on his horse before him and we rode away among the knights. He held me close and I went to sleep that way, and didn't wake up till I got home."
|
||||
|
||||
"Rubbish!" cried Fritz Bergmann. "Fairy tales! How did you come from the quarries to my wagon?"
|
||||
|
||||
"The Prince brought me," said Lena, confidently.
|
||||
|
||||
And to this day the good people of Fredericksburg haven't been able to make her give any other explanation.
|
||||
26
src/epub/text/a-cheering-thought.md
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src/epub/text/a-cheering-thought.md
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|
||||
A Cheering Thought {#a-cheering-thought type="title"}
|
||||
------------------
|
||||
|
||||
A weary-looking man with dejected auburn whiskers, walked into the police station yesterday afternoon and said to the officer in charge:
|
||||
|
||||
"I want to give myself up. I expect you had better handcuff me and put me into a real dark cell where there are plenty of spiders and mice. I'm one of the worst men you ever saw, and I waive trial. Please tell the jailer to give me moldy bread to eat, and hydrant water with plenty of sulphur in it."
|
||||
|
||||
"What have you done?" asked the officer.
|
||||
|
||||
"I'm a miserable, low-down, lying, good-for-nothing, slandering, drunken, villainous, sacrilegious galoot, and I'm not fit to die. You might ask the jailer, also, to bring little boys in to look at me through the bars, while I gnash my teeth and curse in demoniac rage."
|
||||
|
||||
"We can't put you in jail unless you have committed some offense. Can't you bring some more specific charge against yourself?"
|
||||
|
||||
"No, I just want to give myself up on general principles. You see, I went to hear Sam Jones last night, and he saw me in the crowd and diagnosed my case to a *T*. Up to that time I thought I was a four-horse team with a yellow dog under the wagon, but Sam took the negative side and won. I'm a danged old sore-eyed hound dog; I wouldn't mind if you kicked me a few times before you locked me up, and sent my wife word that the old villain that has been abusin' her for twenty years has met his deserts."
|
||||
|
||||
"Aw, come now," said the officer, "I don't believe you are as bad as you think you are. You don't know that Sam Jones was talking about you at all. It might have been somebody else he was hitting. Brace up and don't let it worry you."
|
||||
|
||||
"Lemme see," said the weary-looking man reflectively. "Come to think of it there was one of my neighbors sitting right behind me who is the meanest man in Houston. He is a mangy pup, and no mistake. He beats his wife and has refused to loan me three dollars five different times. What Sam said just fits his case exactly. If I thought now---"
|
||||
|
||||
"That's the way to look at it," said the officer. "The chances are Sam wasn't thinking about you at all."
|
||||
|
||||
"Durned if I believe he was, now I remember about that neighbor of mine," said the penitent, beginning to brighten up. "You don't know what a weight you've taken off my mind. I was just feeling like I was one of the worst sinners in the world. I'll bet any man ten dollars he was talking right straight at that miserable, contemptible scalawag that sat right behind me. Say, come on and let's go out and take somethin', will you?"
|
||||
|
||||
The officer declined and the weary-looking man ran his finger down his neck and pulled his collar up into sight and said:
|
||||
|
||||
"I'll never forget your kindness, sir, in helping me out of this worry. It has made me feel bad all day. I am going out to the racetrack now, and take the field against the favorite for a few plunks. Good day, I shall always remember your kindness."
|
||||
28
src/epub/text/a-christmas-pi.md
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28
src/epub/text/a-christmas-pi.md
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|
||||
A Christmas Pi {#a-christmas-pi type="title"}
|
||||
--------------
|
||||
|
||||
I am not without claim to distinction. Although I still stick to suspenders---which, happily, reciprocate---I am negatively egregious. I have never, for instance, seen a professional baseball game, never said that George M. Cohan was "clever," never started to keep a diary, never called Eugene Walter by his first name, never parodied "The Raven," never written a Christmas story, never---but what denizen of Never-Never Land can boast so much? Or would, I overhear you think, if he could?
|
||||
|
||||
Always have I been on the lookout for the Impossible, always on the trail of the Unattainable. Someday, perhaps, I shall find a sleeping-car with a name that means something, an intelligent West Indian hallboy in a New York apartment building, a boardinghouse whose inmates occasionally smile, a man born in Manhattan, a 60-cent [table d'hôte]{lang="fr"} that serves six oysters the portion instead of four, a Southerner who leaves you in doubt as to his birthplace longer than ten minutes after the introduction, and myself writing a Christmas story. But that will happen ten days after the millennium, and as the millennium is to be magazineless---
|
||||
|
||||
Every June I am asked to write a Christmas story. Every August I promise, vow, insist, swear that it shall be ready in two weeks. And every November I protest that I am sorry, but I couldn't think of anything new and---well, next year, sure. It was so last year and the year before. It was so this year. And I said to myself that next year it would not be so. I would spend Christmas Eve looking about me. I would get copy from a cop, material from a mater, plot from a messenger boy. And behold! it was Christmas Eve.
|
||||
|
||||
It was Christmas Eve, to give a synopsis of preceding chapters. I will fine-toothcomb the town for an idea next summer, quoth I. And so I walked, rode and taxi-cabbed. I spoke to waiters, subway guards, chauffeurs and newsboys and tried to draw from them some bit of life, some experience that might make a story, a Christmas story, C.O.D., at twenty cents a word. But there was not a syllable in the silly bunch, not a comma in the comatose lot.
|
||||
|
||||
And then I wandered into Grand Street and I saw that which made me instinctively clutch my fountain pen. A man, unswept, unmoneyed and unstrung, was about to hurl a brick into a pawnbroker's window. His arm was raised and he was as deliberate as Mr. Tri-Digital Brown of Chicago trying to lessen the average of Mr. John P. Hanswagner of Pittsburgh. (I always spell Pittsburgh with the final "h"; it's a final h of a town.)
|
||||
|
||||
"Here, Bill," I said, "I wouldn't do that."
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh, yes, you would," he responded.
|
||||
|
||||
Which was my chance. "Let us withdraw to yonder inn," I said, like a head chorus-man whose object is to "get 'em off," "and we can discuss things."
|
||||
|
||||
"What's the game?" I asked, after the waiter had received instructions.
|
||||
|
||||
"I wanted to get money enough to buy my wife a Christmas present. Been out o' work for a year. I'm desperate. I---"
|
||||
|
||||
"Nothing of the kind," I contradicted. "People don't try to steal diamonds on a crowded street for any such purpose. I'm not a detective, as you might know by my guessing so correctly."
|
||||
|
||||
"Well," he laughed, pulling out a bill and giving it to the waiter for the check; "it's a good joke and I'll let you in, though you can't appreciate it. I thought if I hurled that brick in I'd get arrested quick and be sent to a cell or over on the island or something like that. You see, I'm a magazine writer and I wanted to get a real story---'Yuletide on the Island' or something. What's your line, spoiler of a good story?"
|
||||
|
||||
"I?" I said. "My name is John Horner, and I'm a plumber."
|
||||
54
src/epub/text/a-comedy-in-rubber.md
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54
src/epub/text/a-comedy-in-rubber.md
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@ -0,0 +1,54 @@
|
||||
A Comedy in Rubber {#a-comedy-in-rubber type="title"}
|
||||
------------------
|
||||
|
||||
One may hope, in spite of the metaphorists, to avoid the breath of the deadly upas tree; one may, by great good fortune, succeed in blacking the eye of the basilisk; one might even dodge the attentions of Cerberus and Argus, but no man, alive or dead, can escape the gaze of the Rubberer.
|
||||
|
||||
New York is the Caoutchouc City. There are many, of course, who go their ways, making money, without turning to the right or the left, but there is a tribe abroad wonderfully composed, like the Martians, solely of eyes and means of locomotion.
|
||||
|
||||
These devotees of curiosity swarm, like flies, in a moment in a struggling, breathless circle about the scene of an unusual occurrence. If a workman opens a manhole, if a street car runs over a man from North Tarrytown, if a little boy drops an egg on his way home from the grocery, if a casual house or two drops into the subway, if a lady loses a nickel through a hole in the lisle thread, if the police drag a telephone and a racing chart forth from an Ibsen Society reading-room, if Senator Depew or Mr. Chuck Connors walks out to take the air---if any of these incidents or accidents takes place, you will see the mad, irresistible rush of the "rubber" tribe to the spot.
|
||||
|
||||
The importance of the event does not count. They gaze with equal interest and absorption at a chorus girl or at a man painting a liver pill sign. They will form as deep a cordon around a man with a clubfoot as they will around a balked automobile. They have the furor rubberendi. They are optical gluttons, feasting and fattening on the misfortunes of their fellow beings. They gloat and pore and glare and squint and stare with their fishy eyes like goggle-eyed perch at the book baited with calamity.
|
||||
|
||||
It would seem that Cupid would find these ocular vampires too cold game for his calorific shafts, but have we not yet to discover an immune even among the Protozoa? Yes, beautiful Romance descended upon two of this tribe, and love came into their hearts as they crowded about the prostrate form of a man who had been run over by a brewery wagon.
|
||||
|
||||
William Pry was the first on the spot. He was an expert at such gatherings. With an expression of intense happiness on his features, he stood over the victim of the accident, listening to his groans as if to the sweetest music. When the crowd of spectators had swelled to a closely packed circle William saw a violent commotion in the crowd opposite him. Men were hurled aside like ninepins by the impact of some moving body that clove them like the rush of a tornado. With elbows, umbrella, hatpin, tongue, and fingernails doing their duty, Violet Seymour forced her way through the mob of onlookers to the first row. Strong men who even had been able to secure a seat on the 5:30 Harlem express staggered back like children as she bucked centre. Two large lady spectators who had seen the Duke of Roxburgh married and had often blocked traffic on Twenty-third Street fell back into the second row with ripped shirtwaists when Violet had finished with them. William Pry loved her at first sight.
|
||||
|
||||
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.
|
||||
|
||||
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."
|
||||
|
||||
She looked up at him shyly, yet with unmistakable love transfiguring her countenance.
|
||||
|
||||
"And you have saved it for me?" she asked, trembling with the first dim ecstasy of a woman beloved.
|
||||
|
||||
Together they hurried to the bootblack's stand. An hour they spent there gazing at the malformed youth.
|
||||
|
||||
A window-cleaner fell from the fifth story to the sidewalk beside them. As the ambulance came clanging up William pressed her hand joyously. "Four ribs at least and a compound fracture," he whispered, swiftly. "You are not sorry that you met me, are you, dearest?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Me?" said Violet, returning the pressure. "Sure not. I could stand all day rubbering with you."
|
||||
|
||||
The climax of the romance occurred a few days later. Perhaps the reader will remember the intense excitement into which the city was thrown when Eliza Jane, a colored woman, was served with a subpoena. The Rubber Tribe encamped on the spot. With his own hands William Pry placed a board upon two beer kegs in the street opposite Eliza Jane's residence. He and Violet sat there for three days and nights. Then it occurred to a detective to open the door and serve the subpoena. He sent for a kinetoscope and did so.
|
||||
|
||||
Two souls with such congenial tastes could not long remain apart. As a policeman drove them away with his night stick that evening they plighted their troth. The seeds of love had been well sown, and had grown up, hardy and vigorous, into a---let us call it a rubber plant.
|
||||
|
||||
The wedding of William Pry and Violet Seymour was set for June 10. The Big Church in the Middle of the Block was banked high with flowers. The populous tribe of Rubberers the world over is rampant over weddings. They are the pessimists of the pews. They are the guyers of the groom and the banterers of the bride. They come to laugh at your marriage, and should you escape from Hymen's tower on the back of death's pale steed they will come to the funeral and sit in the same pew and cry over your luck. Rubber will stretch.
|
||||
|
||||
The church was lighted. A grosgrain carpet lay over the asphalt to the edge of the sidewalk. Bridesmaids were patting one another's sashes awry and speaking of the Bride's freckles. Coachmen tied white ribbons on their whips and bewailed the space of time between drinks. The minister was musing over his possible fee, essaying conjecture whether it would suffice to purchase a new broadcloth suit for himself and a photograph of Laura Jane Libbey for his wife. Yea, Cupid was in the air.
|
||||
|
||||
And outside the church, oh, my brothers, surged and heaved the rank and file of the tribe of Rubberers. In two bodies they were, with the grosgrain carpet and cops with clubs between. They crowded like cattle, they fought, they pressed and surged and swayed and trampled one another to see a bit of a girl in a white veil acquire license to go through a man's pockets while he sleeps.
|
||||
|
||||
But the hour for the wedding came and went, and the bride and bridegroom came not. And impatience gave way to alarm and alarm brought about search, and they were not found. And then two big policemen took a hand and dragged out of the furious mob of onlookers a crushed and trampled thing, with a wedding ring in its vest pocket and a shredded and hysterical woman beating her way to the carpet's edge, ragged, bruised and obstreperous.
|
||||
|
||||
William Pry and Violet Seymour, creatures of habit, had joined in the seething game of the spectators, unable to resist the overwhelming desire to gaze upon themselves entering, as bride and bridegroom, the rose-decked church.
|
||||
|
||||
Rubber will out.
|
||||
20
src/epub/text/a-conditional-pardon.md
Normal file
20
src/epub/text/a-conditional-pardon.md
Normal file
@ -0,0 +1,20 @@
|
||||
A Conditional Pardon {#a-conditional-pardon type="title"}
|
||||
--------------------
|
||||
|
||||
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."
|
||||
|
||||
"Yes," said the old man, his voice trembling with emotion, "you have brought her back. You have brought her back. Bat that is not all, lad; you have brought her back, but you have also brought the part of her that eats provisions. I will forgive you for fifty dollars per month, lights and washing extra."
|
||||
|
||||
------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
It is but justice to the Pension Bureau at Washington to state that they have not yet granted the pension claimed by a man who was wounded in the late unpleasantness by the accidental discharge of his duty.
|
||||
|
||||
------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
A careful inquiry has revealed the fact that Samson was the first man who rushed the growler.
|
||||
|
||||
Better blow your own horn than one you haven't paid for.
|
||||
|
||||
If your rye offend you, buy a better quality.
|
||||
64
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|
||||
A Cosmopolite in a Café {#a-cosmopolite-in-a-café type="title"}
|
||||
-----------------------
|
||||
|
||||
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.
|
||||
|
||||
I invoke your consideration of the scene---the marble-topped tables, the range of leather-upholstered wall seats, the gay company, the ladies dressed in demi-state toilets, speaking in an exquisite visible chorus of taste, economy, opulence or art; the sedulous and largess-loving [garçons]{lang="fr"}, the music wisely catering to all with its raids upon the composers; the mélange of talk and laughter---and, if you will, the Würzburger in the tall glass cones that bend to your lips as a ripe cherry sways on its branch to the beak of a robber jay. I was told by a sculptor from Mauch Chunk that the scene was truly Parisian.
|
||||
|
||||
My cosmopolite was named E. Rushmore Coglan, and he will be heard from next summer at Coney Island. He is to establish a new "attraction" there, he informed me, offering kingly diversion. And then his conversation rang along parallels of latitude and longitude. He took the great, round world in his hand, so to speak, familiarly, contemptuously, and it seemed no larger than the seed of a Maraschino cherry in a [table d'hôte]{lang="fr"} grape fruit. He spoke disrespectfully of the equator, he skipped from continent to continent, he derided the zones, he mopped up the high seas with his napkin. With a wave of his hand he would speak of a certain bazaar in Hyderabad. Whiff! He would have you on skis in Lapland. Zip! Now you rode the breakers with the Kanakas at Kealaikahiki. Presto! He dragged you through an Arkansas post-oak swamp, let you dry for a moment on the alkali plains of his Idaho ranch, then whirled you into the society of Viennese archdukes. Anon he would be telling you of a cold he acquired in a Chicago lake breeze and how old Escamila cured it in Buenos Aires with a hot infusion of the *chuchula* weed. You would have addressed a letter to "E. Rushmore Coglan, Esq., the Earth, Solar System, the Universe," and have mailed it, feeling confident that it would be delivered to him.
|
||||
|
||||
I was sure that I had found at last the one true cosmopolite since Adam, and I listened to his worldwide discourse fearful lest I should discover in it the local note of the mere globetrotter. But his opinions never fluttered or drooped; he was as impartial to cities, countries and continents as the winds or gravitation.
|
||||
|
||||
And as E. Rushmore Coglan prattled of this little planet I thought with glee of a great almost-cosmopolite who wrote for the whole world and dedicated himself to Bombay. In a poem he has to say that there is pride and rivalry between the cities of the earth, and that "the men that breed from them, they traffic up and down, but cling to their cities' hem as a child to the mother's gown." And whenever they walk "by roaring streets unknown" they remember their native city "most faithful, foolish, fond; making her mere-breathed name their bond upon their bond." And my glee was roused because I had caught Mr. Kipling napping. Here I had found a man not made from dust; one who had no narrow boasts of birthplace or country, one who, if he bragged at all, would brag of his whole round globe against the Martians and the inhabitants of the Moon.
|
||||
|
||||
Expression on these subjects was precipitated from E. Rushmore Coglan by the third corner to our table. While Coglan was describing to me the topography along the Siberian Railway the orchestra glided into a medley. The concluding air was "Dixie," and as the exhilarating notes tumbled forth they were almost overpowered by a great clapping of hands from almost every table.
|
||||
|
||||
It is worth a paragraph to say that this remarkable scene can be witnessed every evening in numerous cafés in the City of New York. Tons of brew have been consumed over theories to account for it. Some have conjectured hastily that all Southerners in town hie themselves to cafés at nightfall. This applause of the "rebel" air in a Northern city does puzzle a little; but it is not insolvable. The war with Spain, many years' generous mint and watermelon crops, a few long-shot winners at the New Orleans racetrack, and the brilliant banquets given by the Indiana and Kansas citizens who compose the North Carolina Society have made the South rather a "fad" in Manhattan. Your manicure will lisp softly that your left forefinger reminds her so much of a gentleman's in Richmond, Va. Oh, certainly; but many a lady has to work now---the war, you know.
|
||||
|
||||
When "Dixie" was being played a dark-haired young man sprang up from somewhere with a Mosby guerrilla yell and waved frantically his soft-brimmed hat. Then he strayed through the smoke, dropped into the vacant chair at our table and pulled out cigarettes.
|
||||
|
||||
The evening was at the period when reserve is thawed. One of us mentioned three Würzburgers to the waiter; the dark-haired young man acknowledged his inclusion in the order by a smile and a nod. I hastened to ask him a question because I wanted to try out a theory I had.
|
||||
|
||||
"Would you mind telling me," I began, "whether you are from---"
|
||||
|
||||
The fist of E. Rushmore Coglan banged the table and I was jarred into silence.
|
||||
|
||||
"Excuse me," said he, "but that's a question I never like to hear asked. What does it matter where a man is from? Is it fair to judge a man by his post-office address? Why, I've seen Kentuckians who hated whiskey, Virginians who weren't descended from Pocahontas, Indianians who hadn't written a novel, Mexicans who didn't wear velvet trousers with silver dollars sewed along the seams, funny Englishmen, spendthrift Yankees, cold-blooded Southerners, narrow-minded Westerners, and New Yorkers who were too busy to stop for an hour on the street to watch a one-armed grocer's clerk do up cranberries in paper bags. Let a man be a man and don't handicap him with the label of any section."
|
||||
|
||||
"Pardon me," I said, "but my curiosity was not altogether an idle one. I know the South, and when the band plays 'Dixie' I like to observe. I have formed the belief that the man who applauds that air with special violence and ostensible sectional loyalty is invariably a native of either Secaucus, NJ, or the district between Murray Hill Lyceum and the Harlem River, this city. I was about to put my opinion to the test by inquiring of this gentleman when you interrupted with your own---larger theory, I must confess."
|
||||
|
||||
And now the dark-haired young man spoke to me, and it became evident that his mind also moved along its own set of grooves.
|
||||
|
||||
"I should like to be a periwinkle," said he, mysteriously, "on the top of a valley, and sing tooralloo-ralloo."
|
||||
|
||||
This was clearly too obscure, so I turned again to Coglan.
|
||||
|
||||
"I've been around the world twelve times," said he. "I know an Eskimo in Upernavik who sends to Cincinnati for his neckties, and I saw a goat-herder in Uruguay who won a prize in a Battle Creek breakfast food puzzle competition. I pay rent on a room in Cairo, Egypt, and another in Yokohama all the year around. I've got slippers waiting for me in a teahouse in Shanghai, and I don't have to tell 'em how to cook my eggs in Rio de Janeiro or Seattle. It's a mighty little old world. What's the use of bragging about being from the North, or the South, or the old manor house in the dale, or Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, or Pike's Peak, or Fairfax County, Va., or Hooligan's Flats or any place? It'll be a better world when we quit being fools about some mildewed town or ten acres of swampland just because we happened to be born there."
|
||||
|
||||
"You seem to be a genuine cosmopolite," I said admiringly. "But it also seems that you would decry patriotism."
|
||||
|
||||
"A relic of the stone age," declared Coglan, warmly. "We are all brothers---Chinamen, Englishmen, Zulus, Patagonians and the people in the bend of the Kaw River. Some day all this petty pride in one's city or State or section or country will be wiped out, and we'll all be citizens of the world, as we ought to be."
|
||||
|
||||
"But while you are wandering in foreign lands," I persisted, "do not your thoughts revert to some spot---some dear and---"
|
||||
|
||||
"Nary a spot," interrupted E. R. Coglan, flippantly. "The terrestrial, globular, planetary hunk of matter, slightly flattened at the poles, and known as the Earth, is my abode. I've met a good many object-bound citizens of this country abroad. I've seen men from Chicago sit in a gondola in Venice on a moonlight night and brag about their drainage canal. I've seen a Southerner on being introduced to the King of England hand that monarch, without batting his eyes, the information that his grandaunt on his mother's side was related by marriage to the Perkinses, of Charleston. I knew a New Yorker who was kidnapped for ransom by some Afghanistan bandits. His people sent over the money and he came back to Kabul with the agent. 'Afghanistan?' the natives said to him through an interpreter. 'Well, not so slow, do you think?' 'Oh, I don't know,' says he, and he begins to tell them about a cab driver at Sixth Avenue and Broadway. Those ideas don't suit me. I'm not tied down to anything that isn't 8,000 miles in diameter. Just put me down as E. Rushmore Coglan, citizen of the terrestrial sphere."
|
||||
|
||||
My cosmopolite made a large adieu and left me, for he thought he saw someone through the chatter and smoke whom he knew. So I was left with the would-be periwinkle, who was reduced to Würzburger without further ability to voice his aspirations to perch, melodious, upon the summit of a valley.
|
||||
|
||||
I sat reflecting upon my evident cosmopolite and wondering how the poet had managed to miss him. He was my discovery and I believed in him. How was it? "The men that breed from them they traffic up and down, but cling to their cities' hem as a child to the mother's gown."
|
||||
|
||||
Not so E. Rushmore Coglan. With the whole world for his---
|
||||
|
||||
My meditations were interrupted by a tremendous noise and conflict in another part of the café. I saw above the heads of the seated patrons E. Rushmore Coglan and a stranger to me engaged in terrific battle. They fought between the tables like Titans, and glasses crashed, and men caught their hats up and were knocked down, and a brunette screamed, and a blonde began to sing "Teasing."
|
||||
|
||||
My cosmopolite was sustaining the pride and reputation of the Earth when the waiters closed in on both combatants with their famous flying wedge formation and bore them outside, still resisting.
|
||||
|
||||
I called McCarthy, one of the French [garçons]{lang="fr"}, and asked him the cause of the conflict.
|
||||
|
||||
"The man with the red tie" (that was my cosmopolite), said he, "got hot on account of things said about the bum sidewalks and water supply of the place he come from by the other guy."
|
||||
|
||||
"Why," said I, bewildered, "that man is a citizen of the world---a cosmopolite. He---"
|
||||
|
||||
"Originally from Mattawamkeag, Maine, he said," continued McCarthy, "and he wouldn't stand for no knockin' the place."
|
||||
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src/epub/text/a-departmental-case.md
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|
||||
A Departmental Case {#a-departmental-case type="title"}
|
||||
-------------------
|
||||
|
||||
In Texas you may travel a thousand miles in a straight line. If your course is a crooked one, it is likely that both the distance and your rate of speed may be vastly increased. Clouds there sail serenely against the wind. The whip-poor-will delivers its disconsolate cry with the notes exactly reversed from those of his Northern brother. Given a drought and a subsequently lively rain, and lo! from a glazed and stony soil will spring in a single night blossomed lilies, miraculously fair. Tom Green County was once the standard of measurement. I have forgotten how many New Jerseys and Rhode Islands it was that could have been stowed away and lost in its chaparral. But the legislative axe has slashed Tom Green into a handful of counties hardly larger than European kingdoms. The legislature convenes at Austin, near the centre of the state; and, while the representative from the Rio Grande country is gathering his palm-leaf fan and his linen duster to set out for the capital, the Panhandle solon winds his muffler above his well-buttoned overcoat and kicks the snow from his well-greased boots ready for the same journey. All this merely to hint that the big ex-republic of the Southwest forms a sizable star on the flag, and to prepare for the corollary that things sometimes happen there uncut to pattern and unfettered by metes and bounds.
|
||||
|
||||
The Commissioner of Insurance, Statistics, and History of the State of Texas was an official of no very great or very small importance. The past tense is used, for now he is Commissioner of Insurance alone. Statistics and history are no longer proper nouns in the government records.
|
||||
|
||||
In the year 188-, the governor appointed Luke Coonrod Standifer to be the head of this department. Standifer was then fifty-five years of age, and a Texan to the core. His father had been one of the state's earliest settlers and pioneers. Standifer himself had served the commonwealth as Indian fighter, soldier, ranger, and legislator. Much learning he did not claim, but he had drank pretty deep of the spring of experience.
|
||||
|
||||
If other grounds were less abundant, Texas should be well up in the lists of glory as the grateful republic. For both as republic and state, it has busily heaped honours and solid rewards upon its sons who rescued it from the wilderness.
|
||||
|
||||
Wherefore and therefore, Luke Coonrod Standifer, son of Ezra Standifer, ex-Terry ranger, simon-pure democrat, and lucky dweller in an unrepresented portion of the politico-geographical map, was appointed Commissioner of Insurance, Statistics, and History.
|
||||
|
||||
Standifer accepted the honour with some doubt as to the nature of the office he was to fill and his capacity for filling it---but he accepted, and by wire. He immediately set out from the little country town where he maintained (and was scarcely maintained by) a somnolent and unfruitful office of surveying and map-drawing. Before departing, he had looked up under the *I*'s, *S*'s and *H*'s in the "Encyclopaedia Britannica" what information and preparation toward his official duties that those weighty volumes afforded.
|
||||
|
||||
A few weeks of incumbency diminished the new commissioner's awe of the great and important office he had been called upon to conduct. An increasing familiarity with its workings soon restored him to his accustomed placid course of life. In his office was an old, spectacled clerk---a consecrated, informed, able machine, who held his desk regardless of changes of administrative heads. Old Kauffman instructed his new chief gradually in the knowledge of the department without seeming to do so, and kept the wheels revolving without the slip of a cog.
|
||||
|
||||
Indeed, the Department of Insurance, Statistics, and History carried no great heft of the burden of state. Its main work was the regulating of the business done in the state by foreign insurance companies, and the letter of the law was its guide. As for statistics---well, you wrote letters to county officers, and scissored other people's reports, and each year you got out a report of your own about the corn crop and the cotton crop and pecans and pigs and black and white population, and a great many columns of figures headed "bushels" and "acres" and "square miles," etc.---and there you were. History? The branch was purely a receptive one. Old ladies interested in the science bothered you some with long reports of proceedings of their historical societies. Some twenty or thirty people would write you each year that they had secured Sam Houston's pocketknife or Santa Ana's whisky-flask or Davy Crockett's rifle---all absolutely authenticated---and demanded legislative appropriation to purchase. Most of the work in the history branch went into pigeonholes.
|
||||
|
||||
One sizzling August afternoon the commissioner reclined in his office chair, with his feet upon the long, official table covered with green billiard cloth. The commissioner was smoking a cigar, and dreamily regarding the quivering landscape framed by the window that looked upon the treeless capitol grounds. Perhaps he was thinking of the rough and ready life he had led, of the old days of breathless adventure and movement, of the comrades who now trod other paths or had ceased to tread any, of the changes civilization and peace had brought, and, maybe, complacently, of the snug and comfortable camp pitched for him under the dome of the capitol of the state that had not forgotten his services.
|
||||
|
||||
The business of the department was lax. Insurance was easy. Statistics were not in demand. History was dead. Old Kauffman, the efficient and perpetual clerk, had requested an infrequent half-holiday, incited to the unusual dissipation by the joy of having successfully twisted the tail of a Connecticut insurance company that was trying to do business contrary to the edicts of the great Lone Star State.
|
||||
|
||||
The office was very still. A few subdued noises trickled in through the open door from the other departments---a dull tinkling crash from the treasurer's office adjoining, as a clerk tossed a bag of silver to the floor of the vault---the vague, intermittent clatter of a dilatory typewriter---a dull tapping from the state geologist's quarters as if some woodpecker had flown in to bore for his prey in the cool of the massive building---and then a faint rustle and the light shuffling of the well-worn shoes along the hall, the sounds ceasing at the door toward which the commissioner's lethargic back was presented. Following this, the sound of a gentle voice speaking words unintelligible to the commissioner's somewhat dormant comprehension, but giving evidence of bewilderment and hesitation.
|
||||
|
||||
The voice was feminine; the commissioner was of the race of cavaliers who make salaam before the trail of a skirt without considering the quality of its cloth.
|
||||
|
||||
There stood in the door a faded woman, one of the numerous sisterhood of the unhappy. She was dressed all in black---poverty's perpetual mourning for lost joys. Her face had the contours of twenty and the lines of forty. She may have lived that intervening score of years in a twelvemonth. There was about her yet an aurum of indignant, unappeased, protesting youth that shone faintly through the premature veil of unearned decline.
|
||||
|
||||
"I beg your pardon, ma'am," said the commissioner, gaining his feet to the accompaniment of a great creaking and sliding of his chair.
|
||||
|
||||
"Are you the governor, sir?" asked the vision of melancholy.
|
||||
|
||||
The commissioner hesitated at the end of his best bow, with his hand in the bosom of his double-breasted "frock." Truth at last conquered.
|
||||
|
||||
"Well, no, ma'am. I am not the governor. I have the honour to be Commissioner of Insurance, Statistics, and History. Is there anything, ma'am, I can do for you? Won't you have a chair, ma'am?"
|
||||
|
||||
The lady subsided into the chair handed her, probably from purely physical reasons. She wielded a cheap fan---last token of gentility to be abandoned. Her clothing seemed to indicate a reduction almost to extreme poverty. She looked at the man who was not the governor, and saw kindliness and simplicity and a rugged, unadorned courtliness emanating from a countenance tanned and toughened by forty years of outdoor life. Also, she saw that his eyes were clear and strong and blue. Just so they had been when he used them to skim the horizon for raiding Kiowas and Sioux. His mouth was as set and firm as it had been on that day when he bearded the old Lion Sam Houston himself, and defied him during that season when secession was the theme. Now, in bearing and dress, Luke Coonrod Sandifer endeavoured to do credit to the important arts and sciences of Insurance, Statistics, and History. He had abandoned the careless dress of his country home. Now, his broad-brimmed black slouch hat, and his long-tailed "frock" made him not the least imposing of the official family, even if his office was reckoned to stand at the tail of the list.
|
||||
|
||||
"You wanted to see the governor, ma'am?" asked the commissioner, with a deferential manner he always used toward the fair sex.
|
||||
|
||||
"I hardly know," said the lady, hesitatingly. "I suppose so." And then, suddenly drawn by the sympathetic look of the other, she poured forth the story of her need.
|
||||
|
||||
It was a story so common that the public has come to look at its monotony instead of its pity. The old tale of an unhappy married life---made so by a brutal, conscienceless husband, a robber, a spendthrift, a moral coward and a bully, who failed to provide even the means of the barest existence. Yes, he had come down in the scale so low as to strike her. It happened only the day before---there was the bruise on one temple---she had offended his highness by asking for a little money to live on. And yet she must needs, womanlike, append a plea for her tyrant---he was drinking; he had rarely abused her thus when sober.
|
||||
|
||||
"I thought," mourned this pale sister of sorrow, "that maybe the state might be willing to give me some relief. I've heard of such things being done for the families of old settlers. I've heard tell that the state used to give land to the men who fought for it against Mexico, and settled up the country, and helped drive out the Indians. My father did all of that, and he never received anything. He never would take it. I thought the governor would be the one to see, and that's why I came. If father was entitled to anything, they might let it come to me."
|
||||
|
||||
"It's possible, ma'am," said Standifer, "that such might be the case. But 'most all the veterans and settlers got their land certificates issued, and located long ago. Still, we can look that up in the land office, and be sure. Your father's name, now, was---"
|
||||
|
||||
"Amos Colvin, sir."
|
||||
|
||||
"Good Lord!" exclaimed Standifer, rising and unbuttoning his tight coat, excitedly. "Are you Amos Colvin's daughter? Why, ma'am, Amos Colvin and me were thicker than two hoss thieves for more than ten years! We fought Kiowas, drove cattle, and rangered side by side nearly all over Texas. I remember seeing you once before, now. You were a kid, about seven, a-riding a little yellow pony up and down. Amos and me stopped at your home for a little grub when we were trailing that band of Mexican cattle thieves down through Karnes and Bee. Great tarantulas! and you're Amos Colvin's little girl! Did you ever hear your father mention Luke Standifer---just kind of casually---as if he'd met me once or twice?"
|
||||
|
||||
A little pale smile flitted across the lady's white face.
|
||||
|
||||
"It seems to me," she said, "that I don't remember hearing him talk about much else. Every day there was some story he had to tell about what he and you had done. Mighty near the last thing I heard him tell was about the time when the Indians wounded him, and you crawled out to him through the grass, with a canteen of water, while they---"
|
||||
|
||||
"Yes, yes---well---oh, that wasn't anything," said Standifer, "hemming" loudly and buttoning his coat again, briskly. "And now, ma'am, who was the infernal skunk---I beg your pardon, ma'am---who was the gentleman you married?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Benton Sharp."
|
||||
|
||||
The commissioner plumped down again into his chair, with a groan. This gentle, sad little woman, in the rusty black gown, the daughter of his oldest friend, the wife of Benton Sharp! Benton Sharp, one of the most noted "bad" men in that part of the state---a man who had been a cattle thief, an outlaw, a desperado, and was now a gambler, a swaggering bully, who plied his trade in the larger frontier towns, relying upon his record and the quickness of his gun play to maintain his supremacy. Seldom did anyone take the risk of going "up against" Benton Sharp. Even the law officers were content to let him make his own terms of peace. Sharp was a ready and an accurate shot, and as lucky as a brand-new penny at coming clear from his scrapes. Standifer wondered how this pillaging eagle ever came to be mated with Amos Colvin's little dove, and expressed his wonder.
|
||||
|
||||
Mrs. Sharp sighed.
|
||||
|
||||
"You see, Mr. Standifer, we didn't know anything about him, and he can be very pleasant and kind when he wants to. We lived down in the little town of Goliad. Benton came riding down that way, and stopped there a while. I reckon I was some better looking then than I am now. He was good to me for a whole year after we were married. He insured his life for me for five thousand dollars. But for the last six months he has done everything but kill me. I often wish he had done that, too. He got out of money for a while, and abused me shamefully for not having anything he could spend. Then father died, and left me the little home in Goliad. My husband made me sell that, and turned me out into the world. I've barely been able to live, for I'm not strong enough to work. Lately, I heard he was making money in San Antonio, so I went there, and found him, and asked for a little help. This," touching the livid bruise on her temple, "is what he gave me. So I came on to Austin to see the governor. I once heard father say that there was some land, or a pension, coming to him from the state that he never would ask for."
|
||||
|
||||
Luke Standifer rose to his feet, and pushed his chair back. He looked rather perplexedly around the big office, with its handsome furniture.
|
||||
|
||||
"It's a long trail to follow," he said, slowly, "trying to get back dues from the government. There's red tape and lawyers and rulings and evidence and courts to keep you waiting. I'm not certain," continued the commissioner, with a profoundly meditative frown, "whether this department that I'm the boss of has any jurisdiction or not. It's only Insurance, Statistics, and History, ma'am, and it don't sound as if it would cover the case. But sometimes a saddle blanket can be made to stretch. You keep your seat, just for a few minutes, ma'am, till I step into the next room and see about it."
|
||||
|
||||
The state treasurer was seated within his massive, complicated railings, reading a newspaper. Business for the day was about over. The clerks lolled at their desks, awaiting the closing hour. The Commissioner of Insurance, Statistics, and History entered, and leaned in at the window.
|
||||
|
||||
The treasurer, a little, brisk old man, with snow-white moustache and beard, jumped up youthfully and came forward to greet Standifer. They were friends of old.
|
||||
|
||||
"Uncle Frank," said the commissioner, using the familiar name by which the historic treasurer was addressed by every Texan, "how much money have you got on hand?"
|
||||
|
||||
The treasurer named the sum of the last balance down to the odd cents---something more than a million dollars.
|
||||
|
||||
The commissioner whistled lowly, and his eyes grew hopefully bright.
|
||||
|
||||
"You know, or else you've heard of, Amos Colvin, Uncle Frank?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Knew him well," said the treasurer, promptly. "A good man. A valuable citizen. One of the first settlers in the Southwest."
|
||||
|
||||
"His daughter," said Standifer, "is sitting in my office. She's penniless. She's married to Benton Sharp, a coyote and a murderer. He's reduced her to want, and broken her heart. Her father helped build up this state, and it's the state's turn to help his child. A couple of thousand dollars will buy back her home and let her live in peace. The State of Texas can't afford to refuse it. Give me the money, Uncle Frank, and I'll give it to her right away. We'll fix up the red-tape business afterward."
|
||||
|
||||
The treasurer looked a little bewildered.
|
||||
|
||||
"Why, Standifer," he said, "you know I can't pay a cent out of the treasury without a warrant from the comptroller. I can't disburse a dollar without a voucher to show for it."
|
||||
|
||||
The commissioner betrayed a slight impatience.
|
||||
|
||||
"I'll give you a voucher," he declared. "What's this job they've given me for? Am I just a knot on a mesquite stump? Can't my office stand for it? Charge it up to Insurance and the other two sideshows. Don't Statistics show that Amos Colvin came to this state when it was in the hands of Greasers and rattlesnakes and Comanches, and fought day and night to make a white man's country of it? Don't they show that Amos Colvin's daughter is brought to ruin by a villain who's trying to pull down what you and I and old Texans shed our blood to build up? Don't History show that the Lone Star State never yet failed to grant relief to the suffering and oppressed children of the men who made her the grandest commonwealth in the Union? If Statistics and History don't bear out the claim of Amos Colvin's child I'll ask the next legislature to abolish my office. Come, now, Uncle Frank, let her have the money. I'll sign the papers officially, if you say so; and then if the governor or the comptroller or the janitor or anybody else makes a kick, by the Lord I'll refer the matter to the people, and see if they won't endorse the act."
|
||||
|
||||
The treasurer looked sympathetic but shocked. The commissioner's voice had grown louder as he rounded off the sentences that, however praiseworthy they might be in sentiment, reflected somewhat upon the capacity of the head of a more or less important department of state. The clerks were beginning to listen.
|
||||
|
||||
"Now, Standifer," said the treasurer, soothingly, "you know I'd like to help in this matter, but stop and think a moment, please. Every cent in the treasury is expended only by appropriation made by the legislature, and drawn out by checks issued by the comptroller. I can't control the use of a cent of it. Neither can you. Your department isn't disbursive---it isn't even administrative---it's purely clerical. The only way for the lady to obtain relief is to petition the legislature, and---"
|
||||
|
||||
"To the devil with the legislature," said Standifer, turning away.
|
||||
|
||||
The treasurer called him back.
|
||||
|
||||
"I'd be glad, Standifer, to contribute a hundred dollars personally toward the immediate expenses of Colvin's daughter." He reached for his pocketbook.
|
||||
|
||||
"Never mind, Uncle Frank," said the commissioner, in a softer tone. "There's no need of that. She hasn't asked for anything of that sort yet. Besides, her case is in my hands. I see now what a little, ragtag, bobtail, gotch-eared department I've been put in charge of. It seems to be about as important as an almanac or a hotel register. But while I'm running it, it won't turn away any daughters of Amos Colvin without stretching its jurisdiction to cover, if possible. You want to keep your eye on the Department of Insurance, Statistics, and History."
|
||||
|
||||
The commissioner returned to his office, looking thoughtful. He opened and closed an inkstand on his desk many times with extreme and undue attention. "Why don't you get a divorce?" he asked, suddenly.
|
||||
|
||||
"I haven't the money to pay for it," answered the lady.
|
||||
|
||||
"Just at present," announced the commissioner, in a formal tone, "the powers of my department appear to be considerably string-halted. Statistics seem to be overdrawn at the bank, and History isn't good for a square meal. But you've come to the right place, ma'am. The department will see you through. Where did you say your husband is, ma'am?"
|
||||
|
||||
"He was in San Antonio yesterday. He is living there now."
|
||||
|
||||
Suddenly the commissioner abandoned his official air. He took the faded little woman's hands in his, and spoke in the old voice he used on the trail and around campfires.
|
||||
|
||||
"Your name's Amanda, isn't it?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Yes, sir."
|
||||
|
||||
"I thought so. I've heard your dad say it often enough. Well, Amanda, here's your father's best friend, the head of a big office in the state government, that's going to help you out of your troubles. And here's the old bushwhacker and cowpuncher that your father has helped out of scrapes time and time again wants to ask you a question. Amanda, have you got money enough to run you for the next two or three days?"
|
||||
|
||||
Mrs. Sharp's white face flushed the least bit.
|
||||
|
||||
"Plenty, sir---for a few days."
|
||||
|
||||
"All right, then, ma'am. Now you go back where you are stopping here, and you come to the office again the day after tomorrow at four o'clock in the afternoon. Very likely by that time there will be something definite to report to you." The commissioner hesitated, and looked a trifle embarrassed. "You said your husband had insured his life for \$5,000. Do you know whether the premiums have been kept paid upon it or not?"
|
||||
|
||||
"He paid for a whole year in advance about five months ago," said Mrs. Sharp. "I have the policy and receipts in my trunk."
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh, that's all right, then," said Standifer. "It's best to look after things of that sort. Some day they may come in handy."
|
||||
|
||||
Mrs. Sharp departed, and soon afterward Luke Standifer went down to the little hotel where he boarded and looked up the railroad timetable in the daily paper. Half an hour later he removed his coat and vest, and strapped a peculiarly constructed pistol holster across his shoulders, leaving the receptacle close under his left armpit. Into the holster he shoved a short-barrelled .44 calibre revolver. Putting on his clothes again, he strolled to the station and caught the five-twenty afternoon train for San Antonio.
|
||||
|
||||
The San Antonio *Express* of the following morning contained this sensational piece of news:
|
||||
|
||||
> Benton Sharp Meets His Match > > **The Most Noted Desperado in Southwest Texas Shot to Death in the > Gold Front Restaurant---Prominent State Official Successfully Defends > Himself Against the Noted Bully---Magnificent Exhibition of Quick Gun > Play.** > > Last night about eleven o'clock Benton Sharp, with two other men, > entered the Gold Front Restaurant and seated themselves at a table. > Sharp had been drinking, and was loud and boisterous, as he always was > when under the influence of liquor. Five minutes after the party was > seated a tall, well-dressed, elderly gentleman entered the restaurant. > Few present recognized the Honourable Luke Standifer, the recently > appointed Commissioner of Insurance, Statistics, and History. > > Going over to the same side where Sharp was, Mr. Standifer prepared to > take a seat at the next table. In hanging his hat upon one of the > hooks along the wall he let it fall upon Sharp's head. Sharp turned, > being in an especially ugly humour, and cursed the other roundly. > Mr. Standifer apologized calmly for the accident, but Sharp continued > his vituperations. Mr. Standifer was observed to draw near and speak a > few sentences to the desperado in so low a tone that no one else > caught the words. Sharp sprang up, wild with rage. In the meantime > Standifer had stepped some yards away, and was standing quietly with > his arms folded across the breast of his loosely hanging coat. > > With that impetuous and deadly rapidity that made Sharp so dreaded, he > reached for the gun he always carried in his hip pocket---a movement > that has preceded the death of at least a dozen men at his hands. > Quick as the motion was, the bystanders assert that it was met by the > most beautiful exhibition of lightning gun-pulling ever witnessed in > the Southwest. As Sharp's pistol was being raised---and the act was > really quicker than the eye could follow---a glittering .44 appeared > as if by some conjuring trick in the right hand of Mr. Standifer, who, > without a perceptible movement of his arm, shot Benton Sharp through > the heart. It seems that the new Commissioner of Insurance, > Statistics, and History has been an old-time Indian fighter and ranger > for many years, which accounts for the happy knack he has of handling > a .44. > > It is not believed that Mr. Standifer will be put to any inconvenience > beyond a necessary formal hearing today, as all the witnesses who were > present unite in declaring that the deed was done in self-defence.
|
||||
|
||||
When Mrs. Sharp appeared at the office of the commissioner, according to appointment, she found that gentleman calmly eating a golden russet apple. He greeted her without embarrassment and without hesitation at approaching the subject that was the topic of the day.
|
||||
|
||||
"I had to do it, ma'am," he said, simply, "or get it myself. Mr. Kauffman," he added, turning to the old clerk, "please look up the records of the Security Life Insurance Company and see if they are all right."
|
||||
|
||||
"No need to look," grunted Kauffman, who had everything in his head. "It's all OK. They pay all losses within ten days."
|
||||
|
||||
Mrs. Sharp soon rose to depart. She had arranged to remain in town until the policy was paid. The commissioner did not detain her. She was a woman, and he did not know just what to say to her at present. Rest and time would bring her what she needed.
|
||||
|
||||
But, as she was leaving, Luke Standifer indulged himself in an official remark:
|
||||
|
||||
"The Department of Insurance, Statistics, and History, ma'am, has done the best it could with your case. 'Twas a case hard to cover according to red tape. Statistics failed, and History missed fire, but, if I may be permitted to say it, we came out particularly strong on Insurance."
|
||||
148
src/epub/text/a-dinner-at.md
Normal file
148
src/epub/text/a-dinner-at.md
Normal file
@ -0,0 +1,148 @@
|
||||
A Dinner at ⸻[3](endnotes.xhtml#note-3){#noteref-3} {#a-dinner-at-3 type="title"}
|
||||
---------------------------------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
> The Adventures of an Author With His Own Hero
|
||||
|
||||
All that day---in fact from the moment of his creation---Van Sweller had conducted himself fairly well in my eyes. Of course I had had to make many concessions; but in return he had been no less considerate. Once or twice we had had sharp, brief contentions over certain points of behavior; but, prevailingly, give and take had been our rule.
|
||||
|
||||
His morning toilet provoked our first tilt. Van Sweller went about it confidently.
|
||||
|
||||
"The usual thing, I suppose, old chap," he said, with a smile and a yawn. "I ring for a b. and s., and then I have my tub. I splash a good deal in the water, of course. You are aware that there are two ways in which I can receive Tommy Carmichael when he looks in to have a chat about polo. I can talk to him through the bathroom door, or I can be picking at a grilled bone which my man has brought in. Which would you prefer?"
|
||||
|
||||
I smiled with diabolic satisfaction at his coming discomfiture.
|
||||
|
||||
"Neither," I said. "You will make your appearance on the scene when a gentleman should---after you are fully dressed, which indubitably private function shall take place behind closed doors. And I will feel indebted to you if, after you do appear, your deportment and manners are such that it will not be necessary to inform the public, in order to appease its apprehension, that you have taken a bath."
|
||||
|
||||
Van Sweller slightly elevated his brows.
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh, very well," he said, a trifle piqued. "I rather imagine it concerns you more than it does me. Cut the 'tub' by all means, if you think best. But it has been the usual thing, you know."
|
||||
|
||||
This was my victory; but after Van Sweller emerged from his apartments in the "Beaujolie" I was vanquished in a dozen small but well-contested skirmishes. I allowed him a cigar; but routed him on the question of naming its brand. But he worsted me when I objected to giving him a "coat unmistakably English in its cut." I allowed him to "stroll down Broadway," and even permitted "passers by" (God knows there's nowhere to pass but by) to "turn their heads and gaze with evident admiration at his erect figure." I demeaned myself, and, as a barber, gave him a "smooth, dark face with its keen, frank eye, and firm jaw."
|
||||
|
||||
Later on he looked in at the club and saw Freddy Vavasour, polo team captain, dawdling over grilled bone No. 1.
|
||||
|
||||
"Dear old boy," began Van Sweller; but in an instant I had seized him by the collar and dragged him aside with the scantiest courtesy.
|
||||
|
||||
"For heaven's sake talk like a man," I said, sternly. "Do you think it is manly to use those mushy and inane forms of address? That man is neither dear nor old nor a boy."
|
||||
|
||||
To my surprise Van Sweller turned upon me a look of frank pleasure.
|
||||
|
||||
"I am glad to hear you say that," he said, heartily. "I used those words because I have been forced to say them so often. They really are contemptible. Thanks for correcting me, dear old boy."
|
||||
|
||||
Still I must admit that Van Sweller's conduct in the park that morning was almost without flaw. The courage, the dash, the modesty, the skill, and fidelity that he displayed atoned for everything.
|
||||
|
||||
This is the way the story runs. Van Sweller has been a gentleman member of the "Rugged Riders," the company that made a war with a foreign country famous. Among his comrades was Lawrence O'Roon, a man whom Van Sweller liked. A strange thing---and a hazardous one in fiction---was that Van Sweller and O'Roon resembled each other mightily in face, form, and general appearance. After the war Van Sweller pulled wires, and O'Roon was made a mounted policeman.
|
||||
|
||||
Now, one night in New York there are commemorations and libations by old comrades, and in the morning, Mounted Policeman O'Roon, unused to potent liquids---another premise hazardous in fiction---finds the earth bucking and bounding like a bronco, with no stirrup into which he may insert foot and save his honor and his badge.
|
||||
|
||||
[Noblesse oblige]{lang="fr"}? Surely. So out along the driveways and bridle paths trots Hudson Van Sweller in the uniform of his incapacitated comrade, as like unto him as one French pea is unto a *petit pois*.
|
||||
|
||||
It is, of course, jolly larks for Van Sweller, who has wealth and social position enough for him to masquerade safely even as a police commissioner doing his duty, if he wished to do so. But society, not given to scanning the countenances of mounted policemen, sees nothing unusual in the officer on the beat.
|
||||
|
||||
And then comes the runaway.
|
||||
|
||||
That is a fine scene---the swaying victoria, the impetuous, daft horses plunging through the line of scattering vehicles, the driver stupidly holding his broken reins, and the ivory-white face of Amy Ffolliott, as she clings desperately with each slender hand. Fear has come and gone: it has left her expression pensive and just a little pleading, for life is not so bitter.
|
||||
|
||||
And then the clatter and swoop of Mounted Policeman Van Sweller! Oh, it was---but the story has not yet been printed. When it is you shall learn bow he sent his bay like a bullet after the imperilled victoria. A Crichton, a Croesus, and a Centaur in one, he hurls the invincible combination into the chase.
|
||||
|
||||
When the story is printed you will admire the breathless scene where Van Sweller checks the headlong team. And then he looks into Amy Ffolliott's eyes and sees two things---the possibilities of a happiness he has long sought, and a nascent promise of it. He is unknown to her; but he stands in her sight illuminated by the hero's potent glory, she his and he hers by all the golden, fond, unreasonable laws of love and light literature.
|
||||
|
||||
Ay, that is a rich moment. And it will stir you to find Van Sweller in that fruitful nick of time thinking of his comrade O'Roon, who is cursing his gyrating bed and incapable legs in an unsteady room in a West Side hotel while Van Sweller holds his badge and his honor.
|
||||
|
||||
Van Sweller hears Miss Ffolliott's voice thrillingly asking the name of her preserver. If Hudson Van Sweller, in policeman's uniform, has saved the life of palpitating beauty in the park---where is Mounted Policeman O'Roon, in whose territory the deed is done? How quickly by a word can the hero reveal himself, thus discarding his masquerade of ineligibility and doubling the romance! But there is his friend!
|
||||
|
||||
Van Sweller touches his cap. "It's nothing, Miss," he says, sturdily; "that's what we are paid for---to do our duty." And away he rides. But the story does not end there.
|
||||
|
||||
As I have said, Van Sweller carried off the park scene to my decided satisfaction. Even to me he was a hero when he foreswore, for the sake of his friend, the romantic promise of his adventure. It was later in the day, amongst the more exacting conventions that encompass the society hero, when we had our liveliest disagreement. At noon he went to O'Roon's room and found him far enough recovered to return to his post, which he at once did.
|
||||
|
||||
At about six o'clock in the afternoon Van Sweller fingered his watch, and flashed at me a brief look full of such shrewd cunning that I suspected him at once.
|
||||
|
||||
"Time to dress for dinner, old man," he said, with exaggerated carelessness.
|
||||
|
||||
"Very well," I answered, without giving him a clue to my suspicions; "I will go with you to your rooms and see that you do the thing properly. I suppose that every author must be a valet to his own hero."
|
||||
|
||||
He affected cheerful acceptance of my somewhat officious proposal to accompany him. I could see that he was annoyed by it, and that fact fastened deeper in my mind the conviction that he was meditating some act of treachery.
|
||||
|
||||
When he had reached his apartments he said to me, with a too patronizing air: "There are, as you perhaps know, quite a number of little distinguishing touches to be had out of the dressing process. Some writers rely almost wholly upon them. I suppose that I am to ring for my man, and that he is to enter noiselessly, with an expressionless countenance."
|
||||
|
||||
"He may enter," I said, with decision, "and only enter. Valets do not usually enter a room shouting college songs or with St. Vitus's dance in their faces; so the contrary may be assumed without fatuous or gratuitous asseveration."
|
||||
|
||||
"I must ask you to pardon me," continued Van Sweller, gracefully, "for annoying you with questions, but some of your methods are a little new to me. Shall I don a full-dress suit with an immaculate white tie---or is there another tradition to be upset?"
|
||||
|
||||
"You will wear," I replied, "evening dress, such as a gentleman wears. If it is full, your tailor should be responsible for its bagginess. And I will leave it to whatever erudition you are supposed to possess whether a white tie is rendered any whiter by being immaculate. And I will leave it to the consciences of you and your man whether a tie that is not white, and therefore not immaculate, could possibly form any part of a gentleman's evening dress. If not, then the perfect tie is included and understood in the term 'dress,' and its expressed addition predicates either a redundancy of speech or the spectacle of a man wearing two ties at once."
|
||||
|
||||
With this mild but deserved rebuke I left Van Sweller in his dressing-room, and waited for him in his library.
|
||||
|
||||
About an hour later his valet came out, and I heard him telephone for an electric cab. Then out came Van Sweller, smiling, but with that sly, secretive design in his eye that was puzzling me.
|
||||
|
||||
"I believe," he said easily, as he smoothed a glove, "that I will drop in at ⸻[4](endnotes.xhtml#note-4){#noteref-4} for dinner."
|
||||
|
||||
I sprang up, angrily, at his words. This, then, was the paltry trick he had been scheming to play upon me. I faced him with a look so grim that even his patrician poise was flustered.
|
||||
|
||||
"You will never do so," I exclaimed, "with my permission. What kind of a return is this," I continued, hotly, "for the favors I have granted you? I gave you a 'Van' to your name when I might have called you 'Perkins' or 'Simpson.' I have humbled myself so far as to brag of your polo ponies, your automobiles, and the iron muscles that you acquired when you were stroke-oar of your 'varsity eight,' or 'eleven,' whichever it is. I created you for the hero of this story; and I will not submit to having you queer it. I have tried to make you a typical young New York gentleman of the highest social station and breeding. You have no reason to complain of my treatment to you. Amy Ffolliott, the girl you are to win, is a prize for any man to be thankful for, and cannot be equalled for beauty---provided the story is illustrated by the right artist. I do not understand why you should try to spoil everything. I had thought you were a gentleman."
|
||||
|
||||
"What it is you are objecting to, old man?" asked Van Sweller, in a surprised tone.
|
||||
|
||||
"To your dining at ⸻,"[5](endnotes.xhtml#note-5){#noteref-5} I answered. "The pleasure would be yours, no doubt, but the responsibility would fall upon me. You intend deliberately to make me out a tout for a restaurant. Where you dine tonight has not the slightest connection with the thread of our story. You know very well that the plot requires that you be in front of the Alhambra Opera House at 11:30 where you are to rescue Miss Ffolliott a second time as the fire engine crashes into her cab. Until that time your movements are immaterial to the reader. Why can't you dine out of sight somewhere, as many a hero does, instead of insisting upon an inapposite and vulgar exhibition of yourself?"
|
||||
|
||||
"My dear fellow," said Van Sweller, politely, but with a stubborn tightening of his lips, "I'm sorry it doesn't please you, but there's no help for it. Even a character in a story has rights that an author cannot ignore. The hero of a story of New York social life must dine at ⸻[6](endnotes.xhtml#note-6){#noteref-6} at least once during its action."
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Must,' " I echoed, disdainfully; "why 'must'? Who demands it?"
|
||||
|
||||
"The magazine editors," answered Van Sweller, giving me a glance of significant warning.
|
||||
|
||||
"But why?" I persisted.
|
||||
|
||||
"To please subscribers around Kankakee, Ill.," said Van Sweller, without hesitation.
|
||||
|
||||
"How do you know these things?" I inquired, with sudden suspicion. "You never came into existence until this morning. You are only a character in fiction, anyway. I, myself, created you. How is it possible for you to know anything?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Pardon me for referring to it," said Van Sweller, with a sympathetic smile, "but I have been the hero of hundreds of stories of this kind."
|
||||
|
||||
I felt a slow flush creeping into my face.
|
||||
|
||||
"I thought ..." I stammered; "I was hoping ... that is ... Oh, well, of course an absolutely original conception in fiction is impossible in these days."
|
||||
|
||||
"Metropolitan types," continued Van Sweller, kindly, "do not offer a hold for much originality. I've sauntered through every story in pretty much the same way. Now and then the women writers have made me cut some rather strange capers, for a gentleman; but the men generally pass me along from one to another without much change. But never yet, in any story, have I failed to dine at ⸻."[7](endnotes.xhtml#note-7){#noteref-7}
|
||||
|
||||
"You will fail this time," I said, emphatically.
|
||||
|
||||
"Perhaps so," admitted Van Sweller, looking out of the window into the street below, "but if so it will be for the first time. The authors all send me there. I fancy that many of them would have liked to accompany me, but for the little matter of the expense."
|
||||
|
||||
"I say I will be touting for no restaurant," I repeated, loudly. "You are subject to my will, and I declare that you shall not appear of record this evening until the time arrives for you to rescue Miss Ffolliott again. If the reading public cannot conceive that you have dined during that interval at some one of the thousands of establishments provided for that purpose that do not receive literary advertisement it may suppose, for aught I care, that you have gone fasting."
|
||||
|
||||
"Thank you," said Van Sweller, rather coolly, "you are hardly courteous. But take care! it is at your own risk that you attempt to disregard a fundamental principle in metropolitan fiction---one that is dear alike to author and reader. I shall, of course attend to my duty when it comes time to rescue your heroine; but I warn you that it will be your loss if you fail to send me tonight to dine at ⸻."[8](endnotes.xhtml#note-8){#noteref-8}
|
||||
|
||||
"I will take the consequences if there are to be any," I replied. "I am not yet come to be sandwich man for an eating-house."
|
||||
|
||||
I walked over to a table where I had left my cane and gloves. I heard the whirr of the alarm in the cab below and I turned quickly. Van Sweller was gone.
|
||||
|
||||
I rushed down the stairs and out to the curb. An empty hansom was just passing. I hailed the driver excitedly.
|
||||
|
||||
"See that auto cab halfway down the block?" I shouted. "Follow it. Don't lose sight of it for an instant, and I will give you two dollars!"
|
||||
|
||||
If I only had been one of the characters in my story instead of myself I could easily have offered \$10 or \$25 or even \$100. But \$2 was all I felt justified in expending, with fiction at its present rates.
|
||||
|
||||
The cab driver, instead of lashing his animal into a foam, proceeded at a deliberate trot that suggested a by-the-hour arrangement.
|
||||
|
||||
But I suspected Van Sweller's design; and when we lost sight of his cab I ordered my driver to proceed at once to ⸻.[9](endnotes.xhtml#note-9){#noteref-9}
|
||||
|
||||
I found Van Sweller at a table under a palm, just glancing over the menu, with a hopeful waiter hovering at his elbow.
|
||||
|
||||
"Come with me," I said, inexorably. "You will not give me the slip again. Under my eye you shall remain until 11:30."
|
||||
|
||||
Van Sweller countermanded the order for his dinner, and arose to accompany me. He could scarcely do less. A fictitious character is but poorly equipped for resisting a hungry but live author who comes to drag him forth from a restaurant. All he said was: "You were just in time; but I think you are making a mistake. You cannot afford to ignore the wishes of the great reading public."
|
||||
|
||||
I took Van Sweller to my own rooms---to my room. He had never seen anything like it before.
|
||||
|
||||
"Sit on that trunk," I said to him, "while I observe whether the landlady is stalking us. If she is not, I will get things at a delicatessen store below, and cook something for you in a pan over the gas jet. It will not be so bad. Of course nothing of this will appear in the story."
|
||||
|
||||
"Jove! old man!" said Van Sweller, looking about him with interest, "this is a jolly little closet you live in! Where the devil do you sleep?---Oh, that pulls down! And I say---what is this under the corner of the carpet?---Oh, a frying pan! I see---clever idea! Fancy cooking over the gas! What larks it will be!"
|
||||
|
||||
"Think of anything you could eat?" I asked; "try a chop, or what?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Anything," said Van Sweller, enthusiastically, "except a grilled bone."
|
||||
|
||||
Two weeks afterward the postman brought me a large, fat envelope. I opened it, and took out something that I had seen before, and this typewritten letter from a magazine that encourages society fiction:
|
||||
|
||||
> Your short story, "The Badge of Policeman O'Roon," is herewith > returned. > > We are sorry that it has been unfavorably passed upon; but it seems to > lack in some of the essential requirements of our publication. > > The story is splendidly constructed; its style is strong and > inimitable, and its action and character-drawing deserve the highest > praise. As a story per se it has merit beyond anything that we have > read for some time. But, as we have said, it fails to come up to some > of the standards we have set. > > Could you not rewrite the story, and inject into it the social > atmosphere, and return it to us for further consideration? It is > suggested to you that you have the hero, Van Sweller, drop in for > luncheon or dinner once or twice at > ⸻[10](endnotes.xhtml#note-10){#noteref-10} or at the > ⸻[11](endnotes.xhtml#note-11){#noteref-11} which will be in line with > the changes desired. > > Very truly yours, > > The Editors
|
||||
4
src/epub/text/a-disagreement.md
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4
src/epub/text/a-disagreement.md
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|
||||
A Disagreement {#a-disagreement type="title"}
|
||||
--------------
|
||||
|
||||
"Dat Mr. Bergman, vot run de obera house, not dread me right," said a Houston citizen. "Ven I go dere und vant ein dicket to see dot 'Schpider und dot Vly' gompany de oder night, I asg him dot he let me in mit half brice, for I was teaf py von ear, and can not but one half of dot performance hear; und he dell me I should bay double brice, as it vould dake me dwice as long to hear de berformance as anypody else."
|
||||
192
src/epub/text/a-double-dyed-deceiver.md
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src/epub/text/a-double-dyed-deceiver.md
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|
||||
A Double-Dyed Deceiver {#a-double-dyed-deceiver type="title"}
|
||||
----------------------
|
||||
|
||||
The trouble began in Laredo. It was the Llano Kid's fault, for he should have confined his habit of manslaughter to Mexicans. But the Kid was past twenty; and to have only Mexicans to one's credit at twenty is to blush unseen on the Rio Grande border.
|
||||
|
||||
It happened in old Justo Valdos's gambling house. There was a poker game at which sat players who were not all friends, as happens often where men ride in from afar to shoot Folly as she gallops. There was a row over so small a matter as a pair of queens; and when the smoke had cleared away it was found that the Kid had committed an indiscretion, and his adversary had been guilty of a blunder. For, the unfortunate combatant, instead of being a Greaser, was a high-blooded youth from the cow ranches, of about the Kid's own age and possessed of friends and champions. His blunder in missing the Kid's right ear only a sixteenth of an inch when he pulled his gun did not lessen the indiscretion of the better marksman.
|
||||
|
||||
The Kid, not being equipped with a retinue, nor bountifully supplied with personal admirers and supporters---on account of a rather umbrageous reputation, even for the border---considered it not incompatible with his indisputable gameness to perform that judicious tractional act known as "pulling his freight."
|
||||
|
||||
Quickly the avengers gathered and sought him. Three of them overtook him within a rod of the station. The Kid turned and showed his teeth in that brilliant but mirthless smile that usually preceded his deeds of insolence and violence, and his pursuers fell back without making it necessary for him even to reach for his weapon.
|
||||
|
||||
But in this affair the Kid had not felt the grim thirst for encounter that usually urged him on to battle. It had been a purely chance row, born of the cards and certain epithets impossible for a gentleman to brook that had passed between the two. The Kid had rather liked the slim, haughty, brown-faced young chap whom his bullet had cut off in the first pride of manhood. And now he wanted no more blood. He wanted to get away and have a good long sleep somewhere in the sun on the mesquite grass with his handkerchief over his face. Even a Mexican might have crossed his path in safety while he was in this mood.
|
||||
|
||||
The Kid openly boarded the northbound passenger train that departed five minutes later. But at Webb, a few miles out, where it was flagged to take on a traveller, he abandoned that manner of escape. There were telegraph stations ahead; and the Kid looked askance at electricity and steam. Saddle and spur were his rocks of safety.
|
||||
|
||||
The man whom he had shot was a stranger to him. But the Kid knew that he was of the Coralitos outfit from Hidalgo; and that the punchers from that ranch were more relentless and vengeful than Kentucky feudists when wrong or harm was done to one of them. So, with the wisdom that has characterized many great fighters, the Kid decided to pile up as many leagues as possible of chaparral and pear between himself and the retaliation of the Coralitos bunch.
|
||||
|
||||
Near the station was a store; and near the store, scattered among the mesquits and elms, stood the saddled horses of the customers. Most of them waited, half asleep, with sagging limbs and drooping heads. But one, a long-legged roan with a curved neck, snorted and pawed the turf. Him the Kid mounted, gripped with his knees, and slapped gently with the owner's own quirt.
|
||||
|
||||
If the slaying of the temerarious card-player had cast a cloud over the Kid's standing as a good and true citizen, this last act of his veiled his figure in the darkest shadows of disrepute. On the Rio Grande border if you take a man's life you sometimes take trash; but if you take his horse, you take a thing the loss of which renders him poor, indeed, and which enriches you not---if you are caught. For the Kid there was no turning back now.
|
||||
|
||||
With the springing roan under him he felt little care or uneasiness. After a five-mile gallop he drew in to the plainsman's jogging trot, and rode northeastward toward the Nueces River bottoms. He knew the country well---its most tortuous and obscure trails through the great wilderness of brush and pear, and its camps and lonesome ranches where one might find safe entertainment. Always he bore to the east; for the Kid had never seen the ocean, and he had a fancy to lay his hand upon the mane of the great Gulf, the gamesome colt of the greater waters.
|
||||
|
||||
So after three days he stood on the shore at Corpus Christi, and looked out across the gentle ripples of a quiet sea.
|
||||
|
||||
Captain Boone, of the schooner *Flyaway*, stood near his skiff, which one of his crew was guarding in the surf. When ready to sail he had discovered that one of the necessaries of life, in the parallelogrammatic shape of plug tobacco, had been forgotten. A sailor had been dispatched for the missing cargo. Meanwhile the captain paced the sands, chewing profanely at his pocket store.
|
||||
|
||||
A slim, wiry youth in high-heeled boots came down to the water's edge. His face was boyish, but with a premature severity that hinted at a man's experience. His complexion was naturally dark; and the sun and wind of an outdoor life had burned it to a coffee brown. His hair was as black and straight as an Indian's; his face had not yet been upturned to the humiliation of a razor; his eyes were a cold and steady blue. He carried his left arm somewhat away from his body, for pearl-handled .45s are frowned upon by town marshals, and are a little bulky when placed in the left armhole of one's vest. He looked beyond Captain Boone at the gulf with the impersonal and expressionless dignity of a Chinese emperor.
|
||||
|
||||
"Thinkin' of buyin' that'ar gulf, buddy?" asked the captain, made sarcastic by his narrow escape from a tobaccoless voyage.
|
||||
|
||||
"Why, no," said the Kid gently, "I reckon not. I never saw it before. I was just looking at it. Not thinking of selling it, are you?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Not this trip," said the captain. "I'll send it to you C.O.D. when I get back to Buenas Tierras. Here comes that capstanfooted lubber with the chewin'. I ought to've weighed anchor an hour ago."
|
||||
|
||||
"Is that your ship out there?" asked the Kid.
|
||||
|
||||
"Why, yes," answered the captain, "if you want to call a schooner a ship, and I don't mind lyin'. But you better say Miller and Gonzales, owners, and ordinary plain, Billy-be-damned old Samuel K. Boone, skipper."
|
||||
|
||||
"Where are you going to?" asked the refugee.
|
||||
|
||||
"Buenas Tierras, coast of South America---I forgot what they called the country the last time I was there. Cargo---lumber, corrugated iron, and machetes."
|
||||
|
||||
"What kind of a country is it?" asked the Kid---"hot or cold?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Warmish, buddy," said the captain. "But a regular Paradise Lost for elegance of scenery and be-yooty of geography. Ye're wakened every morning by the sweet singin' of red birds with seven purple tails, and the sighin' of breezes in the posies and roses. And the inhabitants never work, for they can reach out and pick steamer baskets of the choicest hothouse fruit without gettin' out of bed. And there's no Sunday and no ice and no rent and no troubles and no use and no nothin'. It's a great country for a man to go to sleep with, and wait for somethin' to turn up. The bananys and oranges and hurricanes and pineapples that ye eat comes from there."
|
||||
|
||||
"That sounds to me!" said the Kid, at last betraying interest. "What'll the expressage be to take me out there with you?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Twenty-four dollars," said Captain Boone; "grub and transportation. Second cabin. I haven't got a first cabin."
|
||||
|
||||
"You've got my company," said the Kid, pulling out a buckskin bag.
|
||||
|
||||
With three hundred dollars he had gone to Laredo for his regular "blowout." The duel in Valdos's had cut short his season of hilarity, but it had left him with nearly \$200 for aid in the flight that it had made necessary.
|
||||
|
||||
"All right, buddy," said the captain. "I hope your ma won't blame me for this little childish escapade of yours." He beckoned to one of the boat's crew. "Let Sanchez lift you out to the skiff so you won't get your feet wet."
|
||||
|
||||
------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
Thacker, the United States consul at Buenas Tierras, was not yet drunk. It was only eleven o'clock; and he never arrived at his desired state of beatitude---a state wherein he sang ancient maudlin vaudeville songs and pelted his screaming parrot with banana peels---until the middle of the afternoon. So, when he looked up from his hammock at the sound of a slight cough, and saw the Kid standing in the door of the consulate, he was still in a condition to extend the hospitality and courtesy due from the representative of a great nation. "Don't disturb yourself," said the Kid, easily. "I just dropped in. They told me it was customary to light at your camp before starting in to round up the town. I just came in on a ship from Texas."
|
||||
|
||||
"Glad to see you, Mr.---" said the consul.
|
||||
|
||||
The Kid laughed.
|
||||
|
||||
"Sprague Dalton," he said. "It sounds funny to me to hear it. I'm called the Llano Kid in the Rio Grande country."
|
||||
|
||||
"I'm Thacker," said the consul. "Take that cane-bottom chair. Now if you've come to invest, you want somebody to advise you. These dingies will cheat you out of the gold in your teeth if you don't understand their ways. Try a cigar?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Much obliged," said the Kid, "but if it wasn't for my corn shucks and the little bag in my back pocket I couldn't live a minute." He took out his "makings," and rolled a cigarette.
|
||||
|
||||
"They speak Spanish here," said the consul. "You'll need an interpreter. If there's anything I can do, why, I'd be delighted. If you're buying fruit lands or looking for a concession of any sort, you'll want somebody who knows the ropes to look out for you."
|
||||
|
||||
"I speak Spanish," said the Kid, "about nine times better than I do English. Everybody speaks it on the range where I come from. And I'm not in the market for anything."
|
||||
|
||||
"You speak Spanish?" said Thacker thoughtfully. He regarded the kid absorbedly.
|
||||
|
||||
"You look like a Spaniard, too," he continued. "And you're from Texas. And you can't be more than twenty or twenty-one. I wonder if you've got any nerve."
|
||||
|
||||
"You got a deal of some kind to put through?" asked the Texan, with unexpected shrewdness.
|
||||
|
||||
"Are you open to a proposition?" said Thacker.
|
||||
|
||||
"What's the use to deny it?" said the Kid. "I got into a little gun frolic down in Laredo and plugged a white man. There wasn't any Mexican handy. And I come down to your parrot-and-monkey range just for to smell the morning-glories and marigolds. Now, do you sabe?"
|
||||
|
||||
Thacker got up and closed the door.
|
||||
|
||||
"Let me see your hand," he said.
|
||||
|
||||
He took the Kid's left hand, and examined the back of it closely.
|
||||
|
||||
"I can do it," he said excitedly. "Your flesh is as hard as wood and as healthy as a baby's. It will heal in a week."
|
||||
|
||||
"If it's a fist fight you want to back me for," said the Kid, "don't put your money up yet. Make it gun work, and I'll keep you company. But no barehanded scrapping, like ladies at a tea-party, for me."
|
||||
|
||||
"It's easier than that," said Thacker. "Just step here, will you?"
|
||||
|
||||
Through the window he pointed to a two-story white-stuccoed house with wide galleries rising amid the deep-green tropical foliage on a wooded hill that sloped gently from the sea.
|
||||
|
||||
"In that house," said Thacker, "a fine old Castilian gentleman and his wife are yearning to gather you into their arms and fill your pockets with money. Old Santos Urique lives there. He owns half the goldmines in the country."
|
||||
|
||||
"You haven't been eating loco weed, have you?" asked the Kid.
|
||||
|
||||
"Sit down again," said Thacker, "and I'll tell you. Twelve years ago they lost a kid. No, he didn't die---although most of 'em here do from drinking the surface water. He was a wild little devil, even if he wasn't but eight years old. Everybody knows about it. Some Americans who were through here prospecting for gold had letters to Señor Urique, and the boy was a favorite with them. They filled his head with big stories about the States; and about a month after they left, the kid disappeared, too. He was supposed to have stowed himself away among the banana bunches on a fruit steamer, and gone to New Orleans. He was seen once afterward in Texas, it was thought, but they never heard anything more of him. Old Urique has spent thousands of dollars having him looked for. The madam was broken up worst of all. The kid was her life. She wears mourning yet. But they say she believes he'll come back to her some day, and never gives up hope. On the back of the boy's left hand was tattooed a flying eagle carrying a spear in his claws. That's old Urique's coat of arms or something that he inherited in Spain."
|
||||
|
||||
The Kid raised his left hand slowly and gazed at it curiously.
|
||||
|
||||
"That's it," said Thacker, reaching behind the official desk for his bottle of smuggled brandy. "You're not so slow. I can do it. What was I consul at Sandakan for? I never knew till now. In a week I'll have the eagle bird with the frog-sticker blended in so you'd think you were born with it. I brought a set of the needles and ink just because I was sure you'd drop in some day, Mr. Dalton."
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh, hell," said the Kid. "I thought I told you my name!"
|
||||
|
||||
"All right, 'Kid,' then. It won't be that long. How does Señorito Urique sound, for a change?"
|
||||
|
||||
"I never played son any that I remember of," said the Kid. "If I had any parents to mention they went over the divide about the time I gave my first bleat. What is the plan of your roundup?"
|
||||
|
||||
Thacker leaned back against the wall and held his glass up to the light.
|
||||
|
||||
"We've come now," said he, "to the question of how far you're willing to go in a little matter of the sort."
|
||||
|
||||
"I told you why I came down here," said the Kid simply.
|
||||
|
||||
"A good answer," said the consul. "But you won't have to go that far. Here's the scheme. After I get the trademark tattooed on your hand I'll notify old Urique. In the meantime I'll furnish you with all of the family history I can find out, so you can be studying up points to talk about. You've got the looks, you speak the Spanish, you know the facts, you can tell about Texas, you've got the tattoo mark. When I notify them that the rightful heir has returned and is waiting to know whether he will be received and pardoned, what will happen? They'll simply rush down here and fall on your neck, and the curtain goes down for refreshments and a stroll in the lobby."
|
||||
|
||||
"I'm waiting," said the Kid. "I haven't had my saddle off in your camp long, pardner, and I never met you before; but if you intend to let it go at a parental blessing, why, I'm mistaken in my man, that's all."
|
||||
|
||||
"Thanks," said the consul. "I haven't met anybody in a long time that keeps up with an argument as well as you do. The rest of it is simple. If they take you in only for a while it's long enough. Don't give 'em time to hunt up the strawberry mark on your left shoulder. Old Urique keeps anywhere from \$50,000 to \$100,000 in his house all the time in a little safe that you could open with a shoe buttoner. Get it. My skill as a tattooer is worth half the boddle. We go halves and catch a tramp steamer for Rio Janeiro. Let the United States go to pieces if it can't get along without my services. *Qué dice, señor?*"
|
||||
|
||||
"It sounds to me!" said the Kid, nodding his head. "I'm out for the dust."
|
||||
|
||||
"All right, then," said Thacker. "You'll have to keep close until we get the bird on you. You can live in the back room here. I do my own cooking, and I'll make you as comfortable as a parsimonious Government will allow me."
|
||||
|
||||
Thacker had set the time at a week, but it was two weeks before the design that he patiently tattooed upon the Kid's hand was to his notion. And then Thacker called a muchacho, and dispatched this note to the intended victim:
|
||||
|
||||
> El Señor Don Santos Urique, > > La Casa Blanca, > > My Dear Sir: > > I beg permission to inform you that there is in my house as a > temporary guest a young man who arrived in Buenas Tierras from the > United States some days ago. Without wishing to excite any hopes that > may not be realized, I think there is a possibility of his being your > long-absent son. It might be well for you to call and see him. If he > is, it is my opinion that his intention was to return to his home, but > upon arriving here, his courage failed him from doubts as to how he > would be received. [Your true servant,]{type="z3998:valediction"} > > Thompson Thacker.
|
||||
|
||||
Half an hour afterward---quick time for Buenas Tierras---Señor Urique's ancient landau drove to the consul's door, with the barefooted coachman beating and shouting at the team of fat, awkward horses.
|
||||
|
||||
A tall man with a white moustache alighted, and assisted to the ground a lady who was dressed and veiled in unrelieved black.
|
||||
|
||||
The two hastened inside, and were met by Thacker with his best diplomatic bow. By his desk stood a slender young man with clear-cut, sun-browned features and smoothly brushed black hair.
|
||||
|
||||
Señora Urique threw back her black veil with a quick gesture. She was past middle age, and her hair was beginning to silver, but her full, proud figure and clear olive skin retained traces of the beauty peculiar to the Basque province. But, once you had seen her eyes, and comprehended the great sadness that was revealed in their deep shadows and hopeless expression, you saw that the woman lived only in some memory.
|
||||
|
||||
She bent upon the young man a long look of the most agonized questioning. Then her great black eyes turned, and her gaze rested upon his left hand. And then with a sob, not loud, but seeming to shake the room, she cried "*Hijo mio!*" and caught the Llano Kid to her heart.
|
||||
|
||||
A month afterward the Kid came to the consulate in response to a message sent by Thacker.
|
||||
|
||||
He looked the young Spanish caballero. His clothes were imported, and the wiles of the jewellers had not been spent upon him in vain. A more than respectable diamond shone on his finger as he rolled a shuck cigarette.
|
||||
|
||||
"What's doing?" asked Thacker.
|
||||
|
||||
"Nothing much," said the Kid calmly. "I eat my first iguana steak today. They're them big lizards, you sabe? I reckon, though, that frijoles and side bacon would do me about as well. Do you care for iguanas, Thacker?"
|
||||
|
||||
"No, nor for some other kinds of reptiles," said Thacker.
|
||||
|
||||
It was three in the afternoon, and in another hour he would be in his state of beatitude.
|
||||
|
||||
"It's time you were making good, sonny," he went on, with an ugly look on his reddened face. "You're not playing up to me square. You've been the prodigal son for four weeks now, and you could have had veal for every meal on a gold dish if you'd wanted it. Now, Mr. Kid, do you think it's right to leave me out so long on a husk diet? What's the trouble? Don't you get your filial eyes on anything that looks like cash in the Casa Blanca? Don't tell me you don't. Everybody knows where old Urique keeps his stuff. It's U.S. currency, too; he don't accept anything else. What's doing? Don't say 'nothing' this time."
|
||||
|
||||
"Why, sure," said the Kid, admiring his diamond, "there's plenty of money up there. I'm no judge of collateral in bunches, but I will undertake for to say that I've seen the rise of \$50,000 at a time in that tin grub box that my adopted father calls his safe. And he lets me carry the key sometimes just to show me that he knows I'm the real little Francisco that strayed from the herd a long time ago."
|
||||
|
||||
"Well, what are you waiting for?" asked Thacker, angrily. "Don't you forget that I can upset your applecart any day I want to. If old Urique knew you were an imposter, what sort of things would happen to you? Oh, you don't know this country, Mr. Texas Kid. The laws here have got mustard spread between 'em. These people here'd stretch you out like a frog that had been stepped on, and give you about fifty sticks at every corner of the plaza. And they'd wear every stick out, too. What was left of you they'd feed to alligators."
|
||||
|
||||
"I might just as well tell you now, pardner," said the Kid, sliding down low on his steamer chair, "that things are going to stay just as they are. They're about right now."
|
||||
|
||||
"What do you mean?" asked Thacker, rattling the bottom of his glass on his desk.
|
||||
|
||||
"The scheme's off," said the Kid. "And whenever you have the pleasure of speaking to me address me as Don Francisco Urique. I'll guarantee I'll answer to it. We'll let Colonel Urique keep his money. His little tin safe is as good as the time-locker in the First National Bank of Laredo as far as you and me are concerned."
|
||||
|
||||
"You're going to throw me down, then, are you?" said the consul.
|
||||
|
||||
"Sure," said the Kid cheerfully. "Throw you down. That's it. And now I'll tell you why. The first night I was up at the colonel's house they introduced me to a bedroom. No blankets on the floor---a real room, with a bed and things in it. And before I was asleep, in comes this artificial mother of mine and tucks in the covers. 'Panchito,' she says, 'my little lost one, God has brought you back to me. I bless His name forever.' It was that, or some truck like that, she said. And down comes a drop or two of rain and hits me on the nose. And all that stuck by me, Mr. Thacker. And it's been that way ever since. And it's got to stay that way. Don't you think that it's for what's in it for me, either, that I say so. If you have any such ideas, keep 'em to yourself. I haven't had much truck with women in my life, and no mothers to speak of, but here's a lady that we've got to keep fooled. Once she stood it; twice she won't. I'm a low-down wolf, and the devil may have sent me on this trail instead of God, but I'll travel it to the end. And now, don't forget that I'm Don Francisco Urique whenever you happen to mention my name."
|
||||
|
||||
"I'll expose you today, you---you double-dyed traitor," stammered Thacker.
|
||||
|
||||
The Kid arose and, without violence, took Thacker by the throat with a hand of steel, and shoved him slowly into a corner. Then he drew from under his left arm his pearl-handled .45 and poked the cold muzzle of it against the consul's mouth.
|
||||
|
||||
"I told you why I come here," he said, with his old freezing smile. "If I leave here, you'll be the reason. Never forget it, pardner. Now, what is my name?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Er---Don Francisco Urique," gasped Thacker.
|
||||
|
||||
From outside came a sound of wheels, and the shouting of someone, and the sharp thwacks of a wooden whipstock upon the backs of fat horses.
|
||||
|
||||
The Kid put up his gun, and walked toward the door. But he turned again and came back to the trembling Thacker, and held up his left hand with its back toward the consul.
|
||||
|
||||
"There's one more reason," he said slowly, "why things have got to stand as they are. The fellow I killed in Laredo had one of them same pictures on his left hand."
|
||||
|
||||
Outside, the ancient landau of Don Santos Urique rattled to the door. The coachman ceased his bellowing. Señora Urique, in a voluminous gay gown of white lace and flying ribbons, leaned forward with a happy look in her great soft eyes.
|
||||
|
||||
"Are you within, dear son?" she called, in the rippling Castilian.
|
||||
|
||||
"*Madre mia, yo vengo* \[mother, I come\]," answered the young Don Francisco Urique.
|
||||
10
src/epub/text/a-fatal-error.md
Normal file
10
src/epub/text/a-fatal-error.md
Normal file
@ -0,0 +1,10 @@
|
||||
A Fatal Error {#a-fatal-error type="title"}
|
||||
-------------
|
||||
|
||||
"What are you looking so glum about?" asked a Houston man as he dropped into a friend's office on Christmas Day.
|
||||
|
||||
"Same old fool break of putting a letter in the wrong envelope, and I'm afraid to go home. My wife sent me down a note by the hired man an hour ago, telling me to send her ten dollars, and asking me to meet her here at the office at three o'clock and go shopping with her. At the same time I got a bill for ten dollars from a merchant I owe, asking me to remit. I scribbled off a note to the merchant saying: 'Can't possibly do it. I've got to meet another little thing today that won't be put off.' I made the usual mistake and sent the merchant the ten dollars and my wife the note."
|
||||
|
||||
"Can't you go home and explain the mistake to your wife?"
|
||||
|
||||
"You don't know her. I've done all I can. I've taken out an accident policy for \$10,000 good for two hours, and I expect her here in fifteen minutes. Tell all the boys goodbye for me, and if you meet a lady on the stairs as you go down keep close to the wall."
|
||||
136
src/epub/text/a-fog-in-santone.md
Normal file
136
src/epub/text/a-fog-in-santone.md
Normal file
@ -0,0 +1,136 @@
|
||||
A Fog in Santone {#a-fog-in-santone type="title"}
|
||||
----------------
|
||||
|
||||
The drug clerk looks sharply at the white face half concealed by the high-turned overcoat collar.
|
||||
|
||||
"I would rather not supply you," he said doubtfully. "I sold you a dozen morphine tablets less than an hour ago."
|
||||
|
||||
The customer smiles wanly. "The fault is in your crooked streets. I didn't intend to call upon you twice, but I guess I got tangled up. Excuse me."
|
||||
|
||||
He draws his collar higher, and moves out, slowly. He stops under an electric light at the corner, and juggles absorbedly with three or four little pasteboard boxes. "Thirty-six," he announces to himself. "More than plenty." For a gray mist had swept upon Santone that night, an opaque terror that laid a hand to the throat of each of the city's guests. It was computed that three thousand invalids were hibernating in the town. They had come from far and wide, for here, among these contracted river-sliced streets, the goddess Ozone has elected to linger.
|
||||
|
||||
Purest atmosphere, sir, on earth! You might think from the river winding through our town that we are malarial, but, no, sir! Repeated experiments made both by the Government and local experts show that our air contains nothing deleterious---nothing but ozone, sir, pure ozone. Litmus paper tests made all along the river show---but you can read it all in the prospectuses; or the Santonian will recite it for you, word by word.
|
||||
|
||||
We may achieve climate, but weather is thrust upon us. Santone, then, cannot be blamed for this cold gray fog that came and kissed the lips of the three thousand, and then delivered them to the cross. That night the tubercles, whose ravages hope holds in check, multiplied. The writhing fingers of the pale mist did not go thence bloodless. Many of the wooers of ozone capitulated with the enemy that night, turning their faces to the wall in that dumb, isolated apathy that so terrifies their watchers. On the red stream of Hemorrhagia a few souls drifted away, leaving behind pathetic heaps, white and chill as the fog itself. Two or three came to view this atmospheric wraith as the ghost of impossible joys, sent to whisper to them of the egregious folly it is to inhale breath into the lungs, only to exhale it again, and these used whatever came handy to their relief, pistols, gas or the beneficent muriate.
|
||||
|
||||
The purchaser of the morphia wanders into the fog, and at length, finds himself upon a little iron bridge, one of the score or more in the heart of the city, under which the small tortuous river flows. He leans on the rail and gasps, for here the mist has concentrated, lying like a footpad to garrote such of the Three Thousand as creep that way. The iron bridge guys rattle to the strain of his cough, a mocking phthisical rattle, seeming to say to him: "Clickety-clack! just a little rusty cold, sir---but not from our river. Litmus paper all along the banks and nothing but ozone. Clacket-y-clack!"
|
||||
|
||||
The Memphis man at last recovers sufficiently to be aware of another overcoated man ten feet away, leaning on the rail, and just coming out of a paroxysm. There is a freemasonry among the Three Thousand that does away with formalities and introductions. A cough is your card; a hemorrhage a letter of credit. The Memphis man, being nearer recovered, speaks first.
|
||||
|
||||
"Goodall. Memphis---pulmonary tuberculosis---guess last stages." The Three Thousand economize on words. Words are breath and they need breath to write checks for the doctors.
|
||||
|
||||
"Hurd," gasps the other. "Hurd; of T'leder. T'leder, Ah-hia. Catarrhal bronkeetis. Name's Dennis, too---doctor says. Says I'll live four weeks if I---take care of myself. Got your walking papers yet?"
|
||||
|
||||
"My doctor," says Goodall of Memphis, a little boastingly, "gives me three months."
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh," remarks the man from Toledo, filling up great gaps in his conversation with wheezes, "damn the difference. What's months! Expect to---cut mine down to one week---and die in a hack---a four wheeler, not a cough. Be considerable moanin' of the bars when I put out to sea. I've patronized 'em pretty freely since I struck my---present gait. Say, Goodall of Memphis---if your doctor has set your pegs so close---why don't you---get on a big spree and go---to the devil quick and easy---like I'm doing?"
|
||||
|
||||
"A spree," says Goodall, as one who entertains a new idea, "I never did such a thing. I was thinking of another way, but---"
|
||||
|
||||
"Come on," invites the Ohioan, "and have some drinks. I've been at it---for two days, but the inf---ernal stuff won't bite like it used to. Goodall of Memphis, what's your respiration?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Twenty-four."
|
||||
|
||||
"Daily---temperature?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Hundred and four."
|
||||
|
||||
"You can do it in two days. It'll take me a---week. Tank up, friend Goodall---have all the fun you can; then---off you go, in the middle of a jag, and s-s-save trouble and expense. I'm a s-son of a gun if this ain't a health resort---for your whiskers! A Lake Erie fog'd get lost here in two minutes."
|
||||
|
||||
"You said something about a drink," says Goodall.
|
||||
|
||||
A few minutes later they line up at a glittering bar, and hang upon the arm rest. The bartender, blond, heavy, well-groomed, sets out their drinks, instantly perceiving that he serves two of the Three Thousand. He observes that one is a middle-aged man, well-dressed, with a lined and sunken face; the other a mere boy who is chiefly eyes and overcoat. Disguising well the tedium begotten by many repetitions, the server of drinks begins to chant the sanitary saga of Santone. "Rather a moist night, gentlemen, for our town. A little fog from our river, but nothing to hurt. Repeated Tests."
|
||||
|
||||
"Damn your litmus papers," gasps Toledo---"without any---personal offense intended."
|
||||
|
||||
"We've heard of 'em before. Let 'em turn red, white and blue. What we want is a repeated test of that---whiskey. Come again. I paid for the last round, Goodall of Memphis."
|
||||
|
||||
The bottle oscillates from one to the other, continues to do so, and is not removed from the counter. The bartender sees two emaciated invalids dispose of enough Kentucky Belle to floor a dozen cowboys, without displaying any emotion save a sad and contemplative interest in the peregrinations of the bottle. So he is moved to manifest a solicitude as to the consequences.
|
||||
|
||||
"Not on your Uncle Mark Hanna," responds Toledo, "will we get drunk. We've been---vaccinated with whiskey---and---cod liver oil. What would send you to the police station---only gives us a thirst. S-s-set out another bottle."
|
||||
|
||||
It is slow work trying to meet death by that route. Some quicker way must be found. They leave the saloon and plunge again into the mist. The sidewalks are mere flanges at the base of the houses; the street a cold ravine, the fog filling it like a freshet. Not far away is the Mexican quarter. Conducted as if by wires along the heavy air comes a guitar's tinkle, and the demoralizing voice of some señorita singing:
|
||||
|
||||
> "En las tardes sombrillos del invierno\ > En el prado a Marar me reclino\ > Y maldigo mi fausto destino---\ > [Una vida la mas infeliz."]{.i1}
|
||||
|
||||
The words of it they do not understand---neither Toledo nor Memphis, but words are the least important things in life. The music tears the breasts of the seekers after Nepenthe, inciting Toledo to remark:
|
||||
|
||||
"Those kids of mine---I wonder---by God, Mr. Goodall of Memphis, we had too little of that whiskey! No slow music in mine, if you please. It makes you disremember to forget."
|
||||
|
||||
Hurd of Toledo, here pulls out his watch, and says: "I'm a son of a gun! Got an engagement for a hack ride out to San Pedro Springs at eleven. Forgot it. A fellow from Noo York, and me, and the Castillo sisters at Rhinegelder's Garden. That Noo York chap's a lucky dog---got one whole lung---good for a year yet. Plenty of money, too. He pays for everything. I can't afford---to miss the jamboree. Sorry you ain't going along. Goodbye, Goodall of Memphis."
|
||||
|
||||
He rounds the corner and shuffles away, casting off thus easily the ties of acquaintanceship as the moribund do, the season of dissolution being man's supreme hour of egoism and selfishness. But he turns and calls back through the fog to the other: "I say, Goodall of Memphis! If you get there before I do, tell 'em Hurd's a-comin' too. Hurd, of T'leder, Ah-hia."
|
||||
|
||||
Thus Goodall's tempter deserts him. That youth, uncomplaining and uncaring, takes a spell at coughing, and, recovered, wanders desultorily on down the street, the name of which he neither knows nor recks. At a certain point he perceives swinging doors, and hears, filtering between them a noise of wind and string instruments. Two men enter from the street as he arrives, and he follows them in. There is a kind of antechamber, plentifully set with palms and cactuses and oleanders. At little marble-topped tables some people sit, while soft-shod attendants bring the beer. All is orderly, clean, melancholy, gay, of the German method of pleasure. At his right is the foot of a stairway. A man there holds out his hand. Goodall extends his, full of silver, the man selects therefrom a coin. Goodall goes upstairs and sees there two galleries extending along the sides of a concert hall which he now perceives to lie below and beyond the anteroom he first entered. These galleries are divided into boxes or stalls, which bestow with the aid of hanging lace curtains, a certain privacy upon their occupants.
|
||||
|
||||
Passing with aimless feet down the aisle contiguous to these saucy and discreet compartments, he is half checked by the sight in one of them of a young woman, alone and seated in an attitude of reflection. This young woman becomes aware of his approach. A smile from her brings him to a standstill, and her subsequent invitation draws him, though hesitating, to the other chair in the box, a little table between them.
|
||||
|
||||
Goodall is only nineteen. There are some whom, when the terrible god Phthisis wishes to destroy he first makes beautiful; and the boy is one of these. His face is wax, and an awful pulchritude is born of the menacing flame in his cheeks. His eyes reflect an unearthly vista engendered by the certainty of his doom. As it is forbidden man to guess accurately concerning his fate, it is inevitable that he shall tremble at the slightest lifting of the veil.
|
||||
|
||||
The young woman is well-dressed, and exhibits a beauty of distinctly feminine and tender sort; an Eve-like comeliness that scarcely seems predestined to fade.
|
||||
|
||||
It is immaterial, the steps by which the two mount to a certain plane of good understanding; they are short and few, as befits the occasion.
|
||||
|
||||
A button against the wall of the partition is frequently disturbed and a waiter comes and goes at signal.
|
||||
|
||||
Pensive Beauty would nothing of wine; two thick plaits of her blond hair hang almost to the floor; she is a lineal descendant of the Lorelei. So the waiter brings the brew; effervescent, icy, greenish golden. The orchestra on the stage is playing "Oh, Rachel." The youngsters have exchanged a good bit of information. She calls him, "Walter" and he calls her "Miss Rosa."
|
||||
|
||||
Goodall's tongue is loosened and he has told her everything about himself, about his home in Tennessee, the old pillared mansion under the oaks, the stables, the hunting; the friends he has; down to the chickens, and the box bushes bordering the walks. About his coming South for the climate, hoping to escape the hereditary foe of his family. All about his three months on a ranch; the deer hunts, the rattlers, and the rollicking in the cow camps. Then of his advent to Santone, where he had indirectly learned, from a great specialist, that his life's calendar probably contains but two more leaves. And then of this death-white, choking night which has come and strangled his fortitude and sent him out to seek a port amid its depressing billows.
|
||||
|
||||
"My weekly letter from home failed to come," he told her, "and I was pretty blue. I knew I had to go before long and I was tired of waiting. I went out and bought morphine at every drug store where they would sell me a few tablets. I got thirty-six quarter grains, and was going back to my room and take them, but I met a queer fellow on a bridge, who had a new idea."
|
||||
|
||||
Goodall fillips a little pasteboard box upon the table. "I put 'em all together in there."
|
||||
|
||||
Miss Rosa, being a woman, must raise the lid, and gave a slight shiver at the innocent looking triturates. "Horrid things! but those little, white bits---they could never kill one!"
|
||||
|
||||
Indeed they could. Walter knew better. Nine grains of morphia! Why, half the amount might.
|
||||
|
||||
Miss Rosa demands to know about Mr. Hurd, of Toledo, and is told. She laughs like a delighted child. "What a funny fellow! But tell me more about your home and your sisters, Walter. I know enough about Texas and tarantulas and cowboys."
|
||||
|
||||
The theme is dear, just now, to his mood, and he lays before her the simple details of a true home; the little ties and endearments that so fill the exile's heart. Of his sisters, one, Alice, furnishes him a theme he loves to dwell upon.
|
||||
|
||||
"She is like you, Miss Rosa," he says. "Maybe not quite so pretty, but, just as nice, and good, and---"
|
||||
|
||||
"There! Walter," says Miss Rosa sharply, "now talk about something else."
|
||||
|
||||
But a shadow falls upon the wall outside, preceding a big, softly treading man, finely dressed, who pauses a second before the curtains and then passes on. Presently comes the waiter with a message: "Mr. Rolfe says---"
|
||||
|
||||
"Tell Rolfe I'm engaged."
|
||||
|
||||
"I don't know why it is," says Goodall, of Memphis, "but I don't feel as bad as I did. An hour ago I wanted to die, but since I've met you, Miss Rosa, I'd like so much to live."
|
||||
|
||||
The young woman whirls around the table, lays an arm behind his neck and kisses him on the cheek.
|
||||
|
||||
"You must, dear boy," she says. "I know what was the matter. It was the miserable foggy weather that has lowered your spirit and mine too---a little. But look, now."
|
||||
|
||||
With a little spring she has drawn back the curtains. A window is in the wall opposite, and lo! the mist is cleared away. The indulgent moon is out again, revoyaging the plumbless sky. Roof and parapet and spire are softly pearl enamelled. Twice, thrice the retrieved river flashes back, between the houses, the light of the firmament. A tonic day will dawn, sweet and prosperous.
|
||||
|
||||
"Talk of death when the world is so beautiful!" says Miss Rosa, laying her hand on his shoulder. "Do something to please me, Walter. Go home to your rest and say: 'I mean to get better,' and do it."
|
||||
|
||||
"If you ask it," says the boy, with a smile, "I will."
|
||||
|
||||
The waiter brings full glasses. Did they ring? No; but it is well. He may leave them. A farewell glass. Miss Rosa says: "To your better health, Walter." He says: "To our next meeting."
|
||||
|
||||
His eyes look no longer into the void, but gaze upon the antithesis of death. His foot is set in an undiscovered country tonight. He is obedient, ready to go.
|
||||
|
||||
"Good night," she says.
|
||||
|
||||
"I never kissed a girl before," he confesses, "except my sisters."
|
||||
|
||||
"You didn't this time," she laughs, "I kissed you---good night."
|
||||
|
||||
"When shall I see you again," he persists.
|
||||
|
||||
"You promised me to go home," she frowns, "and get well. Perhaps we shall meet again soon. Good night."
|
||||
|
||||
He hesitates, his hat in hand. She smiles broadly and kisses him once more upon the forehead. She watches him far down the aisle, then sits again at the table.
|
||||
|
||||
The shadow falls once more against the wall. This time the big, softly stepping man parts the curtains and looks in. Miss Rosa's eyes meet his and for half a minute they remain thus, silent, fighting a battle with that king of weapons. Presently the big man drops the curtains and passes on.
|
||||
|
||||
The orchestra ceases playing suddenly, and an important voice can be heard loudly talking in one of the boxes farther down the aisle. No doubt some citizen entertains there some visitor to the town, and Miss Rosa leans back in her chair and smiles at some of the words she catches:
|
||||
|
||||
"Purest atmosphere---in the world---litmus paper all long---nothing hurtful---our city---nothing but pure ozone."
|
||||
|
||||
The waiter returns for the tray and glasses. As he enters, the girl crushes a little empty pasteboard box in her hand and throws it in a corner. She is stirring something in her glass with her hatpin.
|
||||
|
||||
"Why, Miss Rosa," says the waiter with the civil familiarity he uses---"putting salt in your beer this early in the night!"
|
||||
126
src/epub/text/a-ghost-of-a-chance.md
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|
||||
A Ghost of a Chance {#a-ghost-of-a-chance type="title"}
|
||||
-------------------
|
||||
|
||||
"Actually, a *hod*!" repeated Mrs. Kinsolving, pathetically.
|
||||
|
||||
Mrs. Bellamy Bellmore arched a sympathetic eyebrow. Thus she expressed condolence and a generous amount of apparent surprise.
|
||||
|
||||
"Fancy her telling everywhere," recapitulated Mrs. Kinsolving, "that she saw a ghost in the apartment she occupied here---our choicest guestroom---a ghost, carrying a hod on its shoulder---the ghost of an old man in overalls, smoking a pipe and carrying a hod! The very absurdity of the thing shows her malicious intent. There never was a Kinsolving that carried a hod. Everyone knows that Mr. Kinsolving's father accumulated his money by large building contracts, but he never worked a day with his own hands. He had this house built from his own plans; but---oh, a hod! Why need she have been so cruel and malicious?"
|
||||
|
||||
"It is really too bad," murmured Mrs. Bellmore, with an approving glance of her fine eyes about the vast chamber done in lilac and old gold. "And it was in this room she saw it! Oh, no, I'm not afraid of ghosts. Don't have the least fear on my account. I'm glad you put me in here. I think family ghosts so interesting! But, really, the story does sound a little inconsistent. I should have expected something better from Mrs. Fischer-Suympkins. Don't they carry bricks in hods? Why should a ghost bring bricks into a villa built of marble and stone? I'm so sorry, but it makes me think that age is beginning to tell upon Mrs. Fischer-Suympkins."
|
||||
|
||||
"This house," continued Mrs. Kinsolving, "was built upon the site of an old one used by the family during the Revolution. There wouldn't be anything strange in its having a ghost. And there was a Captain Kinsolving who fought in General Greene's army, though we've never been able to secure any papers to vouch for it. If there is to be a family ghost, why couldn't it have been his, instead of a bricklayer's?"
|
||||
|
||||
"The ghost of a Revolutionary ancestor wouldn't be a bad idea," agreed Mrs. Bellmore; "but you know how arbitrary and inconsiderate ghosts can be. Maybe, like love, they are 'engendered in the eye.' One advantage of those who see ghosts is that their stories can't be disproved. By a spiteful eye, a Revolutionary knapsack might easily be construed to be a hod. Dear Mrs. Kinsolving, think no more of it. I am sure it was a knapsack."
|
||||
|
||||
"But she told everybody!" mourned Mrs. Kinsolving, inconsolable. "She insisted upon the details. There is the pipe. And how are you going to get out of the overalls?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Shan't get into them," said Mrs. Bellmore, with a prettily suppressed yawn; "too stiff and wrinkly. Is that you, Felice? Prepare my bath, please. Do you dine at seven at Clifftop, Mrs. Kinsolving? So kind of you to run in for a chat before dinner! I love those little touches of informality with a guest. They give such a home flavour to a visit. So sorry; I must be dressing. I am so indolent I always postpone it until the last moment."
|
||||
|
||||
Mrs. Fischer-Suympkins had been the first large plum that the Kinsolvings had drawn from the social pie. For a long time, the pie itself had been out of reach on a top shelf. But the purse and the pursuit had at last lowered it. Mrs. Fischer-Suympkins was the heliograph of the smart society parading corps. The glitter of her wit and actions passed along the line, transmitting whatever was latest and most daring in the game of peepshow. Formerly, her fame and leadership had been secure enough not to need the support of such artifices as handing around live frogs for favours at a cotillon. But, now, these things were necessary to the holding of her throne. Beside, middle age had come to preside, incongruous, at her capers. The sensational papers had cut her space from a page to two columns. Her wit developed a sting; her manners became more rough and inconsiderate, as if she felt the royal necessity of establishing her autocracy by scorning the conventionalities that bound lesser potentates.
|
||||
|
||||
To some pressure at the command of the Kinsolvings, she had yielded so far as to honour their house by her presence, for an evening and night. She had her revenge upon her hostess by relating, with grim enjoyment and sarcastic humour, her story of the vision carrying the hod. To that lady, in raptures at having penetrated thus far toward the coveted inner circle, the result came as a crushing disappointment. Everybody either sympathized or laughed, and there was little to choose between the two modes of expression.
|
||||
|
||||
But, later on, Mrs. Kinsolving's hopes and spirits were revived by the capture of a second and greater prize.
|
||||
|
||||
Mrs. Bellamy Bellmore had accepted an invitation to visit at Clifftop, and would remain for three days. Mrs. Bellmore was one of the younger matrons, whose beauty, descent, and wealth gave her a reserved seat in the holy of holies that required no strenuous bolstering. She was generous enough thus to give Mrs. Kinsolving the accolade that was so poignantly desired; and, at the same time, she thought how much it would please Terence. Perhaps it would end by solving him.
|
||||
|
||||
Terence was Mrs. Kinsolving's son, aged twenty-nine, quite good-looking enough, and with two or three attractive and mysterious traits. For one, he was very devoted to his mother, and that was sufficiently odd to deserve notice. For others, he talked so little that it was irritating, and he seemed either very shy or very deep. Terence interested Mrs. Bellmore, because she was not sure which it was. She intended to study him a little longer, unless she forgot the matter. If he was only shy, she would abandon him, for shyness is a bore. If he was deep, she would also abandon him, for depth is precarious.
|
||||
|
||||
On the afternoon of the third day of her visit, Terence hunted up Mrs. Bellmore, and found her in a nook actually looking at an album.
|
||||
|
||||
"It's so good of you," said he, "to come down here and retrieve the day for us. I suppose you have heard that Mrs. Fischer-Suympkins scuttled the ship before she left. She knocked a whole plank out of the bottom with a hod. My mother is grieving herself ill about it. Can't you manage to see a ghost for us while you are here, Mrs. Bellmore---a bang-up, swell ghost, with a coronet on his head and a cheque book under his arm?"
|
||||
|
||||
"That was a naughty old lady, Terence," said Mrs. Bellmore, "to tell such stories. Perhaps you gave her too much supper. Your mother doesn't really take it seriously, does she?"
|
||||
|
||||
"I think she does," answered Terence. "One would think every brick in the hod had dropped on her. It's a good mammy, and I don't like to see her worried. It's to be hoped that the ghost belongs to the hod-carriers' union, and will go out on a strike. If he doesn't, there will be no peace in this family."
|
||||
|
||||
"I'm sleeping in the ghost-chamber," said Mrs. Bellmore, pensively. "But it's so nice I wouldn't change it, even if I were afraid, which I'm not. It wouldn't do for me to submit a counter story of a desirable, aristocratic shade, would it? I would do so, with pleasure, but it seems to me it would be too obviously an antidote for the other narrative to be effective."
|
||||
|
||||
"True," said Terence, running two fingers thoughtfully into his crisp, brown hair; "that would never do. How would it work to see the same ghost again, minus the overalls, and have gold bricks in the hod? That would elevate the spectre from degrading toil to a financial plane. Don't you think that would be respectable enough?"
|
||||
|
||||
"There was an ancestor who fought against the Britishers, wasn't there? Your mother said something to that effect."
|
||||
|
||||
"I believe so; one of those old chaps in raglan vests and golf trousers. I don't care a continental for a Continental, myself. But the mother has set her heart on pomp and heraldry and pyrotechnics, and I want her to be happy."
|
||||
|
||||
"You are a good boy, Terence," said Mrs. Bellmore, sweeping her silks close to one side of her, "not to beat your mother. Sit here by me, and let's look at the album, just as people used to do twenty years ago. Now, tell me about every one of them. Who is this tall, dignified gentleman leaning against the horizon, with one arm on the Corinthian column?"
|
||||
|
||||
"That old chap with the big feet?" inquired Terence, craning his neck. "That's great-uncle O'Brannigan. He used to keep a rathskeller on the Bowery."
|
||||
|
||||
"I asked you to sit down, Terence. If you are not going to amuse, or obey, me, I shall report in the morning that I saw a ghost wearing an apron and carrying schooners of beer. Now, that is better. To be shy, at your age, Terence, is a thing that you should blush to acknowledge."
|
||||
|
||||
------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
At breakfast on the last morning of her visit, Mrs. Bellmore startled and entranced everyone present by announcing positively that she had seen the ghost.
|
||||
|
||||
"Did it have a---a---a---?" Mrs. Kinsolving, in her suspense and agitation, could not bring out the word.
|
||||
|
||||
"No, indeed---far from it."
|
||||
|
||||
There was a chorus of questions from others at the table. "Weren't you frightened?" "What did it do?" "How did it look?" "How was it dressed?" "Did it say anything?" "Didn't you scream?"
|
||||
|
||||
"I'll try to answer everything at once," said Mrs. Bellmore, heroically, "although I'm frightfully hungry. Something awakened me---I'm not sure whether it was a noise or a touch---and there stood the phantom. I never burn a light at night, so the room was quite dark, but I saw it plainly. I wasn't dreaming. It was a tall man, all misty white from head to foot. It wore the full dress of the old Colonial days---powdered hair, baggy coat skirts, lace ruffles, and a sword. It looked intangible and luminous in the dark, and moved without a sound. Yes, I was a little frightened at first---or startled, I should say. It was the first ghost I had ever seen. No, it didn't say anything. I didn't scream. I raised up on my elbow, and then it glided silently away, and disappeared when it reached the door."
|
||||
|
||||
Mrs. Kinsolving was in the seventh heaven. "The description is that of Captain Kinsolving, of General Greene's army, one of our ancestors," she said, in a voice that trembled with pride and relief. "I really think I must apologize for our ghostly relative, Mrs. Bellmore. I am afraid he must have badly disturbed your rest."
|
||||
|
||||
Terence sent a smile of pleased congratulation toward his mother. Attainment was Mrs. Kinsolving's, at last, and he loved to see her happy.
|
||||
|
||||
"I suppose I ought to be ashamed to confess," said Mrs. Bellmore, who was now enjoying her breakfast, "that I wasn't very much disturbed. I presume it would have been the customary thing to scream and faint, and have all of you running about in picturesque costumes. But, after the first alarm was over, I really couldn't work myself up to a panic. The ghost retired from the stage quietly and peacefully, after doing its little turn, and I went to sleep again."
|
||||
|
||||
Nearly all listened, politely accepted Mrs. Bellmore's story as a made-up affair, charitably offered as an offset to the unkind vision seen by Mrs. Fischer-Suympkins. But one or two present perceived that her assertions bore the genuine stamp of her own convictions. Truth and candour seemed to attend upon every word. Even a scoffer at ghosts---if he were very observant---would have been forced to admit that she had, at least in a very vivid dream, been honestly aware of the weird visitor.
|
||||
|
||||
Soon Mrs. Bellmore's maid was packing. In two hours the auto would come to convey her to the station. As Terence was strolling upon the east piazza, Mrs. Bellmore came up to him, with a confidential sparkle in her eye.
|
||||
|
||||
"I didn't wish to tell the others all of it," she said, "but I will tell you. In a way, I think you should be held responsible. Can you guess in what manner that ghost awakened me last night?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Rattled chains," suggested Terence, after some thought, "or groaned? They usually do one or the other."
|
||||
|
||||
"Do you happen to know," continued Mrs. Bellmore, with sudden irrelevancy, "if I resemble anyone of the female relatives of your restless ancestor, Captain Kinsolving?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Don't think so," said Terence, with an extremely puzzled air. "Never heard of any of them being noted beauties."
|
||||
|
||||
"Then, why," said Mrs. Bellmore, looking the young man gravely in the eye, "should that ghost have kissed me, as I'm sure it did?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Heavens!" exclaimed Terence, in wide-eyed amazement; "you don't mean that, Mrs. Bellmore! Did he actually kiss you?"
|
||||
|
||||
"I said *it*," corrected Mrs. Bellmore. "I hope the impersonal pronoun is correctly used."
|
||||
|
||||
"But why did you say I was responsible?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Because you are the only living male relative of the ghost."
|
||||
|
||||
"I see. 'Unto the third and fourth generation.' But, seriously, did he---did it---how do you---?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Know? How does anyone know? I was asleep, and that is what awakened me, I'm almost certain."
|
||||
|
||||
"Almost?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Well, I awoke just as---oh, can't you understand what I mean? When anything arouses you suddenly, you are not positive whether you dreamed, or---and yet you know that---Dear me, Terence, must I dissect the most elementary sensations in order to accommodate your extremely practical intelligence?"
|
||||
|
||||
"But, about kissing ghosts, you know," said Terence, humbly, "I require the most primary instruction. I never kissed a ghost. Is it---is it---?"
|
||||
|
||||
"The sensation," said Mrs. Bellmore, with deliberate, but slightly smiling, emphasis, "since you are seeking instruction, is a mingling of the material and the spiritual."
|
||||
|
||||
"Of course," said Terence, suddenly growing serious, "it was a dream or some kind of an hallucination. Nobody believes in spirits, these days. If you told the tale out of kindness of heart, Mrs. Bellmore, I can't express how grateful I am to you. It has made my mother supremely happy. That Revolutionary ancestor was a stunning idea."
|
||||
|
||||
Mrs. Bellmore sighed. "The usual fate of ghost-seers is mine," she said, resignedly. "My privileged encounter with a spirit is attributed to lobster salad or mendacity. Well, I have, at least, one memory left from the wreck---a kiss from the unseen world. Was Captain Kinsolving a very brave man, do you know, Terence?"
|
||||
|
||||
"He was licked at Yorktown, I believe," said Terence, reflecting. "They say he skedaddled with his company, after the first battle there."
|
||||
|
||||
"I thought he must have been timid," said Mrs. Bellmore, absently. "He might have had another."
|
||||
|
||||
"Another battle?" asked Terence, dully.
|
||||
|
||||
"What else could I mean? I must go and get ready now; the auto will be here in an hour. I've enjoyed Clifftop immensely. Such a lovely morning, isn't it, Terence?"
|
||||
|
||||
On her way to the station, Mrs. Bellmore took from her bag a silk handkerchief, and looked at it with a little peculiar smile. Then she tied it in several very hard knots, and threw it, at a convenient moment, over the edge of the cliff along which the road ran.
|
||||
|
||||
In his room, Terence was giving some directions to his man, Brooks. "Have this stuff done up in a parcel," he said, "and ship it to the address on that card."
|
||||
|
||||
The card was that of a New York costumer. The "stuff" was a gentleman's costume of the days of '76, made of white satin, with silver buckles, white silk stockings, and white kid shoes. A powdered wig and a sword completed the dress.
|
||||
|
||||
"And look about, Brooks," added Terence, a little anxiously, "for a silk handkerchief with my initials in one corner. I must have dropped it somewhere."
|
||||
|
||||
It was a month later when Mrs. Bellmore and one or two others of the smart crowd were making up a list of names for a coaching trip through the Catskills. Mrs. Bellmore looked over the list for a final censoring. The name of Terence Kinsolving was there. Mrs. Bellmore ran her prohibitive pencil lightly through the name.
|
||||
|
||||
"Too shy!" she murmured, sweetly, in explanation.
|
||||
16
src/epub/text/a-good-story-spoiled.md
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16
src/epub/text/a-good-story-spoiled.md
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@ -0,0 +1,16 @@
|
||||
A Good Story Spoiled {#a-good-story-spoiled type="title"}
|
||||
--------------------
|
||||
|
||||
Few nights ago in a rather tough saloon in a little town on the Central Railroad, a big, strapping desperado, who had an unenviable reputation as a bad man generally, walked up to the bar and in a loud voice ordered everybody in the saloon to walk up and take a drink. The crowd moved quickly to the bar at his invitation, as the man was half drunk and was undoubtedly dangerous when in that condition.
|
||||
|
||||
One man alone failed to accept the invitation. He was a rather small man, neatly dressed, who sat calmly in his chair, gazing idly at the crowd. A student of physiognomy would have been attracted by the expression of his face, which was one of cool determination and force of will. His jaw was square and firm, and his eye gray and steady, with that peculiar gray glint in the iris that presages more danger than any other kind of optic.
|
||||
|
||||
The bully looked around and saw that someone had declined his invitation.
|
||||
|
||||
He repeated it in a louder voice.
|
||||
|
||||
The small man rose to his feet and walked coolly toward the desperado.
|
||||
|
||||
"Excuse me," he said in a low but determined tone, "I'm a little deaf and didn't hear you the first time. Gimme whisky straight."
|
||||
|
||||
And another story was spoiled for the papers.
|
||||
14
src/epub/text/a-green-hand.md
Normal file
14
src/epub/text/a-green-hand.md
Normal file
@ -0,0 +1,14 @@
|
||||
A Green Hand {#a-green-hand type="title"}
|
||||
------------
|
||||
|
||||
"I shall never again employ any but experienced salesmen, who thoroughly understand the jewelry business," said a Houston jeweler to a friend yesterday.
|
||||
|
||||
"You see, at Christmas time we generally need more help, and sometimes employ people who can sell goods, but are not familiar with the fine points of the business. Now, that young man over there is thoroughly good and polite to everyone, but he has just lost me one of my best customers."
|
||||
|
||||
"How was that?" asked the friend.
|
||||
|
||||
"A man who always trades with us came in with his wife last week and with her assistance selected a magnificent diamond pin that he had promised her for a Christmas present and told this young man to lay it aside for him till today."
|
||||
|
||||
"I see," said the friend, "and he sold it to someone else and disappointed him."
|
||||
|
||||
"It's plain you don't know much about married men," said the jeweler. "That idiot of a clerk actually saved the pin for him and he had to buy it."
|
||||
16
src/epub/text/a-guarded-secret.md
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16
src/epub/text/a-guarded-secret.md
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@ -0,0 +1,16 @@
|
||||
A Guarded Secret {#a-guarded-secret type="title"}
|
||||
----------------
|
||||
|
||||
It is time to call a halt upon the persistent spreaders of the alleged joke that a woman can not keep a secret. No baser ingratitude has been shown by man toward the fair sex than the promulgation of this false report. Whenever a would-be humorous man makes use of this antiquated chestnut which his fellow men feel in duty bound to applaud, the face of the woman takes on a strange, inscrutable, pitying smile that few men ever read.
|
||||
|
||||
The truth is that it is only woman who can keep a secret. Only a divine intelligence can understand the marvelous power with which ninety-nine married women out of a hundred successfully hide from the rest of the world the secret that they have bound themselves to something unworthy of the pure and sacrificing love they have given them. She may whisper to her neighbor that Mrs. Jones has turned her old silk dress twice, but if she has in her breast anything affecting one she loves, the gods themselves could not drag it from her.
|
||||
|
||||
Weak man looks into the wine cup and behold, he babbles his innermost thoughts to any gaping bystander; woman can babble of the weather, and gaze with infantine eyes into the orbs of the wiliest diplomat, while holding easily in her breast the heaviest secrets of state.
|
||||
|
||||
Adam was the original blab; the first telltale, and we are not proud of him. With the dreamy, appealing eyes of Eve upon him---she who was created for his comfort and pleasure---even as she stood by his side, loving and fresh and fair as a spring moon, the wretched cad said, "The woman gave me and I did eat." This reprehensible act in our distinguished forefather can not be excused by any gentleman who knows what is due to a lady.
|
||||
|
||||
Adam's conduct would have caused his name to be stricken from the list of every decent club in the country. And since that day, woman has stood by man, faithful, true, and ready to give up all for his sake. She hides his puny peccadilloes from the world, she glosses over his wretched misdemeanors, and she keeps silent when a word would pierce his inflated greatness and leave him a shriveled and shrunken rag.
|
||||
|
||||
And man says that woman can not keep a secret!
|
||||
|
||||
Let him be thankful that she can, or his littleness would be proclaimed from the housetops.
|
||||
36
src/epub/text/a-guess-proof-mystery-story.md
Normal file
36
src/epub/text/a-guess-proof-mystery-story.md
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@ -0,0 +1,36 @@
|
||||
A Guess-Proof Mystery Story {#a-guess-proof-mystery-story type="title"}
|
||||
---------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
The most popular and recent advertising dodge in literature is the Grand Guess Contest Mystery Story. Everybody is invited to guess how the story will end, at any time before the last chapter is published, and incidentally to buy a paper or subscribe. It is the easiest thing in the world to write a story of mystery that will defy the most ingenious guessers in the country.
|
||||
|
||||
To prove it, here is one that we offer \$10,000 to any man and \$15,000 to any woman who guesses the mystery before the last chapter.
|
||||
|
||||
The synopsis of the story is alone given, as literary style is not our object---we want mystery.
|
||||
|
||||
### [Chapter]{type="label"} [I]{type="ordinal z3998:roman"}
|
||||
|
||||
Judge Smith, a highly esteemed citizen of Plunkville, is found murdered in his bed at his home. He has been stabbed with a pair of scissors, poisoned with "rough on rats." His throat has been cut with an ivory handled razor, an artery in his arm has been opened, and he has been shot full of buckshot from a double-barreled gun.
|
||||
|
||||
The coroner is summoned and the room examined. On the ceiling is a bloody footprint, and on the floor are found a lady's lace handkerchief, embroidered with the initials "J. B.," a package of cigarettes and a ham sandwich. The coroner renders a verdict of suicide.
|
||||
|
||||
### [Chapter]{type="label"} [II]{type="ordinal z3998:roman"}
|
||||
|
||||
The judge leaves a daughter, Mabel, aged eighteen, and ravishingly lovely. The night before the murder she exhibited a revolver and an axe in the principal saloon in town and declared her intention of "doing up" the old man. The judge has his life insured for \$100,000 in her favor. Nobody suspects her of the crime.
|
||||
|
||||
Mabel is engaged to a young man named Charlie, who is seen on the night of the murder by several citizens climbing out the judge's window with a bloody razor and a shotgun in his hand. Society gives Charlie the cold shoulder.
|
||||
|
||||
A tramp is run over by a street car and before dying confesses to having committed the murder, and at the judge's funeral his brother, Colonel Smith, breaks down and acknowledges having killed the judge in order to get his watch. Mabel sends to Chicago and employs a skilled detective to work up the case.
|
||||
|
||||
### [Chapter]{type="label"} [III]{type="ordinal z3998:roman"}
|
||||
|
||||
A beautiful strange lady dressed in mourning comes to Plunkville and registers at the hotel as Jane Bumgartner. (The initials on the handkerchief!)
|
||||
|
||||
The next day a Chinaman is found who denies having killed the judge, and is arrested by the detective. The strange lady meets Charlie on the street, and, on smelling the smoke from his cigarette, faints. Mabel discards him and engages herself to the Chinaman.
|
||||
|
||||
### [Chapter]{type="label"} [IV]{type="ordinal z3998:roman"}
|
||||
|
||||
While the Chinaman is being tried for murder, Jane Bumgartner testifies that she saw the detective murder Judge Smith at the instance of the minister who conducted the funeral, and that Mabel is Charlie's stepmother. The Chinaman is about to confess when footsteps are heard approaching. The next chapter will be the last, and it is safe to say that no one will find it easy to guess the ending of the story. To show how difficult this feat is, the last chapter is now given.
|
||||
|
||||
### [Chapter]{type="label"} [V]{type="ordinal z3998:roman"}
|
||||
|
||||
The footsteps prove to be those of Thomas R. Hefflebomer of Washington Territory, who introduces positive proof of having murdered the judge during a fit of mental aberration, and Mabel marries a man named Tompkins, whom she met two years later at Hot Springs.
|
||||
108
src/epub/text/a-harlem-tragedy.md
Normal file
108
src/epub/text/a-harlem-tragedy.md
Normal file
@ -0,0 +1,108 @@
|
||||
A Harlem Tragedy {#a-harlem-tragedy type="title"}
|
||||
----------------
|
||||
|
||||
Harlem.
|
||||
|
||||
Mrs. Fink had dropped into Mrs. Cassidy's flat one flight below.
|
||||
|
||||
"Ain't it a beaut?" said Mrs. Cassidy.
|
||||
|
||||
She turned her face proudly for her friend Mrs. Fink to see. One eye was nearly closed, with a great, greenish-purple bruise around it. Her lip was cut and bleeding a little and there were red fingermarks on each side of her neck.
|
||||
|
||||
"My husband wouldn't ever think of doing that to me," said Mrs. Fink, concealing her envy.
|
||||
|
||||
"I wouldn't have a man," declared Mrs. Cassidy, "that didn't beat me up at least once a week. Shows he thinks something of you. Say! but that last dose Jack gave me wasn't no homeopathic one. I can see stars yet. But he'll be the sweetest man in town for the rest of the week to make up for it. This eye is good for theater tickets and a silk shirt waist at the very least."
|
||||
|
||||
"I should hope," said Mrs. Fink, assuming complacency, "that Mr. Fink is too much of a gentleman ever to raise his hand against me."
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh, go on, Maggie!" said Mrs. Cassidy, laughing and applying witch hazel, "you're only jealous. Your old man is too frappéd and slow to ever give you a punch. He just sits down and practises physical culture with a newspaper when he comes home---now ain't that the truth?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Mr. Fink certainly peruses of the papers when he comes home," acknowledged Mrs. Fink, with a toss of her head; "but he certainly don't ever make no Steve O'Donnell out of me just to amuse himself---that's a sure thing."
|
||||
|
||||
Mrs. Cassidy laughed the contented laugh of the guarded and happy matron. With the air of Cornelia exhibiting her jewels, she drew down the collar of her kimono and revealed another treasured bruise, maroon-colored, edged with olive and orange---a bruise now nearly well, but still to memory dear.
|
||||
|
||||
Mrs. Fink capitulated. The formal light in her eye softened to envious admiration. She and Mrs. Cassidy had been chums in the downtown paper-box factory before they had married, one year before. Now she and her man occupied the flat above Mame and her man. Therefore she could not put on airs with Mame.
|
||||
|
||||
"Don't it hurt when he soaks you?" asked Mrs. Fink, curiously.
|
||||
|
||||
"Hurt!"---Mrs. Cassidy gave a soprano scream of delight. "Well, say---did you ever have a brick house fall on you?---well, that's just the way it feels---just like when they're digging you out of the ruins. Jack's got a left that spells two matinees and a new pair of Oxfords---and his right!---well, it takes a trip to Coney and six pairs of openwork, silk lisle threads to make that good."
|
||||
|
||||
"But what does he beat you for?" inquired Mrs. Fink, with wide-open eyes.
|
||||
|
||||
"Silly!" said Mrs. Cassidy, indulgently. "Why, because he's full. It's generally on Saturday nights."
|
||||
|
||||
"But what cause do you give him?" persisted the seeker after knowledge.
|
||||
|
||||
"Why, didn't I marry him? Jack comes in tanked up; and I'm here, ain't I? Who else has he got a right to beat? I'd just like to catch him once beating anybody else! Sometimes it's because supper ain't ready; and sometimes it's because it is. Jack ain't particular about causes. He just lushes till he remembers he's married, and then he makes for home and does me up. Saturday nights I just move the furniture with sharp corners out of the way, so I won't cut my head when he gets his work in. He's got a left swing that jars you! Sometimes I take the count in the first round; but when I feel like having a good time during the week or want some new rags I come up again for more punishment. That's what I done last night. Jack knows I've been wanting a black silk waist for a month, and I didn't think just one black eye would bring it. Tell you what, Mag, I'll bet you the ice cream he brings it tonight."
|
||||
|
||||
Mrs. Fink was thinking deeply.
|
||||
|
||||
"My Mart," she said, "never hit me a lick in his life. It's just like you said, Mame; he comes in grouchy and ain't got a word to say. He never takes me out anywhere. He's a chair-warmer at home for fair. He buys me things, but he looks so glum about it that I never appreciate 'em."
|
||||
|
||||
Mrs. Cassidy slipped an arm around her chum. "You poor thing!" she said. "But everybody can't have a husband like Jack. Marriage wouldn't be no failure if they was all like him. These discontented wives you hear about---what they need is a man to come home and kick their slats in once a week, and then make it up in kisses, and chocolate creams. That'd give 'em some interest in life. What I want is a masterful man that slugs you when he's jagged and hugs you when he ain't jagged. Preserve me from the man that ain't got the sand to do neither!"
|
||||
|
||||
Mrs. Fink sighed.
|
||||
|
||||
The hallways were suddenly filled with sound. The door flew open at the kick of Mr. Cassidy. His arms were occupied with bundles. Mame flew and hung about his neck. Her sound eye sparkled with the love light that shines in the eye of the Maori maid when she recovers consciousness in the hut of the wooer who has stunned and dragged her there.
|
||||
|
||||
"Hello, old girl!" shouted Mr. Cassidy. He shed his bundles and lifted her off her feet in a mighty hug. "I got tickets for Barnum & Bailey's, and if you'll bust the string of one of them bundles I guess you'll find that silk waist---why, good evening, Mrs. Fink---I didn't see you at first. How's old Mart coming along?"
|
||||
|
||||
"He's very well, Mr. Cassidy---thanks," said Mrs. Fink. "I must be going along up now. Mart'll be home for supper soon. I'll bring you down that pattern you wanted tomorrow, Mame."
|
||||
|
||||
Mrs. Fink went up to her flat and had a little cry. It was a meaningless cry, the kind of cry that only a woman knows about, a cry from no particular cause, altogether an absurd cry; the most transient and the most hopeless cry in the repertory of grief. Why had Martin never thrashed her? He was as big and strong as Jack Cassidy. Did he not care for her at all? He never quarrelled; he came home and lounged about, silent, glum, idle. He was a fairly good provider, but he ignored the spices of life.
|
||||
|
||||
Mrs. Fink's ship of dreams was becalmed. Her captain ranged between plum duff and his hammock. If only he would shiver his timbers or stamp his foot on the quarterdeck now and then! And she had thought to sail so merrily, touching at ports in the Delectable Isles! But now, to vary the figure, she was ready to throw up the sponge, tired out, without a scratch to show for all those tame rounds with her sparring partner. For one moment she almost hated Mame---Mame, with her cuts and bruises, her salve of presents and kisses; her stormy voyage with her fighting, brutal, loving mate.
|
||||
|
||||
Mr. Fink came home at 7. He was permeated with the curse of domesticity. Beyond the portals of his cozy home he cared not to roam, to roam. He was the man who had caught the street car, the anaconda that had swallowed its prey, the tree that lay as it had fallen.
|
||||
|
||||
"Like the supper, Mart?" asked Mrs. Fink, who had striven over it.
|
||||
|
||||
"M-m-m-yep," grunted Mr. Fink.
|
||||
|
||||
After supper he gathered his newspapers to read. He sat in his stocking feet.
|
||||
|
||||
Arise, some new Dante, and sing me the befitting corner of perdition for the man who sitteth in the house in his stockinged feet. Sisters of Patience who by reason of ties or duty have endured it in silk, yarn, cotton, lisle thread or woollen---does not the new canto belong?
|
||||
|
||||
The next day was Labor Day. The occupations of Mr. Cassidy and Mr. Fink ceased for one passage of the sun. Labor, triumphant, would parade and otherwise disport itself.
|
||||
|
||||
Mrs. Fink took Mrs. Cassidy's pattern down early. Mame had on her new silk waist. Even her damaged eye managed to emit a holiday gleam. Jack was fruitfully penitent, and there was a hilarious scheme for the day afoot, with parks and picnics and Pilsener in it.
|
||||
|
||||
A rising, indignant jealousy seized Mrs. Fink as she returned to her flat above. Oh, happy Mame, with her bruises and her quick-following balm! But was Mame to have a monopoly of happiness? Surely Martin Fink was as good a man as Jack Cassidy. Was his wife to go always unbelabored and uncaressed? A sudden, brilliant, breathless idea came to Mrs. Fink. She would show Mame that there were husbands as able to use their fists and perhaps to be as tender afterward as any Jack.
|
||||
|
||||
The holiday promised to be a nominal one with the Finks. Mrs. Fink had the stationary washtubs in the kitchen filled with a two weeks' wash that had been soaking overnight. Mr. Fink sat in his stockinged feet reading a newspaper. Thus Labor Day presaged to speed.
|
||||
|
||||
Jealousy surged high in Mrs. Fink's heart, and higher still surged an audacious resolve. If her man would not strike her---if he would not so far prove his manhood, his prerogative and his interest in conjugal affairs, he must be prompted to his duty.
|
||||
|
||||
Mr. Fink lit his pipe and peacefully rubbed an ankle with a stockinged toe. He reposed in the state of matrimony like a lump of unblended suet in a pudding. This was his level Elysium---to sit at ease vicariously girdling the world in print amid the wifely splashing of suds and the agreeable smells of breakfast dishes departed and dinner ones to come. Many ideas were far from his mind; but the furthest one was the thought of beating his wife.
|
||||
|
||||
Mrs. Fink turned on the hot water and set the washboards in the suds. Up from the flat below came the gay laugh of Mrs. Cassidy. It sounded like a taunt, a flaunting of her own happiness in the face of the unslugged bride above. Now was Mrs. Fink's time.
|
||||
|
||||
Suddenly she turned like a fury upon the man reading.
|
||||
|
||||
"You lazy loafer!" she cried, "must I work my arms off washing and toiling for the ugly likes of you? Are you a man or are you a kitchen hound?"
|
||||
|
||||
Mr. Fink dropped his paper, motionless from surprise. She feared that he would not strike---that the provocation had been insufficient. She leaped at him and struck him fiercely in the face with her clenched hand. In that instant she felt a thrill of love for him such as she had not felt for many a day. Rise up, Martin Fink, and come into your kingdom! Oh, she must feel the weight of his hand now---just to show that he cared---just to show that he cared!
|
||||
|
||||
Mr. Fink sprang to his feet---Maggie caught him again on the jaw with a wide swing of her other hand. She closed her eyes in that fearful, blissful moment before his blow should come---she whispered his name to herself---she leaned to the expected shock, hungry for it.
|
||||
|
||||
In the flat below Mr. Cassidy, with a shamed and contrite face was powdering Mame's eye in preparation for their junket. From the flat above came the sound of a woman's voice, high-raised, a bumping, a stumbling and a shuffling, a chair overturned---unmistakable sounds of domestic conflict.
|
||||
|
||||
"Mart and Mag scrapping?" postulated Mr. Cassidy. "Didn't know they ever indulged. Shall I trot up and see if they need a sponge holder?"
|
||||
|
||||
One of Mrs. Cassidy's eyes sparkled like a diamond. The other twinkled at least like paste.
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh, oh," she said, softly and without apparent meaning, in the feminine ejaculatory manner. "I wonder if---wonder if! Wait, Jack, till I go up and see."
|
||||
|
||||
Up the stairs she sped. As her foot struck the hallway above out from the kitchen door of her flat wildly flounced Mrs. Fink.
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh, Maggie," cried Mrs. Cassidy, in a delighted whisper; "did he? Oh, did he?"
|
||||
|
||||
Mrs. Fink ran and laid her face upon her chum's shoulder and sobbed hopelessly.
|
||||
|
||||
Mrs. Cassidy took Maggie's face between her hands and lifted it gently. Tear-stained it was, flushing and paling, but its velvety, pink-and-white, becomingly freckled surface was unscratched, unbruised, unmarred by the recreant fist of Mr. Fink.
|
||||
|
||||
"Tell me, Maggie," pleaded Mame, "or I'll go in there and find out. What was it? Did he hurt you---what did he do?"
|
||||
|
||||
Mrs. Fink's face went down again despairingly on the bosom of her friend.
|
||||
|
||||
"For God's sake don't open that door, Mame," she sobbed. "And don't ever tell nobody---keep it under your hat. He---he never touched me, and---he's---oh, Gawd---he's washin' the clothes---he's washin' the clothes!"
|
||||
34
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|
||||
A Houston Romance {#a-houston-romance type="title"}
|
||||
-----------------
|
||||
|
||||
About two years ago one of the most popular young society men in Houston mysteriously disappeared. He had been the glass of fashion and the mold of form of the Magnolia City for several years. Especially was he noted for his exquisite and fashionable dress, and he was regarded as the leader in bringing out the latest and correct styles of clothing. No one in Houston ever saw a wrinkle in his elegantly fitting clothes, or a spot upon his snowy linen. He possessed sufficient means to enable him to devote his whole time to society and the art of dress, and in his whole bearing and manners was well nigh equal to the famous Beau Brummel.
|
||||
|
||||
About a year ago it was noticed that he was beginning to grow preoccupied and reserved. His gay and gallant manner was as Chesterfieldian as ever, but he was becoming more silent and moody, and there seemed to be something weighing upon his mind. Suddenly, without a word of farewell, he disappeared, and no traces of him could be discovered. He left a good balance in the bank to his credit, and society racked its brains to conjecture some reason for his mysterious disappearance. He had no relatives in Houston, and with proverbial fickleness his acquaintances and butterfly friends soon allowed him to pass from their minds.
|
||||
|
||||
------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
The mystery has at length been cleared up. A young Houston merchant who was an intimate associate with the young society man took a trip to Europe in September.
|
||||
|
||||
While in Italy he had a desire to visit one of the old monasteries among the Alps; so one day he ascended the [Passo di San Giacomo]{lang="fr"}, a road little wider than a bridle path that led up for 7000 feet among the glaciers of the Leopontine Alps. Far up, perched upon a snow-covered crag, he could see the monastery of the Franciscan monks---the Minorite Friars of the Cismontana group of the Franciscans.
|
||||
|
||||
He picked his cautious way up the narrow way, pausing now and then to admire the rainbow hues that flashed from frozen glaciers, or the vast drifts of snow packed among the crevasses high above his head.
|
||||
|
||||
After six hours' arduous toil he stood before the massive iron gates of the monastery. He rang the bell, and a grim warden bade him enter and partake of the hospitality of the brothers. He was ushered into a vast dim hall, with walls and floors of cold gray stone. The monk who admitted him bade him wait, as the brothers were about to pass through on their way to their cells from evening prayer. A deep-toned bell clanged once; a great door softly opened, and a procession of shaved monks filed slowly and noiselessly past. Theirs heads were bowed and, as they told their beads, their lips moved in silent prayer.
|
||||
|
||||
As they came past the visitor he was astounded to see among the devout monks the form of the man who had once been the curled darling and pattern of elegance in Houston.
|
||||
|
||||
------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
He called his name and the monk, startled by his voice, raised his head and stepped from the ranks of his brother penitents. The others continued their silent march until another great door had closed behind them.
|
||||
|
||||
The Houston man gazed at the friar in wonder.
|
||||
|
||||
He wore a long black robe, slightly confined at the waist by a hempen cord, that hung to his feet in classic, shapely folds. The crown of his head was shaven and his face was as smooth as a maiden's. But the most noticeable thing was the expression of absolute peace and serene happiness that shone from his features. There was no trace of the worried and absent look that his friends had noticed before he disappeared.
|
||||
|
||||
A calm and holy beatitude beamed from his face like a benison.
|
||||
|
||||
"In heaven's name," said his friend, "what brought you here to bury yourself forever from the world; why did you leave your friends and pleasures to pass your days in this dreary place?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Listen," said the monk, "and I will tell you. I am now supremely and ecstatically happy. I have attained the goal of my desires. Look at this robe." He glanced proudly at the dark, severe robe that swept downward from his waist in graceful folds.
|
||||
|
||||
"I am one man," he continued, "who has arrived at the fruition of his dearest earthly hopes. I have got something on at least that will not bag at the knees."
|
||||
106
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|
||||
A Lickpenny Lover {#a-lickpenny-lover type="title"}
|
||||
-----------------
|
||||
|
||||
There, were 3,000 girls in the Biggest Store. Masie was one of them. She was eighteen and a saleslady in the gents' gloves. Here she became versed in two varieties of human beings---the kind of gents who buy their gloves in department stores and the kind of women who buy gloves for unfortunate gents. Besides this wide knowledge of the human species, Masie had acquired other information. She had listened to the promulgated wisdom of the 2,999 other girls and had stored it in a brain that was as secretive and wary as that of a Maltese cat. Perhaps nature, foreseeing that she would lack wise counsellors, had mingled the saving ingredient of shrewdness along with her beauty, as she has endowed the silver fox of the priceless fur above the other animals with cunning.
|
||||
|
||||
For Masie was beautiful. She was a deep-tinted blonde, with the calm poise of a lady who cooks butter cakes in a window. She stood behind her counter in the Biggest Store; and as you closed your hand over the tapeline for your glove measure you thought of Hebe; and as you looked again you wondered how she had come by Minerva's eyes.
|
||||
|
||||
When the floorwalker was not looking Masie chewed tutti frutti; when he was looking she gazed up as if at the clouds and smiled wistfully.
|
||||
|
||||
That is the shopgirl smile, and I enjoin you to shun it unless you are well fortified with callosity of the heart, caramels and a congeniality for the capers of Cupid. This smile belonged to Masie's recreation hours and not to the store; but the floorwalker must have his own. He is the Shylock of the stores. When he comes nosing around the bridge of his nose is a toll-bridge. It is goo-goo eyes or "git" when he looks toward a pretty girl. Of course not all floorwalkers are thus. Only a few days ago the papers printed news of one over eighty years of age.
|
||||
|
||||
One day Irving Carter, painter, millionaire, traveller, poet, automobilist, happened to enter the Biggest Store. It is due to him to add that his visit was not voluntary. Filial duty took him by the collar and dragged him inside, while his mother philandered among the bronze and terra-cotta statuettes.
|
||||
|
||||
Carter strolled across to the glove counter in order to shoot a few minutes on the wing. His need for gloves was genuine; he had forgotten to bring a pair with him. But his action hardly calls for apology, because he had never heard of glove-counter flirtations.
|
||||
|
||||
As he neared the vicinity of his fate he hesitated, suddenly conscious of this unknown phase of Cupid's less worthy profession.
|
||||
|
||||
Three or four cheap fellows, sonorously garbed, were leaning over the counters, wrestling with the mediatorial hand-coverings, while giggling girls played vivacious seconds to their lead upon the strident string of coquetry. Carter would have retreated, but he had gone too far. Masie confronted him behind her counter with a questioning look in eyes as coldly, beautifully, warmly blue as the glint of summer sunshine on an iceberg drifting in Southern seas.
|
||||
|
||||
And then Irving Carter, painter, millionaire, etc., felt a warm flush rise to his aristocratically pale face. But not from diffidence. The blush was intellectual in origin. He knew in a moment that he stood in the ranks of the ready-made youths who wooed the giggling girls at other counters. Himself leaned against the oaken trysting place of a cockney Cupid with a desire in his heart for the favor of a glove salesgirl. He was no more than Bill and Jack and Mickey. And then he felt a sudden tolerance for them, and an elating, courageous contempt for the conventions upon which he had fed, and an unhesitating determination to have this perfect creature for his own.
|
||||
|
||||
When the gloves were paid for and wrapped Carter lingered for a moment. The dimples at the corners of Masie's damask mouth deepened. All gentlemen who bought gloves lingered in just that way. She curved an arm, showing like Psyche's through her shirtwaist sleeve, and rested an elbow upon the showcase edge.
|
||||
|
||||
Carter had never before encountered a situation of which he had not been perfect master. But now he stood far more awkward than Bill or Jack or Mickey. He had no chance of meeting this beautiful girl socially. His mind struggled to recall the nature and habits of shopgirls as he had read or heard of them. Somehow he had received the idea that they sometimes did not insist too strictly upon the regular channels of introduction. His heart beat loudly at the thought of proposing an unconventional meeting with this lovely and virginal being. But the tumult in his heart gave him courage.
|
||||
|
||||
After a few friendly and well-received remarks on general subjects, he laid his card by her hand on the counter.
|
||||
|
||||
"Will you please pardon me," he said, "if I seem too bold; but I earnestly hope you will allow me the pleasure of seeing you again. There is my name; I assure you that it is with the greatest respect that I ask the favor of becoming one of your fr---acquaintances. May I not hope for the privilege?"
|
||||
|
||||
Masie knew men---especially men who buy gloves. Without hesitation she looked him frankly and smilingly in the eyes, and said:
|
||||
|
||||
"Sure. I guess you're all right. I don't usually go out with strange gentlemen, though. It ain't quite ladylike. When should you want to see me again?"
|
||||
|
||||
"As soon as I may," said Carter. "If you would allow me to call at your home, I---"
|
||||
|
||||
Masie laughed musically. "Oh, gee, no!" she said, emphatically. "If you could see our flat once! There's five of us in three rooms. I'd just like to see ma's face if I was to bring a gentleman friend there!"
|
||||
|
||||
"Anywhere, then," said the enamored Carter, "that will be convenient to you."
|
||||
|
||||
"Say," suggested Masie, with a bright-idea look in her peach-blow face; "I guess Thursday night will about suit me. Suppose you come to the corner of Eighth Avenue and Forty-eighth Street at 7:30. I live right near the corner. But I've got to be back home by eleven. Ma never lets me stay out after eleven."
|
||||
|
||||
Carter promised gratefully to keep the tryst, and then hastened to his mother, who was looking about for him to ratify her purchase of a bronze Diana.
|
||||
|
||||
A salesgirl, with small eyes and an obtuse nose, strolled near Masie, with a friendly leer.
|
||||
|
||||
"Did you make a hit with his nobs, Mase?" she asked, familiarly.
|
||||
|
||||
"The gentleman asked permission to call," answered Masie, with the grand air, as she slipped Carter's card into the bosom of her waist.
|
||||
|
||||
"Permission to call!" echoed small eyes, with a snigger. "Did he say anything about dinner in the Waldorf and a spin in his auto afterward?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh, cheese it!" said Masie, wearily. "You've been used to swell things, I don't think. You've had a swelled head ever since that hose-cart driver took you out to a chop suey joint. No, he never mentioned the Waldorf; but there's a Fifth Avenue address on his card, and if he buys the supper you can bet your life there won't be no pigtail on the waiter what takes the order."
|
||||
|
||||
As Carter glided away from the Biggest Store with his mother in his electric runabout, he bit his lip with a dull pain at his heart. He knew that love had come to him for the first time in all the twenty-nine years of his life. And that the object of it should make so readily an appointment with him at a street corner, though it was a step toward his desires, tortured him with misgivings.
|
||||
|
||||
Carter did not know the shopgirl. He did not know that her home is often either a scarcely habitable tiny room or a domicile filled to overflowing with kith and kin. The street-corner is her parlor, the park is her drawing-room; the avenue is her garden walk; yet for the most part she is as inviolate mistress of herself in them as is my lady inside her tapestried chamber.
|
||||
|
||||
One evening at dusk, two weeks after their first meeting, Carter and Masie strolled arm-in-arm into a little, dimly-lit park. They found a bench, tree-shadowed and secluded, and sat there.
|
||||
|
||||
For the first time his arm stole gently around her. Her golden-bronze head slid restfully against his shoulder.
|
||||
|
||||
"Gee!" sighed Masie, thankfully. "Why didn't you ever think of that before?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Masie," said Carter, earnestly, "you surely know that I love you. I ask you sincerely to marry me. You know me well enough by this time to have no doubts of me. I want you, and I must have you. I care nothing for the difference in our stations."
|
||||
|
||||
"What is the difference?" asked Masie, curiously.
|
||||
|
||||
"Well, there isn't any," said Carter, quickly, "except in the minds of foolish people. It is in my power to give you a life of luxury. My social position is beyond dispute, and my means are ample."
|
||||
|
||||
"They all say that," remarked Masie. "It's the kid they all give you. I suppose you really work in a delicatessen or follow the races. I ain't as green as I look."
|
||||
|
||||
"I can furnish you all the proofs you want," said Carter, gently. "And I want you, Masie. I loved you the first day I saw you."
|
||||
|
||||
"They all do," said Masie, with an amused laugh, "to hear 'em talk. If I could meet a man that got stuck on me the third time he'd seen me I think I'd get mashed on him."
|
||||
|
||||
"Please don't say such things," pleaded Carter. "Listen to me, dear. Ever since I first looked into your eyes you have been the only woman in the world for me."
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh, ain't you the kidder!" smiled Masie. "How many other girls did you ever tell that?"
|
||||
|
||||
But Carter persisted. And at length he reached the flimsy, fluttering little soul of the shopgirl that existed somewhere deep down in her lovely bosom. His words penetrated the heart whose very lightness was its safest armor. She looked up at him with eyes that saw. And a warm glow visited her cool cheeks. Tremblingly, awfully, her moth wings closed, and she seemed about to settle upon the flower of love. Some faint glimmer of life and its possibilities on the other side of her glove counter dawned upon her. Carter felt the change and crowded the opportunity.
|
||||
|
||||
"Marry me, Masie," he whispered softly, "and we will go away from this ugly city to beautiful ones. We will forget work and business, and life will be one long holiday. I know where I should take you---I have been there often. Just think of a shore where summer is eternal, where the waves are always rippling on the lovely beach and the people are happy and free as children. We will sail to those shores and remain there as long as you please. In one of those faraway cities there are grand and lovely palaces and towers full of beautiful pictures and statues. The streets of the city are water, and one travels about in---"
|
||||
|
||||
"I know," said Masie, sitting up suddenly. "Gondolas."
|
||||
|
||||
"Yes," smiled Carter.
|
||||
|
||||
"I thought so," said Masie.
|
||||
|
||||
"And then," continued Carter, "we will travel on and see whatever we wish in the world. After the European cities we will visit India and the ancient cities there, and ride on elephants and see the wonderful temples of the Hindus and Brahmins and the Japanese gardens and the camel trains and chariot races in Persia, and all the queer sights of foreign countries. Don't you think you would like it, Masie?"
|
||||
|
||||
Masie rose to her feet.
|
||||
|
||||
"I think we had better be going home," she said, coolly. "It's getting late."
|
||||
|
||||
Carter humored her. He had come to know her varying, thistledown moods, and that it was useless to combat them. But he felt a certain happy triumph. He had held for a moment, though but by a silken thread, the soul of his wild Psyche, and hope was stronger within him. Once she had folded her wings and her cool hand had closed about his own.
|
||||
|
||||
At the Biggest Store the next day Masie's chum, Lulu, waylaid her in an angle of the counter.
|
||||
|
||||
"How are you and your swell friend making it?" she asked.
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh, him?" said Masie, patting her side curls. "He ain't in it any more. Say, Lu, what do you think that fellow wanted me to do?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Go on the stage?" guessed Lulu, breathlessly.
|
||||
|
||||
"Nit; he's too cheap a guy for that. He wanted me to marry him and go down to Coney Island for a wedding tour!"
|
||||
112
src/epub/text/a-little-local-colour.md
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@ -0,0 +1,112 @@
|
||||
A Little Local Colour {#a-little-local-colour type="title"}
|
||||
---------------------
|
||||
|
||||
I mentioned to Rivington that I was in search of characteristic New York scenes and incidents---something typical, I told him, without necessarily having to spell the first syllable with an "*i*."
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh, for your writing business," said Rivington; "you couldn't have applied to a better shop. What I don't know about little old New York wouldn't make a sonnet to a sunbonnet. I'll put you right in the middle of so much local colour that you won't know whether you are a magazine cover or in the erysipelas ward. When do you want to begin?"
|
||||
|
||||
Rivington is a young-man-about-town and a New Yorker by birth, preference and incommutability.
|
||||
|
||||
I told him that I would be glad to accept his escort and guardianship so that I might take notes of Manhattan's grand, gloomy and peculiar idiosyncrasies, and that the time of so doing would be at his own convenience.
|
||||
|
||||
"We'll begin this very evening," said Rivington, himself interested, like a good fellow. "Dine with me at seven, and then I'll steer you up against metropolitan phases so thick you'll have to have a kinetoscope to record 'em."
|
||||
|
||||
So I dined with Rivington pleasantly at his club, in Forty-eleventh Street, and then we set forth in pursuit of the elusive tincture of affairs.
|
||||
|
||||
As we came out of the club there stood two men on the sidewalk near the steps in earnest conversation.
|
||||
|
||||
"And by what process of ratiocination," said one of them, "do you arrive at the conclusion that the division of society into producing and non-possessing classes predicates failure when compared with competitive systems that are monopolizing in tendency and result inimically to industrial evolution?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh, come off your perch!" said the other man, who wore glasses. "Your premises won't come out in the wash. You windjammers who apply bandy-legged theories to concrete categorical syllogisms send logical conclusions skallybootin' into the infinitesimal ragbag. You can't pull my leg with an old sophism with whiskers on it. You quote Marx and Hyndman and Kautsky---what are they?---shines! Tolstoy?---his garret is full of rats. I put it to you over the home-plate that the idea of a cooperative commonwealth and an abolishment of competitive systems simply takes the rag off the bush and gives me hyperesthesia of the roopteetoop! The skookum house for yours!"
|
||||
|
||||
I stopped a few yards away and took out my little notebook.
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh, come ahead," said Rivington, somewhat nervously; "you don't want to listen to that."
|
||||
|
||||
"Why, man," I whispered, "this is just what I do want to hear. These slang types are among your city's most distinguishing features. Is this the Bowery variety? I really must hear more of it."
|
||||
|
||||
"If I follow you," said the man who had spoken first, "you do not believe it possible to reorganize society on the basis of common interest?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Shinny on your own side!" said the man with glasses. "You never heard any such music from my foghorn. What I said was that I did not believe it practicable just now. The guys with wads are not in the frame of mind to slack up on the mazuma, and the man with the portable tin banqueting canister isn't exactly ready to join the Bible class. You can bet your variegated socks that the situation is all spifflicated up from the Battery to breakfast! What the country needs is for some bully old bloke like Cobden or some wise guy like old Ben Franklin to sashay up to the front and biff the nigger's head with the baseball. Do you catch my smoke? What?"
|
||||
|
||||
Rivington pulled me by the arm impatiently.
|
||||
|
||||
"Please come on," he said. "Let's go see something. This isn't what you want."
|
||||
|
||||
"Indeed, it is," I said resisting. "This tough talk is the very stuff that counts. There is a picturesqueness about the speech of the lower order of people that is quite unique. Did you say that this is the Bowery variety of slang?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh, well," said Rivington, giving it up, "I'll tell you straight. That's one of our college professors talking. He ran down for a day or two at the club. It's a sort of fad with him lately to use slang in his conversation. He thinks it improves language. The man he is talking to is one of New York's famous social economists. Now will you come on. You can't use that, you know."
|
||||
|
||||
"No," I agreed; "I can't use that. Would you call that typical of New York?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Of course not," said Rivington, with a sigh of relief. "I'm glad you see the difference. But if you want to hear the real old tough Bowery slang I'll take you down where you'll get your fill of it."
|
||||
|
||||
"I would like it," I said; "that is, if it's the real thing. I've often read it in books, but I never heard it. Do you think it will be dangerous to go unprotected among those characters?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh, no," said Rivington; "not at this time of night. To tell the truth, I haven't been along the Bowery in a long time, but I know it as well as I do Broadway. We'll look up some of the typical Bowery boys and get them to talk. It'll be worth your while. They talk a peculiar dialect that you won't hear anywhere else on earth."
|
||||
|
||||
Rivington and I went east in a Forty-second Street car and then south on the Third Avenue line.
|
||||
|
||||
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."
|
||||
|
||||
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.
|
||||
|
||||
By and by Rivington stopped and said we were in the heart of the Bowery. There was a policeman on the corner whom Rivington knew.
|
||||
|
||||
"Hallo, Donahue!" said my guide. "How goes it? My friend and I are down this way looking up a bit of local colour. He's anxious to meet one of the Bowery types. Can't you put us on to something genuine in that line---something that's got the colour, you know?"
|
||||
|
||||
Policeman Donahue turned himself about ponderously, his florid face full of good-nature. He pointed with his club down the street.
|
||||
|
||||
"Sure!" he said huskily. "Here comes a lad now that was born on the Bowery and knows every inch of it. If he's ever been above Bleecker Street he's kept it to himself."
|
||||
|
||||
A man about twenty-eight or twenty-nine, with a smooth face, was sauntering toward us with his hands in his coat pockets. Policeman Donahue stopped him with a courteous wave of his club.
|
||||
|
||||
"Evening, Kerry," he said. "Here's a couple of gents, friends of mine, that want to hear you spiel something about the Bowery. Can you reel 'em off a few yards?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Certainly, Donahue," said the young man, pleasantly. "Good evening, gentlemen," he said to us, with a pleasant smile. Donahue walked off on his beat.
|
||||
|
||||
"This is the goods," whispered Rivington, nudging me with his elbow. "Look at his jaw!"
|
||||
|
||||
"Say, cull," said Rivington, pushing back his hat, "wot's doin'? Me and my friend's taking a look down de old line---see? De copper tipped us off dat you was wise to de bowery. Is dat right?"
|
||||
|
||||
I could not help admiring Rivington's power of adapting himself to his surroundings.
|
||||
|
||||
"Donahue was right," said the young man, frankly; "I was brought up on the Bowery. I have been newsboy, teamster, pugilist, member of an organized band of 'toughs,' bartender, and a 'sport' in various meanings of the word. The experience certainly warrants the supposition that I have at least a passing acquaintance with a few phases of Bowery life. I will be pleased to place whatever knowledge and experience I have at the service of my friend Donahue's friends."
|
||||
|
||||
Rivington seemed ill at ease.
|
||||
|
||||
"I say," he said---somewhat entreatingly, "I thought---you're not stringing us, are you? It isn't just the kind of talk we expected. You haven't even said 'Hully gee!' once. Do you really belong on the Bowery?"
|
||||
|
||||
"I am afraid," said the Bowery boy, smilingly, "that at some time you have been enticed into one of the dives of literature and had the counterfeit coin of the Bowery passed upon you. The 'argot' to which you doubtless refer was the invention of certain of your literary 'discoverers' who invaded the unknown wilds below Third Avenue and put strange sounds into the mouths of the inhabitants. Safe in their homes far to the north and west, the credulous readers who were beguiled by this new 'dialect' perused and believed. Like Marco Polo and Mungo Park---pioneers indeed, but ambitious souls who could not draw the line of demarcation between discovery and invention---the literary bones of these explorers are dotting the trackless wastes of the subway. While it is true that after the publication of the mythical language attributed to the dwellers along the Bowery certain of its pat phrases and apt metaphors were adopted and, to a limited extent, used in this locality, it was because our people are prompt in assimilating whatever is to their commercial advantage. To the tourists who visited our newly discovered clime, and who expected a realization of their literary guide books, they supplied the demands of the market.
|
||||
|
||||
"But perhaps I am wandering from the question. In what way can I assist you, gentlemen? I beg you will believe that the hospitality of the street is extended to all. There are, I regret to say, many catchpenny places of entertainment, but I cannot conceive that they would entice you."
|
||||
|
||||
I felt Rivington lean somewhat heavily against me.
|
||||
|
||||
"Say!" he remarked, with uncertain utterance; "come and have a drink with us."
|
||||
|
||||
"Thank you, but I never drink. I find that alcohol, even in the smallest quantities, alters the perspective. And I must preserve my perspective, for I am studying the Bowery. I have lived in it nearly thirty years, and I am just beginning to understand its heartbeats. It is like a great river fed by a hundred alien streams. Each influx brings strange seeds on its flood, strange silt and weeds, and now and then a flower of rare promise. To construe this river requires a man who can build dykes against the overflow, who is a naturalist, a geologist, a humanitarian, a diver and a strong swimmer. I love my Bowery. It was my cradle and is my inspiration. I have published one book. The critics have been kind. I put my heart in it. I am writing another, into which I hope to put both heart and brain. Consider me your guide, gentlemen. Is there anything I can take you to see, any place to which I can conduct you?"
|
||||
|
||||
I was afraid to look at Rivington except with one eye.
|
||||
|
||||
"Thanks," said Rivington. "We were looking up ... that is ... my friend ... confound it; it's against all precedent, you know ... awfully obliged ... just the same."
|
||||
|
||||
"In case," said our friend, "you would like to meet some of our Bowery young men I would be pleased to have you visit the quarters of our East Side Kappa Delta Phi Society, only two blocks east of here."
|
||||
|
||||
"Awfully sorry," said Rivington, "but my friend's got me on the jump tonight. He's a terror when he's out after local colour. Now, there's nothing I would like better than to drop in at the Kappa Delta Phi, but---some other time!"
|
||||
|
||||
We said our farewells and boarded a home-bound car. We had a rabbit on upper Broadway, and then I parted with Rivington on a street corner.
|
||||
|
||||
"Well, anyhow," said he, braced and recovered, "it couldn't have happened anywhere but in little old New York."
|
||||
|
||||
Which to say the least, was typical of Rivington.
|
||||
54
src/epub/text/a-little-talk-about-mobs.md
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|
||||
A Little Talk About Mobs {#a-little-talk-about-mobs type="title"}
|
||||
------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
"I see," remarked the tall gentleman in the frock coat and black slouch hat, "that another street car motorman in your city has narrowly excaped lynching at the hands of an infuriated mob by lighting a cigar and walking a couple of blocks down the street."
|
||||
|
||||
"Do you think they would have lynched him?" asked the New Yorker, in the next seat of the ferry station, who was also waiting for the boat.
|
||||
|
||||
"Not until after the election," said the tall man, cutting a corner off his plug of tobacco. "I've been in your city long enough to know something about your mobs. The motorman's mob is about the least dangerous of them all, except the National Guard and the Dressmakers' Convention.
|
||||
|
||||
"You see, when little Willie Goldstein is sent by his mother for pigs' knuckles, with a nickel tightly grasped in his chubby fist, he always crosses the street car track safely twenty feet ahead of the car; and then suddenly turns back to ask his mother whether it was pale ale or a spool of 80 white cotton that she wanted. The motorman yells and throws himself on the brakes like a football player. There is a horrible grinding and then a ripping sound, and a piercing shriek, and Willie is sitting, with part of his trousers torn away by the fender, screaming for his lost nickel.
|
||||
|
||||
"In ten seconds the car is surrounded by 600 infuriated citizens, crying, 'Lynch the motorman! Lynch the motorman!' at the top of their voices. Some of them run to the nearest cigar store to get a rope; but they find the last one has just been cut up and labelled. Hundreds of the excited mob press close to the cowering motorman, whose hand is observed to tremble perceptibly as he transfers a stick of pepsin gum from his pocket to his mouth.
|
||||
|
||||
"When the bloodthirsty mob of maddened citizens has closed in on the motorman, some bringing camp stools and sitting quite close to him, and all shouting, 'Lynch him!' Policeman Fogarty forces his way through them to the side of their prospective victim.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Hello, Mike,' says the motorman in a low voice, 'nice day. Shall I sneak off a block or so, or would you like to rescue me?'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Well, Jerry, if you don't mind,' says the policeman, 'I'd like to disperse the infuriated mob singlehanded. I haven't defeated a lynching mob since last Tuesday; and that was a small one of only 300, that wanted to string up a Dago boy for selling wormy pears. It would boost me some down at the station.'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'All right, Mike,' says the motorman, 'anything to oblige. I'll turn pale and tremble.'
|
||||
|
||||
"And he does so; and Policeman Fogarty draws his club and says, 'G'wan wid yez!' and in eight seconds the desperate mob has scattered and gone about its business, except about a hundred who remain to search for Willie's nickel."
|
||||
|
||||
"I never heard of a mob in our city doing violence to a motorman because of an accident," said the New Yorker.
|
||||
|
||||
"You are not liable to," said the tall man. "They know the motorman's all right, and that he wouldn't even run over a stray dog if he could help it. And they know that not a man among 'em would tie the knot to hang even a Thomas cat that had been tried and condemned and sentenced according to law."
|
||||
|
||||
"Then why do they become infuriated and make threats of lynching?" asked the New Yorker.
|
||||
|
||||
"To assure the motorman," answered the tall man, "that he is safe. If they really wanted to do him up they would go into the houses and drop bricks on him from the third-story windows."
|
||||
|
||||
"New Yorkers are not cowards," said the other man, a little stiffly.
|
||||
|
||||
"Not one at a time," agreed the tall man, promptly. "You've got a fine lot of single-handed scrappers in your town. I'd rather fight three of you than one; and I'd go up against all the Gas Trust's victims in a bunch before I'd pass two citizens on a dark corner, with my watch chain showing. When you get rounded up in a bunch you lose your nerve. Get you in crowds and you're easy. Ask the 'L' road guards and George B. Cortelyou and the tintype booths at Coney Island. Divided you stand, united you fall. *E pluribus nihil.* Whenever one of your mobs surrounds a man and begins to holler, 'Lynch him!' he says to himself, 'Oh, dear, I suppose I must look pale to please the boys, but I will, forsooth, let my life insurance premium lapse tomorrow. This is a sure tip for me to play Methuselah straight across the board in the next handicap.' "
|
||||
|
||||
"I can imagine the tortured feelings of a prisoner in the hands of New York policemen when an infuriated mob demands that he be turned over to them for lynching. 'For God's sake, officers,' cries the distracted wretch, 'have ye hearts of stone, that ye will not let them wrest me from ye?'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Sorry, Jimmy,' says one of the policemen, 'but it won't do. There's three of us---me and Darrel and the plain-clothes man; and there's only sivin thousand of the mob. How'd we explain it at the office if they took ye? Jist chase the infuriated aggregation around the corner, Darrel, and we'll be movin' along to the station.' "
|
||||
|
||||
"Some of our gatherings of excited citizens have not been so harmless," said the New Yorker, with a faint note of civic pride.
|
||||
|
||||
"I'll admit that," said the tall man. "A cousin of mine who was on a visit here once had an arm broken and lost an ear in one of them."
|
||||
|
||||
"That must have been during the Cooper Union riots," remarked the New Yorker.
|
||||
|
||||
"Not the Cooper Union," explained the tall man---"but it was a union riot---at the Vanastor wedding."
|
||||
|
||||
"You seem to be in favor of lynch law," said the New Yorker, severely.
|
||||
|
||||
"No, sir, I am not. No intelligent man is. But, sir, there are certain cases when people rise in their just majesty and take a righteous vengeance for crimes that the law is slow in punishing. I am an advocate of law and order, but I will say to you that less than six months ago I myself assisted at the lynching of one of that race that is creating a wide chasm between your section of country and mine, sir."
|
||||
|
||||
"It is a deplorable condition," said the New Yorker, "that exists in the South, but---"
|
||||
|
||||
"I am from Indiana, sir," said the tall man, taking another chew; "and I don't think you will condemn my course when I tell you that the colored man in question had stolen \$9.60 in cash, sir, from my own brother."
|
||||
20
src/epub/text/a-lunar-episode.md
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src/epub/text/a-lunar-episode.md
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|
||||
A Lunar Episode {#a-lunar-episode type="title"}
|
||||
---------------
|
||||
|
||||
The scene was one of supernatural weirdness. Tall, fantastic mountains reared their seamed peaks over a dreary waste of igneous rock and burned-out lava beds. Deep lakes of black water stood motionless as glass under frowning, honeycombed crags, from which ever and anon dropped crumbled masses with a sullen plunge. Vegetation there was none. Bitter cold reigned and ridges of black and shapeless rocks cut the horizon on all sides. An extinct volcano loomed against a purple sky, black as night and old as the world.
|
||||
|
||||
The firmament was studded with immense stars that shone with a wan and spectral light. Orion's belt hung high above.
|
||||
|
||||
Aldebaran faintly shone millions of miles away, and the earth gleamed like a new-risen moon with a lurid, blood-like glow.
|
||||
|
||||
On a lofty mountain that hung toppling above an ink-black sea stood a dwelling built of stone. From its solitary window came a bright light that gleamed upon the misshapen rocks. The door opened and two men emerged locked in a deadly struggle.
|
||||
|
||||
They swayed and twisted upon the edge of the precipice, now one gaining the advantage, now the other.
|
||||
|
||||
Strong men they were, and stone rolled from their feet into the valley as each strove to overcome the other.
|
||||
|
||||
At length one prevailed. He seized his opponent, and raising him high above his head, hurled him into space.
|
||||
|
||||
The vanquished combatant shot through the air like a stone from a catapult in the direction of the luminous earth.
|
||||
|
||||
"That's three of 'em this week," said the Man in the Moon as he lit a cigarette and turned back into the house. "Those New York interviewers are going to make me tired if they keep this thing up much longer."
|
||||
106
src/epub/text/a-madison-square-arabian-night.md
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|
||||
A Madison Square Arabian Night {#a-madison-square-arabian-night type="title"}
|
||||
------------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
To Carson Chalmers, in his apartment near the square, Phillips brought the evening mail. Beside the routine correspondence there were two items bearing the same foreign postmark.
|
||||
|
||||
One of the incoming parcels contained a photograph of a woman. The other contained an interminable letter, over which Chalmers hung, absorbed, for a long time. The letter was from another woman; and it contained poisoned barbs, sweetly dipped in honey, and feathered with innuendoes concerning the photographed woman.
|
||||
|
||||
Chalmers tore this letter into a thousand bits and began to wear out his expensive rug by striding back and forth upon it. Thus an animal from the jungle acts when it is caged, and thus a caged man acts when he is housed in a jungle of doubt.
|
||||
|
||||
By and by the restless mood was overcome. The rug was not an enchanted one. For sixteen feet he could travel along it; three thousand miles was beyond its power to aid.
|
||||
|
||||
Phillips appeared. He never entered; he invariably appeared, like a well-oiled genie.
|
||||
|
||||
"Will you dine here, sir, or out?" he asked.
|
||||
|
||||
"Here," said Chalmers, "and in half an hour." He listened glumly to the January blasts making an Aeolian trombone of the empty street.
|
||||
|
||||
"Wait," he said to the disappearing genie. "As I came home across the end of the square I saw many men standing there in rows. There was one mounted upon something, talking. Why do those men stand in rows, and why are they there?"
|
||||
|
||||
"They are homeless men, sir," said Phillips. "The man standing on the box tries to get lodging for them for the night. People come around to listen and give him money. Then he sends as many as the money will pay for to some lodging-house. That is why they stand in rows; they get sent to bed in order as they come."
|
||||
|
||||
"By the time dinner is served," said Chalmers, "have one of those men here. He will dine with me."
|
||||
|
||||
"W-w-which---," began Phillips, stammering for the first time during his service.
|
||||
|
||||
"Choose one at random," said Chalmers. "You might see that he is reasonably sober---and a certain amount of cleanliness will not be held against him. That is all."
|
||||
|
||||
It was an unusual thing for Carson Chalmers to play the Caliph. But on that night he felt the inefficacy of conventional antidotes to melancholy. Something wanton and egregious, something high-flavored and Arabian, he must have to lighten his mood.
|
||||
|
||||
On the half hour Phillips had finished his duties as slave of the lamp. The waiters from the restaurant below had whisked aloft the delectable dinner. The dining table, laid for two, glowed cheerily in the glow of the pink-shaded candles.
|
||||
|
||||
And now Phillips, as though he ushered a cardinal---or held in charge a burglar---wafted in the shivering guest who had been haled from the line of mendicant lodgers.
|
||||
|
||||
It is a common thing to call such men wrecks; if the comparison be used here it is the specific one of a derelict come to grief through fire. Even yet some flickering combustion illuminated the drifting hulk. His face and hands had been recently washed---a rite insisted upon by Phillips as a memorial to the slaughtered conventions. In the candlelight he stood, a flaw in the decorous fittings of the apartment. His face was a sickly white, covered almost to the eyes with a stubble the shade of a red Irish setter's coat. Phillips's comb had failed to control the pale brown hair, long matted and conformed to the contour of a constantly worn hat. His eyes were full of a hopeless, tricky defiance like that seen in a cur's that is cornered by his tormentors. His shabby coat was buttoned high, but a quarter inch of redeeming collar showed above it. His manner was singularly free from embarrassment when Chalmers rose from his chair across the round dining table.
|
||||
|
||||
"If you will oblige me," said the host, "I will be glad to have your company at dinner."
|
||||
|
||||
"My name is Plumer," said the highway guest, in harsh and aggressive tones. "If you're like me, you like to know the name of the party you're dining with."
|
||||
|
||||
"I was going on to say," continued Chalmers somewhat hastily, "that mine is Chalmers. Will you sit opposite?"
|
||||
|
||||
Plumer, of the ruffled plumes, bent his knee for Phillips to slide the chair beneath him. He had an air of having sat at attended boards before. Phillips set out the anchovies and olives.
|
||||
|
||||
"Good!" barked Plumer; "going to be in courses, is it? All right, my jovial ruler of Bagdad. I'm your Scheherezade all the way to the toothpicks. You're the first Caliph with a genuine Oriental flavor I've struck since frost. What luck! And I was forty-third in line. I finished counting, just as your welcome emissary arrived to bid me to the feast. I had about as much chance of getting a bed tonight as I have of being the next President. How will you have the sad story of my life, Mr. Al Raschid---a chapter with each course or the whole edition with the cigars and coffee?"
|
||||
|
||||
"The situation does not seem a novel one to you," said Chalmers with a smile.
|
||||
|
||||
"By the chin whiskers of the prophet---no!" answered the guest. "New York's as full of cheap Haroun al Raschids as Bagdad is of fleas. I've been held up for my story with a loaded meal pointed at my head twenty times. Catch anybody in New York giving you something for nothing! They spell curiosity and charity with the same set of building blocks. Lots of 'em will stake you to a dime and chop-suey; and a few of 'em will play Caliph to the tune of a top sirloin; but every one of 'em will stand over you till they screw your autobiography out of you with foot notes, appendix and unpublished fragments. Oh, I know what to do when I see victuals coming toward me in little old Bagdad-on-the-Subway. I strike the asphalt three times with my forehead and get ready to spiel yarns for my supper. I claim descent from the late Tommy Tucker, who was forced to hand out vocal harmony for his predigested wheaterina and spoopju."
|
||||
|
||||
"I do not ask your story," said Chalmers. "I tell you frankly that it was a sudden whim that prompted me to send for some stranger to dine with me. I assure you you will not suffer through any curiosity of mine."
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh, fudge!" exclaimed the guest, enthusiastically tackling his soup; "I don't mind it a bit. I'm a regular Oriental magazine with a red cover and the leaves cut when the Caliph walks abroad. In fact, we fellows in the bed line have a sort of union rate for things of this sort. Somebody's always stopping and wanting to know what brought us down so low in the world. For a sandwich and a glass of beer I tell 'em that drink did it. For corned beef and cabbage and a cup of coffee I give 'em the hardhearted-landlord---six-months-in-the-hospital-lost-job story. A sirloin steak and a quarter for a bed gets the Wall Street tragedy of the swept-away fortune and the gradual descent. This is the first spread of this kind I've stumbled against. I haven't got a story to fit it. I'll tell you what, Mr. Chalmers, I'm going to tell you the truth for this, if you'll listen to it. It'll be harder for you to believe than the made-up ones."
|
||||
|
||||
An hour later the Arabian guest lay back with a sigh of satisfaction while Phillips brought the coffee and cigars and cleared the table.
|
||||
|
||||
"Did you ever hear of Sherrard Plumer?" he asked, with a strange smile.
|
||||
|
||||
"I remember the name," said Chalmers. "He was a painter, I think, of a good deal of prominence a few years ago."
|
||||
|
||||
"Five years," said the guest. "Then I went down like a chunk of lead. I'm Sherrard Plumer! I sold the last portrait I painted for \$2,000. After that I couldn't have found a sitter for a gratis picture."
|
||||
|
||||
"What was the trouble?" Chalmers could not resist asking.
|
||||
|
||||
"Funny thing," answered Plumer, grimly. "Never quite understood it myself. For a while I swam like a cork. I broke into the swell crowd and got commissions right and left. The newspapers called me a fashionable painter. Then the funny things began to happen. Whenever I finished a picture people would come to see it, and whisper and look queerly at one another."
|
||||
|
||||
"I soon found out what the trouble was. I had a knack of bringing out in the face of a portrait the hidden character of the original. I don't know how I did it---I painted what I saw---but I know it did me. Some of my sitters were fearfully enraged and refused their pictures. I painted the portrait of a very beautiful and popular society dame. When it was finished her husband looked at it with a peculiar expression on his face, and the next week he sued for divorce."
|
||||
|
||||
"I remember one case of a prominent banker who sat to me. While I had his portrait on exhibition in my studio an acquaintance of his came in to look at it. 'Bless me,' says he, 'does he really look like that?' I told him it was considered a faithful likeness. 'I never noticed that expression about his eyes before,' said he; 'I think I'll drop downtown and change my bank account.' He did drop down, but the bank account was gone and so was Mr. Banker.
|
||||
|
||||
"It wasn't long till they put me out of business. People don't want their secret meannesses shown up in a picture. They can smile and twist their own faces and deceive you, but the picture can't. I couldn't get an order for another picture, and I had to give up. I worked as a newspaper artist for a while, and then for a lithographer, but my work with them got me into the same trouble. If I drew from a photograph my drawing showed up characteristics and expressions that you couldn't find in the photo, but I guess they were in the original, all right. The customers raised lively rows, especially the women, and I never could hold a job long. So I began to rest my weary head upon the breast of Old Booze for comfort. And pretty soon I was in the free-bed line and doing oral fiction for handouts among the food bazaars. Does the truthful statement weary thee, O Caliph? I can turn on the Wall Street disaster stop if you prefer, but that requires a tear, and I'm afraid I can't hustle one up after that good dinner."
|
||||
|
||||
"No, no," said Chalmers, earnestly, "you interest me very much. Did all of your portraits reveal some unpleasant trait, or were there some that did not suffer from the ordeal of your peculiar brush?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Some? Yes," said Plumer. "Children generally, a good many women and a sufficient number of men. All people aren't bad, you know. When they were all right the pictures were all right. As I said, I don't explain it, but I'm telling you facts."
|
||||
|
||||
On Chalmers's writing-table lay the photograph that he had received that day in the foreign mail. Ten minutes later he had Plumer at work making a sketch from it in pastels. At the end of an hour the artist rose and stretched wearily.
|
||||
|
||||
"It's done," he yawned. "You'll excuse me for being so long. I got interested in the job. Lordy! but I'm tired. No bed last night, you know. Guess it'll have to be good night now, O Commander of the Faithful!"
|
||||
|
||||
Chalmers went as far as the door with him and slipped some bills into his hand.
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh! I'll take 'em," said Plumer. "All that's included in the fall. Thanks. And for the very good dinner. I shall sleep on feathers tonight and dream of Bagdad. I hope it won't turn out to be a dream in the morning. Farewell, most excellent Caliph!"
|
||||
|
||||
Again Chalmers paced restlessly upon his rug. But his beat lay as far from the table whereon lay the pastel sketch as the room would permit. Twice, thrice, he tried to approach it, but failed. He could see the dun and gold and brown of the colors, but there was a wall about it built by his fears that kept him at a distance. He sat down and tried to calm himself. He sprang up and rang for Phillips.
|
||||
|
||||
"There is a young artist in this building," he said. "---a Mr. Reineman---do you know which is his apartment?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Top floor, front, sir," said Phillips.
|
||||
|
||||
"Go up and ask him to favor me with his presence here for a few minutes."
|
||||
|
||||
Reineman came at once. Chalmers introduced himself.
|
||||
|
||||
"Mr. Reineman," said he, "there is a little pastel sketch on yonder table. I would be glad if you will give me your opinion of it as to its artistic merits and as a picture."
|
||||
|
||||
The young artist advanced to the table and took up the sketch. Chalmers half turned away, leaning upon the back of a chair.
|
||||
|
||||
"How---do---you find it?" he asked, slowly.
|
||||
|
||||
"As a drawing," said the artist, "I can't praise it enough. It's the work of a master---bold and fine and true. It puzzles me a little; I haven't seen any pastel work near as good in years."
|
||||
|
||||
"The face, man---the subject---the original---what would you say of that?"
|
||||
|
||||
"The face," said Reineman, "is the face of one of God's own angels. May I ask who---"
|
||||
|
||||
"My wife!" shouted Chalmers, wheeling and pouncing upon the astonished artist, gripping his hand and pounding his back. "She is traveling in Europe. Take that sketch, boy, and paint the picture of your life from it and leave the price to me."
|
||||
10
src/epub/text/a-matter-of-loyalty.md
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10
src/epub/text/a-matter-of-loyalty.md
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@ -0,0 +1,10 @@
|
||||
A Matter of Loyalty {#a-matter-of-loyalty type="title"}
|
||||
-------------------
|
||||
|
||||
Two men were talking at the Grand Central depot yesterday, and one of them was telling about a difficulty he had recently been engaged in.
|
||||
|
||||
"He said I was the biggest liar ever heard in Texas," said the man, "and I jumped on him and blacked both his eyes in about a minute."
|
||||
|
||||
"That's right," said the other man, "a man ought to resent an imputation of that sort right away."
|
||||
|
||||
"It wasn't exactly that," said the first speaker, "but Tom Achiltree is a second cousin of mine, and I won't stand by and hear any man belittle him."
|
||||
102
src/epub/text/a-matter-of-mean-elevation.md
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102
src/epub/text/a-matter-of-mean-elevation.md
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@ -0,0 +1,102 @@
|
||||
A Matter of Mean Elevation {#a-matter-of-mean-elevation type="title"}
|
||||
--------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
One winter the Alcazar Opera Company of New Orleans made a speculative trip along the Mexican, Central American and South American coasts. The venture proved a most successful one. The music-loving, impressionable Spanish-Americans deluged the company with dollars and "vivas." The manager waxed plump and amiable. But for the prohibitive climate he would have put forth the distinctive flower of his prosperity---the overcoat of fur, braided, frogged and opulent. Almost was he persuaded to raise the salaries of his company. But with a mighty effort he conquered the impulse toward such an unprofitable effervescence of joy.
|
||||
|
||||
At Macuto, on the coast of Venezuela, the company scored its greatest success. Imagine Coney Island translated into Spanish and you will comprehend Macuto. The fashionable season is from November to March. Down from La Guayra and Caracas and Valencia and other interior towns flock the people for their holiday season. There are bathing and fiestas and bull fights and scandal. And then the people have a passion for music that the bands in the plaza and on the sea beach stir but do not satisfy. The coming of the Alcazar Opera Company aroused the utmost ardour and zeal among the pleasure seekers.
|
||||
|
||||
The illustrious Guzman Blanco, President and Dictator of Venezuela, sojourned in Macuto with his court for the season. That potent ruler---who himself paid a subsidy of 40,000 pesos each year to grand opera in Caracas---ordered one of the Government warehouses to be cleared for a temporary theatre. A stage was quickly constructed and rough wooden benches made for the audience. Private boxes were added for the use of the President and the notables of the army and Government.
|
||||
|
||||
The company remained in Macuto for two weeks. Each performance filled the house as closely as it could be packed. Then the music-mad people fought for room in the open doors and windows, and crowded about, hundreds deep, on the outside. Those audiences formed a brilliantly diversified patch of colour. The hue of their faces ranged from the clear olive of the pure-blood Spaniards down through the yellow and brown shades of the Mestizos to the coal-black Carib and the Jamaica Negro. Scattered among them were little groups of Indians with faces like stone idols, wrapped in gaudy fibre-woven blankets---Indians down from the mountain states of Zamora and Los Andes and Miranda to trade their gold dust in the coast towns.
|
||||
|
||||
The spell cast upon these denizens of the interior fastnesses was remarkable. They sat in petrified ecstasy, conspicuous among the excitable Macutians, who wildly strove with tongue and hand to give evidence of their delight. Only once did the sombre rapture of these aboriginals find expression. During the rendition of "Faust," Guzman Blanco, extravagantly pleased by the "Jewel Song," cast upon the stage a purse of gold pieces. Other distinguished citizens followed his lead to the extent of whatever loose coin they had convenient, while some of the fair and fashionable señoras were moved, in imitation, to fling a jewel or a ring or two at the feet of the Marguerite---who was, according to the bills, Mlle. Nina Giraud. Then, from different parts of the house rose sundry of the stolid hillmen and cast upon the stage little brown and dun bags that fell with soft "thumps" and did not rebound. It was, no doubt, pleasure at the tribute to her art that caused Mlle. Giraud's eyes to shine so brightly when she opened these little deerskin bags in her dressing room and found them to contain pure gold dust. If so, the pleasure was rightly hers, for her voice in song, pure, strong and thrilling with the feeling of the emotional artist, deserved the tribute that it earned.
|
||||
|
||||
But the triumph of the Alcazar Opera Company is not the theme---it but leans upon and colours it. There happened in Macuto a tragic thing, an unsolvable mystery, that sobered for a time the gaiety of the happy season.
|
||||
|
||||
One evening between the short twilight and the time when she should have whirled upon the stage in the red and black of the ardent Carmen, Mlle. Nina Giraud disappeared from the sight and ken of 6,000 pairs of eyes and as many minds in Macuto. There was the usual turmoil and hurrying to seek her. Messengers flew to the little French-kept hotel where she stayed; others of the company hastened here or there where she might be lingering in some tienda or unduly prolonging her bath upon the beach. All search was fruitless. Mademoiselle had vanished.
|
||||
|
||||
Half an hour passed and she did not appear. The dictator, unused to the caprices of prime donne, became impatient. He sent an aide from his box to say to the manager that if the curtain did not at once rise he would immediately hale the entire company to the calabosa, though it would desolate his heart, indeed, to be compelled to such an act. Birds in Macuto could be made to sing.
|
||||
|
||||
The manager abandoned hope for the time of Mlle. Giraud. A member of the chorus, who had dreamed hopelessly for years of the blessed opportunity, quickly Carmenized herself and the opera went on.
|
||||
|
||||
Afterward, when the lost cantatrice appeared not, the aid of the authorities was invoked. The President at once set the army, the police and all citizens to the search. Not one clue to Mlle. Giraud's disappearance was found. The Alcazar left to fill engagements farther down the coast.
|
||||
|
||||
On the way back the steamer stopped at Macuto and the manager made anxious inquiry. Not a trace of the lady had been discovered. The Alcazar could do no more. The personal belongings of the missing lady were stored in the hotel against her possible later reappearance and the opera company continued upon its homeward voyage to New Orleans.
|
||||
|
||||
------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
On the camino real along the beach the two saddle mules and the four pack mules of Don Señor Johnny Armstrong stood, patiently awaiting the crack of the whip of the arriero, Luis. That would be the signal for the start on another long journey into the mountains. The pack mules were loaded with a varied assortment of hardware and cutlery. These articles Don Johnny traded to the interior Indians for the gold dust that they washed from the Andean streams and stored in quills and bags against his coming. It was a profitable business, and Señor Armstrong expected soon to be able to purchase the coffee plantation that he coveted.
|
||||
|
||||
Armstrong stood on the narrow sidewalk, exchanging garbled Spanish with old Peralto, the rich native merchant who had just charged him four prices for half a gross of pot-metal hatchets, and abridged English with Rucker, the little German who was Consul for the United States.
|
||||
|
||||
"Take with you, señor," said Peralto, "the blessings of the saints upon your journey."
|
||||
|
||||
"Better try quinine," growled Rucker through his pipe. "Take two grains every night. And don't make your trip too long, Johnny, because we haf needs of you. It is ein villainous game dot Melville play of whist, and dere is no oder substitute. [Auf wiedersehen]{lang="de"}, und keep your eyes dot mule's ears between when you on der edge of der brecipices ride."
|
||||
|
||||
The bells of Luis's mule jingled and the pack train filed after the warning note. Armstrong, waved a goodbye and took his place at the tail of the procession. Up the narrow street they turned, and passed the two-story wooden Hotel Ingles, where Ives and Dawson and Richards and the rest of the chaps were dawdling on the broad piazza, reading week-old newspapers. They crowded to the railing and shouted many friendly and wise and foolish farewells after him. Across the plaza they trotted slowly past the bronze statue of Guzman Blanco, within its fence of bayoneted rifles captured from revolutionists, and out of the town between the rows of thatched huts swarming with the unclothed youth of Macuto. They plunged into the damp coolness of banana groves at length to emerge upon a bright stream, where brown women in scant raiment laundered clothes destructively upon the rocks. Then the pack train, fording the stream, attacked the sudden ascent, and bade adieu to such civilization as the coast afforded.
|
||||
|
||||
For weeks Armstrong, guided by Luis, followed his regular route among the mountains. After he had collected an arroba of the precious metal, winning a profit of nearly \$5,000, the heads of the lightened mules were turned down-trail again. Where the head of the Guarico River springs from a great gash in the mountainside, Luis halted the train.
|
||||
|
||||
"Half a day's journey from here, Señor," said he, "is the village of Tacuzama, which we have never visited. I think many ounces of gold may be procured there. It is worth the trial."
|
||||
|
||||
Armstrong concurred, and they turned again upward toward Tacuzama. The trail was abrupt and precipitous, mounting through a dense forest. As night fell, dark and gloomy, Luis once more halted. Before them was a black chasm, bisecting the path as far as they could see.
|
||||
|
||||
Luis dismounted. "There should be a bridge," he called, and ran along the cleft a distance. "It is here," he cried, and remounting, led the way. In a few moments Armstrong, heard a sound as though a thunderous drum were beating somewhere in the dark. It was the falling of the mules' hoofs upon the bridge made of strong hides lashed to poles and stretched across the chasm. Half a mile further was Tacuzama. The village was a congregation of rock and mud huts set in the profundity of an obscure wood. As they rode in a sound inconsistent with that brooding solitude met their ears. From a long, low mud hut that they were nearing rose the glorious voice of a woman in song. The words were English, the air familiar to Armstrong's memory, but not to his musical knowledge.
|
||||
|
||||
He slipped from his mule and stole to a narrow window in one end of the house. Peering cautiously inside, he saw, within three feet of him, a woman of marvellous, imposing beauty, clothed in a splendid loose robe of leopard skins. The hut was packed close to the small space in which she stood with the squatting figures of Indians.
|
||||
|
||||
The woman finished her song and seated herself close to the little window, as if grateful for the unpolluted air that entered it. When she had ceased several of the audience rose and cast little softly-falling bags at her feet. A harsh murmur---no doubt a barbarous kind of applause and comment---went through the grim assembly.
|
||||
|
||||
Armstrong, was used to seizing opportunities promptly. Taking advantage of the noise he called to the woman in a low but distinct voice: "Do not turn your head this way, but listen. I am an American. If you need assistance tell me how I can render it. Answer as briefly as you can."
|
||||
|
||||
The woman was worthy of his boldness. Only by a sudden flush of her pale cheek did she acknowledge understanding of his words. Then she spoke, scarcely moving her lips.
|
||||
|
||||
"I am held a prisoner by these Indians. God knows I need help. In two hours come to the little hut twenty yards toward the Mountainside. There will be a light and a red curtain in the window. There is always a guard at the door, whom you will have to overcome. For the love of heaven, do not fail to come."
|
||||
|
||||
The story seems to shrink from adventure and rescue and mystery. The theme is one too gentle for those brave and quickening tones. And yet it reaches as far back as time itself. It has been named "environment," which is as weak a word as any to express the unnameable kinship of man to nature, that queer fraternity that causes stones and trees and salt water and clouds to play upon our emotions. Why are we made serious and solemn and sublime by mountain heights, grave and contemplative by an abundance of overhanging trees, reduced to inconstancy and monkey capers by the ripples on a sandy beach? Did the protoplasm---but enough. The chemists are looking into the matter, and before long they will have all life in the table of the symbols.
|
||||
|
||||
Briefly, then, in order to confine the story within scientific bounds, John Armstrong, went to the hut, choked the Indian guard and carried away Mlle. Giraud. With her was also conveyed a number of pounds of gold dust she had collected during her six months' forced engagement in Tacuzama. The Carabobo Indians are easily the most enthusiastic lovers of music between the equator and the French Opera House in New Orleans. They are also strong believers that the advice of Emerson was good when he said: "The thing thou wantest, O discontented man---take it, and pay the price." A number of them had attended the performance of the Alcazar Opera Company in Macuto, and found Mlle. Giraud's style and technique satisfactory. They wanted her, so they took her one evening suddenly and without any fuss. They treated her with much consideration, exacting only one song recital each day. She was quite pleased at being rescued by Mr. Armstrong. So much for mystery and adventure. Now to resume the theory of the protoplasm.
|
||||
|
||||
John Armstrong and Mlle. Giraud rode among the Andean peaks, enveloped in their greatness and sublimity. The mightiest cousins, furthest removed, in nature's great family become conscious of the tie. Among those huge piles of primordial upheaval, amid those gigantic silences and elongated fields of distance the littlenesses of men are precipitated as one chemical throws down a sediment from another. They moved reverently, as in a temple. Their souls were uplifted in unison with the stately heights. They travelled in a zone of majesty and peace.
|
||||
|
||||
To Armstrong the woman seemed almost a holy thing. Yet bathed in the white, still dignity of her martyrdom that purified her earthly beauty and gave out, it seemed, an aura of transcendent loveliness, in those first hours of companionship she drew from him an adoration that was half human love, half the worship of a descended goddess.
|
||||
|
||||
Never yet since her rescue had she smiled. Over her dress she still wore the robe of leopard skins, for the mountain air was cold. She looked to be some splendid princess belonging to those wild and awesome altitudes. The spirit of the region chimed with hers. Her eyes were always turned upon the sombre cliffs, the blue gorges and the snow-clad turrets, looking a sublime melancholy equal to their own. At times on the journey she sang thrilling te deums and misereres that struck the true note of the hills, and made their route seem like a solemn march down a cathedral aisle. The rescued one spoke but seldom, her mood partaking of the hush of nature that surrounded them. Armstrong looked upon her as an angel. He could not bring himself to the sacrilege of attempting to woo her as other women may be wooed.
|
||||
|
||||
On the third day they had descended as far as the [tierra templada]{lang="es"}, the zona of the table lands and foot hills. The mountains were receding in their rear, but still towered, exhibiting yet impressively their formidable heads. Here they met signs of man. They saw the white houses of coffee plantations gleam across the clearings. They struck into a road where they met travellers and pack-mules. Cattle were grazing on the slopes. They passed a little village where the round-eyed *niños* shrieked and called at sight of them.
|
||||
|
||||
Mlle. Giraud laid aside her leopard-skin robe. It seemed to be a trifle incongruous now. In the mountains it had appeared fitting and natural. And if Armstrong was not mistaken she laid aside with it something of the high dignity of her demeanour. As the country became more populous and significant of comfortable life he saw, with a feeling of joy, that the exalted princess and priestess of the Andean peaks was changing to a woman---an earth woman, but no less enticing. A little colour crept to the surface of her marble cheek. She arranged the conventional dress that the removal of the robe now disclosed with the solicitous touch of one who is conscious of the eyes of others. She smoothed the careless sweep of her hair. A mundane interest, long latent in the chilling atmosphere of the ascetic peaks, showed in her eyes.
|
||||
|
||||
This thaw in his divinity sent Armstrong's heart going faster. So might an Arctic explorer thrill at his first ken of green fields and liquescent waters. They were on a lower plane of earth and life and were succumbing to its peculiar, subtle influence. The austerity of the hills no longer thinned the air they breathed. About them was the breath of fruit and corn and builded homes, the comfortable smell of smoke and warm earth and the consolations man has placed between himself and the dust of his brother earth from which he sprung. While traversing those awful mountains, Mile. Giraud had seemed to be wrapped in their spirit of reverent reserve. Was this that same woman---now palpitating, warm, eager, throbbing with conscious life and charm, feminine to her fingertips? Pondering over this, Armstrong felt certain misgivings intrude upon his thoughts. He wished he could stop there with this changing creature, descending no farther. Here was the elevation and environment to which her nature seemed to respond with its best. He feared to go down upon the man-dominated levels. Would her spirit not yield still further in that artificial zone to which they were descending?
|
||||
|
||||
Now from a little plateau they saw the sea flash at the edge of the green lowlands. Mile. Giraud gave a little, catching sigh.
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh! look, Mr. Armstrong, there is the sea! Isn't it lovely? I'm so tired of mountains." She heaved a pretty shoulder in a gesture of repugnance. "Those horrid Indians! Just think of what I suffered! Although I suppose I attained my ambition of becoming a stellar attraction, I wouldn't care to repeat the engagement. It was very nice of you to bring me away. Tell me, Mr. Armstrong---honestly, now---do I look such an awful, awful fright? I haven't looked into a mirror, you know, for months."
|
||||
|
||||
Armstrong made answer according to his changed moods. Also he laid his hand upon hers as it rested upon the horn of her saddle. Luis was at the head of the pack train and could not see. She allowed it to remain there, and her eyes smiled frankly into his.
|
||||
|
||||
Then at sundown they dropped upon the coast level under the palms and lemons among the vivid greens and scarlets and ochres of the [tierra caliente]{lang="es"}. They rode into Macuto, and saw the line of volatile bathers frolicking in the surf. The mountains were very far away.
|
||||
|
||||
Mlle. Giraud's eyes were shining with a joy that could not have existed under the chaperonage of the mountain-tops. There were other spirits calling to her---nymphs of the orange groves, pixies from the chattering surf, imps, born of the music, the perfumes, colours and the insinuating presence of humanity. She laughed aloud, musically, at a sudden thought.
|
||||
|
||||
"Won't there be a sensation?" she called to Armstrong. "Don't I wish I had an engagement just now, though! What a picnic the press agent would have! 'Held a prisoner by a band of savage Indians subdued by the spell of her wonderful voice'---wouldn't that make great stuff? But I guess I quit the game winner, anyhow---there ought to be a couple of thousand dollars in that sack of gold dust I collected as encores, don't you think?"
|
||||
|
||||
He left her at the door of the little Hotel de Buen Descansar, where she had stopped before. Two hours later he returned to the hotel. He glanced in at the open door of the little combined reception room and café.
|
||||
|
||||
------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
Half a dozen of Macuto's representative social and official caballeros were distributed about the room. Señor Villablanca, the wealthy rubber concessionist, reposed his fat figure on two chairs, with an emollient smile beaming upon his chocolate-coloured face. Guilbert, the French mining engineer, leered through his polished nose-glasses. Colonel Mendez, of the regular army, in gold-laced uniform and fatuous grin, was busily extracting corks from champagne bottles. Other patterns of Macutian gallantry and fashion pranced and posed. The air was hazy with cigarette smoke. Wine dripped upon the floor.
|
||||
|
||||
Perched upon a table in the centre of the room in an attitude of easy preeminence was Mlle. Giraud. A chic costume of white lawn and cherry ribbons supplanted her travelling garb. There was a suggestion of lace, and a frill or two, with a discreet, small implication of hand-embroidered pink hosiery. Upon her lap rested a guitar. In her face was the light of resurrection, the peace of elysium attained through fire and suffering. She was singing to a lively accompaniment a little song:
|
||||
|
||||
> "When you see de big round moon\ > Comin' up like a balloon,\ > Dis nigger skips fur to kiss de lips\ > Ob his stylish, black-faced coon."
|
||||
|
||||
The singer caught sight of Armstrong.
|
||||
|
||||
"Hi! there, Johnny," she called; "I've been expecting you for an hour. What kept you? Gee! but these smoked guys are the slowest you ever saw. They ain't on, at all. Come along in, and I'll make this coffee-coloured old sport with the gold epaulettes open one for you right off the ice."
|
||||
|
||||
"Thank you," said Armstrong; "not just now, I believe. I've several things to attend to."
|
||||
|
||||
He walked out and down the street, and met Rucker coming up from the Consulate.
|
||||
|
||||
"Play you a game of billiards," said Armstrong. "I want something to take the taste of the sea level out of my mouth."
|
||||
78
src/epub/text/a-midsummer-knights-dream.md
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78
src/epub/text/a-midsummer-knights-dream.md
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@ -0,0 +1,78 @@
|
||||
A Midsummer Knight's Dream {#a-midsummer-knights-dream type="title"}
|
||||
--------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
> "The knights are dead;\ > Their swords are rust.\ > Except a few who have to hust---\ > Le all the time\ > To raise the dust."
|
||||
|
||||
**Dear Reader**: It was summertime. The sun glared down upon the city with pitiless ferocity. It is difficult for the sun to be ferocious and exhibit compunction simultaneously. The heat was---oh, bother thermometers!---who cares for standard measures, anyhow? It was so hot that---
|
||||
|
||||
The roof gardens put on so many extra waiters that you could hope to get your gin fizz now---as soon as all the other people got theirs. The hospitals were putting in extra cots for bystanders. For when little, woolly dogs loll their tongues out and say "woof, woof!" at the fleas that bite 'em, and nervous old black bombazine ladies screech "Mad dog!" and policemen begin to shoot, somebody is going to get hurt. The man from Pompton, NJ, who always wears an overcoat in July, had turned up in a Broadway hotel drinking hot Scotches and enjoying his annual ray from the calcium. Philanthropists were petitioning the Legislature to pass a bill requiring builders to make tenement fire-escapes more commodious, so that families might die all together of the heat instead of one or two at a time. So many men were telling you about the number of baths they took each day that you wondered how they got along after the real lessee of the apartment came back to town and thanked 'em for taking such good care of it. The young man who called loudly for cold beef and beer in the restaurant, protesting that roast pullet and Burgundy was really too heavy for such weather, blushed when he met your eye, for you had heard him all winter calling, in modest tones, for the same ascetic viands. Soup, pocketbooks, shirt waists, actors and baseball excuses grew thinner. Yes, it was summertime.
|
||||
|
||||
A man stood at Thirty-fourth Street waiting for a downtown car. A man of forty, gray-haired, pink-faced, keen, nervous, plainly dressed, with a harassed look around the eyes. He wiped his forehead and laughed loudly when a fat man with an outing look stopped and spoke with him.
|
||||
|
||||
"No, siree," he shouted with defiance and scorn. "None of your old mosquito-haunted swamps and skyscraper mountains without elevators for me. When I want to get away from hot weather I know how to do it. New York, sir, is the finest summer resort in the country. Keep in the shade and watch your diet, and don't get too far away from an electric fan. Talk about your Adirondacks and your Catskills! There's more solid comfort in the borough of Manhattan than in all the rest of the country together. No, siree! No tramping up perpendicular cliffs and being waked up at 4 in the morning by a million flies, and eating canned goods straight from the city for me. Little old New York will take a few select summer boarders; comforts and conveniences of homes---that's the ad that I answer every time."
|
||||
|
||||
"You need a vacation," said the fat man, looking closely at the other. "You haven't been away from town in years. Better come with me for two weeks, anyhow. The trout in the Beaverkill are jumping at anything now that looks like a fly. Harding writes me that he landed a three-pound brown last week."
|
||||
|
||||
"Nonsense!" cried the other man. "Go ahead, if you like, and boggle around in rubber boots wearing yourself out trying to catch fish. When I want one I go to a cool restaurant and order it. I laugh at you fellows whenever I think of you hustling around in the heat in the country thinking you are having a good time. For me Father Knickerbocker's little improved farm with the big shady lane running through the middle of it."
|
||||
|
||||
The fat man sighed over his friend and went his way. The man who thought New York was the greatest summer resort in the country boarded a car and went buzzing down to his office. On the way he threw away his newspaper and looked up at a ragged patch of sky above the housetops.
|
||||
|
||||
"Three pounds!" he muttered, absently. "And Harding isn't a liar. I believe, if I could---but it's impossible---they've got to have another month---another month at least."
|
||||
|
||||
In his office the upholder of urban midsummer joys dived, headforemost, into the swimming pool of business. Adkins, his clerk, came and added a spray of letters, memoranda and telegrams.
|
||||
|
||||
At 5 o'clock in the afternoon the busy man leaned back in his office chair, put his feet on the desk and mused aloud:
|
||||
|
||||
"I wonder what kind of bait Harding used."
|
||||
|
||||
------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
She was all in white that day; and thereby Compton lost a bet to Gaines. Compton had wagered she would wear light blue, for she knew that was his favorite color, and Compton was a millionaire's son, and that almost laid him open to the charge of betting on a sure thing. But white was her choice, and Gaines held up his head with twenty-five's lordly air.
|
||||
|
||||
The little summer hotel in the mountains had a lively crowd that year. There were two or three young college men and a couple of artists and a young naval officer on one side. On the other there were enough beauties among the young ladies for the correspondent of a society paper to refer to them as a "bevy." But the moon among the stars was Mary Sewell. Each one of the young men greatly desired to arrange matters so that he could pay her millinery bills, and fix the furnace, and have her do away with the "Sewell" part of her name forever. Those who could stay only a week or two went away hinting at pistols and blighted hearts. But Compton stayed like the mountains themselves, for he could afford it. And Gaines stayed because he was a fighter and wasn't afraid of millionaire's sons, and---well, he adored the country.
|
||||
|
||||
"What do you think, Miss Mary?" he said once. "I knew a duffer in New York who claimed to like it in the summer time. Said you could keep cooler there than you could in the woods. Wasn't he an awful silly? I don't think I could breathe on Broadway after the 1st of June."
|
||||
|
||||
"Mamma was thinking of going back week after next," said Miss Mary with a lovely frown.
|
||||
|
||||
"But when you think of it," said Gaines, "there are lots of jolly places in town in the summer. The roof gardens, you know, and the---er---the roof gardens."
|
||||
|
||||
Deepest blue was the lake that day---the day when they had the mock tournament, and the men rode clumsy farm horses around in a glade in the woods and caught curtain rings on the end of a lance. Such fun!
|
||||
|
||||
Cool and dry as the finest wine came the breath of the shadowed forest. The valley below was a vision seen through an opal haze. A white mist from hidden falls blurred the green of a hand's breadth of tree tops halfway down the gorge. Youth made merry hand-in-hand with young summer. Nothing on Broadway like that.
|
||||
|
||||
The villagers gathered to see the city folks pursue their mad drollery. The woods rang with the laughter of pixies and naiads and sprites. Gaines caught most of the rings. His was the privilege to crown the queen of the tournament. He was the conquering knight---as far as the rings went. On his arm he wore a white scarf. Compton wore light blue. She had declared her preference for blue, but she wore white that day.
|
||||
|
||||
Gaines looked about for the queen to crown her. He heard her merry laugh, as if from the clouds. She had slipped away and climbed Chimney Rock, a little granite bluff, and stood there, a white fairy among the laurels, fifty feet above their heads.
|
||||
|
||||
Instantly he and Compton accepted the implied challenge. The bluff was easily mounted at the rear, but the front offered small hold to hand or foot. Each man quickly selected his route and began to climb. A crevice, a bush, a slight projection, a vine or tree branch---all of these were aids that counted in the race. It was all foolery---there was no stake; but there was youth in it, cross reader, and light hearts, and something else that Miss Clay writes so charmingly about.
|
||||
|
||||
Gaines gave a great tug at the root of a laurel and pulled himself to Miss Mary's feet. On his arm he carried the wreath of roses; and while the villagers and summer boarders screamed and applauded below he placed it on the queen's brow.
|
||||
|
||||
"You are a gallant knight," said Miss Mary.
|
||||
|
||||
"If I could be your true knight always," began Gaines, but Miss Mary laughed him dumb, for Compton scrambled over the edge of the rock one minute behind time.
|
||||
|
||||
What a twilight that was when they drove back to the hotel! The opal of the valley turned slowly to purple, the dark woods framed the lake as a mirror, the tonic air stirred the very soul in one. The first pale stars came out over the mountain tops where yet a faint glow of---
|
||||
|
||||
------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
"I beg your pardon, Mr. Gaines," said Adkins.
|
||||
|
||||
The man who believed New York to be the finest summer resort in the world opened his eyes and kicked over the mucilage bottle on his desk.
|
||||
|
||||
"I---I believe I was asleep," he said.
|
||||
|
||||
"It's the heat," said Adkins. "It's something awful in the city these---"
|
||||
|
||||
"Nonsense!" said the other. "The city beats the country ten to one in summer. Fools go out tramping in muddy brooks and wear themselves out trying to catch little fish as long as your finger. Stay in town and keep comfortable---that's my idea."
|
||||
|
||||
"Some letters just came," said Adkins. "I thought you might like to glance at them before you go."
|
||||
|
||||
Let us look over his shoulder and read just a few lines of one of them:
|
||||
|
||||
> [My Dear, Dear Husband]{type="z3998:salutation"}: Just received your > letter ordering us to stay another month. ... Rita's cough is almost > gone. ... Johnny has simply gone wild like a little Indian ... > Will be the making of both children ... work so hard, and I know > that your business can hardly afford to keep us here so long ... > best man that ever ... you always pretend that you like the city in > summer ... trout fishing that you used to be so fond of ... and > all to keep us well and happy ... come to you if it were not doing > the babies so much good. ... I stood last evening on Chimney Rock in > exactly the same spot where I was when you put the wreath of roses on > my head ... through all the world ... when you said you would be > my true knight ... fifteen years ago, dear, just think! ... have > always been that to me ... ever and ever, > > Mary.
|
||||
|
||||
The man who said he thought New York the finest summer resort in the country dropped into a café on his way home and had a glass of beer under an electric fan.
|
||||
|
||||
"Wonder what kind of a fly old Harding used," he said to himself.
|
||||
88
src/epub/text/a-midsummer-masquerade.md
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88
src/epub/text/a-midsummer-masquerade.md
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@ -0,0 +1,88 @@
|
||||
A Midsummer Masquerade {#a-midsummer-masquerade type="title"}
|
||||
----------------------
|
||||
|
||||
"Satan," said Jeff Peters, "is a hard boss to work for. When other people are having their vacation is when he keeps you the busiest. As old Dr. Watts or St. Paul or some other diagnostician says: 'He always finds somebody for idle hands to do.'
|
||||
|
||||
"I remember one summer when me and my partner, Andy Tucker, tried to take a layoff from our professional and business duties; but it seems that our work followed us wherever we went.
|
||||
|
||||
"Now, with a preacher it's different. He can throw off his responsibilities and enjoy himself. On the 31st of May he wraps mosquito netting and tin foil around the pulpit, grabs his niblick, breviary and fishing pole and hikes for Lake Como or Atlantic City according to the size of the loudness with which he has been called by his congregation. And, sir, for three months he don't have to think about business except to hunt around in Deuteronomy and Proverbs and Timothy to find texts to cover and exculpate such little midsummer penances as dropping a couple of looey door on rouge or teaching a Presbyterian widow to swim.
|
||||
|
||||
"But I was going to tell you about mine and Andy's summer vacation that wasn't one.
|
||||
|
||||
"We was tired of finance and all the branches of unsanctified ingenuity. Even Andy, whose brain rarely ever stopped working, began to make noises like a tennis cabinet.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Heigh ho!' says Andy. 'I'm tired. I've got that steam up the yacht Corsair and ho for the Riviera! feeling. I want to loaf and indict my soul, as Walt Whittier says. I want to play pinochle with Merry del Val or give a knouting to the tenants on my Tarrytown estates or do a monologue at a Chautauqua picnic in kilts or something summery and outside the line of routine and sandbagging.'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Patience,' says I. 'You'll have to climb higher in the profession before you can taste the laurels that crown the footprints of the great captains of industry. Now, what I'd like, Andy,' says I, 'would be a summer sojourn in a mountain village far from scenes of larceny, labor and overcapitalization. I'm tired, too, and a month or so of sinlessness ought to leave us in good shape to begin again to take away the white man's burdens in the fall.'
|
||||
|
||||
"Andy fell in with the rest cure at once, so we struck the general passenger agents of all the railroads for summer resort literature, and took a week to study out where we should go. I reckon the first passenger agent in the world was that man Genesis. But there wasn't much competition in his day, and when he said: 'The Lord made the earth in six days, and all very good,' he hadn't any idea to what extent the press agents of the summer hotels would plagiarize from him later on.
|
||||
|
||||
"When we finished the booklets we perceived, easy, that the United States from Passadumkeg, Maine, to El Paso, and from Skagway to Key West was a paradise of glorious mountain peaks, crystal lakes, new laid eggs, golf, girls, garages, cooling breezes, straw rides, open plumbing and tennis; and all within two hours' ride.
|
||||
|
||||
"So me and Andy dumps the books out the back window and packs our trunk and takes the 6 o'clock Tortoise Flyer for Crow Knob, a kind of a dernier resort in the mountains on the line of Tennessee and North Carolina.
|
||||
|
||||
"We was directed to a kind of private hotel called Woodchuck Inn, and thither me and Andy bent and almost broke our footsteps over the rocks and stumps. The Inn set back from the road in a big grove of trees, and it looked fine with its broad porches and a lot of women in white dresses rocking in the shade. The rest of Crow Knob was a post office and some scenery set an angle of forty-five degrees and a welkin.
|
||||
|
||||
"Well, sir, when we got to the gate who do you suppose comes down the walk to greet us? Old Smoke-'em-out Smithers, who used to be the best open air painless dentist and electric liver pad faker in the Southwest.
|
||||
|
||||
"Old Smoke-'em-out is dressed clerico-rural, and has the mingled air of a landlord and a claim jumper. Which aspect he corroborates by telling us that he is the host and perpetrator of Woodchuck Inn. I introduces Andy, and we talk about a few volatile topics, such as will go around at meetings of boards of directors and old associates like us three were. Old Smoke-'em-out leads us into a kind of summer house in the yard near the gate and took up the harp of life and smote on all the chords with his mighty right.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Gents,' says he, 'I'm glad to see you. Maybe you can help me out of a scrape. I'm getting a bit old for street work, so I leased this dogdays emporium so the good things would come to me. Two weeks before the season opened I gets a letter signed Lieut. Peary and one from the Duke of Marlborough, each wanting to engage board for part of the summer.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Well, sir, you gents know what a big thing for an obscure hustlery it would be to have for guests two gentlemen whose names are famous from long association with icebergs and the Coburgs. So I prints a lot of handbills announcing that Woodchuck Inn would shelter these distinguished boarders during the summer, except in places where it leaked, and I sends 'em out to towns around as far as Knoxville and Charlotte and Fish Dam and Bowling Green.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'And now look up there on the porch, gents,' says Smoke-'em-out, 'at them disconsolate specimens of their fair sex waiting for the arrival of the Duke and the Lieutenant. The house is packed from rafters to cellar with hero worshippers.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'There's four normal school teachers and two abnormal; there's three high school graduates between 37 and 42; there's two literary old maids and one that can write; there's a couple of society women and a lady from Haw River. Two elocutionists are bunking in the corn crib, and I've put cots in the hay loft for the cook and the society editress of the Chattanooga *Opera Glass*. You see how names draw, gents.'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Well,' says I, 'how is it that you seem to be biting your thumbs at good luck? You didn't use to be that way.'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'I ain't through,' says Smoke-'em-out. 'Yesterday was the day for the advent of the auspicious personages. I goes down to the depot to welcome 'em. Two apparently animate substances gets off the train, both carrying bags full of croquet mallets and these magic lanterns with pushbuttons.
|
||||
|
||||
"I compares these integers with the original signatures to the letters---and, well, gents, I reckon the mistake was due to my poor eyesight. Instead of being the Lieutenant, the daisy chain and wild verbena explorer was none other than Levi T. Peevy, a soda water clerk from Asheville. And the Duke of Marlborough turned out to be Theo. Drake of Murfreesborough, a bookkeeper in a grocery. What did I do? I kicked 'em both back on the train and watched 'em depart for the lowlands, the low.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Now you see the fix I'm in, gents,' goes on Smoke-'em-out Smithers. 'I told the ladies that the notorious visitors had been detained on the road by some unavoidable circumstances that made a noise like an ice jam and an heiress, but they would arrive a day or two later. When they find out that they've been deceived,' says Smoke-'em-out, 'every yard of cross barred muslin and natural waved switch in the house will pack up and leave. It's a hard deal,' says old Smoke-'em-out.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Friend,' says Andy, touching the old man on the aesophagus, 'why this jeremiad when the polar regions and the portals of Blenheim are conspiring to hand you prosperity on a hall-marked silver salver. We have arrived.'
|
||||
|
||||
"A light breaks out on Smoke-'em-out's face.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Can you do it, gents?' he asks. 'Could ye do it? Could ye play the polar man and the little duke for the nice ladies? Will ye do it?'
|
||||
|
||||
"I see that Andy is superimposed with his old hankering for the oral and polyglot system of buncoing. That man had a vocabulary of about 10,000 words and synonyms, which arrayed themselves into contraband sophistries and parables when they came out.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Listen,' says Andy to old Smoke-'em-out. 'Can we do it? You behold before you, Mr. Smithers, two of the finest equipped men on earth for inveigling the proletariat, whether by word of mouth, sleight-of-hand or swiftness of foot. Dukes come and go, explorers go and get lost, but me and Jeff Peters,' says Andy, 'go after the come-ons forever. If you say so, we're the two illustrious guests you were expecting. And you'll find,' says Andy, 'that we'll give you the true local color of the title roles from the aurora borealis to the ducal portcullis.'
|
||||
|
||||
"Old Smoke-'em-out is delighted. He takes me and Andy up to the inn by an arm apiece, telling us on the way that the finest fruits of the can and luxuries of the fast freights should be ours without price as long as we would stay.
|
||||
|
||||
"On the porch Smoke-'em-out says: 'Ladies, I have the honor to introduce His Gracefulness the Duke of Marlborough and the famous inventor of the North Pole, Lieut. Peary.'
|
||||
|
||||
"The skirts all flutter and the rocking chairs squeak as me and Andy bows and then goes on in with old Smoke-'em-out to register. And then we washed up and turned our cuffs, and the landlord took us to the rooms he'd been saving for us and got out a demijohn of North Carolina real mountain dew.
|
||||
|
||||
"I expected trouble when Andy began to drink. He has the artistic metempsychosis which is half drunk when sober and looks down on airships when stimulated.
|
||||
|
||||
"After lingering with the demijohn me and Andy goes out on the porch, where the ladies are to begin to earn our keep. We sit in two special chairs and then the schoolma'ams and literaterrers hunched their rockers close around us.
|
||||
|
||||
"One lady says to me: 'How did that last venture of yours turn out, sir?'
|
||||
|
||||
"Now, I'd clean forgot to have an understanding with Andy which I was to be, the duke or the lieutenant. And I couldn't tell from her question whether she was referring to Arctic or matrimonial expeditions. So I gave an answer that would cover both cases.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Well, ma'am,' says I, 'it was a freeze out---right smart of a freeze out, ma'am.'
|
||||
|
||||
"And then the flood gates of Andy's perorations was opened and I knew which one of the renowned ostensible guests I was supposed to be. I wasn't either. Andy was both. And still furthermore it seemed that he was trying to be the mouthpiece of the whole British nobility and of Arctic exploration from Sir John Franklin down. It was the union of corn whiskey and the conscientious fictional form that Mr. W. D. Howletts admires so much.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Ladies,' says Andy, smiling semicircularly, 'I am truly glad to visit America. I do not consider the magna charta,' says he, 'or gas balloons or snowshoes in any way a detriment to the beauty and charm of your American women, skyscrapers or the architecture of your icebergs. The next time,' says Andy, 'that I go after the North Pole all the Vanderbilts in Greenland won't be able to turn me out in the cold---I mean make it hot for me.'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Tell us about one of your trips, Lieutenant,' says one of the normals.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Sure,' says Andy, getting the decision over a hiccup. 'It was in the spring of last year that I sailed the Castle of Blenheim up to latitude 87 degrees Fahrenheit and beat the record. Ladies,' says Andy, 'it was a sad sight to see a Duke allied by a civil and liturgical chattel mortgage to one of your first families lost in a region of semiannual days.' And then he goes on, 'At four bells we sighted Westminster Abbey, but there was not a drop to eat. At noon we threw out five sandbags, and the ship rose fifteen knots higher. At midnight,' continues Andy, 'the restaurants closed. Sitting on a cake of ice we ate seven hot dogs. All around us was snow and ice. Six times a night the boatswain rose up and tore a leaf off the calendar, so we could keep time with the barometer. At 12,' says Andy, with a lot of anguish on his face, 'three huge polar bears sprang down the hatchway, into the cabin. And then---'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'What then, Lieutenant?' says a schoolma'am, excitedly.
|
||||
|
||||
"Andy gives a loud sob.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'The Duchess shook me,' he cries out, and slides out of the chair and weeps on the porch.
|
||||
|
||||
"Well, of course, that fixed the scheme. The women boarders all left the next morning. The landlord wouldn't speak to us for two days, but when he found we had money to pay our way he loosened up.
|
||||
|
||||
"So me and Andy had a quiet, restful summer after all, coming away from Crow Knob with \$1,100, that we enticed out of old Smoke-'em-out playing seven up."
|
||||
235
src/epub/text/a-municipal-report.md
Normal file
235
src/epub/text/a-municipal-report.md
Normal file
@ -0,0 +1,235 @@
|
||||
A Municipal Report {#a-municipal-report type="title"}
|
||||
------------------
|
||||
|
||||
> The cities are full of pride,\ > [Challenging each to each---]{.i1}\ > This from her mountainside,\ > [That from her burdened beach.]{.i1} > > R. Kipling
|
||||
|
||||
> Fancy a novel about Chicago or Buffalo, let us say, or Nashville, > Tennessee! There are just three big cities in the United States that > are "story cities"---New York, of course, New Orleans, and, best of > the lot, San Francisco. > >
|
||||
---Frank Norris.
|
||||
|
||||
East is East, and West is San Francisco, according to Californians. Californians are a race of people; they are not merely inhabitants of a State. They are the Southerners of the West. Now, Chicagoans are no less loyal to their city; but when you ask them why, they stammer and speak of lake fish and the new Odd Fellows Building. But Californians go into detail.
|
||||
|
||||
Of course they have, in the climate, an argument that is good for half an hour while you are thinking of your coal bills and heavy underwear. But as soon as they come to mistake your silence for conviction, madness comes upon them, and they picture the city of the Golden Gate as the Bagdad of the New World. So far, as a matter of opinion, no refutation is necessary. But, dear cousins all (from Adam and Eve descended), it is a rash one who will lay his finger on the map and say: "In this town there can be no romance---what could happen here?" Yes, it is a bold and a rash deed to challenge in one sentence history, romance, and Rand and McNally.
|
||||
|
||||
> **Nashville**---A city, port of delivery, and the capital of the > State of Tennessee, is on the Cumberland River and on the N.C. & > St. L. and the L. & N. railroads. This city is regarded as the most > important educational centre in the South.
|
||||
|
||||
I stepped off the train at 8 a.m. Having searched the thesaurus in vain for adjectives, I must, as a substitution, hie me to comparison in the form of a recipe.
|
||||
|
||||
Take a London fog 30 parts; malaria 10 parts; gas leaks 20 parts; dewdrops gathered in a brick yard at sunrise, 25 parts; odor of honeysuckle 15 parts. Mix.
|
||||
|
||||
The mixture will give you an approximate conception of a Nashville drizzle. It is not so fragrant as a mothball nor as thick as pea-soup; but 'tis enough---'twill serve.
|
||||
|
||||
I went to a hotel in a tumbril. It required strong self-suppression for me to keep from climbing to the top of it and giving an imitation of Sidney Carton. The vehicle was drawn by beasts of a bygone era and driven by something dark and emancipated.
|
||||
|
||||
I was sleepy and tired, so when I got to the hotel I hurriedly paid it the fifty cents it demanded (with approximate lagniappe, I assure you). I knew its habits; and I did not want to hear it prate about its old "marster" or anything that happened "befo' de wah."
|
||||
|
||||
The hotel was one of the kind described as "renovated." That means \$20,000 worth of new marble pillars, tiling, electric lights and brass cuspidors in the lobby, and a new L. & N. time table and a lithograph of Lookout Mountain in each one of the great rooms above. The management was without reproach, the attention full of exquisite Southern courtesy, the service as slow as the progress of a snail and as good-humored as Rip Van Winkle. The food was worth traveling a thousand miles for. There is no other hotel in the world where you can get such chicken livers [en brochette]{lang="fr"}.
|
||||
|
||||
At dinner I asked a Negro waiter if there was anything doing in town. He pondered gravely for a minute, and then replied: "Well, boss, I don't really reckon there's anything at all doin' after sundown."
|
||||
|
||||
Sundown had been accomplished; it had been drowned in the drizzle long before. So that spectacle was denied me. But I went forth upon the streets in the drizzle to see what might be there.
|
||||
|
||||
> It is built on undulating grounds; and the streets are lighted by > electricity at a cost of \$32,470 per annum.
|
||||
|
||||
As I left the hotel there was a race riot. Down upon me charged a company of freedmen, or Arabs, or Zulus, armed with---no, I saw with relief that they were not rifles, but whips. And I saw dimly a caravan of black, clumsy vehicles; and at the reassuring shouts, "Kyar you anywhere in the town, boss, fuh fifty cents," I reasoned that I was merely a "fare" instead of a victim.
|
||||
|
||||
I walked through long streets, all leading uphill. I wondered how those streets ever came down again. Perhaps they didn't until they were "graded." On a few of the "main streets" I saw lights in stores here and there; saw street cars go by conveying worthy burghers hither and yon; saw people pass engaged in the art of conversation, and heard a burst of semi-lively laughter issuing from a soda-water and ice-cream parlor. The streets other than "main" seemed to have enticed upon their borders houses consecrated to peace and domesticity. In many of them lights shone behind discreetly drawn window shades; in a few pianos tinkled orderly and irreproachable music. There was, indeed, little "doing." I wished I had come before sundown. So I returned to my hotel.
|
||||
|
||||
> In November, 1864, the Confederate General Hood advanced against > Nashville, where he shut up a National force under General Thomas. The > latter then sallied forth and defeated the Confederates in a terrible > conflict.
|
||||
|
||||
All my life I have heard of, admired, and witnessed the fine marksmanship of the South in its peaceful conflicts in the tobacco-chewing regions. But in my hotel a surprise awaited me. There were twelve bright, new, imposing, capacious brass cuspidors in the great lobby, tall enough to be called urns and so wide-mouthed that the crack pitcher of a lady baseball team should have been able to throw a ball into one of them at five paces distant. But, although a terrible battle had raged and was still raging, the enemy had not suffered. Bright, new, imposing, capacious, untouched, they stood. But, shades of Jefferson Brick! the tile floor---the beautiful tile floor! I could not avoid thinking of the battle of Nashville, and trying to draw, as is my foolish habit, some deductions about hereditary marksmanship.
|
||||
|
||||
Here I first saw Major (by misplaced courtesy) Wentworth Caswell. I knew him for a type the moment my eyes suffered from the sight of him. A rat has no geographical habitat. My old friend, A. Tennyson, said, as he so well said almost everything:
|
||||
|
||||
> Prophet, curse me the blabbing lip,\ > And curse me the British vermin, the rat.
|
||||
|
||||
Let us regard the word "British" as interchangeable ad lib. A rat is a rat.
|
||||
|
||||
This man was hunting about the hotel lobby like a starved dog that had forgotten where he had buried a bone. He had a face of great acreage, red, pulpy, and with a kind of sleepy massiveness like that of Buddha. He possessed one single virtue---he was very smoothly shaven. The mark of the beast is not indelible upon a man until he goes about with a stubble. I think that if he had not used his razor that day I would have repulsed his advances, and the criminal calendar of the world would have been spared the addition of one murder.
|
||||
|
||||
I happened to be standing within five feet of a cuspidor when Major Caswell opened fire upon it. I had been observant enough to perceive that the attacking force was using Gatlings instead of squirrel rifles; so I sidestepped so promptly that the major seized the opportunity to apologize to a noncombatant. He had the blabbing lip. In four minutes he had become my friend and had dragged me to the bar.
|
||||
|
||||
I desire to interpolate here that I am a Southerner. But I am not one by profession or trade. I eschew the string tie, the slouch hat, the Prince Albert, the number of bales of cotton destroyed by Sherman, and plug chewing. When the orchestra plays Dixie I do not cheer. I slide a little lower on the leather-cornered seat and, well, order another Würzburger and wish that Longstreet had---but what's the use?
|
||||
|
||||
Major Caswell banged the bar with his fist, and the first gun at Fort Sumter reechoed. When he fired the last one at Appomattox I began to hope. But then he began on family trees, and demonstrated that Adam was only a third cousin of a collateral branch of the Caswell family. Genealogy disposed of, he took up, to my distaste, his private family matters. He spoke of his wife, traced her descent back to Eve, and profanely denied any possible rumor that she may have had relations in the land of Nod.
|
||||
|
||||
By this time I was beginning to suspect that he was trying to obscure by noise the fact that he had ordered the drinks, on the chance that I would be bewildered into paying for them. But when they were down he crashed a silver dollar loudly upon the bar. Then, of course, another serving was obligatory. And when I had paid for that I took leave of him brusquely; for I wanted no more of him. But before I had obtained my release he had prated loudly of an income that his wife received, and showed a handful of silver money.
|
||||
|
||||
When I got my key at the desk the clerk said to me courteously: "If that man Caswell has annoyed you, and if you would like to make a complaint, we will have him ejected. He is a nuisance, a loafer, and without any known means of support, although he seems to have some money most the time. But we don't seem to be able to hit upon any means of throwing him out legally."
|
||||
|
||||
"Why, no," said I, after some reflection; "I don't see my way clear to making a complaint. But I would like to place myself on record as asserting that I do not care for his company. Your town," I continued, "seems to be a quiet one. What manner of entertainment, adventure, or excitement have you to offer to the stranger within your gates?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Well, sir," said the clerk, "there will be a show here next Thursday. It is---I'll look it up and have the announcement sent up to your room with the ice water. Good night."
|
||||
|
||||
After I went up to my room I looked out the window. It was only about ten o'clock, but I looked upon a silent town. The drizzle continued, spangled with dim lights, as far apart as currants in a cake sold at the Ladies' Exchange.
|
||||
|
||||
"A quiet place," I said to myself, as my first shoe struck the ceiling of the occupant of the room beneath mine. "Nothing of the life here that gives color and variety to the cities in the East and West. Just a good, ordinary, humdrum, business town."
|
||||
|
||||
> Nashville occupies a foremost place among the manufacturing centres of > the country. It is the fifth boot and shoe market in the United > States, the largest candy and cracker manufacturing city in the South, > and does an enormous wholesale drygoods, grocery, and drug business.
|
||||
|
||||
I must tell you how I came to be in Nashville, and I assure you the digression brings as much tedium to me as it does to you. I was traveling elsewhere on my own business, but I had a commission from a Northern literary magazine to stop over there and establish a personal connection between the publication and one of its contributors, Azalea Adair.
|
||||
|
||||
Adair (there was no clue to the personality except the handwriting) had sent in some essays (lost art!) and poems that had made the editors swear approvingly over their one o'clock luncheon. So they had commissioned me to round up said Adair and corner by contract his or her output at two cents a word before some other publisher offered her ten or twenty.
|
||||
|
||||
At nine o'clock the next morning, after my chicken livers [en brochette]{lang="fr"} (try them if you can find that hotel), I strayed out into the drizzle, which was still on for an unlimited run. At the first corner I came upon Uncle Caesar. He was a stalwart Negro, older than the pyramids, with gray wool and a face that reminded me of Brutus, and a second afterwards of the late King Cettiwayo. He wore the most remarkable coat that I ever had seen or expect to see. It reached to his ankles and had once been a Confederate gray in colors. But rain and sun and age had so variegated it that Joseph's coat, beside it, would have faded to a pale monochrome. I must linger with that coat, for it has to do with the story---the story that is so long in coming, because you can hardly expect anything to happen in Nashville.
|
||||
|
||||
Once it must have been the military coat of an officer. The cape of it had vanished, but all adown its front it had been frogged and tasseled magnificently. But now the frogs and tassles were gone. In their stead had been patiently stitched (I surmised by some surviving "black mammy") new frogs made of cunningly twisted common hempen twine. This twine was frayed and disheveled. It must have been added to the coat as a substitute for vanished splendors, with tasteless but painstaking devotion, for it followed faithfully the curves of the long-missing frogs. And, to complete the comedy and pathos of the garment, all its buttons were gone save one. The second button from the top alone remained. The coat was fastened by other twine strings tied through the buttonholes and other holes rudely pierced in the opposite side. There was never such a weird garment so fantastically bedecked and of so many mottled hues. The lone button was the size of a half-dollar, made of yellow horn and sewed on with coarse twine.
|
||||
|
||||
This Negro stood by a carriage so old that Ham himself might have started a hack line with it after he left the ark with the two animals hitched to it. As I approached he threw open the door, drew out a feather duster, waved it without using it, and said in deep, rumbling tones:
|
||||
|
||||
"Step right in, suh; ain't a speck of dust in it---jus' got back from a funeral, suh."
|
||||
|
||||
I inferred that on such gala occasions carriages were given an extra cleaning. I looked up and down the street and perceived that there was little choice among the vehicles for hire that lined the curb. I looked in my memorandum book for the address of Azalea Adair.
|
||||
|
||||
"I want to go to 861 Jessamine Street," I said, and was about to step into the hack. But for an instant the thick, long, gorilla-like arm of the old Negro barred me. On his massive and saturnine face a look of sudden suspicion and enmity flashed for a moment. Then, with quickly returning conviction, he asked blandishingly: "What are you gwine there for, boss?"
|
||||
|
||||
"What is it to you?" I asked, a little sharply.
|
||||
|
||||
"Nothin', suh, jus' nothin'. Only it's a lonesome kind of part of town and few folks ever has business out there. Step right in. The seats is clean---jes' got back from a funeral, suh."
|
||||
|
||||
A mile and a half it must have been to our journey's end. I could hear nothing but the fearful rattle of the ancient hack over the uneven brick paving; I could smell nothing but the drizzle, now further flavored with coal smoke and something like a mixture of tar and oleander blossoms. All I could see through the streaming windows were two rows of dim houses.
|
||||
|
||||
> The city has an area of 10 square miles; 181 miles of streets, of > which 137 miles are paved; a system of waterworks that cost > \$2,000,000, with 77 miles of mains.
|
||||
|
||||
Eight-sixty-one Jessamine Street was a decayed mansion. Thirty yards back from the street it stood, outmerged in a splendid grove of trees and untrimmed shrubbery. A row of box bushes overflowed and almost hid the paling fence from sight; the gate was kept closed by a rope noose that encircled the gate post and the first paling of the gate. But when you got inside you saw that 861 was a shell, a shadow, a ghost of former grandeur and excellence. But in the story, I have not yet got inside.
|
||||
|
||||
When the hack had ceased from rattling and the weary quadrupeds came to a rest I handed my jehu his fifty cents with an additional quarter, feeling a glow of conscious generosity, as I did so. He refused it.
|
||||
|
||||
"It's two dollars, suh," he said.
|
||||
|
||||
"How's that?" I asked. "I plainly heard you call out at the hotel: 'Fifty cents to any part of the town.' "
|
||||
|
||||
"It's two dollars, suh," he repeated obstinately. "It's a long ways from the hotel."
|
||||
|
||||
"It is within the city limits and well within them." I argued. "Don't think that you have picked up a greenhorn Yankee. Do you see those hills over there?" I went on, pointing toward the east (I could not see them, myself, for the drizzle); "well, I was born and raised on their other side. You old fool nigger, can't you tell people from other people when you see 'em?"
|
||||
|
||||
The grim face of King Cettiwayo softened. "Is you from the South, suh? I reckon it was them shoes of yourn fooled me. They is somethin' sharp in the toes for a Southern gen'l'man to wear."
|
||||
|
||||
"Then the charge is fifty cents, I suppose?" said I inexorably.
|
||||
|
||||
His former expression, a mingling of cupidity and hostility, returned, remained ten seconds, and vanished.
|
||||
|
||||
"Boss," he said, "fifty cents is right; but I *needs* two dollars, suh; I'm *obleeged* to have two dollars. I ain't *demandin'* it now, suh; after I know whar you's from; I'm jus' sayin' that I *has* to have two dollars tonight, and business is mighty po'."
|
||||
|
||||
Peace and confidence settled upon his heavy features. He had been luckier than he had hoped. Instead of having picked up a greenhorn, ignorant of rates, he had come upon an inheritance.
|
||||
|
||||
"You confounded old rascal," I said, reaching down to my pocket, "you ought to be turned over to the police."
|
||||
|
||||
For the first time I saw him smile. He knew; *he knew*. **He knew**.
|
||||
|
||||
I gave him two one-dollar bills. As I handed them over I noticed that one of them had seen parlous times. Its upper right-hand corner was missing, and it had been torn through the middle, but joined again. A strip of blue tissue paper, pasted over the split, preserved its negotiability.
|
||||
|
||||
Enough of the African bandit for the present: I left him happy, lifted the rope and opened a creaky gate.
|
||||
|
||||
The house, as I said, was a shell. A paint brush had not touched it in twenty years. I could not see why a strong wind should not have bowled it over like a house of cards until I looked again at the trees that hugged it close---the trees that saw the battle of Nashville and still drew their protecting branches around it against storm and enemy and cold.
|
||||
|
||||
Azalea Adair, fifty years old, white-haired, a descendant of the cavaliers, as thin and frail as the house she lived in, robed in the cheapest and cleanest dress I ever saw, with an air as simple as a queen's, received me.
|
||||
|
||||
The reception room seemed a mile square, because there was nothing in it except some rows of books, on unpainted white-pine bookshelves, a cracked marble-top table, a rag rug, a hairless horsehair sofa and two or three chairs. Yes, there was a picture on the wall, a colored crayon drawing of a cluster of pansies. I looked around for the portrait of Andrew Jackson and the pinecone hanging basket but they were not there.
|
||||
|
||||
Azalea Adair and I had conversation, a little of which will be repeated to you. She was a product of the old South, gently nurtured in the sheltered life. Her learning was not broad, but was deep and of splendid originality in its somewhat narrow scope. She had been educated at home, and her knowledge of the world was derived from inference and by inspiration. Of such is the precious, small group of essayists made. While she talked to me I kept brushing my fingers, trying, unconsciously, to rid them guiltily of the absent dust from the half-calf backs of Lamb, Chaucer, Hazlitt, Marcus Aurelius, Montaigne and Hood. She was exquisite, she was a valuable discovery. Nearly everybody nowadays knows too much---oh, so much too much---of real life.
|
||||
|
||||
I could perceive clearly that Azalea Adair was very poor. A house and a dress she had, not much else, I fancied. So, divided between my duty to the magazine and my loyalty to the poets and essayists who fought Thomas in the valley of the Cumberland, I listened to her voice, which was like a harpsichord's, and found that I could not speak of contracts. In the presence of the nine Muses and the three Graces one hesitated to lower the topic to two cents. There would have to be another colloquy after I had regained my commercialism. But I spoke of my mission, and three o'clock of the next afternoon was set for the discussion of the business proposition.
|
||||
|
||||
"Your town," I said, as I began to make ready to depart (which is the time for smooth generalities), "seems to be a quiet, sedate place. A home town, I should say, where few things out of the ordinary ever happen."
|
||||
|
||||
> It carries on an extensive trade in stoves and hollow ware with the > West and South, and its flouring mills have a daily capacity of more > than 2,000 barrels.
|
||||
|
||||
Azalea Adair seemed to reflect.
|
||||
|
||||
"I have never thought of it that way," she said, with a kind of sincere intensity that seemed to belong to her. "Isn't it in the still, quiet places that things do happen? I fancy that when God began to create the earth on the first Monday morning one could have leaned out one's window and heard the drops of mud splashing from His trowel as He built up the everlasting hills. What did the noisiest project in the world---I mean the building of the Tower of Babel---result in finally? A page and a half of Esperanto in the *North American Review*."
|
||||
|
||||
"Of course," said I platitudinously, "human nature is the same everywhere; but there is more color---er---more drama and movement and---er---romance in some cities than in others."
|
||||
|
||||
"On the surface," said Azalea Adair. "I have traveled many times around the world in a golden airship wafted on two wings---print and dreams. I have seen (on one of my imaginary tours) the Sultan of Turkey bowstring with his own hands one of his wives who had uncovered her face in public. I have seen a man in Nashville tear up his theatre tickets because his wife was going out with her face covered---with rice powder. In San Francisco's Chinatown I saw the slave girl Sing Yee dipped slowly, inch by inch, in boiling almond oil to make her swear she would never see her American lover again. She gave in when the boiling oil had reached three inches above her knee. At a euchre party in East Nashville the other night I saw Kitty Morgan cut dead by seven of her schoolmates and lifelong friends because she had married a house painter. The boiling oil was sizzling as high as her heart; but I wish you could have seen the fine little smile that she carried from table to table. Oh, yes, it is a humdrum town. Just a few miles of red brick houses and mud and lumber yards."
|
||||
|
||||
Someone knocked hollowly at the back of the house. Azalea Adair breathed a soft apology and went to investigate the sound. She came back in three minutes with brightened eyes, a faint flush on her cheeks, and ten years lifted from her shoulders.
|
||||
|
||||
"You must have a cup of tea before you go," she said, "and a sugar cake."
|
||||
|
||||
She reached and shook a little iron bell. In shuffled a small Negro girl about twelve, barefoot, not very tidy, glowering at me with thumb in mouth and bulging eyes.
|
||||
|
||||
Azalea Adair opened a tiny, worn purse and drew out a dollar bill, a dollar bill with the upper right-hand corner missing, torn in two pieces, and pasted together again with a strip of blue tissue paper. It was one of the bills I had given the piratical Negro---there was no doubt about it.
|
||||
|
||||
"Go up to Mr. Baker's store on the corner, Impy," she said, handing the girl the dollar bill, "and get a quarter of a pound of tea---the kind he always sends me---and ten cents worth of sugar cakes. Now, hurry. The supply of tea in the house happens to be exhausted," she explained to me.
|
||||
|
||||
Impy left by the back way. Before the scrape of her hard, bare feet had died away on the back porch, a wild shriek---I was sure it was hers---filled the hollow house. Then the deep, gruff tones of an angry man's voice mingled with the girl's further squeals and unintelligible words.
|
||||
|
||||
Azalea Adair rose without surprise or emotion and disappeared. For two minutes I heard the hoarse rumble of the man's voice; then something like an oath and a slight scuffle, and she returned calmly to her chair.
|
||||
|
||||
"This is a roomy house," she said, "and I have a tenant for part of it. I am sorry to have to rescind my invitation to tea. It was impossible to get the kind I always use at the store. Perhaps tomorrow, Mr. Baker will be able to supply me."
|
||||
|
||||
I was sure that Impy had not had time to leave the house. I inquired concerning streetcar lines and took my leave. After I was well on my way I remembered that I had not learned Azalea Adair's name. But tomorrow would do.
|
||||
|
||||
That same day I started in on the course of iniquity that this uneventful city forced upon me. I was in the town only two days, but in that time I managed to lie shamelessly by telegraph, and to be an accomplice---after the fact, if that is the correct legal term---to a murder.
|
||||
|
||||
As I rounded the corner nearest my hotel the Afrite coachman of the polychromatic, nonpareil coat seized me, swung open the dungeony door of his peripatetic sarcophagus, flirted his feather duster and began his ritual: "Step right in, boss. Carriage is clean---jus' got back from a funeral. Fifty cents to any---"
|
||||
|
||||
And then he knew me and grinned broadly. " 'Scuse me, boss; you is de gen'l'man what rid out with me dis mawnin'. Thank you kindly, suh."
|
||||
|
||||
"I am going out to 861 again tomorrow afternoon at three," said I, "and if you will be here, I'll let you drive me. So you know Miss Adair?" I concluded, thinking of my dollar bill.
|
||||
|
||||
"I belonged to her father, Judge Adair, suh," he replied.
|
||||
|
||||
"I judge that she is pretty poor," I said. "She hasn't much money to speak of, has she?"
|
||||
|
||||
For an instant I looked again at the fierce countenance of King Cettiwayo, and then he changed back to an extortionate old Negro hack driver.
|
||||
|
||||
"She ain't gwine to starve, suh," he said slowly. "She has reso'ces, suh; she has reso'ces."
|
||||
|
||||
"I shall pay you fifty cents for the trip," said I.
|
||||
|
||||
"Dat is puffeckly correct, suh," he answered humbly. "I jus' *had* to have dat two dollars dis mawnin', boss."
|
||||
|
||||
I went to the hotel and lied by electricity. I wired the magazine: "A. Adair holds out for eight cents a word."
|
||||
|
||||
The answer that came back was: "Give it to her quick you duffer."
|
||||
|
||||
Just before dinner "Major" Wentworth Caswell bore down upon me with the greetings of a long-lost friend. I have seen few men whom I have so instantaneously hated, and of whom it was so difficult to be rid. I was standing at the bar when he invaded me; therefore I could not wave the white ribbon in his face. I would have paid gladly for the drinks, hoping, thereby, to escape another; but he was one of those despicable, roaring, advertising bibbers who must have brass bands and fireworks attend upon every cent that they waste in their follies.
|
||||
|
||||
With an air of producing millions he drew two one-dollar bills from a pocket and dashed one of them upon the bar. I looked once more at the dollar bill with the upper right-hand corner missing, torn through the middle, and patched with a strip of blue tissue paper. It was my dollar bill again. It could have been no other.
|
||||
|
||||
I went up to my room. The drizzle and the monotony of a dreary, eventless Southern town had made me tired and listless. I remember that just before I went to bed I mentally disposed of the mysterious dollar bill (which might have formed the clue to a tremendously fine detective story of San Francisco) by saying to myself sleepily: "Seems as if a lot of people here own stock in the Hack-Driver's Trust. Pays dividends promptly, too. Wonder if---" Then I fell asleep.
|
||||
|
||||
King Cettiwayo was at his post the next day, and rattled my bones over the stones out to 861. He was to wait and rattle me back again when I was ready.
|
||||
|
||||
Azalea Adair looked paler and cleaner and frailer than she had looked on the day before. After she had signed the contract at eight cents per word she grew still paler and began to slip out of her chair. Without much trouble I managed to get her up on the antediluvian horsehair sofa and then I ran out to the sidewalk and yelled to the coffee-colored Pirate to bring a doctor. With a wisdom that I had not expected in him, he abandoned his team and struck off up the street afoot, realizing the value of speed. In ten minutes he returned with a grave, gray-haired and capable man of medicine. In a few words (worth much less than eight cents each) I explained to him my presence in the hollow house of mystery. He bowed with stately understanding, and turned to the old Negro.
|
||||
|
||||
"Uncle Caesar," he said calmly, "Run up to my house and ask Miss Lucy to give you a cream pitcher full of fresh milk and half a tumbler of port wine. And hurry back. Don't drive---run. I want you to get back sometime this week."
|
||||
|
||||
It occurred to me that Dr. Merriman also felt a distrust as to the speeding powers of the land-pirate's steeds. After Uncle Caesar was gone, lumberingly, but swiftly, up the street, the doctor looked me over with great politeness and as much careful calculation until he had decided that I might do.
|
||||
|
||||
"It is only a case of insufficient nutrition," he said. "In other words, the result of poverty, pride, and starvation. Mrs. Caswell has many devoted friends who would be glad to aid her, but she will accept nothing except from that old Negro, Uncle Caesar, who was once owned by her family."
|
||||
|
||||
"Mrs. Caswell!" said I, in surprise. And then I looked at the contract and saw that she had signed it "Azalea Adair Caswell."
|
||||
|
||||
"I thought she was Miss Adair," I said.
|
||||
|
||||
"Married to a drunken, worthless loafer, sir," said the doctor. "It is said that he robs her even of the small sums that her old servant contributes toward her support."
|
||||
|
||||
When the milk and wine had been brought the doctor soon revived Azalea Adair. She sat up and talked of the beauty of the autumn leaves that were then in season, and their height of color. She referred lightly to her fainting seizure as the outcome of an old palpitation of the heart. Impy fanned her as she lay on the sofa. The doctor was due elsewhere, and I followed him to the door. I told him that it was within my power and intentions to make a reasonable advance of money to Azalea Adair on future contributions to the magazine, and he seemed pleased.
|
||||
|
||||
"By the way," he said, "perhaps you would like to know that you have had royalty for a coachman. Old Caesar's grandfather was a king in Congo. Caesar himself has royal ways, as you may have observed."
|
||||
|
||||
As the doctor was moving off I heard Uncle Caesar's voice inside: "Did he get bofe of dem two dollars from you, Mis' Zalea?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Yes, Caesar," I heard Azalea Adair answer weakly. And then I went in and concluded business negotiations with our contributor. I assumed the responsibility of advancing fifty dollars, putting it as a necessary formality in binding our bargain. And then Uncle Caesar drove me back to the hotel.
|
||||
|
||||
Here ends all of the story as far as I can testify as a witness. The rest must be only bare statements of facts.
|
||||
|
||||
At about six o'clock I went out for a stroll. Uncle Caesar was at his corner. He threw open the door of his carriage, flourished his duster and began his depressing formula: "Step right in, suh. Fifty cents to anywhere in the city---hack's puffickly clean, suh---jus' got back from a funeral---"
|
||||
|
||||
And then he recognized me. I think his eyesight was getting bad. His coat had taken on a few more faded shades of color, the twine strings were more frayed and ragged, the last remaining button---the button of yellow horn---was gone. A motley descendant of kings was Uncle Caesar!
|
||||
|
||||
About two hours later I saw an excited crowd besieging the front of a drug store. In a desert where nothing happens this was manna; so I wedged my way inside. On an extemporized couch of empty boxes and chairs was stretched the mortal corporeality of Major Wentworth Caswell. A doctor was testing him for the immortal ingredient. His decision was that it was conspicuous by its absence.
|
||||
|
||||
The erstwhile Major had been found dead on a dark street and brought by curious and ennuied citizens to the drug store. The late human being had been engaged in terrific battle---the details showed that. Loafer and reprobate though he had been, he had been also a warrior. But he had lost. His hands were yet clinched so tightly that his fingers would not be opened. The gentle citizens who had know him stood about and searched their vocabularies to find some good words, if it were possible, to speak of him. One kind-looking man said, after much thought: "When 'Cas' was about fo'teen he was one of the best spellers in school."
|
||||
|
||||
While I stood there the fingers of the right hand of "the man that was" which hung down the side of a white pine box, relaxed, and dropped something at my feet. I covered it with one foot quietly, and a little later on I picked it up and pocketed it. I reasoned that in his last struggle his hand must have seized that object unwittingly and held it in a death grip.
|
||||
|
||||
At the hotel that night the main topic of conversation, with the possible exceptions of politics and prohibition, was the demise of Major Caswell. I heard one man say to a group of listeners:
|
||||
|
||||
"In my opinion, gentlemen, Caswell was murdered by some of these no-account niggers for his money. He had fifty dollars this afternoon which he showed to several gentlemen in the hotel. When he was found the money was not on his person."
|
||||
|
||||
I left the city the next morning at nine, and as the train was crossing the bridge over the Cumberland River I took out of my pocket a yellow horn overcoat button the size of a fifty-cent piece, with frayed ends of coarse twine hanging from it, and cast it out of the window into the slow, muddy waters below.
|
||||
|
||||
*I wonder what's doing in Buffalo!*
|
||||
20
src/epub/text/a-mystery-of-many-centuries.md
Normal file
20
src/epub/text/a-mystery-of-many-centuries.md
Normal file
@ -0,0 +1,20 @@
|
||||
A Mystery of Many Centuries {#a-mystery-of-many-centuries type="title"}
|
||||
---------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
Up to a few years ago man regarded the means of locomotion possessed by the fair sex as a sacred areanum into which it were desecration to inquire.
|
||||
|
||||
The bicycle costume has developed the fact that there are two---well, that there are two. Whereas man bowed down and worshipped what he could not understand nor see, when the veil of mystery was rent, his reverence departed. For generations woman has been supposed in moving from one place to another to simply get there. Whether borne like Venus in an invisible car drawn by two milk white doves, or wafted imperceptibly by the force of her own sweet will, admiring man did not pause to consider. He only knew that there was a soft rustle of unseen drapery, an entrancing frou-frou of something agitated but unknown and the lovely beings would be standing on another spot. Whereat he wondered, adoring, but uninquisitive. At times beneath the lace-hemmed snowy skirts might be seen the toe of a tiny slipper, and perhaps the gleam of a silver buckle upon the arch of an instep, but thence imagination retired, baffled, but enthralled. In olden times the sweetest singers among the poets sang to their lutes of those Lilliputian members, and romance struck a lofty note when it wove the deathless legend of Cinderella and the slipper of glass. Courtiers have held aloft the silken slipper of the adored one filled with champagne and drank her health. Where is the bicyclist hero who would undertake the task of draining to the good health of his lady love her bicycle gaiter filled with beer?
|
||||
|
||||
The mysterious and lovelorn damosel no longer chucks roses at us from her latticed window and sighs to us from afar. She has descended, borrowed our clothes, and is our good friend and demands equal rights. We no longer express our admiration by midnight serenades and sonnets. We slap her on the back and feel we have gained a good comrade.
|
||||
|
||||
But we feel like inserting the following want ad in every paper in the land:
|
||||
|
||||
> **Lost**---A maiden dressed in long skirts: blushes sometimes, and > wears a placard round her neck, which says, "hands off." A liberal > reward will be paid for her return.
|
||||
|
||||
------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
The other, day the *Post* Man saw a nice, clean-minded old gentleman, who is of the old school of cavaliers, and who is loath to see woman come down from the pedestal on which he has always viewed her.
|
||||
|
||||
He was watching a lady bicycle rider go by. The *Post* Man asked him what he thought.
|
||||
|
||||
"I never see a lady on a bicycle," said he, "but I am reminded of God, for they certainly move in a mysterious way their wonders to perform."
|
||||
26
src/epub/text/a-narrow-escape.md
Normal file
26
src/epub/text/a-narrow-escape.md
Normal file
@ -0,0 +1,26 @@
|
||||
A Narrow Escape {#a-narrow-escape type="title"}
|
||||
---------------
|
||||
|
||||
A meek-looking man, with one eye and a timid, shuffling gait, entered a Houston saloon while no one was in except the bartender, and said:
|
||||
|
||||
"Excuse me, sir, but would you permit me to step behind the bar for just a moment? You can keep your eye on me. There is something there I wanted to look at."
|
||||
|
||||
The bartender was not busy, and humored him through curiosity.
|
||||
|
||||
The meek-looking man stepped around and toward the shelf back of the bar.
|
||||
|
||||
"Would you kindly remove that wine bottle and those glasses for a moment?"
|
||||
|
||||
The bartender did so, and disclosed a little plowed streak on the shelf and a small hole bored for quite a distance into the wall.
|
||||
|
||||
"Thanks, that's all," said the meek man, as he went around to the front again.
|
||||
|
||||
He leaned thoughtfully on the bar and said: "I shot that hole in there just nine years ago. I came in feeling pretty thirsty and had no money. The bartender refused me a drink and I commenced firing. That ball went through his ear and five bottles of champagne before it stopped. I then yelled quite loudly, and two men broke their arms trying to get out the door, and the bartender trembled so when he mixed a drink for me you would have thought he was putting up a milk shake for a girl who wanted to catch a street car."
|
||||
|
||||
"Yes?" said the bartender.
|
||||
|
||||
"Yes, sir, I am feeling a little out of sorts today, and it always makes me real cross and impatient when I get that way. A little gin and bitters always helps me. It was six times, I think, that I fired, the time I was telling you about. Straight whisky would do if the gin is out."
|
||||
|
||||
"If I had any fly paper," said the bartender, sweetly, "I would stick you on it and set you in the back window; but I am out, consequently, I shall have to adopt harsher measures. I shall tie a knot in this towel, and then count ten, and walk around the end of the bar. That will give you time to do your shooting, and I'll see that you let out that same old yell that you spoke of."
|
||||
|
||||
"Wait a moment," said the meek man. "Come to think of it, my doctor ordered me not to drink anything for six weeks. But you had a narrow escape all the same. I think I shall go down to the next drug store and fall in a fit on the sidewalk. That's good for some peppermint and aromatic spirits of ammonia, anyhow."
|
||||
40
src/epub/text/a-new-microbe.md
Normal file
40
src/epub/text/a-new-microbe.md
Normal file
@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
|
||||
A New Microbe {#a-new-microbe type="title"}
|
||||
-------------
|
||||
|
||||
There is a Houston man who is a great lover of science and an ardent student of her mysteries. He has a small laboratory fitted up at home and spends a great deal of his time in experimenting with chemicals and analyzing different substances.
|
||||
|
||||
Of late he has been much interested in various germ theories, and has somewhat neglected his business to read Pasteur's and Koch's writings, and everything he could procure relating to sundry kinds of bacilli.
|
||||
|
||||
He has bought a new 900-power magnifying instrument, and hopes before long to add his quota to the number of valuable discoveries concerning germ life.
|
||||
|
||||
Last Tuesday night there was a sociable and supper given at one of the churches.
|
||||
|
||||
The man's wife wanted him to go, but he begged off, saying that he would much rather stay at home and have a good quiet time with his microscope, while she went and took the children.
|
||||
|
||||
He had been reading ex-State Geologist Dumble's report of his analysis of Houston bayou water, and he was anxious to verify that gentleman's statements by an examination of his own.
|
||||
|
||||
So, immediately after supper he went through the kitchen and found a tin bucket full of water sitting on a bench by the hydrant and carried it at once to his laboratory and, fastening himself in, went to work.
|
||||
|
||||
After a time he heard his wife and children leave the house on their way to the supper at the church, which was only a block or two away, and he congratulated himself on the nice quiet time he was going to have.
|
||||
|
||||
He worked away for nearly three hours, repeatedly examining through the powerful microscope samples of the bayou water from the bucket.
|
||||
|
||||
------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
At last he slapped his hand on his knee in triumph.
|
||||
|
||||
"Dumble's wrong!" he exclaimed. "He says it's the *Hybadid cystallis*, and I'm certain he's mistaken. The inhabitants of this water are schizomycetic bacteria, but they are neither macrocci of roseopersicina, nor have they iso-diametric cells.
|
||||
|
||||
"Can it be that I have discovered a new germ? Is scientific fame within my grasp?"
|
||||
|
||||
He seized his pen and began to write. In a little while his family came home and his wife came up to the laboratory. He generally refused to let her in, but on that occasion he opened the door and welcomed her enthusiastically.
|
||||
|
||||
"Ellen," he cried, "since you have been gone I have won fame and perhaps fortune. I have discovered a new bacterium in the bayou water. Science describes nothing like it. I shall call it after you and your name will pass into eternal fame. Just take a look through the microscope."
|
||||
|
||||
His wife shut one eye and looked into the cylinder.
|
||||
|
||||
"Funny little round things, ain't they?" she said. "Are they injurious to the system?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Sure death. Get one of 'em in your alimentary canal and you're a goner. I'm going to write to the London *Lancet* and the New York Academy of Sciences tonight. What shall we call 'em, Ellen? Let's see---Ellenobes, or Ellenites, or what?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh, John, you wretch!" shrieked his wife, as she caught sight of the tin bucket on the table. "You've got my bucket of Galveston oysters that I bought to take to the church supper! Microbes, indeed!"
|
||||
62
src/epub/text/a-newspaper-story.md
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|
||||
A Newspaper Story {#a-newspaper-story type="title"}
|
||||
-----------------
|
||||
|
||||
At 8 a.m. it lay on Giuseppi's newsstand, still damp from the presses. Giuseppi, with the cunning of his ilk, philandered on the opposite corner, leaving his patrons to help themselves, no doubt on a theory related to the hypothesis of the watched pot.
|
||||
|
||||
This particular newspaper was, according to its custom and design, an educator, a guide, a monitor, a champion and a household counsellor and [vade mecum]{lang="la"}.
|
||||
|
||||
From its many excellencies might be selected three editorials. One was in simple and chaste but illuminating language directed to parents and teachers, deprecating corporal punishment for children.
|
||||
|
||||
Another was an accusive and significant warning addressed to a notorious labour leader who was on the point of instigating his clients to a troublesome strike.
|
||||
|
||||
The third was an eloquent demand that the police force be sustained and aided in everything that tended to increase its efficiency as public guardians and servants.
|
||||
|
||||
Besides these more important chidings and requisitions upon the store of good citizenship was a wise prescription or form of procedure laid out by the editor of the heart-to-heart column in the specific case of a young man who had complained of the obduracy of his lady love, teaching him how he might win her.
|
||||
|
||||
Again, there was, on the beauty page, a complete answer to a young lady inquirer who desired admonition toward the securing of bright eyes, rosy cheeks and a beautiful countenance.
|
||||
|
||||
One other item requiring special cognizance was a brief "personal," running thus:
|
||||
|
||||
> [Dear Jack]{type="z3998:salutation"}:---Forgive me. You were right. > Meet me corner Madison and ⸺th at 8:30 this morning. We leave at > noon. > > Penitent.
|
||||
|
||||
At 8 o'clock a young man with a haggard look and the feverish gleam of unrest in his eye dropped a penny and picked up the top paper as he passed Giuseppi's stand. A sleepless night had left him a late riser. There was an office to be reached by nine, and a shave and a hasty cup of coffee to be crowded into the interval.
|
||||
|
||||
He visited his barber shop and then hurried on his way. He pocketed his paper, meditating a belated perusal of it at the luncheon hour. At the next corner it fell from his pocket, carrying with it his pair of new gloves. Three blocks he walked, missed the gloves and turned back fuming.
|
||||
|
||||
Just on the half-hour he reached the corner where lay the gloves and the paper. But he strangely ignored that which he had come to seek. He was holding two little hands as tightly as ever he could and looking into two penitent brown eyes, while joy rioted in his heart.
|
||||
|
||||
"Dear Jack," she said, "I knew you would be here on time."
|
||||
|
||||
"I wonder what she means by that," he was saying to himself; "but it's all right, it's all right."
|
||||
|
||||
A big wind puffed out of the west, picked up the paper from the sidewalk, opened it out and sent it flying and whirling down a side street. Up that street was driving a skittish bay to a spider-wheel buggy, the young man who had written to the heart-to-heart editor for a recipe that he might win her for whom he sighed.
|
||||
|
||||
The wind, with a prankish flurry, flapped the flying newspaper against the face of the skittish bay. There was a lengthened streak of bay mingled with the red of running gear that stretched itself out for four blocks. Then a water-hydrant played its part in the cosmogony, the buggy became matchwood as foreordained, and the driver rested very quietly where he had been flung on the asphalt in front of a certain brownstone mansion.
|
||||
|
||||
They came out and had him inside very promptly. And there was one who made herself a pillow for his head, and cared for no curious eyes, bending over and saying, "Oh, it was you; it was you all the time, Bobby! Couldn't you see it? And if you die, why, so must I, and---"
|
||||
|
||||
But in all this wind we must hurry to keep in touch with our paper.
|
||||
|
||||
Policeman O'Brine arrested it as a character dangerous to traffic. Straightening its dishevelled leaves with his big, slow fingers, he stood a few feet from the family entrance of the Shandon Bells Café. One headline he spelled out ponderously: "The Papers to the Front in a Move to Help the Police."
|
||||
|
||||
But, whisht! The voice of Danny, the head bartender, through the crack of the door: "Here's a nip for ye, Mike, ould man."
|
||||
|
||||
Behind the widespread, amicable columns of the press Policeman O'Brine receives swiftly his nip of the real stuff. He moves away, stalwart, refreshed, fortified, to his duties. Might not the editor man view with pride the early, the spiritual, the literal fruit that had blessed his labours.
|
||||
|
||||
Policeman O'Brine folded the paper and poked it playfully under the arm of a small boy that was passing. That boy was named Johnny, and he took the paper home with him. His sister was named Gladys, and she had written to the beauty editor of the paper asking for the practicable touchstone of beauty. That was weeks ago, and she had ceased to look for an answer. Gladys was a pale girl, with dull eyes and a discontented expression. She was dressing to go up to the avenue to get some braid. Beneath her skirt she pinned two leaves of the paper Johnny had brought. When she walked the rustling sound was an exact imitation of the real thing.
|
||||
|
||||
On the street she met the Brown girl from the flat below and stopped to talk. The Brown girl turned green. Only silk at \$5 a yard could make the sound that she heard when Gladys moved. The Brown girl, consumed by jealousy, said something spiteful and went her way, with pinched lips.
|
||||
|
||||
Gladys proceeded toward the avenue. Her eyes now sparkled like jagerfonteins. A rosy bloom visited her cheeks; a triumphant, subtle, vivifying, smile transfigured her face. She was beautiful. Could the beauty editor have seen her then! There was something in her answer in the paper, I believe, about cultivating kind feelings toward others in order to make plain features attractive.
|
||||
|
||||
The labour leader against whom the paper's solemn and weighty editorial injunction was laid was the father of Gladys and Johnny. He picked up the remains of the journal from which Gladys had ravished a cosmetic of silken sounds. The editorial did not come under his eye, but instead it was greeted by one of those ingenious and specious puzzle problems that enthrall alike the simpleton and the sage.
|
||||
|
||||
The labour leader tore off half of the page, provided himself with table, pencil and paper and glued himself to his puzzle.
|
||||
|
||||
Three hours later, after waiting vainly for him at the appointed place, other more conservative leaders declared and ruled in favour of arbitration, and the strike with its attendant dangers was averted. Subsequent editions of the paper referred, in coloured inks, to the clarion tone of its successful denunciation of the labour leader's intended designs.
|
||||
|
||||
The remaining leaves of the active journal also went loyally to the proving of its potency.
|
||||
|
||||
When Johnny returned from school he sought a secluded spot and removed the missing columns from the inside of his clothing, where they had been artfully distributed so as to successfully defend such areas as are generally attacked during scholastic castigations. Johnny attended a private school and had had trouble with his teacher. As has been said, there was an excellent editorial against corporal punishment in that morning's issue, and no doubt it had its effect.
|
||||
|
||||
After this can anyone doubt the power of the press?
|
||||
114
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|
||||
A Night Errant {#a-night-errant type="title"}
|
||||
--------------
|
||||
|
||||
One of the greatest of books is the daily life around us. All that the human mind can conceive; all that the human heart can feel, and the lips tell are encompassed in the little world about us. He that beholds with understanding eyes can see beneath the thin veil of the commonplace, the romance, the tragedy and the broad comedy that is being played upon the world's stage by the actors great and little who tread the boards of the Theater of the Universe.
|
||||
|
||||
Life is neither tragedy nor comedy. It is a mingling of both. High above us omnipotent hands pull the strings that choke our laughter with sobs and cause strange sounds of mirth to break in upon our deepest grief. We are marionettes that dance and cry, scarce at our own wills; and at the end, the flaring lights are out, we are laid to rest in our wooden boxes, and down comes the dark night to cover the scene of our brief triumph.
|
||||
|
||||
We elbow heroes on the streets as grand as any the poets have sung; in the faces of obscure women and prosy men a student of his kind can see the imprints of all the passions, both good and bad, that have illuminated the pages of song and story.
|
||||
|
||||
There is good in all, and we are none all good. The scholar in his library, the woodcutter in the forest, my lady in her boudoir and the painted, hard-eyed denizen of the byways---we are all from the same clay.
|
||||
|
||||
And the hands of fate pull the strings, and we caper and pirouette; and some go up and some go down and haphazard chance or else an obscure divinity pulls us this way and that, and where are we left? Blind and chattering on the brink of an eternal unknowableness. We spring from a common root. The king and the bricklayer are equal except as to environs; the queen and the milkmaid may sit side by side with pail and crown on the ragged edge of destiny; the human heart is the same the world over; and when the judge sits upon the doings of his puppets, who will prevail?
|
||||
|
||||
The *Post* Man has an overcoat with a high collar. This is convenient in more ways than one. He turns it up when passing beggars upon the street corners, and thus shuts out their importunities and saves his conscience; he pulls it around his ears with dignified stateliness when meeting gentlemen who deal in goods which he hath bought anon; and lastly, it is useful when the weather is cold.
|
||||
|
||||
Sometimes when the purple shades begin to fall on Saturday evening and the cool mists creep up from the sluggish waters of the bayou the *Post* Man dons his useful article of apparel and hieth him forth among the hedges and the highways. He sees the seamy side through the gilding that covers the elect of the earth, and he sees the pure gold that glitters amid the mire where tread the lowly and meek of heart. He catches the note of discord in the prayer of the Pharisee on the street corner, and the jangle of the untuned bells that hang above many houses of worship. He sees strange deeds of nobility and lofty self-denial among people from whose touch respectability draws aside its skirts, and the mark of the beast upon the brow of the high and saintly.
|
||||
|
||||
A little here and there he jots down upon his pad; the greater part of the panorama goes by unrecorded until something comes in the vast To Be that will either explain---or end.
|
||||
|
||||
------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
Robert Burns has drawn a perfect picture of the purest peace and happiness in his "Cotter's Saturday Night." The laborer comes home from his work and is met by his joyful family. The fire burns brightly, the lamp is lit, and they draw the curtains and sit about their humble board, shutting in their little happy world from the cold and bleak night.
|
||||
|
||||
There are such homes now and always will be, but if one will traverse the streets of a city on Saturday night he will witness many scenes of a far different nature.
|
||||
|
||||
As the homeward bound columns file along the sidewalks there is much to be seen that presages sorrow and scant comfort to the waiting ones at their homes. There are staggering steps, loud speeches with rude and thickened tongues, and plentiful signs of misspent wages and the indulgence of debased appetites.
|
||||
|
||||
The saloons are reaping a rich harvest that should belong to wives and children. Some fling away in an hour what has taken them days to earn, and will carry home nothing but sullen looks and empty pockets. You can see all along the streets pale, anxious-looking women slipping through the crowd in the hope of meeting the providers and protectors of their homes, and inducing them to come there instead of lingering with their besotted comrades. What should be a season of rest and repose beneath the home vine and fig tree is turned into Saturnalia, and a loosing of bad passions.
|
||||
|
||||
Homeward flit the trim shop girls, the week's work over, intent on the rest and pleasure of the morrow; threading their straightforward and dextrous way through the throng. Homeward plods the weary housekeeper with her basket of vegetables for Sunday's dinner. Homeward goes the solid citizen laden with bundles and bags. Homeward slip weary working women, hurrying to fill the hungry mouths awaiting them. Respectability moves homeward, but as the everlasting stars creep out above, queer and warped things steal forth like imps of the night to hide, and sulk, and carouse, and prey upon whatever the darkness bringeth to them.
|
||||
|
||||
Down on the bank of the bayou, beyond the car shops, the foundries, the lumbermills and the great manufactories that go to make Houston the wonderful business and trade center she is, stands---or rather, leans---a little shanty. It is made of clapboards, old planks, pieces of tin and odds and ends of lumber picked up here and there. It is built close to the edge of the foul and sluggish bayou. Back of it rises the bank full ten feet high; below it, only a few feet, ripples the sullen tide.
|
||||
|
||||
In this squalid hut lives Crip. Crip is nine years old. He is freckled-faced, thin and subdued. From his knee his left leg is gone and in its place is a clumsy wooden stump, on which he limps around at quite a wonderful pace. Crip's mother cleans up three or four offices on Main Street and takes in washing at other times. Somehow, they manage to live in this tottering habitation patched up by Crip's father, who several years before had fallen into the bayou one night while drunk, and what was left of him by the catfish was buried upon the bank a hundred yards farther down. Of late, Crip had undertaken to assist in the mutual support.
|
||||
|
||||
One morning he came stumping timidly into the office of the *Post* and purchased a few papers. These he offered for sale upon the streets with great diffidence. Crip had no difficulty in selling his papers. People stopped and bought readily the wares of this shrinking, weak-voiced youngster. His wooden leg caught the eye of hurrying passersby and the nickels rained into his hand as long as he had any papers left.
|
||||
|
||||
One morning Crip failed to call for his papers. The next day he did not appear, nor the next, and one of the newsboys was duly questioned as to his absence.
|
||||
|
||||
"Crip's got de pewmonia," he said.
|
||||
|
||||
------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
The *Post* Man, albeit weighed down by numerous tribulations of others and his own, when night comes puts on his overcoat and wends his way down the bayou toward the home of Crip.
|
||||
|
||||
The air is chilly and full of mist, and great puddles left by the recent rains glimmer and sparkle in the electric lights. No wonder that pneumonia has laid its cold hand upon the frail and weakly Crip, living as he does in the rain-soaked shanty down on the water's edge. The *Post* Man goes to inquire if he has had a doctor and if he is supplied with the necessities his condition must require. He walks down the railroad tracks and comes close upon two figures marching with uncertain stateliness in the same direction.
|
||||
|
||||
One of them speaks loudly, with oratorical flourish, but with an exaggerated carefulness that proclaims he is in a certain stage of intoxication. His voice is well known in the drawing-rooms and the highest social circles of Houston. His name is---well, let us call him Old Boy, for so do his admiring companions denominate him. There comes hurrying past them the form of a somberly-clad woman.
|
||||
|
||||
Intuitively the *Post* Man thinks she is of the house of Crip and accosts her with interrogatories. He gleans from her gasping brogue that a doctor has seen Crip and that he is very sick, but with proper medicines, nursing and food he will probably recover. She is now hastening to the drug store to buy---with her last dollar, she says---the medicine he must take at once.
|
||||
|
||||
"I will stay with him until you return," says the *Post* Man, and with a fervent "Hiven bless you, sorr!" she melts away toward the lights of the city.
|
||||
|
||||
The house where Crip lives is on a kind of shelf on the bayou side and its approach from above must be made down a set of steep and roughly hewn steps cut into the bank by the deceased architect of the house. At the top of these stairs the two society lights stop.
|
||||
|
||||
"Old Boy," says one of them, "give it up. It might be catching. And you are going to the dance tonight. This little rat of a newsboy---why should you see him personally? Come, let's go back. You've had so much---"
|
||||
|
||||
"Bobby," says the Old Boy, "have I labored all these years in vain, trying to convince you that you are an ass? I know I'm a devil of a buzzerfly, and glash of fashion, but I've gozzer see zat boy. Sold me papers a week, 'n now zey tell me he's sick in this ratsh hole down here. Come on, Bobby, or else go't devil. I'm going in."
|
||||
|
||||
Old Boy pushes his silk hat to the back of his head and starts with dangerous rapidity down the steep stairs.
|
||||
|
||||
His friend, seeing that he is determined, takes his arm and they both sway and stagger down to the little shelf of land below.
|
||||
|
||||
The *Post* Man follows them silently, and they are too much occupied with their own unsteady progress to note his presence. He slips around them, raises the latch of the rickety door, stoops and enters the miserable hut.
|
||||
|
||||
Crip lies on a meager bed in the corner, with great, feverish eyes, and little, bony, restless fingers moving nervously upon the covers. The night wind blows in streamy draughts between the many crannies and flares the weak flame of a candle stuck in its own grease upon the top of a wooden box.
|
||||
|
||||
"Hello, mister," says Crip. "I knows yer. Yer works on de paper. I been laid up wid a rattlin' pain in me chist. Who wins de fight?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Fitzsimmons won," says the *Post* Man, feeling his hot freckled hand. "Are you in much pain?"
|
||||
|
||||
"How many rounds?"
|
||||
|
||||
"First round. Less than two minutes. Can I do anything to make you easier?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Geeminetty! dat was quick. Yer might gimme a drink."
|
||||
|
||||
The door opens again and two magnificent beings enter. Crip gives a little gasp as his quick eyes fall upon them. Old Boy acknowledges the presence of the *Post* Man by a deep and exaggerated but well intentioned bow, and then he goes and stands by Crip's bedside.
|
||||
|
||||
"Old man," he says, with solemnly raised eyebrows, "Whazzer mazzer?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Sick," says Crip. "I know yer. Yer gimme a quarter for a paper one mornin'."
|
||||
|
||||
Old Boy's friend ranges himself in the background. He is a man in a dress suit with a mackintosh and cane, and is not of an obtrusive personality.
|
||||
|
||||
He shows an inclination to brace himself against something, but the fragile furniture of the hut not promising much support, he stands uneasily, with a perplexed frown upon his face, awaiting developments.
|
||||
|
||||
"You little devil," says Old Boy, smiling down with mock anger at the little scrap of humanity under the covers, "Do you know why I've come to see you?"
|
||||
|
||||
"N-n-n-no, sir," says Crip, the fever flush growing deeper on his cheeks. He has never seen anything so wonderful as this grand, tall, handsome man in his black evening suit, with the dark, half-smiling, half-frowning eyes, and the great diamond flashing on his snowy bosom, and the tall, shiny hat on the back of his head.
|
||||
|
||||
"Gen'lemen," says Old Boy, with a comprehensive wave of his hand, "I don't know myself, why I have come here, but I couldn't help it. That little devil's eyes have been in my head for a week. I've never sheen him 'n my life till a week ago; but I've sheen his eyes somewhere, long time ago. Sheems to me I knew this little rascal when I was a kid myself 'way back before I left Alabama; but, then, gentlemen, thash impossible. However, as Bobby will tell you, I made him walk all the way down here with me to shee zis little sick fellow, 'n now we mus' do all we can for 'm."
|
||||
|
||||
Old Boy runs his hands into his pockets and draws out the contents thereof and lays all, with lordly indiscrimination, on the ragged quilt that covers Crip.
|
||||
|
||||
"Little devil," he says solemnly, "you mus' buy medicine and get well and come back and shell me papers again. Where in thunder have I seen you before? Never mind. Come on, Bobby---good boy to wait for me---come on now and le's get a zrink."
|
||||
|
||||
The two magnificent gentlemen sway around grandly for a moment, make elaborate but silent adieus in the direction of Crip and the *Post* Man, and finally dwindle out into the darkness, where they can be heard urging each other forward to the tremendous feat of remounting the steps that lead to the path above.
|
||||
|
||||
Presently Crip's mother returns with his medicine and proceeds to make him comfortable. She gives a screech of surprise at what she sees lying upon the bed, and proceeds to take an inventory. There are \$42 in currency, \$6.50 in silver, a lady's silver slipper buckle and an elegant pearl-handled knife with four blades.
|
||||
|
||||
The *Post* Man sees Crip take his medicine and his fever go down, and promising him to bring down a paper that tells all about the great fight, he moves away. A thought strikes him, and he stops near the door and says:
|
||||
|
||||
"Your husband, now where was he from?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh, plaze yer honor," says Crip's mother, "from Alabama he was, and a gentleman born, as everyone could tell till the dhrink got away wid him, and thin he married me."
|
||||
|
||||
As the *Post* Man departs he hears Crip say to his mother reverentially:
|
||||
|
||||
"Dat man what left de stuff, mammy, he couldn't have been God, for God don't get full; but if it wasn't him, mammy, I bet a dollar he was Dan Stuart."
|
||||
|
||||
As the *Post* Man trudges back along the dark road to the city, he says to himself:
|
||||
|
||||
"We have seen tonight good springing up where we would never have looked for it, and something of a mystery all the way from Alabama. Heigho! this is a funny little world."
|
||||
268
src/epub/text/a-night-in-new-arabia.md
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268
src/epub/text/a-night-in-new-arabia.md
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@ -0,0 +1,268 @@
|
||||
A Night in New Arabia {#a-night-in-new-arabia type="title"}
|
||||
---------------------
|
||||
|
||||
The great city of Bagdad-on-the-Subway is caliph-ridden. Its palaces, bazaars, khans, and byways are thronged with Al Rashids in divers disguises, seeking diversion and victims for their unbridled generosity. You can scarcely find a poor beggar whom they are willing to let enjoy his spoils unsuccored, nor a wrecked unfortunate upon whom they will not reshower the means of fresh misfortune. You will hardly find anywhere a hungry one who has not had the opportunity to tighten his belt in gift libraries, nor a poor pundit who has not blushed at the holiday basket of celery-crowned turkey forced resoundingly through his door by the eleemosynary press.
|
||||
|
||||
So then, fearfully through the Harun-haunted streets creep the one-eyed calenders, the Little Hunchback and the Barber's Sixth Brother, hoping to escape the ministrations of the roving horde of caliphoid sultans.
|
||||
|
||||
Entertainment for many Arabian nights might be had from the histories of those who have escaped the largesse of the army of Commanders of the Faithful. Until dawn you might sit on the enchanted rug and listen to such stories as are told of the powerful genie Roc-Ef-El-Er who sent the Forty Thieves to soak up the oil plant of Ali Baba; of the good Caliph Kar-Neg-Ghe, who gave away palaces; of the Seven Voyages of Sailbad, the Sinner, who frequented wooden excursion steamers among the islands; of the Fisherman and the Bottle; of the Barmecides' Boarding house; of Aladdin's rise to wealth by means of his Wonderful Gas-meter.
|
||||
|
||||
But now, there being ten sultans to one Sheherazade, she is held too valuable to be in fear of the bowstring. In consequence the art of narrative languishes. And, as the lesser caliphs are hunting the happy poor and the resigned unfortunate from cover to cover in order to heap upon them strange mercies and mysterious benefits, too often comes the report from Arabian headquarters that the captive refused "to talk."
|
||||
|
||||
This reticence, then, in the actors who perform the sad comedies of their philanthropy-scourged world, must, in a degree, account for the shortcomings of this painfully gleaned tale, which shall be called
|
||||
|
||||
The Story of the Caliph Who Alleviated His Conscience
|
||||
|
||||
Old Jacob Spraggins mixed for himself some Scotch and lithia water at his \$1,200 oak sideboard. Inspiration must have resulted from its imbibition, for immediately afterward he struck the quartered oak soundly with his fist and shouted to the empty dining room:
|
||||
|
||||
"By the coke ovens of hell, it must be that ten thousand dollars! If I can get that squared, it'll do the trick."
|
||||
|
||||
Thus, by the commonest artifice of the trade, having gained your interest, the action of the story will now be suspended, leaving you grumpily to consider a sort of dull biography beginning fifteen years before.
|
||||
|
||||
When old Jacob was young Jacob he was a breaker boy in a Pennsylvania coal mine. I don't know what a breaker boy is; but his occupation seems to be standing by a coal dump with a wan look and a dinner-pail to have his picture taken for magazine articles. Anyhow, Jacob was one. But, instead of dying of overwork at nine, and leaving his helpless parents and brothers at the mercy of the union strikers' reserve fund, he hitched up his galluses, put a dollar or two in a side proposition now and then, and at forty-five was worth \$20,000,000.
|
||||
|
||||
There now! it's over. Hardly had time to yawn, did you? I've seen biographies that---but let us dissemble.
|
||||
|
||||
I want you to consider Jacob Spraggins, Esq., after he had arrived at the seventh stage of his career. The stages meant are, first, humble origin; second, deserved promotion; third, stockholder; fourth, capitalist; fifth, trust magnate; sixth, rich malefactor; seventh, caliph; eighth, *x*. The eighth stage shall be left to the higher mathematics.
|
||||
|
||||
At fifty-five Jacob retired from active business. The income of a czar was still rolling in on him from coal, iron, real estate, oil, railroads, manufactories, and corporations, but none of it touched Jacob's hands in a raw state. It was a sterilized increment, carefully cleaned and dusted and fumigated until it arrived at its ultimate stage of untainted, spotless checks in the white fingers of his private secretary. Jacob built a three-million-dollar palace on a corner lot fronting on Nabob Avenue, city of New Bagdad, and began to feel the mantle of the late H. A. Rashid descending upon him. Eventually Jacob slipped the mantle under his collar, tied it in a neat four-in-hand, and became a licensed harrier of our Mesopotamian proletariat.
|
||||
|
||||
When a man's income becomes so large that the butcher actually sends him the kind of steak he orders, he begins to think about his soul's salvation. Now, the various stages or classes of rich men must not be forgotten. The capitalist can tell you to a dollar the amount of his wealth. The trust magnate "estimates" it. The rich malefactor hands you a cigar and denies that he has bought the P. D. & Q. The caliph merely smiles and talks about Hammerstein and the musical lasses. There is a record of tremendous altercation at breakfast in a "Where-to-Dine-Well" tavern between a magnate and his wife, the rift within the loot being that the wife calculated their fortune at a figure \$3,000,000 higher than did her future divorcé. Oh, well, I, myself, heard a similar quarrel between a man and his wife because he found fifty cents less in his pockets than he thought he had. After all, we are all human---Count Tolstoy, R. Fitzsimmons, Peter Pan, and the rest of us.
|
||||
|
||||
Don't lose heart because the story seems to be degenerating into a sort of moral essay for intellectual readers.
|
||||
|
||||
There will be dialogue and stage business pretty soon.
|
||||
|
||||
When Jacob first began to compare the eyes of needles with the camels in the zoo he decided upon organized charity. He had his secretary send a check for one million to the Universal Benevolent Association of the Globe. You may have looked down through a grating in front of a decayed warehouse for a nickel that you had dropped through. But that is neither here nor there. The Association acknowledged receipt of his favor of the 24th ult. with enclosure as stated. Separated by a double line, but still mighty close to the matter under the caption of "Oddities of the Day's News" in an evening paper, Jacob Spraggins read that one "Jasper Spargyous" had "donated \$100,000 to the U. B. A. of G." A camel may have a stomach for each day in the week; but I dare not venture to accord him whiskers, for fear of the Great Displeasure at Washington; but if he have whiskers, surely not one of them will seem to have been inserted in the eye of a needle by that effort of that rich man to enter the K. of H. The right is reserved to reject any and all bids; signed, S. Peter, secretary and gatekeeper.
|
||||
|
||||
Next, Jacob selected the best endowed college he could scare up and presented it with a \$200,000 laboratory. The college did not maintain a scientific course, but it accepted the money and built an elaborate lavatory instead, which was no diversion of funds so far as Jacob ever discovered.
|
||||
|
||||
The faculty met and invited Jacob to come over and take his A.B.C. degree. Before sending the invitation they smiled, cut out the *C*, added the proper punctuation marks, and all was well.
|
||||
|
||||
While walking on the campus before being capped and gowned, Jacob saw two professors strolling nearby. Their voices, long adapted to indoor acoustics, undesignedly reached his ear.
|
||||
|
||||
"There goes the latest *chevalier d'industrie*," said one of them, "to buy a sleeping powder from us. He gets his degree tomorrow."
|
||||
|
||||
"[In foro conscientiae]{lang="la"}," said the other. "Let's 'eave 'arf a brick at 'im."
|
||||
|
||||
Jacob ignored the Latin, but the brick pleasantry was not too hard for him. There was no mandragora in the honorary draught of learning that he had bought. That was before the passage of the Pure Food and Drugs Act.
|
||||
|
||||
Jacob wearied of philanthropy on a large scale.
|
||||
|
||||
"If I could see folks made happier," he said to himself---"If I could see 'em myself and hear 'em express their gratitude for what I done for 'em it would make me feel better. This donatin' funds to institutions and societies is about as satisfactory as dropping money into a broken slot machine."
|
||||
|
||||
So Jacob followed his nose, which led him through unswept streets to the homes of the poorest.
|
||||
|
||||
"The very thing!" said Jacob. "I will charter two river steamboats, pack them full of these unfortunate children and---say ten thousand dolls and drums and a thousand freezers of ice cream, and give them a delightful outing up the Sound. The sea breezes on that trip ought to blow the taint off some of this money that keeps coming in faster than I can work it off my mind."
|
||||
|
||||
Jacob must have leaked some of his benevolent intentions, for an immense person with a bald face and a mouth that looked as if it ought to have a "Drop Letters Here" sign over it hooked a finger around him and set him in a space between a barber's pole and a stack of ash cans. Words came out of the post-office slit---smooth, husky words with gloves on 'em, but sounding as if they might turn to bare knuckles any moment.
|
||||
|
||||
"Say, Sport, do you know where you are at? Well, dis is Mike O'Grady's district you're buttin' into---see? Mike's got de stomachache privilege for every kid in dis neighborhood---see? And if dere's any picnics or red balloons to be dealt out here, Mike's money pays for 'em---see? Don't you butt in, or something'll be handed to you. Youse d⸺ settlers and reformers with your social ologies and your millionaire detectives have got dis district in a hell of a fix, anyhow. With your college students and professors roughhousing de soda-water stands and dem rubberneck coaches fillin' de streets, de folks down here are 'fraid to go out of de houses. Now, you leave 'em to Mike. Dey belongs to him, and he knows how to handle 'em. Keep on your own side of de town. Are you some wiser now, uncle, or do you want to scrap wit' Mike O'Grady for de Santa Claus belt in dis district?"
|
||||
|
||||
Clearly, that spot in the moral vineyard was preempted. So Caliph Spraggins menaced no more the people in the bazaars of the East Side. To keep down his growing surplus he doubled his donations to organized charity, presented the Y.M.C.A. of his native town with a \$10,000 collection of butterflies, and sent a check to the famine sufferers in China big enough to buy new emerald eyes and diamond-filled teeth for all their gods. But none of these charitable acts seemed to bring peace to the caliph's heart. He tried to get a personal note into his benefactions by tipping bellboys and waiters \$10 and \$20 bills. He got well snickered at and derided for that by the minions who accept with respect gratuities commensurate to the service performed. He sought out an ambitious and talented but poor young woman, and bought for her the star part in a new comedy. He might have gotten rid of \$50,000 more of his cumbersome money in this philanthropy if he had not neglected to write letters to her. But she lost the suit for lack of evidence, while his capital still kept piling up, and his *optikos needleorum camelibus*---or rich man's disease---was unrelieved.
|
||||
|
||||
In Caliph Spraggins's \$3,000,000 home lived his sister Henrietta, who used to cook for the coal miners in a twenty-five-cent eating house in Coketown, Pa., and who now would have offered John Mitchell only two fingers of her hand to shake. And his daughter Celia, nineteen, back from boarding-school and from being polished off by private instructors in the restaurant languages and those études and things.
|
||||
|
||||
Celia is the heroine. Lest the artist's delineation of her charms on this very page humbug your fancy, take from me her authorized description. She was a nice-looking, awkward, loud, rather bashful, brown-haired girl, with a sallow complexion, bright eyes, and a perpetual smile. She had a wholesome, Spraggins-inherited love for plain food, loose clothing, and the society of the lower classes. She had too much health and youth to feel the burden of wealth. She had a wide mouth that kept the peppermint-pepsin tablets rattling like hail from the slot-machine wherever she went, and she could whistle hornpipes. Keep this picture in mind; and let the artist do his worst.
|
||||
|
||||
Celia looked out of her window one day and gave her heart to the grocer's young man. The receiver thereof was at that moment engaged in conceding immortality to his horse and calling down upon him the ultimate fate of the wicked; so he did not notice the transfer. A horse should stand still when you are lifting a crate of strictly new-laid eggs out of the wagon.
|
||||
|
||||
Young lady reader, you would have liked that grocer's young man yourself. But you wouldn't have given him your heart, because you are saving it for a riding-master, or a shoe-manufacturer with a torpid liver, or something quiet but rich in gray tweeds at Palm Beach. Oh, I know about it. So I am glad the grocer's young man was for Celia, and not for you.
|
||||
|
||||
The grocer's young man was slim and straight and as confident and easy in his movements as the man in the back of the magazines who wears the new frictionless roller suspenders. He wore a gray bicycle cap on the back of his head, and his hair was straw-colored and curly, and his sunburned face looked like one that smiled a good deal when he was not preaching the doctrine of everlasting punishment to delivery-wagon horses. He slung imported A1 fancy groceries about as though they were only the stuff he delivered at boardinghouses; and when he picked up his whip, your mind instantly recalled Mr. Tackett and his air with the buttonless foils.
|
||||
|
||||
Tradesmen delivered their goods at a side gate at the rear of the house. The grocer's wagon came about ten in the morning. For three days Celia watched the driver when he came, finding something new each time to admire in the lofty and almost contemptuous way he had of tossing around the choicest gifts of Pomona, Ceres, and the canning factories. Then she consulted Annette.
|
||||
|
||||
To be explicit, Annette McCorkle, the second housemaid who deserves a paragraph herself. Annette Fletcherized large numbers of romantic novels which she obtained at a free public library branch (donated by one of the biggest caliphs in the business). She was Celia's side-kicker and chum, though Aunt Henrietta didn't know it, you may hazard a bean or two.
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh, canary-bird seed!" exclaimed Annette. "Ain't it a corkin' situation? You a heiress, and fallin' in love with him on sight! He's a sweet boy, too, and above his business. But he ain't susceptible like the common run of grocer's assistants. He never pays no attention to me."
|
||||
|
||||
"He will to me," said Celia.
|
||||
|
||||
"Riches---" began Annette, unsheathing the not unjustifiable feminine sting.
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh, you're not so beautiful," said Celia, with her wide, disarming smile. "Neither am I; but he shan't know that there's any money mixed up with my looks, such as they are. That's fair. Now, I want you to lend me one of your caps and an apron, Annette."
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh, marshmallows!" cried Annette. "I see. Ain't it lovely? It's just like *Lurline, the Left-Handed; or, a Buttonhole Maker's Wrongs*. I'll bet he'll turn out to be a count."
|
||||
|
||||
There was a long hallway (or "passageway," as they call it in the land of the Colonels) with one side latticed, running along the rear of the house. The grocer's young man went through this to deliver his goods. One morning he passed a girl in there with shining eyes, sallow complexion, and wide, smiling mouth, wearing a maid's cap and apron. But as he was cumbered with a basket of Early Drumhead lettuce and Trophy tomatoes and three bunches of asparagus and six bottles of the most expensive Queen olives, he saw no more than that she was one of the maids.
|
||||
|
||||
But on his way out he came up behind her, and she was whistling "Fisher's Hornpipe" so loudly and clearly that all the piccolos in the world should have disjointed themselves and crept into their cases for shame.
|
||||
|
||||
The grocer's young man stopped and pushed back his cap until it hung on his collar button behind.
|
||||
|
||||
"That's out o' sight, Kid," said he.
|
||||
|
||||
"My name is Celia, if you please," said the whistler, dazzling him with a three-inch smile.
|
||||
|
||||
"That's all right. I'm Thomas McLeod. What part of the house do you work in?"
|
||||
|
||||
"I'm the---the second parlor maid."
|
||||
|
||||
"Do you know the 'Falling Waters'?"
|
||||
|
||||
"No," said Celia, "we don't know anybody. We got rich too quick---that is, Mr. Spraggins did."
|
||||
|
||||
"I'll make you acquainted," said Thomas McLeod. "It's a strathspey---the first cousin to a hornpipe."
|
||||
|
||||
If Celia's whistling put the piccolos out of commission, Thomas McLeod's surely made the biggest flutes hunt their holes. He could actually whistle *bass*.
|
||||
|
||||
When he stopped Celia was ready to jump into his delivery wagon and ride with him clear to the end of the pier and on to the ferryboat of the Charon line.
|
||||
|
||||
"I'll be around tomorrow at 10:15," said Thomas, "with some spinach and a case of carbonic."
|
||||
|
||||
"I'll practice that what-you-may-call-it," said Celia. "I can whistle a fine second."
|
||||
|
||||
The processes of courtship are personal, and do not belong to general literature. They should be chronicled in detail only in advertisements of iron tonics and in the secret bylaws of the Woman's Auxiliary of the Ancient Order of the Rat Trap. But genteel writing may contain a description of certain stages of its progress without intruding upon the province of the [X]{type="z3998:roman"}-ray or of park policemen.
|
||||
|
||||
A day came when Thomas McLeod and Celia lingered at the end of the latticed "passage."
|
||||
|
||||
"Sixteen a week isn't much," said Thomas, letting his cap rest on his shoulder blades.
|
||||
|
||||
Celia looked through the latticework and whistled a dead march. Shopping with Aunt Henrietta the day before, she had paid that much for a dozen handkerchiefs.
|
||||
|
||||
"Maybe I'll get a raise next month," said Thomas. "I'll be around tomorrow at the same time with a bag of flour and the laundry soap."
|
||||
|
||||
"All right," said Celia. "Annette's married cousin pays only \$20 a month for a flat in the Bronx."
|
||||
|
||||
Never for a moment did she count on the Spraggins money. She knew Aunt Henrietta's invincible pride of caste and pa's mightiness as a Colossus of cash, and she understood that if she chose Thomas she and her grocer's young man might go whistle for a living.
|
||||
|
||||
Another day came, Thomas violating the dignity of Nabob Avenue with "The Devil's Dream," whistled keenly between his teeth.
|
||||
|
||||
"Raised to eighteen a week yesterday," he said. "Been pricing flats around Morningside. You want to start untying those apron strings and unpinning that cap, old girl."
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh, Tommy!" said Celia, with her broadest smile. "Won't that be enough? I got Betty to show me how to make a cottage pudding. I guess we could call it a flat pudding if we wanted to."
|
||||
|
||||
"And tell no lie," said Thomas.
|
||||
|
||||
"And I can sweep and polish and dust---of course, a parlor maid learns that. And we could whistle duets of evenings."
|
||||
|
||||
"The old man said he'd raise me to twenty at Christmas if Bryan couldn't think of any harder name to call a Republican than a 'postponer,' " said the grocer's young man.
|
||||
|
||||
"I can sew," said Celia; "and I know that you must make the gas company's man show his badge when he comes to look at the meter; and I know how to put up quince jam and window curtains."
|
||||
|
||||
"Bully! you're all right, Cele. Yes, I believe we can pull it off on eighteen."
|
||||
|
||||
As he was jumping into the wagon the second parlor maid braved discovery by running swiftly to the gate.
|
||||
|
||||
"And, oh, Tommy, I forgot," she called, softly. "I believe I could make your neckties."
|
||||
|
||||
"Forget it," said Thomas decisively.
|
||||
|
||||
"And another thing," she continued. "Sliced cucumbers at night will drive away cockroaches."
|
||||
|
||||
"And sleep, too, you bet," said Mr. McLeod. "Yes, I believe if I have a delivery to make on the West Side this afternoon I'll look in at a furniture store I know over there."
|
||||
|
||||
It was just as the wagon dashed away that old Jacob Spraggins struck the sideboard with his fist and made the mysterious remark about ten thousand dollars that you perhaps remember. Which justifies the reflection that some stories, as well as life, and puppies thrown into wells, move around in circles. Painfully but briefly we must shed light on Jacob's words.
|
||||
|
||||
The foundation of his fortune was made when he was twenty. A poor coal-digger (ever hear of a rich one?) had saved a dollar or two and bought a small tract of land on a hillside on which he tried to raise corn. Not a nubbin. Jacob, whose nose was a divining-rod, told him there was a vein of coal beneath. He bought the land from the miner for \$125 and sold it a month afterward for \$10,000. Luckily the miner had enough left of his sale money to drink himself into a black coat opening in the back, as soon as he heard the news.
|
||||
|
||||
And so, for forty years afterward, we find Jacob illuminated with the sudden thought that if he could make restitution of this sum of money to the heirs or assigns of the unlucky miner, respite and Nepenthe might be his.
|
||||
|
||||
And now must come swift action, for we have here some four thousand words and not a tear shed and never a pistol, joke, safe, nor bottle cracked.
|
||||
|
||||
Old Jacob hired a dozen private detectives to find the heirs, if any existed, of the old miner, Hugh McLeod.
|
||||
|
||||
Get the point? Of course I know as well as you do that Thomas is going to be the heir. I might have concealed the name; but why always hold back your mystery till the end? I say, let it come near the middle so people can stop reading there if they want to.
|
||||
|
||||
After the detectives had trailed false clues about three thousand dollars---I mean miles---they cornered Thomas at the grocery and got his confession that Hugh McLeod had been his grandfather, and that there were no other heirs. They arranged a meeting for him and old Jacob one morning in one of their offices.
|
||||
|
||||
Jacob liked the young man very much. He liked the way he looked straight at him when he talked, and the way he threw his bicycle cap over the top of a rose-colored vase on the centre-table.
|
||||
|
||||
There was a slight flaw in Jacob's system of restitution. He did not consider that the act, to be perfect, should include confession. So he represented himself to be the agent of the purchaser of the land who had sent him to refund the sale price for the ease of his conscience.
|
||||
|
||||
"Well, sir," said Thomas, "this sounds to me like an illustrated postcard from South Boston with 'We're having a good time here' written on it. I don't know the game. Is this ten thousand dollars money, or do I have to save so many coupons to get it?"
|
||||
|
||||
Old Jacob counted out to him twenty five-hundred-dollar bills.
|
||||
|
||||
That was better, he thought, than a check. Thomas put them thoughtfully into his pocket.
|
||||
|
||||
"Grandfather's best thanks," he said, "to the party who sends it."
|
||||
|
||||
Jacob talked on, asking him about his work, how he spent his leisure time, and what his ambitions were. The more he saw and heard of Thomas, the better he liked him. He had not met many young men in Bagdad so frank and wholesome.
|
||||
|
||||
"I would like to have you visit my house," he said. "I might help you in investing or laying out your money. I am a very wealthy man. I have a daughter about grown, and I would like for you to know her. There are not many young men I would care to have call on her."
|
||||
|
||||
"I'm obliged," said Thomas. "I'm not much at making calls. It's generally the side entrance for mine. And, besides, I'm engaged to a girl that has the Delaware peach crop killed in the blossom. She's a parlor maid in a house where I deliver goods. She won't be working there much longer, though. Say, don't forget to give your friend my grandfather's best regards. You'll excuse me now; my wagon's outside with a lot of green stuff that's got to be delivered. See you again, sir."
|
||||
|
||||
At eleven Thomas delivered some bunches of parsley and lettuce at the Spraggins mansion. Thomas was only twenty-two; so, as he came back, he took out the handful of five-hundred-dollar bills and waved them carelessly. Annette took a pair of eyes as big as creamed onion to the cook.
|
||||
|
||||
"I told you he was a count," she said, after relating. "He never would carry on with me."
|
||||
|
||||
"But you say he showed money," said the cook.
|
||||
|
||||
"Hundreds of thousands," said Annette. "Carried around loose in his pockets. And he never would look at me."
|
||||
|
||||
"It was paid to me today," Thomas was explaining to Celia outside. "It came from my grandfather's estate. Say, Cele, what's the use of waiting now? I'm going to quit the job tonight. Why can't we get married next week?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Tommy," said Celia. "I'm no parlor maid. I've been fooling you. I'm Miss Spraggins---Celia Spraggins. The newspapers say I'll be worth forty million dollars some day."
|
||||
|
||||
Thomas pulled his cap down straight on his head for the first time since we have known him.
|
||||
|
||||
"I suppose then," said he, "I suppose then you'll not be marrying me next week. But you *can* whistle."
|
||||
|
||||
"No," said Celia, "I'll not be marrying you next week. My father would never let me marry a grocer's clerk. But I'll marry you tonight, Tommy, if you say so."
|
||||
|
||||
Old Jacob Spraggins came home at 9:30 a.m., in his motor car. The make of it you will have to surmise sorrowfully; I am giving you unsubsidized fiction; had it been a street car I could have told you its voltage and the number of wheels it had. Jacob called for his daughter; he had bought a ruby necklace for her, and wanted to hear her say what a kind, thoughtful, dear old dad he was.
|
||||
|
||||
There was a brief search in the house for her, and then came Annette, glowing with the pure flame of truth and loyalty well mixed with envy and histrionics.
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh, sir," said she, wondering if she should kneel, "Miss Celia's just this minute running away out of the side gate with a young man to be married. I couldn't stop her, sir. They went in a cab."
|
||||
|
||||
"What young man?" roared old Jacob.
|
||||
|
||||
"A millionaire, if you please, sir---a rich nobleman in disguise. He carries his money with him, and the red peppers and the onions was only to blind us, sir. He never did seem to take to me."
|
||||
|
||||
Jacob rushed out in time to catch his car. The chauffeur had been delayed by trying to light a cigarette in the wind.
|
||||
|
||||
"Here, Gaston, or Mike, or whatever you call yourself, scoot around the corner quicker than blazes and see if you can see a cab. If you do, run it down."
|
||||
|
||||
There was a cab in sight a block away. Gaston, or Mike, with his eyes half shut and his mind on his cigarette, picked up the trail, neatly crowded the cab to the curb and pocketed it.
|
||||
|
||||
"What t'ell you doin'?" yelled the cabman.
|
||||
|
||||
"Pa!" shrieked Celia.
|
||||
|
||||
"Grandfather's remorseful friend's agent!" said Thomas. "Wonder what's on his conscience now."
|
||||
|
||||
"A thousand thunders," said Gaston, or Mike. "I have no other match."
|
||||
|
||||
"Young man," said old Jacob, severely, "how about that parlor maid you were engaged to?"
|
||||
|
||||
------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
A couple of years afterward old Jacob went into the office of his private secretary.
|
||||
|
||||
"The Amalgamated Missionary Society solicits a contribution of \$30,000 toward the conversion of the Koreans," said the secretary.
|
||||
|
||||
"Pass 'em up," said Jacob.
|
||||
|
||||
"The University of Plumville writes that its yearly endowment fund of \$50,000 that you bestowed upon it is past due."
|
||||
|
||||
"Tell 'em it's been cut out."
|
||||
|
||||
"The Scientific Society of Clam Cove, Long Island, asks for \$10,000 to buy alcohol to preserve specimens."
|
||||
|
||||
"Waste basket."
|
||||
|
||||
"The Society for Providing Healthful Recreation for Working Girls wants \$20,000 from you to lay out a golf course."
|
||||
|
||||
"Tell 'em to see an undertaker."
|
||||
|
||||
"Cut 'em all out," went on Jacob. "I've quit being a good thing. I need every dollar I can scrape or save. I want you to write to the directors of every company that I'm interested in and recommend a 10 percent cut in salaries. And say---I noticed half a cake of soap lying in a corner of the hall as I came in. I want you to speak to the scrubwoman about waste. I've got no money to throw away. And say---we've got vinegar pretty well in hand, haven't we?"
|
||||
|
||||
"The Globe Spice & Seasons Company," said secretary, "controls the market at present."
|
||||
|
||||
"Raise vinegar two cents a gallon. Notify all our branches."
|
||||
|
||||
Suddenly Jacob Spraggins's plump red face relaxed into a pulpy grin. He walked over to the secretary's desk and showed a small red mark on his thick forefinger.
|
||||
|
||||
"Bit it," he said, "darned if he didn't, and he ain't had the tooth three weeks---Jaky McLeod, my Celia's kid. He'll be worth a hundred millions by the time he's twenty-one if I can pile it up for him."
|
||||
|
||||
As he was leaving, old Jacob turned at the door, and said:
|
||||
|
||||
"Better make that vinegar raise three cents instead of two. I'll be back in an hour and sign the letters."
|
||||
|
||||
------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
The true history of the Caliph Harun Al Rashid relates that toward the end of his reign he wearied of philanthropy, and caused to be beheaded all his former favorites and companions of his "Arabian Nights" rambles. Happy are we in these days of enlightenment, when the only death warrant the caliphs can serve on us is in the form of a tradesman's bill.
|
||||
30
src/epub/text/a-pastel.md
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|
||||
A Pastel {#a-pastel type="title"}
|
||||
--------
|
||||
|
||||
Above all hangs the dreadful night.
|
||||
|
||||
He pleads with her.
|
||||
|
||||
His hand is on her arm.
|
||||
|
||||
They stand in the cold, solemn night, gazing into a brilliantly lighted room. His face is white and terror-stricken. Hers is willful, defiant, and white with the surging impulse of destiny.
|
||||
|
||||
Ten miles away on the Harrisburg road a draggle-tailed rooster crows, but the woman does not falter.
|
||||
|
||||
He pleads with her.
|
||||
|
||||
She shakes off his hand with a gesture of loathing, and takes a step forward toward the lighted room.
|
||||
|
||||
He pleads with her.
|
||||
|
||||
Crystal flakes of moonlight quiver on the trees above; star dust flecks the illimitable rim of the Ineligible. The whicheverness of the Absolute reigns preeminent.
|
||||
|
||||
Sin is below; peace above.
|
||||
|
||||
The whip of the north wind trails a keen lash upon them. Carriages sweep by. Frost creeps upon the stones, lies crustily along parapets, spangles and throws back in arctic scintillation the moon's challenging rays.
|
||||
|
||||
He pleads with her.
|
||||
|
||||
At last she turns, conquered.
|
||||
|
||||
He has refused to treat to oysters.
|
||||
18
src/epub/text/a-personal-insult.md
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18
src/epub/text/a-personal-insult.md
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|
||||
A Personal Insult {#a-personal-insult type="title"}
|
||||
-----------------
|
||||
|
||||
Young lady in Houston became engaged last summer to one of the famous shortstops of the Texas baseball league.
|
||||
|
||||
Last week he broke the engagement, and this is the reason why.
|
||||
|
||||
He had a birthday last Tuesday and she sent him a beautiful bound and illustrated edition of Coleridge's famous poem, "The Ancient Mariner."
|
||||
|
||||
The hero of the diamond opened the book with a puzzled look.
|
||||
|
||||
"What's dis bloomin' stuff about, anyways?" he said, and read:
|
||||
|
||||
> It is the Ancient Mariner\ > And he stoppeth one of three---
|
||||
|
||||
The famous shortstop threw the book out the window, stuck out his chin and said:
|
||||
|
||||
"No Texas sis can gimme de umpire face like dat. I swipes nine daisy cutters outer ten dat comes in my garden, I do."
|
||||
82
src/epub/text/a-philistine-in-bohemia.md
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|
||||
A Philistine in Bohemia {#a-philistine-in-bohemia type="title"}
|
||||
-----------------------
|
||||
|
||||
George Washington, with his right arm upraised, sits his iron horse at the lower corner of Union Square, forever signaling the Broadway cars to stop as they round the curve into Fourteenth Street. But the cars buzz on, heedless, as they do at the beck of a private citizen, and the great General must feel, unless his nerves are iron, that rapid transit [gloria mundi]{lang="la"}.
|
||||
|
||||
Should the General raise his left hand as he has raised his right it would point to a quarter of the city that forms a haven for the oppressed and suppressed of foreign lands. In the cause of national or personal freedom they have found a refuge here, and the patriot who made it for them sits his steed, overlooking their district, while he listens through his left ear to vaudeville that caricatures the posterity of his protégés. Italy, Poland, the former Spanish possessions and the polyglot tribes of Austria-Hungary have spilled here a thick lather of their effervescent sons. In the eccentric cafés and lodging-houses of the vicinity they hover over their native wines and political secrets. The colony changes with much frequency. Faces disappear from the haunts to be replaced by others. Whither do these uneasy birds flit? For half of the answer observe carefully the suave foreign air and foreign courtesy of the next waiter who serves your [table d'hôte]{lang="fr"}. For the other half, perhaps if the barber shops had tongues (and who will dispute it?) they could tell their share.
|
||||
|
||||
Titles are as plentiful as finger rings among these transitory exiles. For lack of proper exploitation a stock of title goods large enough to supply the trade of upper Fifth Avenue is here condemned to a mere pushcart traffic. The new-world landlords who entertain these offshoots of nobility are not dazzled by coronets and crests. They have doughnuts to sell instead of daughters. With them it is a serious matter of trading in flour and sugar instead of pearl powder and bonbons.
|
||||
|
||||
These assertions are deemed fitting as an introduction to the tale, which is of plebeians and contains no one with even the ghost of a title.
|
||||
|
||||
Katy Dempsey's mother kept a furnished-room house in this oasis of the aliens. The business was not profitable. If the two scraped together enough to meet the landlord's agent on rent day and negotiate for the ingredients of a daily Irish stew they called it success. Often the stew lacked both meat and potatoes. Sometimes it became as bad as consommé with music.
|
||||
|
||||
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.
|
||||
|
||||
"Sure, I like him," said Katy. "He's more politeness than twinty candidates for Alderman, and he 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]{type="z3998:roman"} 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.
|
||||
|
||||
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.
|
||||
|
||||
A dozen and a half little tables set upon the bare ground were crowded with Bohemia-hunters, who flocked there because 'Tonio pretended not to want them and pretended to give them a good dinner. There was a sprinkling of real Bohemians present who came for a change because they were tired of the real Bohemia, and a smart shower of the men who originate the bright sayings of Congressmen and the little nephew of the well-known general passenger agent of the Evansville and Terre Haute Railroad Company.
|
||||
|
||||
Here is a [bon mot]{lang="fr"} that was manufactured at 'Tonio's:
|
||||
|
||||
"A dinner at 'Tonio's," said a Bohemian, "always amounts to twice the price that is asked for it."
|
||||
|
||||
Let us assume that an accommodating voice inquires:
|
||||
|
||||
"How so?"
|
||||
|
||||
"The dinner costs you 40 cents; you give 10 cents to the waiter, and it makes you feel like 30 cents."
|
||||
|
||||
Most of the diners were confirmed [table d'hôters]{lang="fr"}---gastronomic adventurers, forever seeking the El Dorado of a good claret, and consistently coming to grief in California.
|
||||
|
||||
Mr. Brunelli escorted Katy to a little table embowered with shrubbery in tubs, and asked her to excuse him for a while.
|
||||
|
||||
Katy sat, enchanted by a scene so brilliant to her. The grand ladies, in splendid dresses and plumes and sparkling rings; the fine gentlemen who laughed so loudly, the cries of "Garsong!" and "We, monseer," and "Hello, Mame!" that distinguish Bohemia; the lively chatter, the cigarette smoke, the interchange of bright smiles and eye-glances---all this display and magnificence overpowered the daughter of Mrs. Dempsey and held her motionless.
|
||||
|
||||
Mr. Brunelli stepped into the yard and seemed to spread his smile and bow over the entire company. And everywhere there was a great clapping of hands and a few cries of "Bravo!" and " 'Tonio! 'Tonio!" whatever those words might mean. Ladies waved their napkins at him, gentlemen almost twisted their necks off, trying to catch his nod.
|
||||
|
||||
When the ovation was concluded Mr. Brunelli, with a final bow, stepped nimbly into the kitchen and flung off his coat and waistcoat.
|
||||
|
||||
Flaherty, the nimblest "garsong" among the waiters, had been assigned to the special service of Katy. She was a little faint from hunger, for the Irish stew on the Dempsey table had been particularly weak that day. Delicious odors from unknown dishes tantalized her. And Flaherty began to bring to her table course after course of ambrosial food that the gods might have pronounced excellent.
|
||||
|
||||
But even in the midst of her Lucullian repast Katy laid down her knife and fork. Her heart sank as lead, and a tear fell upon her filet mignon. Her haunting suspicions of the star lodger arose again, fourfold. Thus courted and admired and smiled upon by that fashionable and gracious assembly, what else could Mr. Brunelli be but one of those dazzling titled patricians, glorious of name but shy of rent money, concerning whom experience had made her wise? With a sense of his ineligibility growing within her there was mingled a torturing conviction that his personality was becoming more pleasing to her day by day. And why had he left her to dine alone?
|
||||
|
||||
But here he was coming again, now coatless, his snowy shirtsleeves rolled high above his Jeffriesonian elbows, a white yachting cap perched upon his jetty curls.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Tonio! 'Tonio!" shouted many, and "The spaghetti! The spaghetti!" shouted the rest.
|
||||
|
||||
Never at 'Tonio's did a waiter dare to serve a dish of spaghetti until 'Tonio came to test it, to prove the sauce and add the needful dash of seasoning that gave it perfection.
|
||||
|
||||
From table to table moved 'Tonio, like a prince in his palace, greeting his guests. White, jewelled hands signalled him from every side.
|
||||
|
||||
A glass of wine with this one and that, smiles for all, a jest and repartee for any that might challenge---truly few princes could be so agreeable a host! And what artist could ask for further appreciation of his handiwork? Katy did not know that the proudest consummation of a New Yorker's ambition is to shake hands with a spaghetti chef or to receive a nod from a Broadway headwaiter.
|
||||
|
||||
At last the company thinned, leaving but a few couples and quartettes lingering over new wine and old stories. And then came Mr. Brunelli to Katy's secluded table, and drew a chair close to hers.
|
||||
|
||||
Katy smiled at him dreamily. She was eating the last spoonful of a raspberry roll with Burgundy sauce.
|
||||
|
||||
"You have seen!" said Mr. Brunelli, laying one hand upon his collar bone. "I am Antonio Brunelli! Yes; I am the great 'Tonio! You have not suspect that! I loave you, Katy, and you shall marry with me. Is it not so? Call me 'Antonio,' and say that you will be mine."
|
||||
|
||||
Katy's head drooped to the shoulder that was now freed from all suspicion of having received the knightly accolade.
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh, Andy," she sighed, "this is great! Sure, I'll marry wid ye. But why didn't ye tell me ye was the cook? I was near turnin' ye down for bein' one of thim foreign counts!"
|
||||
186
src/epub/text/a-poor-rule.md
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186
src/epub/text/a-poor-rule.md
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@ -0,0 +1,186 @@
|
||||
A Poor Rule {#a-poor-rule type="title"}
|
||||
-----------
|
||||
|
||||
I have always maintained, and asserted time to time, that woman is no mystery; that man can foretell, construe, subdue, comprehend, and interpret her. That she is a mystery has been foisted by herself upon credulous mankind. Whether I am right or wrong we shall see. As "Harper's Drawer" used to say in bygone years: "The following good story is told of Miss ⸻, Mr. ⸻, Mr. ⸻, and Mr. ⸻."
|
||||
|
||||
We shall have to omit "Bishop X" and "the Rev. ⸻," for they do not belong.
|
||||
|
||||
In those days Paloma was a new town on the line of the Southern Pacific. A reporter would have called it a "mushroom" town; but it was not. Paloma was, first and last, of the toadstool variety.
|
||||
|
||||
The train stopped there at noon for the engine to drink and for the passengers both to drink and to dine. There was a new yellow-pine hotel, also a wool warehouse, and perhaps three dozen box residences. The rest was composed of tents, cow ponies, "black-waxy" mud, and mesquite-trees, all bound round by a horizon. Paloma was an about-to-be city. The houses represented faith; the tents hope; the twice-a-day train, by which you might leave, creditably sustained the role of charity.
|
||||
|
||||
The Parisian Restaurant occupied the muddiest spot in the town while it rained, and the warmest when it shone. It was operated, owned, and perpetrated by a citizen known as Old Man Hinkle, who had come out of Indiana to make his fortune in this land of condensed milk and sorghum.
|
||||
|
||||
There was a four-room, unpainted, weather-boarded box house in which the family lived. From the kitchen extended a "shelter" made of poles covered with chaparral brush. Under this was a table and two benches, each twenty feet long, the product of Paloma home carpentry. Here was set forth the roast mutton, the stewed apples, boiled beans, soda-biscuits, puddinorpie, and hot coffee of the Parisian menu.
|
||||
|
||||
Ma Hinkle and a subordinate known to the ears as "Betty," but denied to the eyesight, presided at the range. Pa Hinkle himself, with salamandrous thumbs, served the scalding viands. During rush hours a Mexican youth, who rolled and smoked cigarettes between courses, aided him in waiting on the guests. As is customary at Parisian banquets, I place the sweets at the end of my wordy menu.
|
||||
|
||||
Ileen Hinkle!
|
||||
|
||||
The spelling is correct, for I have seen her write it. No doubt she had been named by ear; but she so splendidly bore the orthography that Tom Moore himself (had he seen her) would have endorsed the phonography.
|
||||
|
||||
Ileen was the daughter of the house, and the first Lady Cashier to invade the territory south of an east-and-west line drawn through Galveston and Del Rio. She sat on a high stool in a rough pine grandstand---or was it a temple?---under the shelter at the door of the kitchen. There was a barbed-wire protection in front of her, with a little arch under which you passed your money. Heaven knows why the barbed wire; for every man who dined Parisianly there would have died in her service. Her duties were light; each meal was a dollar; you put it under the arch, and she took it.
|
||||
|
||||
I set out with the intent to describe Ileen Hinkle to you. Instead, I must refer you to the volume by Edmund Burke entitled: *A Philosophical Inquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful*. It is an exhaustive treatise, dealing first with the primitive conceptions of beauty---roundness and smoothness, I think they are, according to Burke. It is well said. Rotundity is a patent charm; as for smoothness---the more new wrinkles a woman acquires, the smoother she becomes.
|
||||
|
||||
Ileen was a strictly vegetable compound, guaranteed under the Pure Ambrosia and Balm-of-Gilead Act of the year of the fall of Adam. She was a fruit-stand blonde---strawberries, peaches, cherries, etc. Her eyes were wide apart, and she possessed the calm that precedes a storm that never comes. But it seems to me that words (at any rate per) are wasted in an effort to describe the beautiful. Like fancy, "It is engendered in the eyes." There are three kinds of beauties---I was foreordained to be homiletic; I can never stick to a story.
|
||||
|
||||
The first is the freckle-faced, snub-nosed girl whom you like. The second is Maud Adams. The third is, or are, the ladies in Bouguereau's paintings. Ileen Hinkle was the fourth. She was the mayoress of Spotless Town. There were a thousand golden apples coming to her as Helen of the Troy laundries.
|
||||
|
||||
The Parisian Restaurant was within a radius. Even from beyond its circumference men rode in to Paloma to win her smiles. They got them. One meal---one smile---one dollar. But, with all her impartiality, Ileen seemed to favor three of her admirers above the rest. According to the rules of politeness, I will mention myself last.
|
||||
|
||||
The first was an artificial product known as Bryan Jacks---a name that had obviously met with reverses. Jacks was the outcome of paved cities. He was a small man made of some material resembling flexible sandstone. His hair was the color of a brick Quaker meetinghouse; his eyes were twin cranberries; his mouth was like the aperture under a drop-letters-here sign.
|
||||
|
||||
He knew every city from Bangor to San Francisco, thence north to Portland, thence S. 45 E. to a given point in Florida. He had mastered every art, trade, game, business, profession, and sport in the world, had been present at, or hurrying on his way to, every headline event that had ever occurred between oceans since he was five years old. You might open the atlas, place your finger at random upon the name of a town, and Jacks would tell you the front names of three prominent citizens before you could close it again. He spoke patronizingly and even disrespectfully of Broadway, Beacon Hill, Michigan, Euclid, and Fifth Avenues, and the St. Louis Four Courts. Compared with him as a cosmopolite, the Wandering Jew would have seemed a mere hermit. He had learned everything the world could teach him, and he would tell you about it.
|
||||
|
||||
I hate to be reminded of Pollok's "Course of Time," and so do you; but every time I saw Jacks I would think of the poet's description of another poet by the name of G. G. Byron who "Drank early; deeply drank---drank draughts that common millions might have quenched; then died of thirst because there was no more to drink."
|
||||
|
||||
That fitted Jacks, except that, instead of dying, he came to Paloma, which was about the same thing. He was a telegrapher and station-and-express-agent at seventy-five dollars a month. Why a young man who knew everything and could do everything was content to serve in such an obscure capacity I never could understand, although he let out a hint once that it was as a personal favor to the president and stockholders of the S. P. Ry. Co.
|
||||
|
||||
One more line of description, and I turn Jacks over to you. He wore bright blue clothes, yellow shoes, and a bow tie made of the same cloth as his shirt.
|
||||
|
||||
My rival No. 2 was Bud Cunningham, whose services had been engaged by a ranch near Paloma to assist in compelling refractory cattle to keep within the bounds of decorum and order. Bud was the only cowboy off the stage that I ever saw who looked like one on it. He wore the sombrero, the chaps, and the handkerchief tied at the back of his neck.
|
||||
|
||||
Twice a week Bud rode in from the Val Verde Ranch to sup at the Parisian Restaurant. He rode a many-high-handed Kentucky horse at a tremendously fast lope, which animal he would rein up so suddenly under the big mesquite at the corner of the brush shelter that his hoofs would plough canals yards long in the loam.
|
||||
|
||||
Jacks and I were regular boarders at the restaurant, of course.
|
||||
|
||||
The front room of the Hinkle House was as neat a little parlor as there was in the black-waxy country. It was all willow rocking-chairs, and home-knit tidies, and albums, and conch shells in a row. And a little upright piano in one corner.
|
||||
|
||||
Here Jacks and Bud and I---or sometimes one or two of us, according to our good-luck---used to sit of evenings when the tide of trade was over, and "visit" Miss Hinkle.
|
||||
|
||||
Ileen was a girl of ideas. She was destined for higher things (if there can be anything higher) than taking in dollars all day through a barbed-wire wicket. She had read and listened and thought. Her looks would have formed a career for a less ambitious girl; but, rising superior to mere beauty, she must establish something in the nature of a salon---the only one in Paloma.
|
||||
|
||||
"Don't you think that Shakespeare was a great writer?" she would ask, with such a pretty little knit of her arched brows that the late Ignatius Donnelly, himself, had he seen it, could scarcely have saved his Bacon.
|
||||
|
||||
Ileen was of the opinion, also, that Boston is more cultured than Chicago; that Rosa Bonheur was one of the greatest of women painters; that Westerners are more spontaneous and openhearted than Easterners; that London must be a very foggy city, and that California must be quite lovely in the springtime. And of many other opinions indicating a keeping up with the world's best thought.
|
||||
|
||||
These, however, were but gleaned from hearsay and evidence: Ileen had theories of her own. One, in particular, she disseminated to us untiringly. Flattery she detested. Frankness and honesty of speech and action, she declared, were the chief mental ornaments of man and woman. If ever she could like anyone, it would be for those qualities.
|
||||
|
||||
"I'm awfully weary," she said, one evening, when we three musketeers of the mesquite were in the little parlor, "of having compliments on my looks paid to me. I know I'm not beautiful."
|
||||
|
||||
(Bud Cunningham told me afterward that it was all he could do to keep from calling her a liar when she said that.)
|
||||
|
||||
"I'm only a little Middle-Western girl," went on Ileen, "who just wants to be simple and neat, and tries to help her father make a humble living."
|
||||
|
||||
(Old Man Hinkle was shipping a thousand silver dollars a month, clear profit, to a bank in San Antonio.)
|
||||
|
||||
Bud twisted around in his chair and bent the rim of his hat, from which he could never be persuaded to separate. He did not know whether she wanted what she said she wanted or what she knew she deserved. Many a wiser man has hesitated at deciding. Bud decided.
|
||||
|
||||
"Why---ah, Miss Ileen, beauty, as you might say, ain't everything. Not sayin' that you haven't your share of good looks, I always admired more than anything else about you the nice, kind way you treat your ma and pa. Anyone what's good to their parents and is a kind of homebody don't specially need to be too pretty."
|
||||
|
||||
Ileen gave him one of her sweetest smiles. "Thank you, Mr. Cunningham," she said. "I consider that one of the finest compliments I've had in a long time. I'd so much rather hear you say that than to hear you talk about my eyes and hair. I'm glad you believe me when I say I don't like flattery."
|
||||
|
||||
Our cue was there for us. Bud had made a good guess. You couldn't lose Jacks. He chimed in next.
|
||||
|
||||
"Sure thing, Miss Ileen," he said; "the good-lookers don't always win out. Now, you ain't bad looking, of course---but that's nix-cum-rous. I knew a girl once in Dubuque with a face like a coconut, who could skin the cat twice on a horizontal bar without changing hands. Now, a girl might have the California peach crop mashed to a marmalade and not be able to do that. I've seen---er---worse lookers than *you*, Miss Ileen; but what I like about you is the business way you've got of doing things. Cool and wise---that's the winning way for a girl. Mr. Hinkle told me the other day you'd never taken in a lead silver dollar or a plugged one since you've been on the job. Now, that's the stuff for a girl---that's what catches me."
|
||||
|
||||
Jacks got his smile, too.
|
||||
|
||||
"Thank you, Mr. Jacks," said Ileen. "If you only knew how I appreciate anyone's being candid and not a flatterer! I get so tired of people telling me I'm pretty. I think it is the loveliest thing to have friends who tell you the truth."
|
||||
|
||||
Then I thought I saw an expectant look on Ileen's face as she glanced toward me. I had a wild, sudden impulse to dare fate, and tell her of all the beautiful handiwork of the Great Artificer she was the most exquisite---that she was a flawless pearl gleaming pure and serene in a setting of black mud and emerald prairies---that she was---a---a corker; and as for mine, I cared not if she were as cruel as a serpent's tooth to her fond parents, or if she couldn't tell a plugged dollar from a bridle buckle, if I might sing, chant, praise, glorify, and worship her peerless and wonderful beauty.
|
||||
|
||||
But I refrained. I feared the fate of a flatterer. I had witnessed her delight at the crafty and discreet words of Bud and Jacks. No! Miss Hinkle was not one to be beguiled by the plated-silver tongue of a flatterer. So I joined the ranks of the candid and honest. At once I became mendacious and didactic.
|
||||
|
||||
"In all ages, Miss Hinkle," said I, "in spite of the poetry and romance of each, intellect in woman has been admired more than beauty. Even in Cleopatra, herself, men found more charm in her queenly mind than in her looks."
|
||||
|
||||
"Well, I should think so!" said Ileen. "I've seen pictures of her that weren't so much. She had an awfully long nose."
|
||||
|
||||
"If I may say so," I went on, "you remind me of Cleopatra, Miss Ileen."
|
||||
|
||||
"Why, my nose isn't so long!" said she, opening her eyes wide and touching that comely feature with a dimpled forefinger.
|
||||
|
||||
"Why---er---I mean," said I---"I mean as to mental endowments."
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh!" said she; and then I got my smile just as Bud and Jacks had got theirs.
|
||||
|
||||
"Thank every one of you," she said, very, very sweetly, "for being so frank and honest with me. That's the way I want you to be always. Just tell me plainly and truthfully what you think, and we'll all be the best friends in the world. And now, because you've been so good to me, and understand so well how I dislike people who do nothing but pay me exaggerated compliments, I'll sing and play a little for you."
|
||||
|
||||
Of course, we expressed our thanks and joy; but we would have been better pleased if Ileen had remained in her low rocking-chair face to face with us and let us gaze upon her. For she was no Adelina Patti---not even on the farewellest of the diva's farewell tours. She had a cooing little voice like that of a turtledove that could almost fill the parlor when the windows and doors were closed, and Betty was not rattling the lids of the stove in the kitchen. She had a gamut that I estimate at about eight inches on the piano; and her runs and trills sounded like the clothes bubbling in your grandmother's iron wash-pot. Believe that she must have been beautiful when I tell you that it sounded like music to us.
|
||||
|
||||
Ileen's musical taste was catholic. She would sing through a pile of sheet music on the left-hand top of the piano, laying each slaughtered composition on the right-hand top. The next evening she would sing from right to left. Her favorites were Mendelssohn, and Moody and Sankey. By request she always wound up with "Sweet Violets" and "When the Leaves Begin to Turn."
|
||||
|
||||
When we left at ten o'clock the three of us would go down to Jacks' little wooden station and sit on the platform, swinging our feet and trying to pump one another for clues as to which way Miss Ileen's inclinations seemed to lean. That is the way of rivals---they do not avoid and glower at one another; they convene and converse and construe---striving by the art politic to estimate the strength of the enemy.
|
||||
|
||||
One day there came a dark horse to Paloma, a young lawyer who at once flaunted his shingle and himself spectacularly upon the town. His name was C. Vincent Vesey. You could see at a glance that he was a recent graduate of a southwestern law school. His Prince Albert coat, light striped trousers, broad-brimmed soft black hat, and narrow white muslin bow tie proclaimed that more loudly than any diploma could. Vesey was a compound of Daniel Webster, Lord Chesterfield, Beau Brummell, and Little Jack Horner. His coming boomed Paloma. The next day after he arrived an addition to the town was surveyed and laid off in lots.
|
||||
|
||||
Of course, Vesey, to further his professional fortunes, must mingle with the citizenry and outliers of Paloma. And, as well as with the soldier men, he was bound to seek popularity with the gay dogs of the place. So Jacks and Bud Cunningham and I came to be honored by his acquaintance.
|
||||
|
||||
The doctrine of predestination would have been discredited had not Vesey seen Ileen Hinkle and become fourth in the tourney. Magnificently, he boarded at the yellow pine hotel instead of at the Parisian Restaurant; but he came to be a formidable visitor in the Hinkle parlor. His competition reduced Bud to an inspired increase of profanity, drove Jacks to an outburst of slang so weird that it sounded more horrible than the most trenchant of Bud's imprecations, and made me dumb with gloom.
|
||||
|
||||
For Vesey had the rhetoric. Words flowed from him like oil from a gusher. Hyperbole, compliment, praise, appreciation, honeyed gallantry, golden opinions, eulogy, and unveiled panegyric vied with one another for preeminence in his speech. We had small hopes that Ileen could resist his oratory and Prince Albert.
|
||||
|
||||
But a day came that gave us courage.
|
||||
|
||||
About dusk one evening I was sitting on the little gallery in front of the Hinkle parlor, waiting for Ileen to come, when I heard voices inside. She had come into the room with her father, and Old Man Hinkle began to talk to her. I had observed before that he was a shrewd man, and not unphilosophic.
|
||||
|
||||
"Ily," said he, "I notice there's three or four young fellers that have been callin' to see you regular for quite a while. Is there any one of 'em you like better than another?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Why, pa," she answered, "I like all of 'em very well. I think Mr. Cunningham and Mr. Jacks and Mr. Harris are very nice young men. They are so frank and honest in everything they say to me. I haven't known Mr. Vesey very long, but I think he's a very nice young man, he's so frank and honest in everything he says to me."
|
||||
|
||||
"Now, that's what I'm gittin' at," says old Hinkle. "You've always been sayin' you like people what tell the truth and don't go humbuggin' you with compliments and bogus talk. Now, suppose you make a test of these fellers, and see which one of 'em will talk the straightest to you."
|
||||
|
||||
"But how'll I do it, pa?"
|
||||
|
||||
"I'll tell you how. You know you sing a little bit, Ily; you took music-lessons nearly two years in Logansport. It wasn't long, but it was all we could afford then. And your teacher said you didn't have any voice, and it was a waste of money to keep on. Now, suppose you ask the fellers what they think of your singin', and see what each one of 'em tells you. The man that'll tell you the truth about it'll have a mighty lot of nerve, and'll do to tie to. What do you think of the plan?"
|
||||
|
||||
"All right, pa," said Ileen. "I think it's a good idea. I'll try it."
|
||||
|
||||
Ileen and Mr. Hinkle went out of the room through the inside doors. Unobserved, I hurried down to the station. Jacks was at his telegraph table waiting for eight o'clock to come. It was Bud's night in town, and when he rode in I repeated the conversation to them both. I was loyal to my rivals, as all true admirers of all Ileens should be.
|
||||
|
||||
Simultaneously the three of us were smitten by an uplifting thought. Surely this test would eliminate Vesey from the contest. He, with his unctuous flattery, would be driven from the lists. Well we remembered Ileen's love of frankness and honesty---how she treasured truth and candor above vain compliment and blandishment.
|
||||
|
||||
Linking arms, we did a grotesque dance of joy up and down the platform, singing "Muldoon Was a Solid Man" at the top of our voices.
|
||||
|
||||
That evening four of the willow rocking-chairs were filled besides the lucky one that sustained the trim figure of Miss Hinkle. Three of us awaited with suppressed excitement the application of the test. It was tried on Bud first.
|
||||
|
||||
"Mr. Cunningham," said Ileen, with her dazzling smile, after she had sung "When the Leaves Begin to Turn," "what do you really think of my voice? Frankly and honestly, now, as you know I want you to always be toward me."
|
||||
|
||||
Bud squirmed in his chair at his chance to show the sincerity that he knew was required of him.
|
||||
|
||||
"Tell you the truth, Miss Ileen," he said, earnestly, "you ain't got much more voice than a weasel---just a little squeak, you know. Of course, we all like to hear you sing, for it's kind of sweet and soothin' after all, and you look most as mighty well sittin' on the piano-stool as you do faced around. But as for real singin'---I reckon you couldn't call it that."
|
||||
|
||||
I looked closely at Ileen to see if Bud had overdone his frankness, but her pleased smile and sweetly spoken thanks assured me that we were on the right track.
|
||||
|
||||
"And what do you think, Mr. Jacks?" she asked next.
|
||||
|
||||
"Take it from me," said Jacks, "you ain't in the prima donna class. I've heard 'em warble in every city in the United States; and I tell you your vocal output don't go. Otherwise, you've got the grand opera bunch sent to the soap factory---in looks, I mean; for the high screechers generally look like Mary Ann on her Thursday out. But nix for the gargle work. Your epiglottis ain't a real side-stepper---its footwork ain't good."
|
||||
|
||||
With a merry laugh at Jacks' criticism, Ileen looked inquiringly at me.
|
||||
|
||||
I admit that I faltered a little. Was there not such a thing as being too frank? Perhaps I even hedged a little in my verdict; but I stayed with the critics.
|
||||
|
||||
"I am not skilled in scientific music, Miss Ileen," I said, "but, frankly, I cannot praise very highly the singing-voice that Nature has given you. It has long been a favorite comparison that a great singer sings like a bird. Well, there are birds and birds. I would say that your voice reminds me of the thrush's---throaty and not strong, nor of much compass or variety---but still---er---sweet---in---er---its---way, and---er---"
|
||||
|
||||
"Thank you, Mr. Harris," interrupted Miss Hinkle. "I knew I could depend upon your frankness and honesty."
|
||||
|
||||
And then C. Vincent Vesey drew back one sleeve from his snowy cuff, and the water came down at Lodore.
|
||||
|
||||
My memory cannot do justice to his masterly tribute to that priceless, God-given treasure---Miss Hinkle's voice. He raved over it in terms that, if they had been addressed to the morning stars when they sang together, would have made that stellar choir explode in a meteoric shower of flaming self-satisfaction.
|
||||
|
||||
He marshalled on his white fingertips the grand opera stars of all the continents, from Jenny Lind to Emma Abbott, only to depreciate their endowments. He spoke of larynxes, of chest notes, of phrasing, arpeggios, and other strange paraphernalia of the throaty art. He admitted, as though driven to a corner, that Jenny Lind had a note or two in the high register that Miss Hinkle had not yet acquired---but---"!!!"---that was a mere matter of practice and training.
|
||||
|
||||
And, as a peroration, he predicted---solemnly predicted---a career in vocal art for the "coming star of the Southwest---and one of which grand old Texas may well be proud," hitherto unsurpassed in the annals of musical history.
|
||||
|
||||
When we left at ten, Ileen gave each of us her usual warm, cordial handshake, entrancing smile, and invitation to call again. I could not see that one was favored above or below another---but three of us knew---we knew.
|
||||
|
||||
We knew that frankness and honesty had won, and that the rivals now numbered three instead of four.
|
||||
|
||||
Down at the station Jacks brought out a pint bottle of the proper stuff, and we celebrated the downfall of a blatant interloper.
|
||||
|
||||
Four days went by without anything happening worthy of recount.
|
||||
|
||||
On the fifth, Jacks and I, entering the brush arbor for our supper, saw the Mexican youth, instead of a divinity in a spotless waist and a navy-blue skirt, taking in the dollars through the barbed-wire wicket.
|
||||
|
||||
We rushed into the kitchen, meeting Pa Hinkle coming out with two cups of hot coffee in his hands.
|
||||
|
||||
"Where's Ileen?" we asked, in recitative.
|
||||
|
||||
Pa Hinkle was a kindly man. "Well, gents," said he, "it was a sudden notion she took; but I've got the money, and I let her have her way. She's gone to a corn---a conservatory in Boston for four years for to have her voice cultivated. Now, excuse me to pass, gents, for this coffee's hot, and my thumbs is tender."
|
||||
|
||||
That night there were four instead of three of us sitting on the station platform and swinging our feet. C. Vincent Vesey was one of us. We discussed things while dogs barked at the moon that rose, as big as a five-cent piece or a flour barrel, over the chaparral.
|
||||
|
||||
And what we discussed was whether it is better to lie to a woman or to tell her the truth.
|
||||
|
||||
And as all of us were young then, we did not come to a decision.
|
||||
150
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|
||||
A Professional Secret {#a-professional-secret type="title"}
|
||||
---------------------
|
||||
|
||||
The Story of a Maid Made Over
|
||||
|
||||
Dr. Satterfield Prince, physician to the leisure class, looked at his watch. It indicated five minutes to twelve. At the stroke of the hour would expire the morning term set apart for the reception of his patients in his handsome office apartments. And then the young woman attendant ushered in from the waiting-room the last unit of the wealthy and fashionable gathering that had come to patronize his skill.
|
||||
|
||||
Dr. Prince turned, his watch still in hand, his manner courteous, but seeming to invite promptness and brevity in the interview. The last patient was a middle-aged lady, richly dressed, with an amiable and placid face. When she spoke her voice revealed the drawling, musical slur and intonation of the South. She had come, she leisurely explained, to bespeak the services of Dr. Prince in the case of her daughter, who was possessed of a most mysterious affliction. And then, femininely, she proceeded to exhaustively diagnose the affliction, informing the physician with a calm certitude of its origin and nature.
|
||||
|
||||
The diagnosis advanced by the lady---Mrs. Galloway Rankin---was one so marvelously strange and singular in its conception that Dr. Prince, accustomed as he was to the conceits and vagaries of wealthy malingerers, was actually dumbfounded. The following is the matter of Mrs. Rankin's statement, briefly reported:
|
||||
|
||||
She---Mrs. Rankin---was of an old Kentucky family, the Bealls. Between the Bealls and another historic house---the Rankins---had been waged for nearly a century one of the fiercest and most sanguinary feuds within the history of the State. Each generation had kept alive both the hate and the warfare, until at length it was said that Nature began to take cognizance of the sentiment and Bealls and Rankins were born upon earth as antagonistic toward each other as cats and dogs. So, for four generations the war had waged, and the mountains were dotted with tombstones of both families. At last, for lack of fuel to feed upon, the feud expired with only one direct descendant of the Bealls and one of the Rankins remaining---Evalina Beall, aged nineteen, and Galloway Rankin, aged twenty-five. The last mortal shot in the feud was fired by Cupid. The two survivors met, became immediately and mutually enamoured, and a miracle transpired on Kentucky soil---a Rankin wedded a Beall.
|
||||
|
||||
Interposed, and irrelevant to the story, was the information that coal mines had been discovered later on the Rankin lands, and now the Galloway Rankins were to be computed among the millionaries.
|
||||
|
||||
All that was long enough ago for there to be now a daughter, twenty years of age---Miss Annabel Rankin---for whose relief the services of Dr. Prince was petitioned.
|
||||
|
||||
Then followed, in Mrs. Rankin's statement, a description of the mysterious, though by her readily accounted for, affliction.
|
||||
|
||||
It seemed that there was a peculiar difficulty in the young lady's powers of locomotion. In walking, a process requiring a coordination and unanimity of the functions---Dr. Prince, said Mrs. Rankin, would understand and admit the nonexistence of a necessity for anatomical specification---there persisted a stubborn opposition, a most contrary and counteracting antagonism. In those successively progressive and generally unconsciously automatic movements necessary to proper locomotion, there was a violent lack of harmony and mutuality. To give an instance cited by Mrs. Rankin---if Miss Annabel desired to ascend a stairway, one foot would be easily advanced to the step above, but instead of aiding and abetting its fellow, the other would at once proceed to start downstairs. By a strong physical and mental effort the young lady could walk fairly well for a short distance but suddenly the rebellious entities would become uncontrollable, and she would be compelled to turn undesirable corners, to enter impossible doorways, to dance, shuffle, sidestep and perform other undignified and distressing evolutions.
|
||||
|
||||
After setting forth these lamentable symptoms, Mrs. Rankin emphatically asserted her belief that the affliction was the result of heredity---of the union between the naturally opposing and contrary Beall and Rankin elements. She believed that the inherited spirit of the ancient feud had taken on physical manifestations, exhibiting them in the person of the unfortunate outcome of the union of opposites. That in Miss Annabel Rankin was warring the imperishable antipathy of the two families. In other words, that one of Miss Rankin's---that is to say, that when Miss Rankin took a step it was a Beall step, and the next one was dominated by the bequeathed opposition of the Rankins.
|
||||
|
||||
Doctor Prince received the communication with his usual grave, professional attention, and promised to call the next day at ten to inspect the patient.
|
||||
|
||||
Promptly at the hour his electric runabout turned into the line of stylish autos and hansoms that wait along the pavements before the most expensive hostelry on American soil.
|
||||
|
||||
When Miss Annabel Rankin entered the reception parlour of their choice suite of rooms Doctor Prince gave a little blink of surprise through his brilliantly polished nose glasses. The glow of perfect health and the contour of perfect beauty were visible in the face and form of the young lady. But admiration gave way to sympathy when he saw her walk. She entered at a little run, swayed, stepped off helplessly at a sharp tangent, advanced, marked time, backed off, recovered and sidled with a manoeuvring rush to a couch, where she rested, with a look of serious melancholy upon her handsome face.
|
||||
|
||||
Dr. Prince proceeded with his interrogatories in the delicate, reassuring gentlemanly manner that had brought him so many patrons who placed a value upon those amenities. Miss Annabel answered frankly and sensibly, indeed, for one of her years. The feud theory of Mrs. Rankin was freely discussed. The daughter also believed in it.
|
||||
|
||||
Soon the physician departed, promising to call again and administer treatment. Then he buzzed down the Avenue and four doors on an asphalted side street to the office of Dr. Grumbleton Myers, the great specialist in locomotor ataxia and nerve ailments. The two distinguished physicians shut themselves in a private office, and the great Myers dragged forth a decanter of sherry and a box of Havanas. When the consultation was over both shook their heads.
|
||||
|
||||
"Fact is," summed up Myers, "we don't know anything about anything. I'd say treat symptoms now until something turns up; but there are no symptoms."
|
||||
|
||||
"The feud diagnosis, then?" suggested Doctor Prince, archly, ridding his cigar of its ash.
|
||||
|
||||
"It's an interesting case," said the specialist, noncommittally.
|
||||
|
||||
"I say, Prince," called Myers, as his caller was leaving. "Er---sometimes, you know, children that fight and quarrel are shut in separate rooms. Doesn't it seem a pity, now, that bloomers aren't in fashion? By separ---"
|
||||
|
||||
"But they aren't," smiled Doctor Prince, "and we must be fashionable, at any rate."
|
||||
|
||||
Doctor Prince burned midnight oil---or its equivalent, a patent, electric, soft-shaded, midnight incandescent, over his case. With such little success did his light shine that he was forced to make a little speech to the Rankins full of scientific terms---a thing he conscientiously avoided with his patients---which shows that he was driven to expedient. At last he was reduced to suggest treatment by hypnotism.
|
||||
|
||||
Being crowded further, he advised it, and appeared another day with Professor Adami, the most reputable and non-advertising one he could find among that school of practitioners.
|
||||
|
||||
Miss Annabel, gentle and melancholy, fell an easy victim---or, I should say, subject---to the professor's influence. Previously instructed by Doctor Prince in the nature of the malady he was about to combat, the dealer in mental drugs proceeded to offer "suggestion" (in the language of his school) to the afflicted and unconscious young lady, impressing her mind with the conviction that her affliction was moonshine and her perambulatory powers without impairment.
|
||||
|
||||
When the spell was removed Miss Rankin sat up, looking a little bewildered at first, and then rose to her feet, walking straight across the room with the grace, the sureness and the ease of a Diana, a Leslie-Carter, or a Vassar basketball champion. Miss Annabel's sad face was now lit with hope and joy. Mrs. Rankin of Southern susceptibility wept a little, delightedly, upon a minute lace handkerchief. Miss Annabel continued to walk about firmly and accurately, in absolute control of the machinery necessary for her so to do. Doctor Prince quietly congratulated Professor Adami, and then stepped forward, smilingly rubbing his nose glasses with an air. His position enabled him to overshadow the hypnotizer who, contented to occupy the background temporarily, was busy estimating in his mind with how large a bill for services he would dare to embellish the occasion when he should come to the front.
|
||||
|
||||
Amid repeated expressions of gratitude, the two professional gentlemen made their adieus, a little elated at the success of the treatment which, with one of them, had been an experiment, with the other an exhibition.
|
||||
|
||||
As the door closed behind them. Miss Annabel, her usually serious and pensive temper somewhat enlivened by the occasion, sat at the piano and dashed into a stirring march. Outside, the two men moving toward the elevator heard a scream of alarm from her and hastened back. They found her on the piano-stool, with one hand still pressing the keys. The other arm was extended rigidly to its full length behind her, its fingers tightly clenched into a pink and pretty little fist. Her mother was bending over her, joining in the alarm and surprise. Miss Rankin rose from the stool, now quiet, but again depressed and sad.
|
||||
|
||||
"I don't know what did it," she said, plaintively; "I began to play and that arm shot back. It wouldn't stay near the piano while the other one was there."
|
||||
|
||||
A ping-pong table stood in the room.
|
||||
|
||||
"A little game, Miss Rankin," cried Professor Adami, gayly, trying to feel his way.
|
||||
|
||||
They played. With the racquet in the refractory arm, Miss Annabel played in fine style. Her control of it was perfect. The professor laid down his racquet.
|
||||
|
||||
"Ah! a button is loose on my coat," said he. "Such is the fate of sorrowful bachelors. A needle and thread, now. Miss Rankin?"
|
||||
|
||||
A little surprised, but smiling acquiescence, Annabel brought the articles from another room.
|
||||
|
||||
"Now thread the needle, if you please," said Professor Adami.
|
||||
|
||||
Annabel bit off two feet of the black silk. When she came to thread the needle the secret was out. As the hand presenting the thread approached the other holding the needle that arm was jerked violently away. Doctor Prince was first to reduce the painful discovery to words.
|
||||
|
||||
"Dear Miss and Mrs. Rankin," he said, in his most musical consolation-baritone, "we have been only partially successful. The affliction, Miss Rankin, has passed from your---that is, the affliction is now in your arms."
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh, dear!" sighed Annabel, "I've a Beall arm and a Rankin arm, then. Well, I can use one hand at a time, anyway. People won't notice it as they did before. Oh, what an annoyance those feuds were, to be sure! It seems to me they should make laws against them."
|
||||
|
||||
Doctor Prince looked inquiringly at Professor Adami. That gentleman shook his head. "Another day," he said. "I prefer not to establish the condition at a lesser interval than two or three days."
|
||||
|
||||
So, three days afterward they returned, and the professor replaced Miss Rankin under control. This time there was, apparently, perfect success. She came forth from the trance, and with full muscular powers. She walked the floor with a sure, rhythmic step. She played several difficult selections upon the piano, the hands and arms moving with propriety and with allied ease. Miss Rankin seemed at last to possess a perfectly well-ordered physical being as well as a very grateful mental one.
|
||||
|
||||
A week afterward there wafted into Doctor Prince's office a youth, generously gilded. The hallmarks of society were deeply writ upon him.
|
||||
|
||||
"I'm Ashburton," he explained; "T. Ripley Ashburton, you know. I'm engaged to Miss Rankin. I understand you've been training her for some breaks in her gaits---" T. Ripley Ashburton caught himself. "Didn't mean that, you know---slipped out---been loafing around stables quite a lot. I say, Doctor Prince, I want you to tell me. Candidly, you know. I'm awful spoons on Miss Rankin. We're to be married in the fall. You might consider me one of the family, you know. They told me about the treatment you gave her with the---er---medium fellow. That set her up wonderfully, I assure you. She goes freely now, and handles her fore---I mean you know, she's over all that old trouble. But there's something else started up that's making the track pretty heavy; so I called, don't you understand."
|
||||
|
||||
"I had not been advised," said Doctor Prince, "of any recurrence of Miss Rankin's indisposition."
|
||||
|
||||
T. Ripley Ashburton produced a silver cigarette-case and contemplated it tenderly. Receiving no encouragement, he replaced it in his pocket with a sigh.
|
||||
|
||||
"Not a recurrence," he said, thoughtfully, "but something different. Possibly I'm the only one in a position to know. Hate to discuss it---reveal Cupid's secrets, you know---such a jolly low thing to do---but suppose the occasion justifies it."
|
||||
|
||||
"If you possess any information or have observed anything," said Doctor Prince, judicially, "through which Miss Rankin's condition might be benefited, it is your duty, of course, to apply it in her behalf. I need hardly remind you that such disclosures are held as secrets on professional honour."
|
||||
|
||||
"I believe I mentioned," said Mr. Ashburton, his fingers still hovering around the pocket containing his cigarette case, "that Miss Rankin and I are ever so sweet upon each other. She's a jolly, swell girl, if she did come from the Kentucky mountains. Lately she's acted awful queerly. She's awful affectionate one minute, and the next she turns me down like a perfect stranger. Last night I called at the hotel, and she met me at the door of their rooms. Nobody was in sight, and she gave me an awful nice kiss---er---engaged, you know, Doctor Prince---and then she fired away and gave me an awful hard slap in the face. 'I hate the sight of you,' she said; 'how dare you take the liberty!' " Mr. Ashburton drew an envelope from his pocket and extracted from it a sheet of note paper of a delicate heliotrope tint. "You might read this note, you know. Can't say if it's a medical case, 'pon my honour, but I'm awfully queered, don't you understand."
|
||||
|
||||
Doctor Prince read the following lines:
|
||||
|
||||
> My dearest Ripley: > > Do come around this evening---there's a dear boy---and take me out > somewhere. Mamma has a headache, and says she'll be glad to be rid of > both of us for a while. 'Twas so sweet of you to send those pond > lilies---they're just what I wanted for the east windows. You darling > boy---you're so thoughtful and good---I'm sure you're worth all the > love of > > Your very own > > Annabel. > > P.S.---On second thoughts, I will ask you not to call this evening, > as I shall be otherwise engaged. Perhaps it has never occurred to you > that there may be two opinions about the vast pleasure you seem to > think your society affords others. Clothes and the small talk of > clubhouses and racetracks hardly ever succeed in making a man without > other accessories. > > Very respectfully, > > Annabel Rankin.
|
||||
|
||||
Being deprived of the aid of his consolation cylinders, T. Ripley Ashburton sat, gloomy, revolving things in his mind.
|
||||
|
||||
"Ah!" exclaimed Doctor Prince, aloud, but addressing the exclamation to himself; "driven from the arms to the heart!" He perceived that the mysterious hereditary contrariety had, indeed, taken up its lodging in that tender organ of the afflicted maiden.
|
||||
|
||||
The gilded youth was dismissed, with the promise that Doctor Prince would make a professional call upon Miss Rankin. He did so soon, in company with Professor Adami, after they had discussed the strange course taken by this annoying heritage of the Bealls and Rankins. This time, as the location of the disorder required that the subject be approached with ingenuity, some diplomacy was exercised before the young lady could be induced to submit herself to the professor's art. But evidently she did so, and emerged from the trance as usual without a trace of unpleasant effect.
|
||||
|
||||
With much interest and some anxiety Doctor Prince passed several days awaiting the report of Mr. Ashburton, who, indeed, of all others would have to be depended upon to observe improvements, if any had occurred. One morning that youth dropped in, jubilant.
|
||||
|
||||
"It's all right, you know," he declared, cheerfully. "Miss Rankin's herself again. She's as sweet as cream, and the trouble's all off. Never a cross word or look. I'm her ducky, all right. She won't believe what I tell her about the way she used to treat me. Intimates I make up the stories. But it's all right now---everything's running on rubber tires. Awfully obliged to you and the old boy---er---the medium, you know. And I say, now, Doctor Prince, there's a wonderful improvement in Miss Rankin in every way. She used to be rather stiff, don't you understand---sort of superior, in a way---bookish, and a habit of thinking things, you know. Well, she's cured all round---she's a topper now of any bunch in the set---swell and stylish and lively! Oh, the crowd will fall in to her lead when she becomes Mrs. T. Ripley. Now, I say. Doctor Prince, you and the---er---medium gentleman come and take supper tonight with Mrs. and Miss Rankin and me. I'd be delighted if you would, now---I would indeed---just for you to see, you know, the improvement in Miss Rankin."
|
||||
|
||||
It transpired that Doctor Prince and Professor Adami accepted Mr. Ashburton's invitation. They convened at the hotel in the rooms of the Rankins. From there they were to proceed to the restaurant honoured by Mr. Ashburton's patronage.
|
||||
|
||||
When Miss Rankin swept gracefully into the room the professional gentlemen felt fascination and surprise conflicting in their feelings. She was radiant, bewitching, lively to effervescence. Her mother and Mr. Ashburton hung, enraptured, upon her looks and words. She was most becomingly clothed in pale blue.
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh, bother!" she suddenly exclaimed, most vivaciously, "I don't like this dress, after all. You must all wait," she commanded, with a captivating fling of her train, "until I change." Half an hour later she returned, magnificent in a stunning costume of black lace.
|
||||
|
||||
"I'll walk with you downstairs, Professor Adami," she declared, with a charming smile. Halfway down she left his side abruptly and joined Doctor Prince. "You've been such a benefit to me," she said. "It's such a relief to get rid of that horrid feud thing. Heavens! Ripley, did you forget those bonbons? Oh, this horrid black dress! I shouldn't have worn it; it makes me think of funerals. Did you get the scent of those lilacs then? It makes me think of the Kentucky mountains. How I wish we were back there."
|
||||
|
||||
"Aren't you fond of New York, then?" asked Doctor Prince, regarding her interestedly.
|
||||
|
||||
She started at the sound of his voice and looked up vivaciously.
|
||||
|
||||
"Indeed I am," she said, earnestly. "I adore New York. Why, I couldn't live without theatres and dances and my daily drives here. Oh, Ripley," she called, over her shoulder, "don't get that bull pup I wanted; I've changed my mind. I want a Pomeranian---now, don't forget."
|
||||
|
||||
They arrived on the pavement.
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh, a carriage!" exclaimed Miss Rankin; "I don't want a carriage, I want an auto. Send it away!"
|
||||
|
||||
"All right," said Ashburton, cheerily, "I thought you said a carriage."
|
||||
|
||||
In obedience to orders the carriage rolled away and an open auto glided up in its place.
|
||||
|
||||
"Stuffy, smelly thing!" cried Miss Rankin, with a winsome pout. "We'll walk. Ripley, you and Doctor Prince look out for mamma. Come on, Professor Adami." The indulgent victims of the charming beauty obeyed.
|
||||
|
||||
"The dear, dear child!" exclaimed Mrs. Rankin, happily, to Doctor Prince. "How full of spirits and life she is getting to be! She's so much improved from her old self."
|
||||
|
||||
"Lots," said Ashburton, proudly and fatuously. "She's picked up the regular metropolitan gaits. Chic and swell don't begin to express her. She's cut out the pensive thought business. Up-to-date. Why she changes her mind every two minutes. That's Annabel."
|
||||
|
||||
At the fashionable restaurant where they were soon seated, Doctor Prince found his curiosity and interest engaged by Miss Rankin's behaviour. She was in an agreeably fascinating humour. Her actions were such as might be expected from an adored child whose vacillating whims were indulged by groveling relatives. She ordered article after article from the bill of fare, petulantly countermanding nearly everyone when they were set before her. Waiters flew and returned, collided, conciliated, apologized, and danced at her bidding. Her speech was quick and lively, deliciously inconsistent, abounding in contradictions, conflicting statements, "bulls," discrepancies and nonconformities. In short, she seemed to have acquired within the space of a few days all that inconsequent, illogical frothiness that passes current among certain circles of fashionable life.
|
||||
|
||||
Mr. T. Ripley Ashburton showed a doting appreciation and an addled delight at the new charms of his fiancée---charms that he at once recognized as the legal tender of his set.
|
||||
|
||||
Later, when the party had broken up, Doctor Prince and Professor Adami stood, for a moment, at a corner, where their ways were to diverge.
|
||||
|
||||
"Well," said the professor, who was genially softened by the excellent supper and wine, "this time our young lady seems to be more fortunate. The malady has been eradicated completely from her entity. Yes, sir, in good time, our school will be recognized by all."
|
||||
|
||||
Doctor Prince scrutinized the handsome, refined countenance of the hypnotist. He saw nothing there to indicate that his own diagnosis was even guessed at by that gentleman.
|
||||
|
||||
"As you say," he made answer, "she appears to have recovered, as far as her friends can judge."
|
||||
|
||||
When he could spare the time. Doctor Prince again invaded the sanctum of the great Grumbleton Myers, and together they absorbed the poison of nicotine.
|
||||
|
||||
"Yes," said the great Myers, when the door was opened and Doctor Prince began to ooze out with the smoke, "I think you have come to the right decision. As long as none of the persons concerned has any suspicion of the truth, and is happy in the present circumstances, I don't think it necessary to inform him that the *feuditis Beallorum et Rankinorum*---how's the Latin, doctor?---has only been driven to Miss Rankin's brain."
|
||||
8
src/epub/text/a-question-of-direction.md
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8
src/epub/text/a-question-of-direction.md
Normal file
@ -0,0 +1,8 @@
|
||||
A Question of Direction {#a-question-of-direction type="title"}
|
||||
-----------------------
|
||||
|
||||
"Do you mean to tell me," gasped the horrified gentleman from Boston, "that this man you speak of was shot and killed at a meeting of your debating society, and by the presiding officer himself, during the discussion of a question, simply because he arose and made a motion that was considered out of order?"
|
||||
|
||||
"He certainly was, sure," said the colonel. "This is simply awful," said the traveler. "I must make a note of this occurrence so that the people of my State can be apprised of the dreadful lawlessness that prevails in this section---a man shot down and killed at a social and educational meeting for the infringement of an unimportant parliamentary error! It is awful to contemplate."
|
||||
|
||||
"That's whatever," said the colonel reflectively. "It is for a fact. But you might state, in order to do justice to our community and town, which is, as it were, the Athens of Texas, that the motion made by the deceased was in the direction of his hip pocket. Shall we all liquor?"
|
||||
222
src/epub/text/a-ramble-in-aphasia.md
Normal file
222
src/epub/text/a-ramble-in-aphasia.md
Normal file
@ -0,0 +1,222 @@
|
||||
A Ramble in Aphasia {#a-ramble-in-aphasia type="title"}
|
||||
-------------------
|
||||
|
||||
My wife and I parted on that morning in precisely our usual manner. She left her second cup of tea to follow me to the front door. There she plucked from my lapel the invisible strand of lint (the universal act of woman to proclaim ownership) and bade me to take care of my cold. I had no cold. Next came her kiss of parting---the level kiss of domesticity flavored with Young Hyson. There was no fear of the extemporaneous, of variety spicing her infinite custom. With the deft touch of long malpractice, she dabbed awry my well-set scarf pin; and then, as I closed the door, I heard her morning slippers pattering back to her cooling tea.
|
||||
|
||||
When I set out I had no thought or premonition of what was to occur. The attack came suddenly.
|
||||
|
||||
For many weeks I had been toiling, almost night and day, at a famous railroad law case that I won triumphantly but a few days previously. In fact, I had been digging away at the law almost without cessation for many years. Once or twice good Doctor Volney, my friend and physician, had warned me.
|
||||
|
||||
"If you don't slacken up, Bellford," he said, "you'll go suddenly to pieces. Either your nerves or your brain will give way. Tell me, does a week pass in which you do not read in the papers of a case of aphasia---of some man lost, wandering nameless, with his past and his identity blotted out---and all from that little brain clot made by overwork or worry?"
|
||||
|
||||
"I always thought," said I, "that the clot in those instances was really to be found on the brains of the newspaper reporters."
|
||||
|
||||
Doctor Volney shook his head.
|
||||
|
||||
"The disease exists," he said. "You need a change or a rest. Courtroom, office and home---there is the only route you travel. For recreation you---read law books. Better take warning in time."
|
||||
|
||||
"On Thursday nights," I said, defensively, "my wife and I play cribbage. On Sundays she reads to me the weekly letter from her mother. That law books are not a recreation remains yet to be established."
|
||||
|
||||
That morning as I walked I was thinking of Doctor Volney's words. I was feeling as well as I usually did---possibly in better spirits than usual.
|
||||
|
||||
------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
I woke with stiff and cramped muscles from having slept long on the incommodious seat of a day coach. I leaned my head against the seat and tried to think. After a long time I said to myself: "I must have a name of some sort." I searched my pockets. Not a card; not a letter; not a paper or monogram could I find. But I found in my coat pocket nearly \$3,000 in bills of large denomination. "I must be someone, of course," I repeated to myself, and began again to consider.
|
||||
|
||||
The car was well crowded with men, among whom, I told myself, there must have been some common interest, for they intermingled freely, and seemed in the best good humor and spirits. One of them---a stout, spectacled gentleman enveloped in a decided odor of cinnamon and aloes---took the vacant half of my seat with a friendly nod, and unfolded a newspaper. In the intervals between his periods of reading, we conversed, as travelers will, on current affairs. I found myself able to sustain the conversation on such subjects with credit, at least to my memory. By and by my companion said:
|
||||
|
||||
"You are one of us, of course. Fine lot of men the West sends in this time. I'm glad they held the convention in New York; I've never been East before. My name's R. P. Bolder---Bolder & Son, of Hickory Grove, Missouri."
|
||||
|
||||
Though unprepared, I rose to the emergency, as men will when put to it. Now must I hold a christening, and be at once babe, parson and parent. My senses came to the rescue of my slower brain. The insistent odor of drugs from my companion supplied one idea; a glance at his newspaper, where my eye met a conspicuous advertisement, assisted me further.
|
||||
|
||||
"My name," said I, glibly, "is Edward Pinkhammer. I am a druggist, and my home is in Cornopolis, Kansas."
|
||||
|
||||
"I knew you were a druggist," said my fellow traveler, affably. "I saw the callous spot on your right forefinger where the handle of the pestle rubs. Of course, you are a delegate to our National Convention."
|
||||
|
||||
"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?"
|
||||
|
||||
"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---"
|
||||
|
||||
"Tartrate of antimony and potash, and tartrate of soda and potash."
|
||||
|
||||
"Shall henceforth sit side by side," I concluded, firmly.
|
||||
|
||||
"Now, there's another thing," said Mr. Bolder. "For an excipient in manipulating a pill mass which do you prefer---the magnesia carbonate or the pulverised glycerrhiza radix?"
|
||||
|
||||
"The---er---magnesia," I said. It was easier to say than the other word.
|
||||
|
||||
Mr. Bolder glanced at me distrustfully through his spectacles.
|
||||
|
||||
"Give me the glycerrhiza," said he. "Magnesia cakes."
|
||||
|
||||
"Here's another one of these fake aphasia cases," he said, presently, handing me his newspaper, and laying his finger upon an article. "I don't believe in 'em. I put nine out of ten of 'em down as frauds. A man gets sick of his business and his folks and wants to have a good time. He skips out somewhere, and when they find him he pretends to have lost his memory---don't know his own name, and won't even recognize the strawberry mark on his wife's left shoulder. Aphasia! Tut! Why can't they stay at home and forget?"
|
||||
|
||||
I took the paper and read, after the pungent headlines, the following:
|
||||
|
||||
> "**Denver**, June 12.---Elwyn C. Bellford, a prominent lawyer, is > mysteriously missing from his home since three days ago, and all > efforts to locate him have been in vain. Mr. Bellford is a well-known > citizen of the highest standing, and has enjoyed a large and lucrative > law practice. He is married and owns a fine home and the most > extensive private library in the State. On the day of his > disappearance, he drew quite a large sum of money from his bank. No > one can be found who saw him after he left the bank. Mr. Bellford was > a man of singularly quiet and domestic tastes, and seemed to find his > happiness in his home and profession. If any clue at all exists to his > strange disappearance, it may be found in the fact that for some > months he has been deeply absorbed in an important law case in > connection with the Q. Y. and Z. Railroad Company. It is feared that > overwork may have affected his mind. Every effort is being made to > discover the whereabouts of the missing man."
|
||||
|
||||
"It seems to me you are not altogether uncynical, Mr. Bolder," I said, after I had read the despatch. "This has the sound, to me, of a genuine case. Why should this man, prosperous, happily married, and respected, choose suddenly to abandon everything? I know that these lapses of memory do occur, and that men do find themselves adrift without a name, a history or a home."
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh, gammon and jalap!" said Mr. Bolder. "It's larks they're after. There's too much education nowadays. Men know about aphasia, and they use it for an excuse. The women are wise, too. When it's all over they look you in the eye, as scientific as you please, and say: 'He hypnotized me.' "
|
||||
|
||||
Thus Mr. Bolder diverted, but did not aid, me with his comments and philosophy.
|
||||
|
||||
We arrived in New York about ten at night. I rode in a cab to a hotel, and I wrote my name "Edward Pinkhammer" in the register. As I did so I felt pervade me a splendid, wild, intoxicating buoyancy---a sense of unlimited freedom, of newly attained possibilities. I was just born into the world. The old fetters---whatever they had been---were stricken from my hands and feet. The future lay before me a clear road such as an infant enters, and I could set out upon it equipped with a man's learning and experience.
|
||||
|
||||
I thought the hotel clerk looked at me five seconds too long. I had no baggage.
|
||||
|
||||
"The Druggists' Convention," I said. "My trunk has somehow failed to arrive." I drew out a roll of money.
|
||||
|
||||
"Ah!" said he, showing an auriferous tooth, "we have quite a number of the Western delegates stopping here." He struck a bell for the boy.
|
||||
|
||||
I endeavored to give color to my role.
|
||||
|
||||
"There is an important movement on foot among us Westerners," I said, "in regard to a recommendation to the convention that the bottles containing the tartrate of antimony and potash, and the tartrate of sodium and potash be kept in a contiguous position on the shelf."
|
||||
|
||||
"Gentleman to three-fourteen," said the clerk, hastily. I was whisked away to my room.
|
||||
|
||||
The next day I bought a trunk and clothing, and began to live the life of Edward Pinkhammer. I did not tax my brain with endeavors to solve problems of the past.
|
||||
|
||||
It was a piquant and sparkling cup that the great island city held up to my lips. I drank of it gratefully. The keys of Manhattan belong to him who is able to bear them. You must be either the city's guest or its victim.
|
||||
|
||||
The following few days were as gold and silver. Edward Pinkhammer, yet counting back to his birth by hours only, knew the rare joy of having come upon so diverting a world full-fledged and unrestrained. I sat entranced on the magic carpets provided in theatres and roof-gardens, that transported one into strange and delightful lands full of frolicsome music, pretty girls and grotesque drolly extravagant parodies upon human kind. I went here and there at my own dear will, bound by no limits of space, time or comportment. I dined in weird cabarets, at weirder tables d'hôte to the sound of Hungarian music and the wild shouts of mercurial artists and sculptors. Or, again, where the night life quivers in the electric glare like a kinetoscopic picture, and the millinery of the world, and its jewels, and the ones whom they adorn, and the men who make all three possible are met for good cheer and the spectacular effect. And among all these scenes that I have mentioned I learned one thing that I never knew before. And that is that the key to liberty is not in the hands of License, but Convention holds it. Comity has a tollgate at which you must pay, or you may not enter the land of Freedom. In all the glitter, the seeming disorder, the parade, the abandon, I saw this law, unobtrusive, yet like iron, prevail. Therefore, in Manhattan you must obey these unwritten laws, and then you will be freest of the free. If you decline to be bound by them, you put on shackles.
|
||||
|
||||
Sometimes, as my mood urged me, I would seek the stately, softly murmuring palm rooms, redolent with highborn life and delicate restraint, in which to dine. Again I would go down to the waterways in steamers packed with vociferous, bedecked, unchecked lovemaking clerks and shop-girls to their crude pleasures on the island shores. And there was always Broadway---glistening, opulent, wily, varying, desirable Broadway---growing upon one like an opium habit.
|
||||
|
||||
One afternoon as I entered my hotel a stout man with a big nose and a black mustache blocked my way in the corridor. When I would have passed around him, he greet me with offensive familiarity.
|
||||
|
||||
"Hello, Bellford!" he cried, loudly. "What the deuce are you doing in New York? Didn't know anything could drag you away from that old book den of yours. Is Mrs. B. along or is this a little business run alone, eh?"
|
||||
|
||||
"You have made a mistake, sir," I said, coldly, releasing my hand from his grasp. "My name is Pinkhammer. You will excuse me."
|
||||
|
||||
The man dropped to one side, apparently astonished. As I walked to the clerk's desk I heard him call to a bell boy and say something about telegraph blanks.
|
||||
|
||||
"You will give me my bill," I said to the clerk, "and have my baggage brought down in half an hour. I do not care to remain where I am annoyed by confidence men."
|
||||
|
||||
I moved that afternoon to another hotel, a sedate, old-fashioned one on lower Fifth Avenue.
|
||||
|
||||
There was a restaurant a little way off Broadway where one could be served almost al fresco in a tropic array of screening flora. Quiet and luxury and a perfect service made it an ideal place in which to take luncheon or refreshment. One afternoon I was there picking my way to a table among the ferns when I felt my sleeve caught.
|
||||
|
||||
"Mr. Bellford!" exclaimed an amazingly sweet voice.
|
||||
|
||||
I turned quickly to see a lady seated alone---a lady of about thirty, with exceedingly handsome eyes, who looked at me as though I had been her very dear friend.
|
||||
|
||||
"You were about to pass me," she said, accusingly. "Don't tell me you do not know me. Why should we not shake hands---at least once in fifteen years?"
|
||||
|
||||
I shook hands with her at once. I took a chair opposite her at the table. I summoned with my eyebrows a hovering waiter. The lady was philandering with an orange ice. I ordered a crème de menthe. Her hair was reddish bronze. You could not look at it, because you could not look away from her eyes. But you were conscious of it as you are conscious of sunset while you look into the profundities of a wood at twilight.
|
||||
|
||||
"Are you sure you know me?" I asked.
|
||||
|
||||
"No," she said, smiling. "I was never sure of that."
|
||||
|
||||
"What would you think," I said, a little anxiously, "if I were to tell you that my name is Edward Pinkhammer, from Cornopolis, Kansas?"
|
||||
|
||||
"What would I think?" she repeated, with a merry glance. "Why, that you had not brought Mrs. Bellford to New York with you, of course. I do wish you had. I would have liked to see Marian." Her voice lowered slightly---"You haven't changed much, Elwyn."
|
||||
|
||||
I felt her wonderful eyes searching mine and my face more closely.
|
||||
|
||||
"Yes, you have," she amended, and there was a soft, exultant note in her latest tones; "I see it now. You haven't forgotten. You haven't forgotten for a year or a day or an hour. I told you you never could."
|
||||
|
||||
I poked my straw anxiously in the crème de menthe.
|
||||
|
||||
"I'm sure I beg your pardon," I said, a little uneasy at her gaze. "But that is just the trouble. I have forgotten. I've forgotten everything."
|
||||
|
||||
She flouted my denial. She laughed deliciously at something she seemed to see in my face.
|
||||
|
||||
"I've heard of you at times," she went on. "You're quite a big lawyer out West---Denver, isn't it, or Los Angeles? Marian must be very proud of you. You knew, I suppose, that I married six months after you did. You may have seen it in the papers. The flowers alone cost two thousand dollars."
|
||||
|
||||
She had mentioned fifteen years. Fifteen years is a long time.
|
||||
|
||||
"Would it be too late," I asked, somewhat timorously, "to offer you congratulations?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Not if you dare do it," she answered, with such fine intrepidity that I was silent, and began to crease patterns on the cloth with my thumb nail.
|
||||
|
||||
"Tell me one thing," she said, leaning toward me rather eagerly---"a thing I have wanted to know for many years---just from a woman's curiosity, of course---have you ever dared since that night to touch, smell or look at white roses---at white roses wet with rain and dew?"
|
||||
|
||||
I took a sip of crème de menthe.
|
||||
|
||||
"It would be useless, I suppose," I said, with a sigh, "for me to repeat that I have no recollection at all about these things. My memory is completely at fault. I need not say how much I regret it."
|
||||
|
||||
The lady rested her arms upon the table, and again her eyes disdained my words and went traveling by their own route direct to my soul. She laughed softly, with a strange quality in the sound---it was a laugh of happiness---yes, and of content---and of misery. I tried to look away from her.
|
||||
|
||||
"You lie, Elwyn Bellford," she breathed, blissfully. "Oh, I know you lie!"
|
||||
|
||||
I gazed dully into the ferns.
|
||||
|
||||
"My name is Edward Pinkhammer," I said. "I came with the delegates to the Druggists' National Convention. There is a movement on foot for arranging a new position for the bottles of tartrate of antimony and tartrate of potash, in which, very likely, you would take little interest."
|
||||
|
||||
A shining landau stopped before the entrance. The lady rose. I took her hand, and bowed.
|
||||
|
||||
"I am deeply sorry," I said to her, "that I cannot remember. I could explain, but fear you would not understand. You will not concede Pinkhammer; and I really cannot at all conceive of the---the roses and other things."
|
||||
|
||||
"Goodbye, Mr. Bellford," she said, with her happy, sorrowful smile, as she stepped into her carriage.
|
||||
|
||||
I attended the theatre that night. When I returned to my hotel, a quiet man in dark clothes, who seemed interested in rubbing his finger nails with a silk handkerchief, appeared, magically, at my side.
|
||||
|
||||
"Mr. Pinkhammer," he said, giving the bulk of his attention to his forefinger, "may I request you to step aside with me for a little conversation? There is a room here."
|
||||
|
||||
"Certainly," I answered.
|
||||
|
||||
He conducted me into a small, private parlor. A lady and a gentleman were there. The lady, I surmised, would have been unusually good-looking had her features not been clouded by an expression of keen worry and fatigue. She was of a style of figure and possessed coloring and features that were agreeable to my fancy. She was in a traveling dress; she fixed upon me an earnest look of extreme anxiety, and pressed an unsteady hand to her bosom. I think she would have started forward, but the gentleman arrested her movement with an authoritative motion of his hand. He then came, himself, to meet me. He was a man of forty, a little gray about the temples, and with a strong, thoughtful face.
|
||||
|
||||
"Bellford, old man," he said, cordially, "I'm glad to see you again. Of course we know everything is all right. I warned you, you know, that you were overdoing it. Now, you'll go back with us, and be yourself again in no time."
|
||||
|
||||
I smiled ironically.
|
||||
|
||||
"I have been 'Bellforded' so often," I said, "that it has lost its edge. Still, in the end, it may grow wearisome. Would you be willing at all to entertain the hypothesis that my name is Edward Pinkhammer, and that I never saw you before in my life?"
|
||||
|
||||
Before the man could reply a wailing cry came from the woman. She sprang past his detaining arm. "Elwyn!" she sobbed, and cast herself upon me, and clung tight. "Elwyn," she cried again, "don't break my heart. I am your wife---call my name once---just once. I could see you dead rather than this way."
|
||||
|
||||
I unwound her arms respectfully, but firmly.
|
||||
|
||||
"Madam," I said, severely, "pardon me if I suggest that you accept a resemblance too precipitately. It is a pity," I went on, with an amused laugh, as the thought occurred to me, "that this Bellford and I could not be kept side by side upon the same shelf like tartrates of sodium and antimony for purposes of identification. In order to understand the allusion," I concluded airily, "it may be necessary for you to keep an eye on the proceedings of the Druggists' National Convention."
|
||||
|
||||
The lady turned to her companion, and grasped his arm.
|
||||
|
||||
"What is it, Doctor Volney? Oh, what is it?" she moaned.
|
||||
|
||||
He led her to the door.
|
||||
|
||||
"Go to your room for a while," I heard him say. "I will remain and talk with him. His mind? No, I think not---only a portion of the brain. Yes, I am sure he will recover. Go to your room and leave me with him."
|
||||
|
||||
The lady disappeared. The man in dark clothes also went outside, still manicuring himself in a thoughtful way. I think he waited in the hall.
|
||||
|
||||
"I would like to talk with you a while, Mr. Pinkhammer, if I may," said the gentleman who remained.
|
||||
|
||||
"Very well, if you care to," I replied, "and will excuse me if I take it comfortably; I am rather tired." I stretched myself upon a couch by a window and lit a cigar. He drew a chair nearby.
|
||||
|
||||
"Let us speak to the point," he said, soothingly. "Your name is not Pinkhammer."
|
||||
|
||||
"I know that as well as you do," I said, coolly. "But a man must have a name of some sort. I can assure you that I do not extravagantly admire the name of Pinkhammer. But when one christens one's self suddenly, the fine names do not seem to suggest themselves. But, suppose it had been Scheringhausen or Scroggins! I think I did very well with Pinkhammer."
|
||||
|
||||
"Your name," said the other man, seriously, "is Elwyn C. Bellford. You are one of the first lawyers in Denver. You are suffering from an attack of aphasia, which has caused you to forget your identity. The cause of it was over-application to your profession, and, perhaps, a life too bare of natural recreation and pleasures. The lady who has just left the room is your wife."
|
||||
|
||||
"She is what I would call a fine-looking woman," I said, after a judicial pause. "I particularly admire the shade of brown in her hair."
|
||||
|
||||
"She is a wife to be proud of. Since your disappearance, nearly two weeks ago, she has scarcely closed her eyes. We learned that you were in New York through a telegram sent by Isidore Newman, a traveling man from Denver. He said that he had met you in a hotel here, and that you did not recognize him."
|
||||
|
||||
"I think I remember the occasion," I said. "The fellow called me 'Bellford,' if I am not mistaken. But don't you think it about time, now, for you to introduce yourself?"
|
||||
|
||||
"I am Robert Volney---Doctor Volney. I have been your close friend for twenty years, and your physician for fifteen. I came with Mrs. Bellford to trace you as soon as we got the telegram. Try, Elwyn, old man---try to remember!"
|
||||
|
||||
"What's the use to try?" I asked, with a little frown. "You say you are a physician. Is aphasia curable? When a man loses his memory does it return slowly, or suddenly?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Sometimes gradually and imperfectly; sometimes as suddenly as it went."
|
||||
|
||||
"Will you undertake the treatment of my case, Doctor Volney?" I asked.
|
||||
|
||||
"Old friend," said he, "I'll do everything in my power, and will have done everything that science can do to cure you."
|
||||
|
||||
"Very well," said I. "Then you will consider that I am your patient. Everything is in confidence now---professional confidence."
|
||||
|
||||
"Of course," said Doctor Volney.
|
||||
|
||||
I got up from the couch. Someone had set a vase of white roses on the centre table---a cluster of white roses, freshly sprinkled and fragrant. I threw them far out of the window, and then I laid myself upon the couch again.
|
||||
|
||||
"It will be best, Bobby," I said, "to have this cure happen suddenly. I'm rather tired of it all, anyway. You may go now and bring Marian in. But, oh, Doc," I said, with a sigh, as I kicked him on the shin---"good old Doc---it was glorious!"
|
||||
128
src/epub/text/a-retrieved-reformation.md
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|
||||
A Retrieved Reformation {#a-retrieved-reformation type="title"}
|
||||
-----------------------
|
||||
|
||||
A guard came to the prison shoe-shop, where Jimmy Valentine was assiduously stitching uppers, and escorted him to the front office. There the warden handed Jimmy his pardon, which had been signed that morning by the governor. Jimmy took it in a tired kind of way. He had served nearly ten months of a four year sentence. He had expected to stay only about three months, at the longest. When a man with as many friends on the outside as Jimmy Valentine had is received in the "stir" it is hardly worthwhile to cut his hair.
|
||||
|
||||
"Now, Valentine," said the warden, "you'll go out in the morning. Brace up, and make a man of yourself. You're not a bad fellow at heart. Stop cracking safes, and live straight."
|
||||
|
||||
"Me?" said Jimmy, in surprise. "Why, I never cracked a safe in my life."
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh, no," laughed the warden. "Of course not. Let's see, now. How was it you happened to get sent up on that Springfield job? Was it because you wouldn't prove an alibi for fear of compromising somebody in extremely high-toned society? Or was it simply a case of a mean old jury that had it in for you? It's always one or the other with you innocent victims."
|
||||
|
||||
"Me?" said Jimmy, still blankly virtuous. "Why, warden, I never was in Springfield in my life!"
|
||||
|
||||
"Take him back, Cronin!" said the warden, "and fix him up with outgoing clothes. Unlock him at seven in the morning, and let him come to the bullpen. Better think over my advice, Valentine."
|
||||
|
||||
At a quarter past seven on the next morning Jimmy stood in the warden's outer office. He had on a suit of the villainously fitting, ready-made clothes and a pair of the stiff, squeaky shoes that the state furnishes to its discharged compulsory guests.
|
||||
|
||||
The clerk handed him a railroad ticket and the five-dollar bill with which the law expected him to rehabilitate himself into good citizenship and prosperity. The warden gave him a cigar, and shook hands. Valentine, 9762, was chronicled on the books, "Pardoned by Governor," and Mr. James Valentine walked out into the sunshine.
|
||||
|
||||
Disregarding the song of the birds, the waving green trees, and the smell of the flowers, Jimmy headed straight for a restaurant. There he tasted the first sweet joys of liberty in the shape of a broiled chicken and a bottle of white wine---followed by a cigar a grade better than the one the warden had given him. From there he proceeded leisurely to the depot. He tossed a quarter into the hat of a blind man sitting by the door, and boarded his train. Three hours set him down in a little town near the state line. He went to the café of one Mike Dolan and shook hands with Mike, who was alone behind the bar.
|
||||
|
||||
"Sorry we couldn't make it sooner, Jimmy, me boy," said Mike. "But we had that protest from Springfield to buck against, and the governor nearly balked. Feeling all right?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Fine," said Jimmy. "Got my key?"
|
||||
|
||||
He got his key and went upstairs, unlocking the door of a room at the rear. Everything was just as he had left it. There on the floor was still Ben Price's collar-button that had been torn from that eminent detective's shirt-band when they had overpowered Jimmy to arrest him.
|
||||
|
||||
Pulling out from the wall a folding-bed, Jimmy slid back a panel in the wall and dragged out a dust-covered suitcase. He opened this and gazed fondly at the finest set of burglar's tools in the East. It was a complete set, made of specially tempered steel, the latest designs in drills, punches, braces and bits, jimmies, clamps, and augers, with two or three novelties, invented by Jimmy himself, in which he took pride. Over nine hundred dollars they had cost him to have made at ⸻, a place where they make such things for the profession.
|
||||
|
||||
In half an hour Jimmy went downstairs and through the café. He was now dressed in tasteful and well-fitting clothes, and carried his dusted and cleaned suitcase in his hand.
|
||||
|
||||
"Got anything on?" asked Mike Dolan, genially.
|
||||
|
||||
"Me?" said Jimmy, in a puzzled tone. "I don't understand. I'm representing the New York Amalgamated Short Snap Biscuit Cracker and Frazzled Wheat Company."
|
||||
|
||||
This statement delighted Mike to such an extent that Jimmy had to take a seltzer-and-milk on the spot. He never touched "hard" drinks.
|
||||
|
||||
A week after the release of Valentine, 9762, there was a neat job of safe-burglary done in Richmond, Indiana, with no clue to the author. A scant eight hundred dollars was all that was secured. Two weeks after that a patented, improved, burglarproof safe in Logansport was opened like a cheese to the tune of fifteen hundred dollars, currency; securities and silver untouched. That began to interest the rogue-catchers. Then an old-fashioned bank-safe in Jefferson City became active and threw out of its crater an eruption of banknotes amounting to five thousand dollars. The losses were now high enough to bring the matter up into Ben Price's class of work. By comparing notes, a remarkable similarity in the methods of the burglaries was noticed. Ben Price investigated the scenes of the robberies, and was heard to remark:
|
||||
|
||||
"That's Dandy Jim Valentine's autograph. He's resumed business. Look at that combination knob---jerked out as easy as pulling up a radish in wet weather. He's got the only clamps that can do it. And look how clean those tumblers were punched out! Jimmy never has to drill but one hole. Yes, I guess I want Mr. Valentine. He'll do his bit next time without any short-time or clemency foolishness."
|
||||
|
||||
Ben Price knew Jimmy's habits. He had learned them while working up the Springfield case. Long jumps, quick getaways, no confederates, and a taste for good society---these ways had helped Mr. Valentine to become noted as a successful dodger of retribution. It was given out that Ben Price had taken up the trail of the elusive cracksman, and other people with burglarproof safes felt more at ease.
|
||||
|
||||
One afternoon Jimmy Valentine and his suitcase climbed out of the mail-hack in Elmore, a little town five miles off the railroad down in the blackjack country of Arkansas. Jimmy, looking like an athletic young senior just home from college, went down the board sidewalk toward the hotel.
|
||||
|
||||
A young lady crossed the street, passed him at the corner and entered a door over which was the sign, "The Elmore Bank." Jimmy Valentine looked into her eyes, forgot what he was, and became another man. She lowered her eyes and coloured slightly. Young men of Jimmy's style and looks were scarce in Elmore.
|
||||
|
||||
Jimmy collared a boy that was loafing on the steps of the bank as if he were one of the stockholders, and began to ask him questions about the town, feeding him dimes at intervals. By and by the young lady came out, looking royally unconscious of the young man with the suitcase, and went her way.
|
||||
|
||||
"Isn't that young lady Polly Simpson?" asked Jimmy, with specious guile.
|
||||
|
||||
"Naw," said the boy. "She's Annabel Adams. Her pa owns this bank. What'd you come to Elmore for? Is that a gold watch-chain? I'm going to get a bulldog. Got any more dimes?"
|
||||
|
||||
Jimmy went to the Planters' Hotel, registered as Ralph D. Spencer, and engaged a room. He leaned on the desk and declared his platform to the clerk. He said he had come to Elmore to look for a location to go into business. How was the shoe business, now, in the town? He had thought of the shoe business. Was there an opening?
|
||||
|
||||
The clerk was impressed by the clothes and manner of Jimmy. He, himself, was something of a pattern of fashion to the thinly gilded youth of Elmore, but he now perceived his shortcomings. While trying to figure out Jimmy's manner of tying his four-in-hand he cordially gave information.
|
||||
|
||||
Yes, there ought to be a good opening in the shoe line. There wasn't an exclusive shoe-store in the place. The dry-goods and general stores handled them. Business in all lines was fairly good. Hoped Mr. Spencer would decide to locate in Elmore. He would find it a pleasant town to live in, and the people very sociable.
|
||||
|
||||
Mr. Spencer thought he would stop over in the town a few days and look over the situation. No, the clerk needn't call the boy. He would carry up his suitcase, himself; it was rather heavy.
|
||||
|
||||
Mr. Ralph Spencer, the phoenix that arose from Jimmy Valentine's ashes---ashes left by the flame of a sudden and alterative attack of love---remained in Elmore, and prospered. He opened a shoe-store and secured a good run of trade.
|
||||
|
||||
Socially he was also a success, and made many friends. And he accomplished the wish of his heart. He met Miss Annabel Adams, and became more and more captivated by her charms.
|
||||
|
||||
At the end of a year the situation of Mr. Ralph Spencer was this: he had won the respect of the community, his shoe-store was flourishing, and he and Annabel were engaged to be married in two weeks. Mr. Adams, the typical, plodding, country banker, approved of Spencer. Annabel's pride in him almost equalled her affection. He was as much at home in the family of Mr. Adams and that of Annabel's married sister as if he were already a member.
|
||||
|
||||
One day Jimmy sat down in his room and wrote this letter, which he mailed to the safe address of one of his old friends in St. Louis:
|
||||
|
||||
> Dear Old Pal: > > I want you to be at Sullivan's place, in Little Rock, next Wednesday > night, at nine o'clock. I want you to wind up some little matters for > me. And, also, I want to make you a present of my kit of tools. I know > you'll be glad to get them---you couldn't duplicate the lot for a > thousand dollars. Say, Billy, I've quit the old business---a year > ago. I've got a nice store. I'm making an honest living, and I'm going > to marry the finest girl on earth two weeks from now. It's the only > life, Billy---the straight one. I wouldn't touch a dollar of another > man's money now for a million. After I get married I'm going to sell > out and go West, where there won't be so much danger of having old > scores brought up against me. I tell you, Billy, she's an angel. She > believes in me; and I wouldn't do another crooked thing for the whole > world. Be sure to be at Sully's, for I must see you. I'll bring along > the tools with me. > > Your old friend, > > Jimmy.
|
||||
|
||||
On the Monday night after Jimmy wrote this letter, Ben Price jogged unobtrusively into Elmore in a livery buggy. He lounged about town in his quiet way until he found out what he wanted to know. From the drugstore across the street from Spencer's shoe-store he got a good look at Ralph D. Spencer.
|
||||
|
||||
"Going to marry the banker's daughter are you, Jimmy?" said Ben to himself, softly. "Well, I don't know!"
|
||||
|
||||
The next morning Jimmy took breakfast at the Adamses. He was going to Little Rock that day to order his wedding-suit and buy something nice for Annabel. That would be the first time he had left town since he came to Elmore. It had been more than a year now since those last professional "jobs," and he thought he could safely venture out.
|
||||
|
||||
After breakfast quite a family party went downtown together---Mr. Adams, Annabel, Jimmy, and Annabel's married sister with her two little girls, aged five and nine. They came by the hotel where Jimmy still boarded, and he ran up to his room and brought along his suitcase. Then they went on to the bank. There stood Jimmy's horse and buggy and Dolph Gibson, who was going to drive him over to the railroad station.
|
||||
|
||||
All went inside the high, carved oak railings into the banking-room---Jimmy included, for Mr. Adams's future son-in-law was welcome anywhere. The clerks were pleased to be greeted by the good-looking, agreeable young man who was going to marry Miss Annabel. Jimmy set his suitcase down. Annabel, whose heart was bubbling with happiness and lively youth, put on Jimmy's hat, and picked up the suitcase. "Wouldn't I make a nice drummer?" said Annabel. "My! Ralph, how heavy it is? Feels like it was full of gold bricks."
|
||||
|
||||
"Lot of nickel-plated shoehorns in there," said Jimmy, coolly, "that I'm going to return. Thought I'd save express charges by taking them up. I'm getting awfully economical."
|
||||
|
||||
The Elmore Bank had just put in a new safe and vault. Mr. Adams was very proud of it, and insisted on an inspection by everyone. The vault was a small one, but it had a new, patented door. It fastened with three solid steel bolts thrown simultaneously with a single handle, and had a time-lock. Mr. Adams beamingly explained its workings to Mr. Spencer, who showed a courteous but not too intelligent interest. The two children, May and Agatha, were delighted by the shining metal and funny clock and knobs.
|
||||
|
||||
While they were thus engaged Ben Price sauntered in and leaned on his elbow, looking casually inside between the railings. He told the teller that he didn't want anything; he was just waiting for a man he knew.
|
||||
|
||||
Suddenly there was a scream or two from the women, and a commotion. Unperceived by the elders, May, the nine-year-old girl, in a spirit of play, had shut Agatha in the vault. She had then shot the bolts and turned the knob of the combination as she had seen Mr. Adams do.
|
||||
|
||||
The old banker sprang to the handle and tugged at it for a moment. "The door can't be opened," he groaned. "The clock hasn't been wound nor the combination set."
|
||||
|
||||
Agatha's mother screamed again, hysterically.
|
||||
|
||||
"Hush!" said Mr. Adams, raising his trembling hand. "All be quite for a moment. Agatha!" he called as loudly as he could. "Listen to me." During the following silence they could just hear the faint sound of the child wildly shrieking in the dark vault in a panic of terror.
|
||||
|
||||
"My precious darling!" wailed the mother. "She will die of fright! Open the door! Oh, break it open! Can't you men do something?"
|
||||
|
||||
"There isn't a man nearer than Little Rock who can open that door," said Mr. Adams, in a shaky voice. "My God! Spencer, what shall we do? That child---she can't stand it long in there. There isn't enough air, and, besides, she'll go into convulsions from fright."
|
||||
|
||||
Agatha's mother, frantic now, beat the door of the vault with her hands. Somebody wildly suggested dynamite. Annabel turned to Jimmy, her large eyes full of anguish, but not yet despairing. To a woman nothing seems quite impossible to the powers of the man she worships.
|
||||
|
||||
"Can't you do something, Ralph---*try*, won't you?"
|
||||
|
||||
He looked at her with a queer, soft smile on his lips and in his keen eyes.
|
||||
|
||||
"Annabel," he said, "give me that rose you are wearing, will you?"
|
||||
|
||||
Hardly believing that she heard him aright, she unpinned the bud from the bosom of her dress, and placed it in his hand. Jimmy stuffed it into his vest-pocket, threw off his coat and pulled up his shirtsleeves. With that act Ralph D. Spencer passed away and Jimmy Valentine took his place.
|
||||
|
||||
"Get away from the door, all of you," he commanded, shortly.
|
||||
|
||||
He set his suitcase on the table, and opened it out flat. From that time on he seemed to be unconscious of the presence of anyone else. He laid out the shining, queer implements swiftly and orderly, whistling softly to himself as he always did when at work. In a deep silence and immovable, the others watched him as if under a spell.
|
||||
|
||||
In a minute Jimmy's pet drill was biting smoothly into the steel door. In ten minutes---breaking his own burglarious record---he threw back the bolts and opened the door.
|
||||
|
||||
Agatha, almost collapsed, but safe, was gathered into her mother's arms.
|
||||
|
||||
Jimmy Valentine put on his coat, and walked outside the railings towards the front door. As he went he thought he heard a faraway voice that he once knew call "Ralph!" But he never hesitated.
|
||||
|
||||
At the door a big man stood somewhat in his way.
|
||||
|
||||
"Hello, Ben!" said Jimmy, still with his strange smile. "Got around at last, have you? Well, let's go. I don't know that it makes much difference, now."
|
||||
|
||||
And then Ben Price acted rather strangely.
|
||||
|
||||
"Guess you're mistaken, Mr. Spencer," he said. "Don't believe I recognize you. Your buggy's waiting for you, ain't it?"
|
||||
|
||||
And Ben Price turned and strolled down the street.
|
||||
16
src/epub/text/a-righteous-outburst.md
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|
||||
A Righteous Outburst {#a-righteous-outburst type="title"}
|
||||
--------------------
|
||||
|
||||
He smelled of gin and his whiskers resembled the cylinder of a Swiss music box. He walked into a toy shop on Main Street yesterday and leaned sorrowfully against the counter.
|
||||
|
||||
"Anything today?" asked the proprietor coldly.
|
||||
|
||||
He wiped an eye with a dingy red handkerchief and said:
|
||||
|
||||
"Nothing at all, thank you. I just came inside to shed a tear. I do not like to obtrude my grief upon the passersby. I have a little daughter, sir; five years of age, with curly golden hair. Her name is Lilian. She says to me this morning: 'Papa, will Santa Claus bring me a red wagon for Christmas?' It completely unmanned me, sir, as, alas, I am out of work and penniless. Just think, one little red wagon would bring her happiness, and there are children who have hundreds of red wagons."
|
||||
|
||||
"Before you go out," said the proprietor, "which you are going to do in about fifteen seconds, I am willing to inform you that I have a branch store on Trains Street, and was around there yesterday. You came in and made the same talk about your little girl, whom you called Daisy, and I gave you a wagon. It seems you don't remember your little girl's name very well."
|
||||
|
||||
The man drew himself up with dignity, and started for the door. When nearly there, he turned and said:
|
||||
|
||||
"Her name is Lilian Daisy, sir, and the wagon you gave me had a rickety wheel and some of the paint was scratched off the handle. I have a friend who tends bar on Willow Street, who is keeping it for me till Christmas, but I will feel a flush of shame on your behalf, sir, when Lilian Daisy sees that old, slab-sided, squeaking, secondhand, leftover-from-last-year's-stock wagon. But, sir, when Lilian Daisy kneels at her little bed at night I shall get her to pray for you, and ask Heaven to have mercy on you. Have you one of your business cards handy, so Lilian Daisy can get your name right in her petitions?"
|
||||
342
src/epub/text/a-ruler-of-men.md
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342
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|
||||
A Ruler of Men {#a-ruler-of-men type="title"}
|
||||
--------------
|
||||
|
||||
I walked the streets of the City of Insolence, thirsting for the sight of a stranger face. For the City is a desert of familiar types as thick and alike as the grains in a sandstorm; and you grow to hate them as you do a friend who is always by you, or one of your own kin.
|
||||
|
||||
And my desire was granted, for I saw near a corner of Broadway and Twenty-ninth Street, a little flaxen-haired man with a face like a scaly-bark hickory-nut, selling to a fast-gathering crowd a tool that omnigeneously proclaimed itself a can-opener, a screwdriver, a buttonhook, a nail-file, a shoehorn, a watch-guard, a potato-peeler, and an ornament to any gentleman's key-ring.
|
||||
|
||||
And then a stall-fed cop shoved himself through the congregation of customers. The vender, plainly used to having his seasons of trade thus abruptly curtailed, closed his satchel and slipped like a weasel through the opposite segment of the circle. The crowd scurried aimlessly away like ants from a disturbed crumb. The cop, suddenly becoming oblivious of the earth and its inhabitants, stood still, swelling his bulk and putting his club through an intricate drill of twirls. I hurried after Kansas Bill Bowers, and caught him by an arm.
|
||||
|
||||
Without his looking at me or slowing his pace, I found a five-dollar bill crumpled neatly into my hand.
|
||||
|
||||
"I wouldn't have thought, Kansas Bill," I said, "that you'd hold an old friend that cheap."
|
||||
|
||||
Then he turned his head, and the hickory-nut cracked into a wide smile.
|
||||
|
||||
"Give back the money," said he, "or I'll have the cop after you for false pretenses. I thought you was the cop."
|
||||
|
||||
"I want to talk to you, Bill," I said. "When did you leave Oklahoma? Where is Reddy McGill now? Why are you selling those impossible contraptions on the street? How did your Big Horn goldmine pan out? How did you get so badly sunburned? What will you drink?"
|
||||
|
||||
"A year ago," answered Kansas Bill systematically. "Putting up windmills in Arizona. For pin money to buy etceteras with. Salted. Been down in the tropics. Beer."
|
||||
|
||||
We foregathered in a propitious place and became Elijahs, while a waiter of dark plumage played the raven to perfection. Reminiscence needs must be had before I could steer Bill into his epic mood.
|
||||
|
||||
"Yes," said he, "I mind the time Timoteo's rope broke on that cow's horns while the calf was chasing you. You and that cow! I'd never forget it."
|
||||
|
||||
"The tropics," said I, "are a broad territory. What part of Cancer of Capricorn have you been honoring with a visit?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Down along China or Peru---or maybe the Argentine Confederacy," said Kansas Bill. "Anyway 'twas among a great race of people, off-colored but progressive. I was there three months."
|
||||
|
||||
"No doubt you are glad to be back among the truly great race," I surmised. "Especially among New Yorkers, the most progressive and independent citizens of any country in the world," I continued, with the fatuity of the provincial who has eaten the Broadway lotus.
|
||||
|
||||
"Do you want to start an argument?" asked Bill.
|
||||
|
||||
"Can there be one?" I answered.
|
||||
|
||||
"Has an Irishman humor, do you think?" asked he.
|
||||
|
||||
"I have an hour or two to spare," said I, looking at the café clock.
|
||||
|
||||
"Not that the Americans aren't a great commercial nation," conceded Bill. "But the fault laid with the people who wrote lies for fiction."
|
||||
|
||||
"What was this Irishman's name?" I asked.
|
||||
|
||||
"Was that last beer cold enough?" said he.
|
||||
|
||||
"I see there is talk of further outbreaks among the Russian peasants," I remarked.
|
||||
|
||||
"His name was Barney O'Connor," said Bill.
|
||||
|
||||
Thus, because of our ancient prescience of each other's trail of thought, we travelled ambiguously to the point where Kansas Bill's story began:
|
||||
|
||||
"I met O'Connor in a boardinghouse on the West Side. He invited me to his hall-room to have a drink, and we became like a dog and a cat that had been raised together. There he sat, a tall, fine, handsome man, with his feet against one wall and his back against the other, looking over a map. On the bed and sticking three feet out of it was a beautiful gold sword with tassels on it and rhinestones in the handle.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'What's this?' says I (for by that time we were well acquainted). 'The annual parade in vilification of the ex-snakes of Ireland? And what's the line of march? Up Broadway to Forty-second; thence east to McCarty's café; thence---'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Sit down on the washstand,' says O'Connor, 'and listen. And cast no perversions on the sword. 'Twas me father's in old Munster. And this map, Bowers, is no diagram of a holiday procession. If ye look again, ye'll see that it's the continent known as South America, comprising fourteen green, blue, red, and yellow countries, all crying out from time to time to be liberated from the yoke of the oppressor.'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'I know,' says I to O'Connor. 'The idea is a literary one. The ten-cent magazine stole it from "Ridpath's History of the World from the Sandstone Period to the Equator." You'll find it in every one of 'em. It's a continued story of a soldier of fortune, generally named O'Keefe, who gets to be dictator while the Spanish-American populace cries "*Cospetto!*" and other Italian maledictions. I misdoubt if it's ever been done. You're not thinking of trying that, are you, Barney?' I asks.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Bowers,' says he, 'you're a man of education and courage.'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'How can I deny it?' says I. 'Education runs in my family; and I have acquired courage by a hard struggle with life.'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'The O'Connors,' says he, 'are a warlike race. There is me father's sword; and here is the map. A life of inaction is not for me. The O'Connors were born to rule. 'Tis a ruler of men I must be.'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Barney,' I says to him, 'why don't you get on the force and settle down to a quiet life of carnage and corruption instead of roaming off to foreign parts? In what better way can you indulge your desire to subdue and maltreat the oppressed?'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Look again at the map,' says he, 'at the country I have the point of me knife on. 'Tis that one I have selected to aid and overthrow with me father's sword.'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'I see,' says I. 'It's the green one; and that does credit to your patriotism, and it's the smallest one; and that does credit to your judgment.'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Do ye accuse me of cowardice?' says Barney, turning pink.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'No man,' says I, 'who attacks and confiscates a country single-handed could be called a coward. The worst you can be charged with is plagiarism or imitation. If Anthony Hope and Roosevelt let you get away with it, nobody else will have any right to kick.'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'I'm not joking,' says O'Connor. 'And I've got \$1,500 cash to work the scheme with. I've taken a liking to you. Do you want it, or not?'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'I'm not working,' I told him; 'but how is it to be? Do I eat during the fomentation of the insurrection, or am I only to be Secretary of War after the country is conquered? Is it to be a pay envelope or only a portfolio?'
|
||||
|
||||
"I'll pay all expenses,' says O'Connor. 'I want a man I can trust. If we succeed you may pick out any appointment you want in the gift of the government.'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'All right, then,' says I. 'You can get me a bunch of draying contracts and then a quick-action consignment to a seat on the Supreme Court bench so I won't be in line for the presidency. The kind of cannon they chasten their presidents with in that country hurt too much. You can consider me on the payroll.'
|
||||
|
||||
"Two weeks afterward O'Connor and me took a steamer for the small, green, doomed country. We were three weeks on the trip. O'Connor said he had his plans all figured out in advance; but being the commanding general, it consorted with his dignity to keep the details concealed from his army and cabinet, commonly known as William T. Bowers. Three dollars a day was the price for which I joined the cause of liberating an undiscovered country from the ills that threatened or sustained it. Every Saturday night on the steamer I stood in line at parade rest, and O'Connor handed over the twenty-one dollars.
|
||||
|
||||
"The town we landed at was named Guayaquerita, so they told me. 'Not for me,' says I. 'It'll be little old Hilldale or Tompkinsville or Cherry Tree Corners when I speak of it. It's a clear case where Spelling Reform ought to butt in and disenvowel it.'
|
||||
|
||||
"But the town looked fine from the bay when we sailed in. It was white, with green ruching, and lace ruffles on the skirt when the surf slashed up on the sand. It looked as tropical and *dolce far ultra* as the pictures of Lake Ronkonkoma in the brochure of the passenger department of the Long Island Railroad.
|
||||
|
||||
"We went through the quarantine and customhouse indignities; and then O'Connor leads me to a 'dobe house on a street called 'The Avenue of the Dolorous Butterflies of the Individual and Collective Saints.' Ten feet wide it was, and knee-deep in alfalfa and cigar stumps.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Hooligan Alley,' says I, rechristening it.
|
||||
|
||||
" ' 'Twill be our headquarters,' says O'Connor. 'My agent here, Don Fernando Pacheco, secured it for us.'
|
||||
|
||||
"So in that house O'Connor and me established the revolutionary centre. In the front room we had ostensible things such as fruit, a guitar, and a table with a conch shell on it. In the back room O'Connor had his desk and a large looking-glass and his sword hid in a roll of straw matting. We slept on hammocks that we hung to hooks in the wall; and took our meals at the Hotel Ingles, a beanery run on the American plan by a German proprietor with Chinese cooking served à la Kansas City lunch counter.
|
||||
|
||||
"It seems that O'Connor really did have some sort of system planned out beforehand. He wrote plenty of letters; and every day or two some native gent would stroll round to headquarters and be shut up in the back room for half an hour with O'Connor and the interpreter. I noticed that when they went in they were always smoking eight-inch cigars and at peace with the world; but when they came out they would be folding up a ten- or twenty-dollar bill and cursing the government horribly.
|
||||
|
||||
"One evening after we had been in Guaya---in this town of Smellville-by-the-Sea---about a month, and me and O'Connor were sitting outside the door helping along old tempus fugit with rum and ice and limes, I says to him:
|
||||
|
||||
" 'If you'll excuse a patriot that don't exactly know what he's patronizing, for the question---what is your scheme for subjugating this country? Do you intend to plunge it into bloodshed, or do you mean to buy its votes peacefully and honorably at the polls?'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Bowers,' says he, 'ye're a fine little man and I intend to make great use of ye after the conflict. But ye do not understand statecraft. Already by now we have a network of strategy clutching with invisible fingers at the throat of the tyrant Calderas. We have agents at work in every town in the republic. The Liberal party is bound to win. On our secret lists we have the names of enough sympathizers to crush the administration forces at a single blow.'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'A straw vote,' says I, 'only shows which way the hot air blows.'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Who has accomplished this?' goes on O'Connor. 'I have. I have directed everything. The time was ripe when we came, so my agents inform me. The people are groaning under burdens of taxes and levies. Who will be their natural leader when they rise? Could it be anyone but meself? 'Twas only yesterday that Zaldas, our representative in the province of Durasnas, tells me that the people, in secret, already call me "El Library Door," which is the Spanish manner of saying "The Liberator." '
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Was Zaldas that maroon-colored old Aztec with a paper collar on and unbleached domestic shoes?' I asked.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'He was,' says O'Connor.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'I saw him tucking a yellow-back into his vest pocket as he came out,' says I. 'It may be,' says I, 'that they call you a library door, but they treat you more like the side door of a bank. But let us hope for the worst.'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'It has cost money, of course,' says O'Connor; 'but we'll have the country in our hands inside of a month.'
|
||||
|
||||
"In the evenings we walked about in the plaza and listened to the band playing and mingled with the populace at its distressing and obnoxious pleasures. There were thirteen vehicles belonging to the upper classes, mostly rockaways and old-style barouches, such as the mayor rides in at the unveiling of the new poorhouse at Milledgeville, Alabama. Round and round the desiccated fountain in the middle of the plaza they drove, and lifted their high silk hats to their friends. The common people walked around in barefooted bunches, puffing stogies that a Pittsburg millionaire wouldn't have chewed for a dry smoke on Ladies' Day at his club. And the grandest figure in the whole turnout was Barney O'Connor. Six foot two he stood in his Fifth Avenue clothes, with his eagle eye and his black moustache that tickled his ears. He was a born dictator and czar and hero and harrier of the human race. It looked to me that all eyes were turned upon O'Connor, and that every woman there loved him, and every man feared him. Once or twice I looked at him and thought of funnier things that had happened than his winning out in his game; and I began to feel like a Hidalgo de Officio de Grafto de South America myself. And then I would come down again to solid bottom and let my imagination gloat, as usual, upon the twenty-one American dollars due me on Saturday night.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Take note,' says O'Connor to me as thus we walked, 'of the mass of the people. Observe their oppressed and melancholy air. Can ye not see that they are ripe for revolt? Do ye not perceive that they are disaffected?'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'I do not,' says I. 'Nor disinfected either. I'm beginning to understand these people. When they look unhappy they're enjoying themselves. When they feel unhappy they go to sleep. They're not the kind of people to take an interest in revolutions.'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'They'll flock to our standard,' says O'Connor. 'Three thousand men in this town alone will spring to arms when the signal is given. I am assured of that. But everything is in secret. There is no chance for us to fail.'
|
||||
|
||||
"On Hooligan Alley, as I prefer to call the street our headquarters was on, there was a row of flat 'dobe houses with red tile roofs, some straw shacks full of Indians and dogs, and one two-story wooden house with balconies a little farther down. That was where General Tumbalo, the comandante and commander of the military forces, lived. Right across the street was a private residence built like a combination bake-oven and folding-bed. One day, O'Connor and me were passing it, single file, on the flange they called a sidewalk, when out of the window flies a big red rose. O'Connor, who is ahead, picks it up, presses it to his fifth rib, and bows to the ground. By *Carrambos*! that man certainly had the Irish drama chaunceyized. I looked around expecting to see the little boy and girl in white sateen ready to jump on his shoulder while he jolted their spinal columns and ribs together through a breakdown, and sang: 'Sleep, Little One, Sleep.'
|
||||
|
||||
"As I passed the window I glanced inside and caught a glimpse of a white dress and a pair of big, flashing black eyes and gleaming teeth under a dark lace mantilla.
|
||||
|
||||
"When we got back to our house O'Connor began to walk up and down the floor and twist his moustaches.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Did ye see her eyes, Bowers?' he asks me.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'I did,' says I, 'and I can see more than that. It's all coming out according to the storybooks. I knew there was something missing. 'Twas the love interest. What is it that comes in Chapter [VII]{type="z3998:roman"} to cheer the gallant Irish adventurer? Why, Love, of course---Love that makes the hat go around. At last we have the eyes of midnight hue and the rose flung from the barred window. Now, what comes next? The underground passage---the intercepted letter---the traitor in camp---the hero thrown into a dungeon---the mysterious message from the señorita---then the outburst---the fighting on the plaza---the---'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Don't be a fool,' says O'Connor, interrupting. 'But that's the only woman in the world for me, Bowers. The O'Connors are as quick to love as they are to fight. I shall wear that rose over me heart when I lead me men into action. For a good battle to be fought there must be some woman to give it power.'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Every time,' I agreed, 'if you want to have a good lively scrap. There's only one thing bothering me. In the novels the light-haired friend of the hero always gets killed. Think 'em all over that you've read, and you'll see that I'm right. I think I'll step down to the Botica Española and lay in a bottle of walnut stain before war is declared.'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'How will I find out her name?' says O'Connor, layin' his chin in his hand.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Why don't you go across the street and ask her?' says I.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Will ye never regard anything in life seriously?' says O'Connor, looking down at me like a schoolmaster.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Maybe she meant the rose for me,' I said, whistling the Spanish Fandango.
|
||||
|
||||
"For the first time since I'd known O'Connor, he laughed. He got up and roared and clapped his knees, and leaned against the wall till the tiles on the roof clattered to the noise of his lungs. He went into the back room and looked at himself in the glass and began and laughed all over from the beginning again. Then he looked at me and repeated himself. That's why I asked you if you thought an Irishman had any humor. He'd been doing farce comedy from the day I saw him without knowing it; and the first time he had an idea advanced to him with any intelligence in it he acted like two twelfths of the sextet in a 'Floradora' road company.
|
||||
|
||||
"The next afternoon he comes in with a triumphant smile and begins to pull something like ticker tape out of his pocket.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Great!' says I. 'This is something like home. How is Amalgamated Copper today?'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'I've got her name,' says O'Connor, and he reads off something like this: '[Dona Isabel Antonia Inez Lolita Carreras y Buencaminos y Monteleon]{lang="es"}. She lives with her mother,' explains O'Connor. 'Her father was killed in the last revolution. She is sure to be in sympathy with our cause.'
|
||||
|
||||
"And sure enough the next day she flung a little bunch of roses clear across the street into our door. O'Connor dived for it and found a piece of paper curled around a stem with a line in Spanish on it. He dragged the interpreter out of his corner and got him busy. The interpreter scratched his head, and gave us as a translation three best bets: 'Fortune had got a face like the man fighting'; 'Fortune looks like a brave man'; and 'Fortune favors the brave.' We put our money on the last one.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Do ye see?' says O'Connor. 'She intends to encourage me sword to save her country.'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'It looks to me like an invitation to supper,' says I.
|
||||
|
||||
"So every day this señorita sits behind the barred windows and exhausts a conservatory or two, one posy at a time. And O'Connor walks like a Dominecker rooster and swells his chest and swears to me he will win her by feats of arms and big deeds on the gory field of battle.
|
||||
|
||||
"By and by the revolution began to get ripe. One day O'Connor takes me into the back room and tells me all.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Bowers,' says he, 'at twelve o'clock one week from today the struggle will take place. It has pleased ye to find amusement and diversion in this project because ye have not sense enough to perceive that it is easily accomplished by a man of courage, intelligence, and historical superiority, such as meself. The whole world over,' says he, 'the O'Connors have ruled men, women, and nations. To subdue a small and indifferent country like this is a trifle. Ye see what little, barefooted manikins the men of it are. I could lick four of 'em single-handed.'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'No doubt,' says I. 'But could you lick six? And suppose they hurled an army of seventeen against you?'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Listen,' says O'Connor, 'to what will occur. At noon next Tuesday 25,000 patriots will rise up in the towns of the republic. The government will be absolutely unprepared. The public buildings will be taken, the regular army made prisoners, and the new administration set up. In the capital it will not be so easy on account of most of the army being stationed there. They will occupy the president's palace and the strongly fortified government buildings and stand a siege. But on the very day of the outbreak a body of our troops will begin a march to the capital from every town as soon as the local victory has been won. The thing is so well planned that it is an impossibility for us to fail. I meself will lead the troops from here. The new president will be Señor Espadas, now Minister of Finance in the present cabinet.'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'What do you get?' I asked.
|
||||
|
||||
" ' 'Twill be strange,' said O'Connor smiling, 'if I don't have all the jobs handed to me on a silver salver to pick what I choose. I've been the brains of the scheme, and when the fighting opens I guess I won't be in the rear rank. Who managed it so our troops could get arms smuggled into this country? Didn't I arrange it with a New York firm before I left there? Our financial agents inform me that 20,000 stands of Winchester rifles have been delivered a month ago at a secret place up coast and distributed among the towns. I tell you, Bowers, the game is already won.'
|
||||
|
||||
"Well, that kind of talk kind of shook my disbelief in the infallibility of the serious Irish gentleman soldier of fortune. It certainly seemed that the patriotic grafters had gone about the thing in a business way. I looked upon O'Connor with more respect, and began to figure on what kind of uniform I might wear as Secretary of War.
|
||||
|
||||
"Tuesday, the day set for the revolution, came around according to schedule. O'Connor said that a signal had been agreed upon for the uprising. There was an old cannon on the beach near the national warehouse. That had been secretly loaded and promptly at twelve o'clock was to be fired off. Immediately the revolutionists would seize their concealed arms, attack the comandante's troops in the cuartel, and capture the customhouse and all government property and supplies.
|
||||
|
||||
"I was nervous all the morning. And about eleven o'clock O'Connor became infused with the excitement and martial spirit of murder. He geared his father's sword around him, and walked up and down in the back room like a lion in the Zoo suffering from corns. I smoked a couple of dozen cigars, and decided on yellow stripes down the trouser legs of my uniform.
|
||||
|
||||
"At half-past eleven O'Connor asks me to take a short stroll through the streets to see if I could notice any signs of the uprising. I was back in fifteen minutes.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Did you hear anything?' he asks.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'I did,' says I. 'At first I thought it was drums. But it wasn't; it was snoring. Everybody in town's asleep.'
|
||||
|
||||
"O'Connor tears out his watch.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Fools!' says he. 'They've set the time right at the siesta hour when everybody takes a nap. But the cannon will wake 'em up. Everything will be all right, depend upon it.'
|
||||
|
||||
"Just at twelve o'clock we heard the sound of a cannon---**boom**!---shaking the whole town.
|
||||
|
||||
"O'Connor loosens his sword in its scabbard and jumps for the door. I went as far as the door and stood in it.
|
||||
|
||||
"People were sticking their heads out of doors and windows. But there was one grand sight that made the landscape look tame.
|
||||
|
||||
"General Tumbalo, the comandante, was rolling down the steps of his residential dugout, waving a five-foot sabre in his hand. He wore his cocked and plumed hat and his dress-parade coat covered with gold braid and buttons. Sky-blue pajamas, one rubber boot, and one red-plush slipper completed his makeup.
|
||||
|
||||
"The general had heard the cannon, and he puffed down the sidewalk toward the soldiers' barracks as fast as his rudely awakened two hundred pounds could travel.
|
||||
|
||||
"O'Connor sees him and lets out a battle-cry and draws his father's sword and rushes across the street and tackles the enemy.
|
||||
|
||||
"Right there in the street he and the general gave an exhibition of blacksmithing and butchery. Sparks flew from their blades, the general roared, and O'Connor gave the slogan of his race and proclivities.
|
||||
|
||||
"Then the general's sabre broke in two; and he took to his ginger-colored heels crying out, '*Policios*,' at every jump. O'Connor chased him a block, imbued with the sentiment of manslaughter, and slicing buttons off the general's coat tails with the paternal weapon. At the corner five barefooted policemen in cotton undershirts and straw fiats climbed over O'Connor and subjugated him according to the municipal statutes.
|
||||
|
||||
"They brought him past the late revolutionary headquarters on the way to jail. I stood in the door. A policeman had him by each hand and foot, and they dragged him on his back through the grass like a turtle. Twice they stopped, and the odd policeman took another's place while he rolled a cigarette. The great soldier of fortune turned his head and looked at me as they passed. I blushed, and lit another cigar. The procession passed on, and at ten minutes past twelve everybody had gone back to sleep again.
|
||||
|
||||
"In the afternoon the interpreter came around and smiled as he laid his hand on the big red jar we usually kept ice-water in.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'The iceman didn't call today,' says I. 'What's the matter with everything, Sancho?'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Ah, yes,' says the liver-colored linguist. 'They just tell me in the town. Verree bad act that Señor O'Connor make fight with General Tumbalo. Yes, general Tumbalo great soldier and big mans.'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'What'll they do to Mr. O'Connor?' I asks.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'I talk little while presently with the *Juez de la Paz*---what you call Justice-with-the-peace,' says Sancho. 'He tell me it verree bad crime that one Señor Americano try kill General Tumbalo. He say they keep señor O'Connor in jail six months; then have trial and shoot him with guns. Verree sorree.'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'How about this revolution that was to be pulled off?' I asks.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Oh,' says this Sancho, 'I think too hot weather for revolution. Revolution better in wintertime. Maybe so next winter. *Quién sabe?*'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'But the cannon went off,' says I. 'The signal was given.'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'That big sound?' says Sancho, grinning. 'The boiler in ice factory he blow up---**boom**! Wake everybody up from siesta. Verree sorree. No ice. Mucho hot day.'
|
||||
|
||||
"About sunset I went over to the jail, and they let me talk to O'Connor through the bars.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'What's the news, Bowers?' says he. 'Have we taken the town? I've been expecting a rescue party all the afternoon. I haven't heard any firing. Has any word been received from the capital?'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Take it easy, Barney,' says I. 'I think there's been a change of plans. There's something more important to talk about. Have you any money?'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'I have not,' says O'Connor. 'The last dollar went to pay our hotel bill yesterday. Did our troops capture the customhouse? There ought be plenty of government money there.'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Segregate your mind from battles,' says I. 'I've been making inquiries. You're to be shot six months from date for assault and battery. I'm expecting to receive fifty years at hard labor for vagrancy. All they furnish you while you're a prisoner is water. You depend on your friends for food. I'll see what I can do.'
|
||||
|
||||
"I went away and found a silver Chile dollar in an old vest of O'Connor's. I took him some fried fish and rice for his supper. In the morning I went down to a lagoon and had a drink of water, and then went back to the jail. O'Connor had a porterhouse steak look in his eye.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Barney,' says I, 'I've found a pond full of the finest kind of water. It's the grandest, sweetest, purest water in the world. Say the word and I'll go fetch you a bucket of it and you can throw this vile government stuff out the window. I'll do anything I can for a friend.'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Has it come to this?' says O'Connor, raging up and down his cell. 'Am I to be starved to death and then shot? I'll make those traitors feel the weight of an O'Connor's hand when I get out of this.' And then he comes to the bars and speaks softer. 'Has nothing been heard from Dona Isabel?' he asks. 'Though everyone else in the world fail,' says he, 'I trust those eyes of hers. She will find a way to effect my release. Do ye think ye could communicate with her? One word from her---even a rose would make me sorrow light. But don't let her know except with the utmost delicacy, Bowers. These high-bred Castilians are sensitive and proud.'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Well said, Barney,' says I. 'You've given me an idea. I'll report later. Something's got to be pulled off quick, or we'll both starve.'
|
||||
|
||||
"I walked out and down to Hooligan Alley, and then on the other side of the street. As I went past the window of [Dona Isabel Antonia Concha Regalia]{lang="es"}, out flies the rose as usual and hits me on the ear.
|
||||
|
||||
"The door was open, and I took off my hat and walked in. It wasn't very light; inside, but there she sat in a rocking-chair by the window smoking a black cheroot. And when I got closer I saw that she was about thirty-nine, and had never seen a straight front in her life. I sat down on the arm of her chair, and took the cheroot out of her mouth and stole a kiss.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Hullo, Izzy,' I says. 'Excuse my unconventionality, but I feel like I have known you for a month. Whose Izzy is oo?'
|
||||
|
||||
"The lady ducked her head under her mantilla, and drew in a long breath. I thought she was going to scream, but with all that intake of air she only came out with: 'Me likee Americanos.'
|
||||
|
||||
"As soon as she said that, I knew that O'Connor and me would be doing things with a knife and fork before the day was over. I drew a chair beside her, and inside of half an hour we were engaged. Then I took my hat and said I must go out for a while.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'You come back?' says Izzy, in alarm.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Me go bring preacher,' says I. 'Come back twenty minutes. We marry now. How you likee?'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Marry today?' says Izzy. 'Good!'
|
||||
|
||||
"I went down on the beach to the United States consul's shack. He was a grizzly man, eighty-two pounds, smoked glasses, five foot eleven, pickled. He was playing chess with an india-rubber man in white clothes.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Excuse me for interrupting,' says I, 'but can you tell me how a man could get married quick?'
|
||||
|
||||
"The consul gets up and fingers in a pigeonhole.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'I believe I had a license to perform the ceremony myself, a year or two ago,' he said. 'I'll look, and---'
|
||||
|
||||
"I caught hold of his arm.
|
||||
|
||||
" '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.'
|
||||
|
||||
"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.
|
||||
|
||||
"That evening Mrs. 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 Mrs. William T. B.
|
||||
|
||||
"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.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'That big, oogly man,' said Izzy. 'But all right---he your friend.'
|
||||
|
||||
"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?'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Hist!' says I, slipping the rose between the bars. 'She sends you this. She bids you take courage. At nightfall two masked men brought it to the ruined château in the orange grove. How did you like that goat hash, Barney?'
|
||||
|
||||
"O'Connor pressed the rose to his lips. 'This is more to me than all the food in the world,' says he. 'But the supper was fine. Where did you raise it?'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'I've negotiated a standoff at a delicatessen hut downtown,' I tells him. 'Rest easy. If there's anything to be done I'll do it.'
|
||||
|
||||
"So things went along that way for some weeks. Izzy was a great cook; and if she had had a little more poise of character and smoked a little better brand of tobacco we might have drifted into some sense of responsibility for the honor I had conferred on her. But as time went on I began to hunger for the sight of a real lady standing before me in a streetcar. All I was staying in that land of bilk and money for was because I couldn't get away, and I thought it no more than decent to stay and see O'Connor shot.
|
||||
|
||||
"One day our old interpreter drops around and after smoking an hour says that the judge of the peace sent him to request me to call on him. I went to his office in a lemon grove on a hill at the edge of the town; and there I had a surprise. I expected to see one of the usual cinnamon-colored natives in congress gaiters and one of Pizzaro's cast-off hats. What I saw was an elegant gentleman of a slightly claybank complexion sitting in an upholstered leather chair, sipping a highball and reading Mrs. Humphry Ward. I had smuggled into my brain a few words of Spanish by the help of Izzy, and I began to remark in a rich Andalusian brogue:
|
||||
|
||||
" '*Buenas dias, señor. Yo tengo---yo tengo---*'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Oh, sit down, Mr. Bowers,' says he. 'I spent eight years in your country in colleges and law schools. Let me mix you a highball. Lemon peel, or not?'
|
||||
|
||||
"Thus we got along. In about half an hour I was beginning to tell him about the scandal in our family when Aunt Elvira ran away with a Cumberland Presbyterian preacher. Then he says to me:
|
||||
|
||||
" 'I sent for you, Mr. Bowers, to let you know that you can have your friend Mr. O'Connor now. Of course we had to make a show of punishing him on account of his attack on General Tumbalo. It is arranged that he shall be released tomorrow night. You and he will be conveyed on board the fruit steamer *Voyager*, bound for New York, which lies in the harbor. Your passage will be arranged for.'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'One moment, judge,' says I; 'that revolution---'
|
||||
|
||||
"The judge lays back in his chair and howls.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Why,' says he presently, 'that was all a little joke fixed up by the boys around the courtroom, and one or two of our cut-ups, and a few clerks in the stores. The town is bursting its sides with laughing. The boys made themselves up to be conspirators, and they---what you call it?---stick Señor O'Connor for his money. It is very funny.'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'It was,' says I. 'I saw the joke all along. I'll take another highball, if your Honor don't mind.'
|
||||
|
||||
"The next evening just at dark a couple of soldiers brought O'Connor down to the beach, where I was waiting under a coconut-tree.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Hist!' says I in his ear: 'Dona Isabel has arranged our escape. Not a word!'
|
||||
|
||||
"They rowed us in a boat out to a little steamer that smelled of [table d'hôte]{lang="fr"} salad oil and bone phosphate.
|
||||
|
||||
"The great, mellow, tropical moon was rising as we steamed away. O'Connor leaned on the taffrail or rear balcony of the ship and gazed silently at Guaya---at Buncoville-on-the-Beach.
|
||||
|
||||
"He had the red rose in his hand.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'She will wait,' I heard him say. 'Eyes like hers never deceive. But I shall see her again. Traitors cannot keep an O'Connor down forever.'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'You talk like a sequel,' says I. 'But in Volume [II]{type="z3998:roman"} please omit the light-haired friend who totes the grub to the hero in his dungeon cell.'
|
||||
|
||||
"And thus reminiscing, we came back to New York."
|
||||
|
||||
There was a little silence broken only by the familiar roar of the streets after Kansas Bill Bowers ceased talking.
|
||||
|
||||
"Did O'Connor ever go back?" I asked.
|
||||
|
||||
"He attained his heart's desire," said Bill. "Can you walk two blocks? I'll show you."
|
||||
|
||||
He led me eastward and down a flight of stairs that was covered by a curious-shaped glowing, pagoda-like structure. Signs and figures on the tiled walls and supporting columns attested that we were in the Grand Central station of the subway. Hundreds of people were on the midway platform.
|
||||
|
||||
An uptown express dashed up and halted. It was crowded. There was a rush for it by a still larger crowd.
|
||||
|
||||
Towering above everyone there a magnificent, broad-shouldered, athletic man leaped into the centre of the struggle. Men and women he seized in either hand and hurled them like manikins toward the open gates of the train.
|
||||
|
||||
Now and then some passenger with a shred of soul and self-respect left to him turned to offer remonstrance; but the blue uniform on the towering figure, the fierce and conquering glare of his eye and the ready impact of his ham-like hands glued together the lips that would have spoken complaint.
|
||||
|
||||
When the train was full, then he exhibited to all who might observe and admire his irresistible genius as a ruler of men. With his knees, with his elbows, with his shoulders, with his resistless feet he shoved, crushed, slammed, heaved, kicked, flung, pounded the overplus of passengers aboard. Then with the sounds of its wheels drowned by the moans, shrieks, prayers, and curses of its unfortunate crew, the express dashed away.
|
||||
|
||||
"That's him. Ain't he a wonder?" said Kansas Bill admiringly. "That tropical country wasn't the place for him. I wish the distinguished traveller, writer, war correspondent, and playright, Richmond Hobson Davis, could see him now. O'Connor ought to be dramatized."
|
||||
72
src/epub/text/a-sacrifice-hit.md
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src/epub/text/a-sacrifice-hit.md
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@ -0,0 +1,72 @@
|
||||
A Sacrifice Hit {#a-sacrifice-hit type="title"}
|
||||
---------------
|
||||
|
||||
The editor of the *Hearthstone Magazine* has his own ideas about the selection of manuscript for his publication. His theory is no secret; in fact, he will expound it to you willingly sitting at his mahogany desk, smiling benignantly and tapping his knee gently with his gold-rimmed eyeglasses.
|
||||
|
||||
"The *Hearthstone*," he will say, "does not employ a staff of readers. We obtain opinions of the manuscripts submitted to us directly from types of the various classes of our readers."
|
||||
|
||||
That is the editor's theory; and this is the way he carries it out:
|
||||
|
||||
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."
|
||||
|
||||
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.
|
||||
|
||||
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.
|
||||
|
||||
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 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.
|
||||
|
||||
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.
|
||||
|
||||
"Was there anything---er---that---er---you particularly fancied in the stories you are going to turn in?" asked Slayton with a thumping heart.
|
||||
|
||||
"There was one---a novelette, that I liked so much," said his wife. "I haven't read anything in years that I thought was half as nice and true to life."
|
||||
|
||||
That afternoon Slayton hurried down to the *Hearthstone* office. He felt that his reward was close at hand. With a novelette in the *Hearthstone*, literary reputation would soon be his.
|
||||
|
||||
The office boy met him at the railing in the outer office. It was not for unsuccessful authors to hold personal colloquy with the editor except at rare intervals.
|
||||
|
||||
Slayton, hugging himself internally, was nursing in his heart the exquisite hope of being able to crush the office boy with his forthcoming success.
|
||||
|
||||
He inquired concerning his novelette. The office boy went into the sacred precincts and brought forth a large envelope, thick with more than the bulk of a thousand checks.
|
||||
|
||||
"The boss told me to tell you he's sorry," said the boy, "but your manuscript ain't available for the magazine."
|
||||
|
||||
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:
|
||||
|
||||
"The ⸻ you say!"
|
||||
106
src/epub/text/a-service-of-love.md
Normal file
106
src/epub/text/a-service-of-love.md
Normal file
@ -0,0 +1,106 @@
|
||||
A Service of Love {#a-service-of-love type="title"}
|
||||
-----------------
|
||||
|
||||
When one loves one's Art no service seems too hard.
|
||||
|
||||
That is our premise. This story shall draw a conclusion from it, and show at the same time that the premise is incorrect. That will be a new thing in logic, and a feat in story-telling somewhat older than the great wall of China.
|
||||
|
||||
Joe Larrabee came out of the post-oak flats of the Middle West pulsing with a genius for pictorial art. At six he drew a picture of the town pump with a prominent citizen passing it hastily. This effort was framed and hung in the drug store window by the side of the ear of corn with an uneven number of rows. At twenty he left for New York with a flowing necktie and a capital tied up somewhat closer.
|
||||
|
||||
Delia Caruthers did things in six octaves so promisingly in a pine-tree village in the South that her relatives chipped in enough in her chip hat for her to go "North" and "finish." They could not see her f---, but that is our story.
|
||||
|
||||
Joe and Delia met in an atelier where a number of art and music students had gathered to discuss chiaroscuro, Wagner, music, Rembrandt's works, pictures, Waldteufel, wall paper, Chopin and Oolong.
|
||||
|
||||
Joe and Delia became enamoured one of the other, or each of the other, as you please, and in a short time were married---for (see above), when one loves one's Art no service seems too hard.
|
||||
|
||||
Mr. and Mrs. Larrabee began housekeeping in a flat. It was a lonesome flat---something like the A sharp way down at the left-hand end of the keyboard. And they were happy; for they had their Art, and they had each other. And my advice to the rich young man would be---sell all thou hast, and give it to the poor---janitor for the privilege of living in a flat with your Art and your Delia.
|
||||
|
||||
Flat-dwellers shall endorse my dictum that theirs is the only true happiness. If a home is happy it cannot fit too close---let the dresser collapse and become a billiard table; let the mantel turn to a rowing machine, the escritoire to a spare bedchamber, the washstand to an upright piano; let the four walls come together, if they will, so you and your Delia are between. But if home be the other kind, let it be wide and long---enter you at the Golden Gate, hang your hat on Hatteras, your cape on Cape Horn and go out by the Labrador.
|
||||
|
||||
Joe was painting in the class of the great Magister---you know his fame. His fees are high; his lessons are light---his highlights have brought him renown. Delia was studying under Rosenstock---you know his repute as a disturber of the piano keys.
|
||||
|
||||
They were mighty happy as long as their money lasted. So is every---but I will not be cynical. Their aims were very clear and defined. Joe was to become capable very soon of turning out pictures that old gentlemen with thin side-whiskers and thick pocketbooks would sandbag one another in his studio for the privilege of buying. Delia was to become familiar and then contemptuous with Music, so that when she saw the orchestra seats and boxes unsold she could have sore throat and lobster in a private dining-room and refuse to go on the stage.
|
||||
|
||||
But the best, in my opinion, was the home life in the little flat---the ardent, voluble chats after the day's study; the cozy dinners and fresh, light breakfasts; the interchange of ambitions---ambitions interwoven each with the other's or else inconsiderable---the mutual help and inspiration; and---overlook my artlessness---stuffed olives and cheese sandwiches at 11 p.m.
|
||||
|
||||
But after a while Art flagged. It sometimes does, even if some switchman doesn't flag it. Everything going out and nothing coming in, as the vulgarians say. Money was lacking to pay Mr. Magister and Herr Rosenstock their prices. When one loves one's Art no service seems too hard. So, Delia said she must give music lessons to keep the chafing dish bubbling.
|
||||
|
||||
For two or three days she went out canvassing for pupils. One evening she came home elated.
|
||||
|
||||
"Joe, dear," she said, gleefully, "I've a pupil. And, oh, the loveliest people! General---General A. B. Pinkney's daughter---on Seventy-first Street. Such a splendid house, Joe---you ought to see the front door! Byzantine I think you would call it. And inside! Oh, Joe, I never saw anything like it before.
|
||||
|
||||
"My pupil is his daughter Clementina. I dearly love her already. She's a delicate thing---dresses always in white; and the sweetest, simplest manners! Only eighteen years old. I'm to give three lessons a week; and, just think, Joe! \$5 a lesson. I don't mind it a bit; for when I get two or three more pupils I can resume my lessons with Herr Rosenstock. Now, smooth out that wrinkle between your brows, dear, and let's have a nice supper."
|
||||
|
||||
"That's all right for you, Dele," said Joe, attacking a can of peas with a carving knife and a hatchet, "but how about me? Do you think I'm going to let you hustle for wages while I philander in the regions of high art? Not by the bones of Benvenuto Cellini! I guess I can sell papers or lay cobblestones, and bring in a dollar or two."
|
||||
|
||||
Delia came and hung about his neck.
|
||||
|
||||
"Joe, dear, you are silly. You must keep on at your studies. It is not as if I had quit my music and gone to work at something else. While I teach I learn. I am always with my music. And we can live as happily as millionaires on \$15 a week. You mustn't think of leaving Mr. Magister."
|
||||
|
||||
"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."
|
||||
|
||||
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.
|
||||
|
||||
"I wish you could see the wainscoting in that drawing-room, Joe! And those Astrakhan rug portières. And Clementina has such a funny little cough. I hope she is stronger than she looks. Oh, I really am getting attached to her, she is so gentle and high bred. Gen. Pinkney's brother was once Minister to Bolivia."
|
||||
|
||||
And then Joe, with the air of a Monte Cristo, drew forth a ten, a five, a two and a one---all legal tender notes---and laid them beside Delia's earnings.
|
||||
|
||||
"Sold that watercolour of the obelisk to a man from Peoria," he announced overwhelmingly.
|
||||
|
||||
"Don't joke with me," said Delia, "not from Peoria!"
|
||||
|
||||
"All the way. I wish you could see him, Dele. Fat man with a woollen muffler and a quill toothpick. He saw the sketch in Tinkle's window and thought it was a windmill at first. He was game, though, and bought it anyhow. He ordered another---an oil sketch of the Lackawanna freight depot---to take back with him. Music lessons! Oh, I guess Art is still in it."
|
||||
|
||||
"I'm so glad you've kept on," said Delia, heartily. "You're bound to win, dear. Thirty-three dollars! We never had so much to spend before. We'll have oysters tonight."
|
||||
|
||||
"And filet mignon with champignons," said Joe. "Where is the olive fork?"
|
||||
|
||||
On the next Saturday evening Joe reached home first. He spread his \$18 on the parlour table and washed what seemed to be a great deal of dark paint from his hands.
|
||||
|
||||
Half an hour later Delia arrived, her right hand tied up in a shapeless bundle of wraps and bandages.
|
||||
|
||||
"How is this?" asked Joe after the usual greetings. Delia laughed, but not very joyously.
|
||||
|
||||
"Clementina," she explained, "insisted upon a Welsh rabbit after her lesson. She is such a queer girl. Welsh rabbits at 5 in the afternoon. The General was there. You should have seen him run for the chafing dish, Joe, just as if there wasn't a servant in the house. I know Clementina isn't in good health; she is so nervous. In serving the rabbit she spilled a great lot of it, boiling hot, over my hand and wrist. It hurt awfully, Joe. And the dear girl was so sorry! But Gen. Pinkney!---Joe, that old man nearly went distracted. He rushed downstairs and sent somebody---they said the furnace man or somebody in the basement---out to a drug store for some oil and things to bind it up with. It doesn't hurt so much now."
|
||||
|
||||
"What's this?" asked Joe, taking the hand tenderly and pulling at some white strands beneath the bandages.
|
||||
|
||||
"It's something soft," said Delia, "that had oil on it. Oh, Joe, did you sell another sketch?" She had seen the money on the table.
|
||||
|
||||
"Did I?" said Joe; "just ask the man from Peoria. He got his depot today, and he isn't sure but he thinks he wants another parkscape and a view on the Hudson. What time this afternoon did you burn your hand, Dele?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Five o'clock, I think," said Dele, plaintively. "The iron---I mean the rabbit came off the fire about that time. You ought to have seen Gen. Pinkney, Joe, when---"
|
||||
|
||||
"Sit down here a moment, Dele," said Joe. He drew her to the couch, sat beside her and put his arm across her shoulders.
|
||||
|
||||
"What have you been doing for the last two weeks, Dele?" he asked.
|
||||
|
||||
She braved it for a moment or two with an eye full of love and stubbornness, and murmured a phrase or two vaguely of Gen. Pinkney; but at length down went her head and out came the truth and tears.
|
||||
|
||||
"I couldn't get any pupils," she confessed. "And I couldn't bear to have you give up your lessons; and I got a place ironing shirts in that big Twenty-fourth Street laundry. And I think I did very well to make up both General Pinkney and Clementina, don't you, Joe? And when a girl in the laundry set down a hot iron on my hand this afternoon I was all the way home making up that story about the Welsh rabbit. You're not angry, are you, Joe? And if I hadn't got the work you mightn't have sold your sketches to that man from Peoria."
|
||||
|
||||
"He wasn't from Peoria," said Joe, slowly.
|
||||
|
||||
"Well, it doesn't matter where he was from. How clever you are, Joe---and---kiss me, Joe---and what made you ever suspect that I wasn't giving music lessons to Clementina?"
|
||||
|
||||
"I didn't," said Joe, "until tonight. And I wouldn't have then, only I sent up this cotton waste and oil from the engine-room this afternoon for a girl upstairs who had her hand burned with a smoothing-iron. I've been firing the engine in that laundry for the last two weeks."
|
||||
|
||||
"And then you didn't---"
|
||||
|
||||
"My purchaser from Peoria," said Joe, "and Gen. Pinkney are both creations of the same art---but you wouldn't call it either painting or music."
|
||||
|
||||
And then they both laughed, and Joe began:
|
||||
|
||||
"When one loves one's Art no service seems---"
|
||||
|
||||
But Delia stopped him with her hand on his lips. "No," she said---"just 'When one loves.' "
|
||||
30
src/epub/text/a-slight-mistake.md
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30
src/epub/text/a-slight-mistake.md
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@ -0,0 +1,30 @@
|
||||
A Slight Mistake {#a-slight-mistake type="title"}
|
||||
----------------
|
||||
|
||||
An ordinary-looking man wearing a last season's negligee shirt stepped into the business office and unrolled a strip of manuscript some three feet long.
|
||||
|
||||
"I wanted to see you about this little thing I want to publish in the paper. There are fifteen verses besides the other reading matter. The verses are on spring. My handwriting is a trifle illegible and I may have to read it over to you. This is the way it runs:
|
||||
|
||||
> Spring > > The air is full of gentle zephyrs,\ > [Grass is growing green;]{.i1}\ > Winter now has surely left us.\ > [Spring has come, I ween.]{.i1} > > When the sun has set, the vapors\ > [Rise from out the meadows low;]{.i1}\ > When the stars are lit like tapers\ > [Then the night winds chilly blow.]{.i1}
|
||||
|
||||
"Take that stuff up to the editorial department," said the business manager shortly.
|
||||
|
||||
"I have been up there already," said the ordinary-looking man, "and they sent me down here. This will fill about a column. I want to talk with you about the price. The last verse runs this way:
|
||||
|
||||
> Then it is that weakening languors\ > [Thicken in our veins the blood]{.i1}\ > And we must ward off these dangers\ > [Ere we find our names are "Mud."]{.i1}
|
||||
|
||||
"The reading matter that follows is, as you see, typewritten, and easily read. Now, I---"
|
||||
|
||||
"D⸺n it," said the business manager. "Don't you come in here reading your old spring poems to me. I've been bored already today with a lot of ink and paper drummers. Why don't you go to work instead of fooling away your time on rot like that?"
|
||||
|
||||
"I didn't mean to bother you," said the other man, rolling up his manuscript. "Is there another paper in the city?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Yes, there's a few. Have you got a family?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Yes, sir."
|
||||
|
||||
"Then why in thunder don't you get into some decent business, instead of going around writing confounded trash and reading it to busy people? Ain't you got any manhood about you?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Excuse me for troubling you," said the ordinary-looking man, as he walked toward the door. "I tell you how it is. I cleared over \$80,000 last year on these little things I write. I am placing my spring and summer ads for the Sarsaparilla firm of which I am a member. I had decided to place about \$1,000 in advertising in this town. I will see the other papers you spoke of. Good morning!"
|
||||
|
||||
The business manager has since become so cautious that all the amateur poets in the city now practice reading their verses to him, and he listens without a murmur.
|
||||
114
src/epub/text/a-snapshot-at-the-president.md
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114
src/epub/text/a-snapshot-at-the-president.md
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@ -0,0 +1,114 @@
|
||||
A Snapshot at the President {#a-snapshot-at-the-president type="title"}
|
||||
---------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
> (It will be remembered that about a month ago there were special rates > offered to the public for a round trip to the City of Washington. The > price of the ticket being exceedingly low, we secured a loan of twenty > dollars from a public-spirited citizen of Austin, by mortgaging our > press and cow, with the additional security of our brother's name and > a slight draught on Major Hutchinson for \$4,000. > > We purchased a round trip ticket, two loaves of Vienna bread, and > quite a large piece of cheese, which we handed to a member of our > reportorial staff, with instructions to go to Washington, interview > President Cleveland, and get a scoop, if possible, on all other Texas > papers. > > Our reporter came in yesterday morning, via the Manor dirt road, with > a large piece of folded cotton bagging tied under each foot. > > It seems that he lost his ticket in Washington, and having divided the > Vienna bread and cheese with some disappointed office seekers who were > coming home by the same route, he arrived home hungry, desiring food, > and with quite an appetite. > > Although somewhat late, we give his description of his interview with > President Cleveland.)
|
||||
|
||||
I am chief reporter on the staff of *The Rolling Stone*.
|
||||
|
||||
About a month ago the managing editor came into the room where we were both sitting engaged in conversation and said:
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh, by the way, go to Washington and interview President Cleveland."
|
||||
|
||||
"All right," said I. "Take care of yourself."
|
||||
|
||||
Five minutes later I was seated in a palatial drawing-room car bounding up and down quite a good deal on the elastic plush-covered seat.
|
||||
|
||||
I shall not linger upon the incidents of the journey. I was given carte blanche to provide myself with every comfort, and to spare no expense that I could meet. For the regalement of my inside the preparations had been lavish. Both Vienna and Germany had been called upon to furnish dainty viands suitable to my palate.
|
||||
|
||||
I changed cars and shirts once only on the journey. A stranger wanted me to also change a two-dollar bill, but I haughtily declined.
|
||||
|
||||
The scenery along the entire road to Washington is diversified. You find a portion of it on one hand by looking out of the window, and upon turning the gaze upon the other side the eye is surprised and delighted by discovering some more of it.
|
||||
|
||||
There were a great many Knights of Pythias on the train. One of them insisted upon my giving him the grip I had with me, but he was unsuccessful.
|
||||
|
||||
On arriving in Washington, which city I instantly recognized from reading the history of George, I left the car so hastily that I forgot to fee Mr. Pullman's representative.
|
||||
|
||||
I went immediately to the Capitol.
|
||||
|
||||
In a spirit of jeu d'esprit I had had made a globular representation of a "rolling stone." It was of wood, painted a dark color, and about the size of a small cannon ball. I had attached to it a twisted pendant about three inches long to indicate moss. I had resolved to use this in place of a card, thinking people would readily recognize it as an emblem of my paper.
|
||||
|
||||
I had studied the arrangement of the Capitol, and walked directly to Mr. Cleveland's private office.
|
||||
|
||||
I met a servant in the hall, and held up my card to him smilingly.
|
||||
|
||||
I saw his hair rise on his head, and he ran like a deer to the door, and, lying down, rolled down the long flight of steps into the yard.
|
||||
|
||||
"Ah," said I to myself, "he is one of our delinquent subscribers."
|
||||
|
||||
A little farther along I met the President's private secretary, who had been writing a tariff letter and cleaning a duck gun for Mr. Cleveland.
|
||||
|
||||
When I showed him the emblem of my paper he sprang out of a high window into a hothouse filled with rare flowers.
|
||||
|
||||
This somewhat surprised me.
|
||||
|
||||
I examined myself. My hat was on straight, and there was nothing at all alarming about my appearance.
|
||||
|
||||
I went into the President's private office.
|
||||
|
||||
He was alone. He was conversing with Tom Ochiltree. Mr. Ochiltree saw my little sphere, and with a loud scream rushed out of the room.
|
||||
|
||||
President Cleveland slowly turned his eyes upon me.
|
||||
|
||||
He also saw what I had in my hand, and said in a husky voice:
|
||||
|
||||
"Wait a moment, please."
|
||||
|
||||
He searched his coat pocket, and presently found a piece of paper on which some words were written.
|
||||
|
||||
He laid this on his desk and rose to his feet, raised one hand above him, and said in deep tones:
|
||||
|
||||
"I die for Free Trade, my country, and---and---all that sort of thing."
|
||||
|
||||
I saw him jerk a string, and a camera snapped on another table, taking our picture as we stood.
|
||||
|
||||
"Don't die in the House, Mr. President," I said. "Go over into the Senate Chamber."
|
||||
|
||||
"Peace, murderer!" he said. "Let your bomb do its deadly work."
|
||||
|
||||
"I'm no bum," I said, with spirit. "I represent *The Rolling Stone*, of Austin, Texas, and this I hold in my hand does the same thing, but, it seems, unsuccessfully."
|
||||
|
||||
The President sank back in his chair greatly relieved.
|
||||
|
||||
"I thought you were a dynamiter," he said. "Let me see; Texas! Texas!" He walked to a large wall map of the United States, and placing his finger thereon at about the location of Idaho, ran it down in a zigzag, doubtful way until he reached Texas.
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh, yes, here it is. I have so many things on my mind, I sometimes forget what I should know well.
|
||||
|
||||
"Let's see; Texas? Oh, yes, that's the State where Ida Wells and a lot of colored people lynched a socialist named Hogg for raising a riot at a camp-meeting. So you are from Texas. I know a man from Texas named Dave Culberson. How is Dave and his family? Has Dave got any children?"
|
||||
|
||||
"He has a boy in Austin," I said, "working around the Capitol."
|
||||
|
||||
"Who is President of Texas now?"
|
||||
|
||||
"I don't exactly---"
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh, excuse me. I forgot again. I thought I heard some talk of its having been made a Republic again."
|
||||
|
||||
"Now, Mr. Cleveland," I said, "you answer some of my questions."
|
||||
|
||||
A curious film came over the President's eyes. He sat stiffly in his chair like an automaton.
|
||||
|
||||
"Proceed," he said.
|
||||
|
||||
"What do you think of the political future of this country?"
|
||||
|
||||
"I will state that political exigencies demand emergentistical promptitude, and while the United States is indissoluble in conception and invisible in intent, treason and internecine disagreement have ruptured the consanguinity of patriotism, and---"
|
||||
|
||||
"One moment, Mr. President," I interrupted; "would you mind changing that cylinder? I could have gotten all that from the American Press Association if I had wanted plate matter. Do you wear flannels? What is your favorite poet, brand of catsup, bird, flower, and what are you going to do when you are out of a job?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Young man," said Mr. Cleveland, sternly, "you are going a little too far. My private affairs do not concern the public."
|
||||
|
||||
I begged his pardon, and he recovered his good humor in a moment.
|
||||
|
||||
"You Texans have a great representative in Senator Mills," he said. "I think the greatest two speeches I ever heard were his address before the Senate advocating the removal of the tariff on salt and increasing it on chloride of sodium."
|
||||
|
||||
"Tom Ochiltree is also from our State," I said.
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh, no, he isn't. You must be mistaken," replied Mr. Cleveland, "for he says he is. I really must go down to Texas some time, and see the State. I want to go up into the Panhandle and see if it is really shaped like it is on the map."
|
||||
|
||||
"Well, I must be going," said I.
|
||||
|
||||
"When you get back to Texas," said the President, rising, "you must write to me. Your visit has awakened in me quite an interest in your State which I fear I have not given the attention it deserves. There are many historical and otherwise interesting places that you have revived in my recollection---the Alamo, where Davy Jones fell; Goliad, Sam Houston's surrender to Montezuma, the petrified boom found near Austin, five-cent cotton and the Siamese Democratic platform born in Dallas. I should so much like to see the gals in Galveston, and go to the wake in Waco. I am glad I met you. Turn to the left as you enter the hall and keep straight on out." I made a low bow to signify that the interview was at an end, and withdrew immediately. I had no difficulty in leaving the building as soon as I was outside.
|
||||
|
||||
I hurried downtown in order to obtain refreshments at some place where viands had been placed upon the free list.
|
||||
|
||||
I shall not describe my journey back to Austin. I lost my return ticket somewhere in the White House, and was forced to return home in a manner not especially beneficial to my shoes. Everybody was well in Washington when I left, and all send their love.
|
||||
26
src/epub/text/a-sporting-interest.md
Normal file
26
src/epub/text/a-sporting-interest.md
Normal file
@ -0,0 +1,26 @@
|
||||
A Sporting Interest {#a-sporting-interest type="title"}
|
||||
-------------------
|
||||
|
||||
It is a busy scene in the rear of one of Houston's greatest manufacturing establishments. A number of workmen are busy raising some heavy object by means of blocks and tackles. Somehow, a rope is worn in two by friction, and a derrick falls. There is a hurried scrambling out of the way, a loud jarring crash, a cloud of dust, and a man stretched out dead beneath the heavy timbers.
|
||||
|
||||
The others gather round and with herculean efforts drag the beams from across his mangled form. There is a hoarse murmur of pity from rough but kindly breasts, and the question runs around the group, "Who is to tell her?"
|
||||
|
||||
In a neat little cottage near the railroad, within their sight as they stand, a bright-eyed, brownhaired young woman is singing at her work, not knowing that death has snatched away her husband in the twinkling of an eye.
|
||||
|
||||
Singing happily at her work, while the hand that she had chosen to protect and comfort her through life lies stilled and fast turning to the coldness of the grave!
|
||||
|
||||
These rough men shrink like children from telling her. They dread to bear the news that will change her smiles to awful sorrow and lamentation.
|
||||
|
||||
"You go, Mike," three or four of them say at once. " 'Tis more lamin' ye have than any av us, whatever, and ye'll be afther brakin' the news to her as aisy as ye can. Be off wid ye now, and shpake gently to Tim's poor lassie while we thry to get the corpse in shape."
|
||||
|
||||
Mike is a pleasant-faced man, young and stalwart, and with a last look at his unfortunate comrade he goes slowly down the street toward the cottage where the fair young wife---alas, now a widow---lives.
|
||||
|
||||
When he arrives, he does not hesitate. He is tenderhearted, but strong. He lifts the gate latch and walks firmly to the door. There is something in his face, before he speaks, that tells her the truth.
|
||||
|
||||
"What was it?" she asks, "spontaneous combustion or snakes?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Derrick fell," says Mike.
|
||||
|
||||
"Then I've lost my bet," she says. "I thought sure it would be whisky."
|
||||
|
||||
Life, messieurs, is full of disappointments.
|
||||
14
src/epub/text/a-startling-demonstration.md
Normal file
14
src/epub/text/a-startling-demonstration.md
Normal file
@ -0,0 +1,14 @@
|
||||
A Startling Demonstration {#a-startling-demonstration type="title"}
|
||||
-------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
What a terrible state of affairs it would be if we could read each other's minds! It is safe to say that if such were the case, most of us would be afraid to think above a whisper.
|
||||
|
||||
As an illustration, a case might be cited that occurred in Houston. Some months ago a very charming young lady came to this city giving exhibitions in mind reading, and proved herself to be marvelously gifted in that respect. She easily read the thoughts of the audience, finding many articles hidden by simply holding the hand of the person secreting them, and read sentences written on little slips of paper by some at a considerable distance from her.
|
||||
|
||||
A young man in Houston fell in love with her, and married her after a short courtship. They went to housekeeping and for a time were as happy as mortals can be.
|
||||
|
||||
One evening they were sitting on the porch of their residence holding each other's hands, and wrapt in the close communion of mutual love, when she suddenly rose and knocked him down the steps with a large flowerpot. He arose astonished, with a big bump on his head, and asked her, if it were not too much trouble, to explain.
|
||||
|
||||
"You can't fool me," she said with flashing eyes. "You were thinking of a redheaded girl named Maud with a gold plug in her front tooth and a light pink waist and a black silk skirt on Rusk Avenue, standing under a cedar bush chewing gum at twenty minutes to eight with your arm around her waist and calling her 'sweetness,' while she fooled with your watch chain and said: 'Oh, George, give me a chance to breathe,' and her mother was calling her to supper. Don't you dare to deny it. Now, when you can get your mind on something better than that, you can come in the house and not before."
|
||||
|
||||
Then the door slammed and George and the broken flowerpot were alone.
|
||||
40
src/epub/text/a-story-for-men.md
Normal file
40
src/epub/text/a-story-for-men.md
Normal file
@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
|
||||
A Story for Men {#a-story-for-men type="title"}
|
||||
---------------
|
||||
|
||||
This little story will be a disappointment to women who read it. They will all say: "I don't see anything in that." Probably there isn't much.
|
||||
|
||||
Mrs. Jessamine lives in Houston. You can meet any number of ladies every day out walking on Main Street that resemble her very much. She is not famous or extraordinary in any way. She has a nice family, is in moderate circumstances and lives in her own house. I would call her an average woman if that did not imply that some were below the average, which would be an ungallant insinuation. Mrs. Jessamine is a genuine woman. She always steps on a street car with her left foot first, wears her snowiest lace-trimmed sub-skirts on muddy days, and can cut a magazine, wind a clock, pick walnuts, open a trunk and clean out an inkstand, all with a hairpin. She can take twenty dollars worth of trimming and make over an old dress so you couldn't tell it from a brand new fifteen dollar one. She is intelligent, reads the newspapers regularly and once cut a cooking recipe out of an old magazine that took the prize offered by a newspaper for the best original directions for making a green tomato pie. Her husband has such confidence in her household management that he trusts her with the entire housekeeping, sometimes leaving her in charge until a late hour of the night.
|
||||
|
||||
Mrs. Jessamine is thoughtful, kindhearted and an excellent manager. She has two children, a little boy of 7 and a little girl of 4, of whom she is extravagantly fond. The Jessamines are going to keep a cook as soon as Mr. Jessamine's salary is raised, but just at present Mrs. Jessamine is doing her own work.
|
||||
|
||||
While she is attending to her duties she gives the children a paper of needles, the scissors, some sample packages of aniline dyes and a box of safety matches to play with, and during the intervals of baking and sweeping the rooms she rushes in, kisses and cuddles them and then flies back to her work singing merrily.
|
||||
|
||||
------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
One afternoon last week Mrs. Jessamine was lying on the bed reading a Sunday paper. The children were blowing soap bubbles with some old pipestems of Mr. Jessamine's that he had discarded because they were full of nicotine.
|
||||
|
||||
Mrs. Jessamine was reading an account of some cruel treatment of children that had been unearthed by the Gerry Society, and the tears came to her eyes as she thought of the heartless and criminally careless mothers of the land who are the cause of so much suffering to their innocent little ones.
|
||||
|
||||
Presently she fell asleep and dreamed this dream:
|
||||
|
||||
She was all alone in a great room. She heard the doorbell snap and footsteps leaving and dying away in the hall outside. The room was a strange one, and she went about to examine it. She paused in front of a mirror and saw her reflection, and lo, she was a little child, in a white pinafore, with wide-open, wondering eyes and tangled dark curls.
|
||||
|
||||
She heard the front door below stairs close and the gate open and shut. She began to play around the room with some dolls and pictures, and for a while was quite happy.
|
||||
|
||||
She undressed and dressed her doll and talked to it soothingly and put it to bed. She could see out the window, but there were some big trees growing in the yard and the wind blew a branch against the corner of the house, making a queer noise that rather frightened her. Then she saw the closet door standing open and a lot of different shaped bottles on a low shelf. She dragged a chair in front of the shelf and climbed into it. The bottles had all kinds of pretty colored liquids in them and she found some that she could pull the corks from quite easily. She tasted one or two of the corks. Some of them were sweet and nice and one was bitter and badtasting. One bottle was full of something clear like water, so she got that one and pulled out the cork, but the bottle slipped from her hand, fell to the floor and broke. Where the liquid spilled it fumed and sputtered and turned green, and a kind of hot, biting vapor arose. She climbed down and began to feel lonesome and scared. She called "Mamma," three or four times loudly, but all the house was still. Then she began to cry and ran to the door. Just then she thought she heard something scratch behind the bed, and she screamed and beat upon the door with her hands, crying for her mamma to come. Nobody answered her.
|
||||
|
||||
Then she listened fearfully for a little and crept over and got her dolly from its bed and crouched in a corner whimpering and hugging her doll tightly, with her heart beating wildly, and watching the dark place under the bed with frightened eyes.
|
||||
|
||||
Presently she saw a pretty red box on a table and curiosity for the moment overcame her fear. She opened the box and saw a lot of funny little sticks, with little round heads on them. She played with them on the floor, building little pigpens and fences and houses.
|
||||
|
||||
In changing her position her heel fell upon the little sticks and the next moment a big blaze flared up, caught her dress, and with a loud scream she ran to the locked door, wrapped in burning, stinging flames, in an agony of pain and horror.
|
||||
|
||||
------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
Mrs. Jessamine awoke with a start and sprang wildly from the bed. The children were playing merrily on the floor, and she ran to them and caught them in her arms in thankfulness that the terrible dream was over. How she wished for someone to whom she could relate it and gain sympathy. Three blocks away lived Mrs. Flutter, her best friend and confidante. Not for a long time had Mrs. Jessamine had a dream that made such an impression upon her mind.
|
||||
|
||||
She hastily put on her hat and cloak and said:
|
||||
|
||||
"Now, be good children till I come back." Then she went out, locked the door and hurried away to Mrs. Flutter's.
|
||||
|
||||
That is all.
|
||||
54
src/epub/text/a-strange-case.md
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54
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|
||||
A Strange Case {#a-strange-case type="title"}
|
||||
--------------
|
||||
|
||||
A *Post* reporter met a young Houston physician the other afternoon, with whom he is well acquainted, and suggested that they go into a neighboring café and partake of a cooling lemonade. The physician agreed, and they were soon seated at a little table in a quiet corner, under an electric fan. After the physician had paid for the lemonade, the reporter turned the conversation upon his practice, and asked if he did not meet with some strange cases in his experience.
|
||||
|
||||
"Yes, indeed," said the doctor, "many that professional etiquette will not allow me to mention, and others that involve no especial secrecy, but are quite as curious in their way. I had one case only a few weeks ago that I considered very unusual, and without giving names, I think I can relate it to you."
|
||||
|
||||
"By all means do so," said the reporter, "and while you are telling it, let us have another lemonade." The young physician looked serious at this proposition, but after searching in his pocket and finding another quarter he assented.
|
||||
|
||||
"About a week ago," he began, "I was sitting in my office, hoping for a patient to come in, when I heard footsteps, and looking up, saw a beautiful young lady enter the room. She advanced at the most curious gait I ever beheld in one so charming. She staggered from side to side and lurched one way and another, succeeding only by a supreme effort in reaching the chair I placed for her. Her face was very lovely, but showed signs of sadness and melancholy.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Doctor,' she said, in a very sweet, but sorrowful voice, 'I want to consult you about my condition, and as it is a most unusual affection, I will have to trouble you to listen to a no doubt tedious discourse upon my family history.'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Madam,' said I, 'my time is yours. Anything you have to say that will throw light upon your trouble will, of course, benefit me in my diagnosis.'
|
||||
|
||||
"She thanked me with a smile that for a moment erased the sad lines from her face.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'My father,' she said, 'was one of the Adamses of Eastern Texas. You have doubtless heard of the family.'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Perhaps so,' I replied, 'but there are so many families by the name of Adams that---'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'It is of no consequence,' she continued with a little wave of her hand. 'Fifty years ago a violent feud broke out between my grandfather's family and another family of old Texas settlers named Redmond. The bloodshed and inhumanities exchanged between the people of each side would fill volumes. The horrors of the old Kentucky and West Virginia feuds were repeated by them. An Adams would shoot a Redmond from behind a fence, at his table while eating, in a church, or anywhere; and a Redmond would murder an Adams in like manner. The most violent hatred imaginable existed between them. They poisoned each other's wells, they killed each other's stock, and if an Adams met a Redmond, only one would leave the spot. The children of each family were taught to hate the others from the time they could speak, and so the legacy of antipathy was handed down from father to son and from mother to daughter. For thirty years this battle raged between them, and one by one the death-dealing rifle and revolver thinned the families until one day just twenty years ago there remained but a single representative of each family, Lemuel Adams and Louisa Redmond. They were both young and handsome, and at their first meeting forgot the ancient feud of their families and loved each other. They married at once, and thus ended the great Adams-Redmond feud. But, alas, sir, the inherited discord and hatred of so many years' standing was destined to rebound upon an innocent victim.'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'I was the child of that marriage, and the Adams and Redmond blood would not mingle. As a babe I was like any other, and was even considered unusually prepossessing.'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'I can well believe that, madam,' I interrupted.
|
||||
|
||||
"The lady colored slightly and went on: 'As I grew older a strange warring and many adverse impulses began to sway me. Every thought or movement I made was met by a contradictory one. It was the result of hereditary antagonism. Half of me was Adams and the other half Redmond. If I attempted to look at an object, one of my eyes would gaze in another direction. If I tried to salt a potato while eating, the other hand would involuntarily reach out and sprinkle it with sugar.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Hundreds of times while playing the piano, while one hand would strike the notes of a lovely Beethoven sonata, I could not keep the other from pounding out "Over the Garden Wall," or "The Skidmore Guards." The Adams and the Redmond blood would not flow in harmony. If I went into an ice cream saloon, I would order a vanilla cream in spite of myself, when my very soul was clamoring for lemon. Many a time I would strive with every nerve to disrobe for the night, and the opposing influence would be so strong that I have instead put on my finest and most elaborate clothing and retired with my shoes on. Have you ever met with a similar case, doctor?'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Never,' I said. 'It is indeed remarkable. And you have never succeeded in overcoming the adverse tendency?'
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh, yes. By constant efforts and daily exercise I have succeeded so far that it troubles me now in one respect only. With one exception I am now entirely released from its influence. It is my locomotion that is affected. My l-lower limbs refuse to coincide in their movements. If I try to walk in a certain direction, one---one of them will take the step I desire, and the other tries to go by an entirely different route. It seems that one l---one of them is Adams, and the other Redmond. Absolutely the only time when they agree is when I ride a bicycle, and as one goes up when the other is going down, their opposite movements of course facilitate my progress; but when endeavoring to walk I find them utterly unmanageable. You observed my entrance into this room. Is there anything you can do for me, doctor?'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Your case is indeed a strange one,' I said. 'I will consider the situation, and if you will call tomorrow at 10 o'clock I will prescribe for you.'
|
||||
|
||||
"She rose from her chair, and I assisted her down the stairs to her carriage, which waited below. Such a sprawling, ungainly, mixed up walk I never saw before.
|
||||
|
||||
"I meditated over her case for a long time that night and consulted all the authorities on locomotor ataxia, and diseases of the muscles, that I could find. I found nothing covering her case, and about midnight I wandered out along the streets for a breath of cool air. I passed a store kept by an old German whom I knew, and dropped in to speak a word with him. I had noticed some time before two tame deer he kept running about in a paddock in his yard. I asked him about them. He told me that they had been fighting, and had not been able to agree, so he had separated them, placing each one in a separate yard. Of a sudden an idea came to me.
|
||||
|
||||
"The next day at ten the young lady came to my office. I had a prescription ready for her. I gave it to her, she read it, flushed and was inclined to be angry.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Try it, madam,' I said.
|
||||
|
||||
"She agreed to do so, and only yesterday I saw her on the street, walking as gracefully and easily as any lady in the city."
|
||||
|
||||
"What was your prescription?" asked the reporter.
|
||||
|
||||
"It was simply to wear a pair of bloomers," said the young physician. "You see by separating the opposing factions harmony was restored. The Adams and the Redmond divisions no longer clashed, and the cure of the patient was complete. Let me see," continued the physician, "it is nearly half past seven, and I have an engagement to call upon her at eight. In confidence, I may say that she has consented to change her name to mine at an early date. I would not have you repeat what I have told you, of course."
|
||||
|
||||
"To be sure, I will not," said the reporter. "But won't you take another lemo---"
|
||||
|
||||
"No, no, thank you," said the doctor, rising hurriedly, "I must go. Good evening. I will see you again in a few days."
|
||||
36
src/epub/text/a-strange-story.md
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36
src/epub/text/a-strange-story.md
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@ -0,0 +1,36 @@
|
||||
A Strange Story {#a-strange-story type="title"}
|
||||
---------------
|
||||
|
||||
In the northern part of Austin there once dwelt an honest family by the name of Smothers. The family consisted of John Smothers, his wife, himself, their little daughter, five years of age, and her parents, making six people toward the population of the city when counted for a special write-up, but only three by actual count.
|
||||
|
||||
One night after supper the little girl was seized with a severe colic, and John Smothers hurried downtown to get some medicine.
|
||||
|
||||
He never came back.
|
||||
|
||||
The little girl recovered and in time grew up to womanhood.
|
||||
|
||||
The mother grieved very much over her husband's disappearance, and it was nearly three months before she married again, and moved to San Antonio.
|
||||
|
||||
The little girl also married in time, and after a few years had rolled around, she also had a little girl five years of age.
|
||||
|
||||
She still lived in the same house where they dwelt when her father had left and never returned.
|
||||
|
||||
One night by a remarkable coincidence her little girl was taken with cramp colic on the anniversary of the disappearance of John Smothers, who would now have been her grandfather if he had been alive and had a steady job.
|
||||
|
||||
"I will go downtown and get some medicine for her," said John Smith (for it was none other than he whom she had married).
|
||||
|
||||
"No, no, dear John," cried his wife. "You, too, might disappear forever, and then forget to come back."
|
||||
|
||||
So John Smith did not go, and together they sat by the bedside of little Pansy (for that was Pansy's name).
|
||||
|
||||
After a little Pansy seemed to grow worse, and John Smith again attempted to go for medicine, but his wife would not let him.
|
||||
|
||||
Suddenly the door opened, and an old man, stooped and bent, with long white hair, entered the room.
|
||||
|
||||
"Hello, here is grandpa," said Pansy. She had recognized him before any of the others.
|
||||
|
||||
The old man drew a bottle of medicine from his pocket and gave Pansy a spoonful.
|
||||
|
||||
She got well immediately.
|
||||
|
||||
"I was a little late," said John Smothers, "as I waited for a street car."
|
||||
10
src/epub/text/a-sure-method.md
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10
src/epub/text/a-sure-method.md
Normal file
@ -0,0 +1,10 @@
|
||||
A Sure Method {#a-sure-method type="title"}
|
||||
-------------
|
||||
|
||||
The editor sat in his palatially furnished sanctum bending over a mass of manuscripts, resting his beetling brow upon his hand. It wanted but one hour of the time of going to press and there was that editorial on the Venezuelan question to write. A pale, intellectual youth approached him with a rolled manuscript tied with a pink ribbon.
|
||||
|
||||
"It is a little thing," said the youth, "that I dashed off in an idle moment."
|
||||
|
||||
The editor unrolled the poem and glanced down the long row of verses. He then drew from his pocket a \$20 bill and held it toward the poet. A heavy thud was heard, and at the tinkle of an electric bell the editor's minions entered and carried the lifeless form of the poet away.
|
||||
|
||||
"That's three today," muttered the great editor as he returned the bill to his pocket. "It works better than a gun or a club and the coroner always brings in a verdict of heart failure."
|
||||
118
src/epub/text/a-technical-error.md
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118
src/epub/text/a-technical-error.md
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|
||||
A Technical Error {#a-technical-error type="title"}
|
||||
-----------------
|
||||
|
||||
I never cared especially for feuds, believing them to be even more overrated products of our country than grapefruit, scrapple, or honeymoons. Nevertheless, if I may be allowed, I will tell you of an Indian Territory feud of which I was press-agent, camp-follower, and inaccessory during the fact.
|
||||
|
||||
I was on a visit to Sam Durkee's ranch, where I had a great time falling off unmanicured ponies and waving my bare hand at the lower jaws of wolves about two miles away. Sam was a hardened person of about twenty-five, with a reputation for going home in the dark with perfect equanimity, though often with reluctance.
|
||||
|
||||
Over in the Creek Nation was a family bearing the name of Tatum. I was told that the Durkees and Tatums had been feuding for years. Several of each family had bitten the grass, and it was expected that more Nebuchadnezzars would follow. A younger generation of each family was growing up, and the grass was keeping pace with them. But I gathered that they had fought fairly; that they had not lain in cornfields and aimed at the division of their enemies' suspenders in the back---partly, perhaps, because there were no cornfields, and nobody wore more than one suspender. Nor had any woman or child of either house ever been harmed. In those days---and you will find it so yet---their women were safe.
|
||||
|
||||
Sam Durkee had a girl. (If it were an all-fiction magazine that I expect to sell this story to, I should say, "Mr. Durkee rejoiced in a fiancée.") Her name was Ella Baynes. They appeared to be devoted to each other, and to have perfect confidence in each other, as all couples do who are and have or aren't and haven't. She was tolerably pretty, with a heavy mass of brown hair that helped her along. He introduced me to her, which seemed not to lessen her preference for him; so I reasoned that they were surely soul-mates.
|
||||
|
||||
Miss Baynes lived in Kingfisher, twenty miles from the ranch. Sam lived on a gallop between the two places.
|
||||
|
||||
One day there came to Kingfisher a courageous young man, rather small, with smooth face and regular features. He made many inquiries about the business of the town, and especially of the inhabitants cognominally. He said he was from Muscogee, and he looked it, with his yellow shoes and crocheted four-in-hand. I met him once when I rode in for the mail. He said his name was Beverly Travers, which seemed rather improbable.
|
||||
|
||||
There were active times on the ranch, just then, and Sam was too busy to go to town often. As an incompetent and generally worthless guest, it devolved upon me to ride in for little things such as post cards, barrels of flour, baking-powder, smoking-tobacco, and---letters from Ella.
|
||||
|
||||
One day, when I was messenger for half a gross of cigarette papers and a couple of wagon tires, I saw the alleged Beverly Travers in a yellow-wheeled buggy with Ella Baynes, driving about town as ostentatiously as the black, waxy mud would permit. I knew that this information would bring no balm of Gilead to Sam's soul, so I refrained from including it in the news of the city that I retailed on my return. But on the next afternoon an elongated ex-cowboy of the name of Simmons, an old-time pal of Sam's, who kept a feed store in Kingfisher, rode out to the ranch and rolled and burned many cigarettes before he would talk. When he did make oration, his words were these:
|
||||
|
||||
"Say, Sam, there's been a description of a galoot miscallin' himself Bevel-edged Travels impairing the atmospheric air of Kingfisher for the past two weeks. You know who he was? He was not otherwise than Ben Tatum, from the Creek Nation, son of old Gopher Tatum that your Uncle Newt shot last February. You know what he done this morning? He killed your brother Lester---shot him in the co't-house yard."
|
||||
|
||||
I wondered if Sam had heard. He pulled a twig from a mesquite bush, chewed it gravely, and said:
|
||||
|
||||
"He did, did he? He killed Lester?"
|
||||
|
||||
"The same," said Simmons. "And he did more. He run away with your girl, the same as to say Miss Ella Baynes. I thought you might like to know, so I rode out to impart the information."
|
||||
|
||||
"I am much obliged, Jim," said Sam, taking the chewed twig from his mouth. "Yes, I'm glad you rode out. Yes, I'm right glad."
|
||||
|
||||
"Well, I'll be ridin' back, I reckon. That boy I left in the feed store don't know hay from oats. He shot Lester in the back."
|
||||
|
||||
"Shot him in the back?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Yes, while he was hitchin' his hoss."
|
||||
|
||||
"I'm much obliged, Jim."
|
||||
|
||||
"I kind of thought you'd like to know as soon as you could."
|
||||
|
||||
"Come in and have some coffee before you ride back, Jim?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Why, no, I reckon not; I must get back to the store."
|
||||
|
||||
"And you say---"
|
||||
|
||||
"Yes, Sam. Everybody seen 'em drive away together in a buckboard, with a big bundle, like clothes, tied up in the back of it. He was drivin' the team he brought over with him from Muscogee. They'll be hard to overtake right away."
|
||||
|
||||
"And which---"
|
||||
|
||||
"I was goin' on to tell you. They left on the Guthrie road; but there's no tellin' which forks they'll take---you know that."
|
||||
|
||||
"All right, Jim; much obliged."
|
||||
|
||||
"You're welcome, Sam."
|
||||
|
||||
Simmons rolled a cigarette and stabbed his pony with both heels. Twenty yards away he reined up and called back:
|
||||
|
||||
"You don't want no---assistance, as you might say?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Not any, thanks."
|
||||
|
||||
"I didn't think you would. Well, so long!"
|
||||
|
||||
Sam took out and opened a bone-handled pocketknife and scraped a dried piece of mud from his left boot. I thought at first he was going to swear a vendetta on the blade of it, or recite "The Gipsy's Curse." The few feuds I had ever seen or read about usually opened that way. This one seemed to be presented with a new treatment. Thus offered on the stage, it would have been hissed off, and one of Belasco's thrilling melodramas demanded instead.
|
||||
|
||||
"I wonder," said Sam, with a profoundly thoughtful expression, "if the cook has any cold beans left over!"
|
||||
|
||||
He called Wash, the Negro cook, and finding that he had some, ordered him to heat up the pot and make some strong coffee. Then we went into Sam's private room, where he slept, and kept his armoury, dogs, and the saddles of his favourite mounts. He took three or four six-shooters out of a bookcase and began to look them over, whistling "The Cowboy's Lament" abstractedly. Afterward he ordered the two best horses on the ranch saddled and tied to the hitching-post.
|
||||
|
||||
Now, in the feud business, in all sections of the country, I have observed that in one particular there is a delicate but strict etiquette belonging. You must not mention the word or refer to the subject in the presence of a feudist. It would be more reprehensible than commenting upon the mole on the chin of your rich aunt. I found, later on, that there is another unwritten rule, but I think that belongs solely to the West.
|
||||
|
||||
It yet lacked two hours to suppertime; but in twenty minutes Sam and I were plunging deep into the reheated beans, hot coffee, and cold beef.
|
||||
|
||||
"Nothing like a good meal before a long ride," said Sam. "Eat hearty."
|
||||
|
||||
I had a sudden suspicion.
|
||||
|
||||
"Why did you have two horses saddled?" I asked.
|
||||
|
||||
"One, two---one, two," said Sam. "You can count, can't you?"
|
||||
|
||||
His mathematics carried with it a momentary qualm and a lesson. The thought had not occurred to him that the thought could possibly occur to me not to ride at his side on that red road to revenge and justice. It was the higher calculus. I was booked for the trail. I began to eat more beans.
|
||||
|
||||
In an hour we set forth at a steady gallop eastward. Our horses were Kentucky-bred, strengthened by the mesquite grass of the west. Ben Tatum's steeds may have been swifter, and he had a good lead; but if he had heard the punctual thuds of the hoofs of those trailers of ours, born in the heart of feudland, he might have felt that retribution was creeping up on the hoof-prints of his dapper nags.
|
||||
|
||||
I knew that Ben Tatum's card to play was flight---flight until he came within the safer territory of his own henchmen and supporters. He knew that the man pursuing him would follow the trail to any end where it might lead.
|
||||
|
||||
During the ride Sam talked of the prospect for rain, of the price of beef, and of the musical glasses. You would have thought he had never had a brother or a sweetheart or an enemy on earth. There are some subjects too big even for the words in the "Unabridged." Knowing this phase of the feud code, but not having practised it sufficiently, I overdid the thing by telling some slightly funny anecdotes. Sam laughed at exactly the right place---laughed with his mouth. When I caught sight of his mouth, I wished I had been blessed with enough sense of humour to have suppressed those anecdotes.
|
||||
|
||||
Our first sight of them we had in Guthrie. Tired and hungry, we stumbled, unwashed, into a little yellow-pine hotel and sat at a table. In the opposite corner we saw the fugitives. They were bent upon their meal, but looked around at times uneasily.
|
||||
|
||||
The girl was dressed in brown---one of these smooth, half-shiny, silky-looking affairs with lace collar and cuffs, and what I believe they call an accordion-plaited skirt. She wore a thick brown veil down to her nose, and a broad-brimmed straw hat with some kind of feathers adorning it. The man wore plain, dark clothes, and his hair was trimmed very short. He was such a man as you might see anywhere.
|
||||
|
||||
There they were---the murderer and the woman he had stolen. There we were---the rightful avenger, according to the code, and the supernumerary who writes these words.
|
||||
|
||||
For one time, at least, in the heart of the supernumerary there rose the killing instinct. For one moment he joined the force of combatants---orally.
|
||||
|
||||
"What are you waiting for, Sam?" I said in a whisper. "Let him have it now!"
|
||||
|
||||
Sam gave a melancholy sigh.
|
||||
|
||||
"You don't understand; but *he* does," he said. "*He* knows. Mr. Tenderfoot, there's a rule out here among white men in the Nation that you can't shoot a man when he's with a woman. I never knew it to be broke yet. You *can't* do it. You've got to get him in a gang of men or by himself. That's why. He knows it, too. We all know. So, that's Mr. Ben Tatum! One of the 'pretty men'! I'll cut him out of the herd before they leave the hotel, and regulate his account!"
|
||||
|
||||
After supper the flying pair disappeared quickly. Although Sam haunted lobby and stairway and halls half the night, in some mysterious way the fugitives eluded him; and in the morning the veiled lady in the brown dress with the accordion-plaited skirt and the dapper young man with the close-clipped hair, and the buckboard with the prancing nags, were gone.
|
||||
|
||||
It is a monotonous story, that of the ride; so it shall be curtailed. Once again we overtook them on a road. We were about fifty yards behind. They turned in the buckboard and looked at us; then drove on without whipping up their horses. Their safety no longer lay in speed. Ben Tatum knew. He knew that the only rock of safety left to him was the code. There is no doubt that, had he been alone, the matter would have been settled quickly with Sam Durkee in the usual way; but he had something at his side that kept still the trigger-finger of both. It seemed likely that he was no coward.
|
||||
|
||||
So, you may perceive that woman, on occasions, may postpone instead of precipitating conflict between man and man. But not willingly or consciously. She is oblivious of codes.
|
||||
|
||||
Five miles farther, we came upon the future great Western city of Chandler. The horses of pursuers and pursued were starved and weary. There was one hotel that offered danger to man and entertainment to beast; so the four of us met again in the dining room at the ringing of a bell so resonant and large that it had cracked the welkin long ago. The dining room was not as large as the one at Guthrie.
|
||||
|
||||
Just as we were eating apple pie---how Ben Davises and tragedy impinge upon each other!---I noticed Sam looking with keen intentness at our quarry where they were seated at a table across the room. The girl still wore the brown dress with lace collar and cuffs, and the veil drawn down to her nose. The man bent over his plate, with his close cropped head held low.
|
||||
|
||||
"There's a code," I heard Sam say, either to me or to himself, "that won't let you shoot a man in the company of a woman; but, by thunder, there ain't one to keep you from killing a woman in the company of a man!"
|
||||
|
||||
And, quicker than my mind could follow his argument, he whipped a Colt's automatic from under his left arm and pumped six bullets into the body that the brown dress covered---the brown dress with the lace collar and cuffs and the accordion-plaited skirt.
|
||||
|
||||
The young person in the dark sack suit, from whose head and from whose life a woman's glory had been clipped, laid her head on her arms stretched upon the table; while people came running to raise Ben Tatum from the floor in his feminine masquerade that had given Sam the opportunity to set aside, technically, the obligations of the code.
|
||||
236
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|
||||
A Tempered Wind {#a-tempered-wind type="title"}
|
||||
---------------
|
||||
|
||||
The first time my optical nerves was disturbed by the sight of Buckingham Skinner was in Kansas City. I was standing on a corner when I see Buck stick his straw-colored head out of a third-story window of a business block and holler, "Whoa, there! Whoa!" like you would in endeavoring to assuage a team of runaway mules.
|
||||
|
||||
I looked around; but all the animals I see in sight is a policeman, having his shoes shined, and a couple of delivery wagons hitched to posts. Then in a minute downstairs tumbles this Buckingham Skinner, and runs to the corner, and stands and gazes down the other street at the imaginary dust kicked up by the fabulous hoofs of the fictitious team of chimerical quadrupeds. And then B. Skinner goes back up to the third-story room again, and I see that the lettering on the window is "The Farmers' Friend Loan Company."
|
||||
|
||||
By and by Straw-top comes down again, and I crossed the street to meet him, for I had my ideas. Yes, sir, when I got close I could see where he overdone it. He was Reub all right as far as his blue jeans and cowhide boots went, but he had a matinee actor's hands, and the rye straw stuck over his ear looked like it belonged to the property man of the Old Homestead Co. Curiosity to know what his graft was got the best of me.
|
||||
|
||||
"Was that your team broke away and run just now?" I asks him, polite. "I tried to stop 'em," says I, "but I couldn't. I guess they're halfway back to the farm by now."
|
||||
|
||||
"Gosh blame them darned mules," says Straw-top, in a voice so good that I nearly apologized; "they're a'lus bustin' loose." And then he looks at me close, and then he takes off his hayseed hat, and says, in a different voice: "I'd like to shake hands with Parleyvoo Pickens, the greatest street man in the West, barring only Montague Silver, which you can no more than allow."
|
||||
|
||||
I let him shake hands with me.
|
||||
|
||||
"I learned under Silver," I said; "I don't begrudge him the lead. But what's your graft, son? I admit that the phantom flight of the non-existing animals at which you remarked 'Whoa!' has puzzled me somewhat. How do you win out on the trick?"
|
||||
|
||||
Buckingham Skinner blushed.
|
||||
|
||||
"Pocket money," says he; "that's all. I am temporarily unfinanced. This little [coup de]{lang="fr"} rye straw is good for forty dollars in a town of this size. How do I work it? Why, I involve myself, as you perceive, in the loathsome apparel of the rural dub. Thus embalmed I am Jonas Stubblefield---a name impossible to improve upon. I repair noisily to the office of some loan company conveniently located in the third-floor, front. There I lay my hat and yarn gloves on the floor and ask to mortgage my farm for \$2,000 to pay for my sister's musical education in Europe. Loans like that always suit the loan companies. It's ten to one that when the note falls due the foreclosure will be leading the semiquavers by a couple of lengths.
|
||||
|
||||
"Well, sir, I reach in my pocket for the abstract of title; but I suddenly hear my team running away. I run to the window and emit the word---or exclamation, whichever it may be---viz, 'Whoa!' Then I rush downstairs and down the street, returning in a few minutes. 'Dang them mules,' I says; 'they done run away and busted the doubletree and two traces. Now I got to hoof it home, for I never brought no money along. Reckon we'll talk about that loan some other time, gen'lemen.'
|
||||
|
||||
"Then I spreads out my tarpaulin, like the Israelites, and waits for the manna to drop.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Why, no, Mr. Stubblefield,' says the lobster-colored party in the specs and dotted pique vest; 'oblige us by accepting this ten-dollar bill until tomorrow. Get your harness repaired and call in at ten. We'll be pleased to accommodate you in the matter of this loan.'
|
||||
|
||||
"It's a slight thing," says Buckingham Skinner, modest, "but, as I said, only for temporary loose change."
|
||||
|
||||
"It's nothing to be ashamed of," says I, in respect for his mortification; "in case of an emergency. Of course, it's small compared to organizing a trust or bridge whist, but even the Chicago University had to be started in a small way."
|
||||
|
||||
"What's your graft these days?" Buckingham Skinner asks me.
|
||||
|
||||
"The legitimate," says I. "I'm handling rhinestones and Dr. Oleum Sinapi's Electric Headache Battery and the Swiss Warbler's Bird Call, a small lot of the new queer ones and twos, and the Bonanza Budget, consisting of a rolled-gold wedding and engagement ring, six Egyptian lily bulbs, a combination pickle fork and nail-clipper, and fifty engraved visiting cards---no two names alike---all for the sum of 38 cents."
|
||||
|
||||
"Two months ago," says Buckingham Skinner, "I was doing well down in Texas with a patent instantaneous fire kindler, made of compressed wood ashes and benzine. I sold loads of 'em in towns where they like to burn niggers quick, without having to ask somebody for a light. And just when I was doing the best they strikes oil down there and puts me out of business. 'Your machine's too slow, now, pardner,' they tells me. 'We can have a coon in hell with this here petroleum before your old flint-and-tinder truck can get him warm enough to perfess religion.' And so I gives up the kindler and drifts up here to K. C. This little curtain-raiser you seen me doing, Mr. Pickens, with the simulated farm and the hypothetical teams, ain't in my line at all, and I'm ashamed you found me working it."
|
||||
|
||||
"No man," says I, kindly, "need to be ashamed of putting the skibunk on a loan corporation for even so small a sum as ten dollars, when he is financially abashed. Still, it wasn't quite the proper thing. It's too much like borrowing money without paying it back."
|
||||
|
||||
I liked Buckingham Skinner from the start, for as good a man as ever stood over the axles and breathed gasoline smoke. And pretty soon we gets thick, and I let him in on a scheme I'd had in mind for some time, and offers to go partners.
|
||||
|
||||
"Anything," says Buck, "that is not actually dishonest will find me willing and ready. Let us perforate into the inwardness of your proposition. I feel degraded when I am forced to wear property straw in my hair and assume a bucolic air for the small sum of ten dollars. Actually, Mr. Pickens, it makes me feel like the Ophelia of the Great Occidental All-Star One-Night Consolidated Theatrical Aggregation."
|
||||
|
||||
This scheme of mine was one that suited my proclivities. By nature I am some sentimental, and have always felt gentle toward the mollifying elements of existence. I am disposed to be lenient with the arts and sciences; and I find time to instigate a cordiality for the more human works of nature, such as romance and the atmosphere and grass and poetry and the Seasons. I never skin a sucker without admiring the prismatic beauty of his scales. I never sell a little auriferous beauty to the man with the hoe without noticing the beautiful harmony there is between gold and green. And that's why I liked this scheme; it was so full of outdoor air and landscapes and easy money.
|
||||
|
||||
We had to have a young lady assistant to help us work this graft; and I asked Buck if he knew of one to fill the bill.
|
||||
|
||||
"One," says I, "that is cool and wise and strictly business from her pompadour to her Oxfords. No ex-toe-dancers or gum-chewers or crayon portrait canvassers for this."
|
||||
|
||||
Buck claimed he knew a suitable feminine and he takes me around to see Miss Sarah Malloy. The minute I see her I am pleased. She looked to be the goods as ordered. No sign of the three p's about her---no peroxide, patchouli, nor peau de soie; about twenty-two, brown hair, pleasant ways---the kind of a lady for the place.
|
||||
|
||||
"A description of the sandbag, if you please," she begins.
|
||||
|
||||
"Why, ma'am," says I, "this graft of ours is so nice and refined and romantic, it would make the balcony scene in 'Romeo and Juliet' look like second-story work."
|
||||
|
||||
We talked it over, and Miss Malloy agreed to come in as a business partner. She said she was glad to get a chance to give up her place as stenographer and secretary to a suburban lot company, and go into something respectable.
|
||||
|
||||
This is the way we worked our scheme. First, I figured it out by a kind of a proverb. The best grafts in the world are built up on copybook maxims and psalms and proverbs and Esau's fables. They seem to kind of hit off human nature. Our peaceful little swindle was constructed on the old saying: "The whole push loves a lover."
|
||||
|
||||
One evening Buck and Miss Malloy drives up like blazes in a buggy to a farmer's door. She is pale but affectionate, clinging to his arm---always clinging to his arm. Anyone can see that she is a peach and of the cling variety. They claim they are eloping for to be married on account of cruel parents. They ask where they can find a preacher. Farmer says, "B'gum there ain't any preacher nigher than Reverend Abels, four miles over on Caney Creek." Farmeress wipes her hand on her apron and rubbers through her specs.
|
||||
|
||||
Then, lo and look ye! Up the road from the other way jogs Parleyvoo Pickens in a gig, dressed in black, white necktie, long face, sniffing his nose, emitting a spurious kind of noise resembling the long meter doxology.
|
||||
|
||||
"B'jinks!" says farmer, "if thar ain't a preacher now!"
|
||||
|
||||
It transpires that I am Rev. Abijah Green, travelling over to Little Bethel schoolhouse for to preach next Sunday.
|
||||
|
||||
The young folks will have it they must be married, for pa is pursuing them with the plow mules and the buckboard. So the Reverend Green, after hesitating, marries 'em in the farmer's parlor. And farmer grins, and has in cider, and says "B'gum!" and farmeress sniffles a bit and pats the bride on the shoulder. And Parleyvoo Pickens, the wrong reverend, writes out a marriage certificate, and farmer and farmeress sign it as witnesses. And the parties of the first, second and third part gets in their vehicles and rides away. Oh, that was an idyllic graft! True love and the lowing kine and the sun shining on the red barns---it certainly had all other impostures I know about beat to a batter.
|
||||
|
||||
I suppose I happened along in time to marry Buck and Miss Malloy at about twenty farmhouses. I hated to think how the romance was going to fade later on when all them marriage certificates turned up in banks where we'd discounted 'em, and the farmers had to pay them notes of hand they'd signed, running from \$300 to \$500.
|
||||
|
||||
On the 15th day of May us three divided about \$6,000. Miss Malloy nearly cried with joy. You don't often see a tenderhearted girl or one that is bent on doing right.
|
||||
|
||||
"Boys," says she, dabbing her eyes with a little handkerchief, "this stake comes in handier than a powder rag at a fat men's ball. It gives me a chance to reform. I was trying to get out of the real estate business when you fellows came along. But if you hadn't taken me in on this neat little proposition for removing the cuticle of the rutabaga propagators I'm afraid I'd have got into something worse. I was about to accept a place in one of these Women's Auxiliary Bazars, where they build a parsonage by selling a spoonful of chicken salad and a cream-puff for seventy-five cents and calling it a Business Man's Lunch.
|
||||
|
||||
"Now I can go into a square, honest business, and give all them queer jobs the shake. I'm going to Cincinnati and start a palm reading and clairvoyant joint. As Madame Saramaloi, the Egyptian Sorceress, I shall give everybody a dollar's worth of good honest prognostication. Goodbye, boys. Take my advice and go into some decent fake. Get friendly with the police and newspapers and you'll be all right."
|
||||
|
||||
So then we all shook hands, and Miss Malloy left us. Me and Buck also rose up and sauntered off a few hundred miles; for we didn't care to be around when them marriage certificates fell due.
|
||||
|
||||
With about \$4,000 between us we hit that bumptious little town off the New Jersey coast they call New York.
|
||||
|
||||
If there ever was an aviary overstocked with jays it is that Yaptown-on-the-Hudson. Cosmopolitan they call it. You bet. So's a piece of flypaper. You listen close when they're buzzing and trying to pull their feet out of the sticky stuff. "Little old New York's good enough for us"---that's what they sing.
|
||||
|
||||
There's enough Reubs walk down Broadway in one hour to buy up a week's output of the factory in Augusta, Maine, that makes Knaughty Knovelties and the little Phine Phun oroide gold finger ring that sticks a needle in your friend's hand.
|
||||
|
||||
You'd think New York people was all wise; but no. They don't get a chance to learn. Everything's too compressed. Even the hayseeds are baled hayseeds. But what else can you expect from a town that's shut off from the world by the ocean on one side and New Jersey on the other?
|
||||
|
||||
It's no place for an honest grafter with a small capital. There's too big a protective tariff on bunco. Even when Giovanni sells a quart of warm worms and chestnut hulls he has to hand out a pint to an insectivorous cop. And the hotel man charges double for everything in the bill that he sends by the patrol wagon to the altar where the duke is about to marry the heiress.
|
||||
|
||||
But old Badville-near-Coney is the ideal burg for a refined piece of piracy if you can pay the bunco duty. Imported grafts come pretty high. The customhouse officers that look after it carry clubs, and it's hard to smuggle in even a bib-and-tucker swindle to work Brooklyn with unless you can pay the toll. But now, me and Buck, having capital, descends upon New York to try and trade the metropolitan backwoodsmen a few glass beads for real estate just as the Vans did a hundred or two years ago.
|
||||
|
||||
At an East Side hotel we gets acquainted with Romulus G. Atterbury, a man with the finest head for financial operations I ever saw. It was all bald and glossy except for gray side whiskers. Seeing that head behind an office railing, and you'd deposit a million with it without a receipt. This Atterbury was well dressed, though he ate seldom; and the synopsis of his talk would make the conversation of a siren sound like a cab driver's kick. He said he used to be a member of the Stock Exchange, but some of the big capitalists got jealous and formed a ring that forced him to sell his seat.
|
||||
|
||||
Atterbury got to liking me and Buck and he begun to throw on the canvas for us some of the schemes that had caused his hair to evacuate. He had one scheme for starting a National bank on \$45 that made the Mississippi Bubble look as solid as a glass marble. He talked this to us for three days, and when his throat was good and sore we told him about the roll we had. Atterbury borrowed a quarter from us and went out and got a box of throat lozenges and started all over again. This time he talked bigger things, and he got us to see 'em as he did. The scheme he laid out looked like a sure winner, and he talked me and Buck into putting our capital against his burnished dome of thought. It looked all right for a kid-gloved graft. It seemed to be just about an inch and a half outside of the reach of the police, and as moneymaking as a mint. It was just what me and Buck wanted---a regular business at a permanent stand, with an open air spieling with tonsilitis on the street corners every evening.
|
||||
|
||||
So, in six weeks you see a handsome furnished set of offices down in the Wall Street neighborhood, with "The Golconda Gold Bond and Investment Company" in gilt letters on the door. And you see in his private room, with the door open, the secretary and treasurer, Mr. Buckingham Skinner, costumed like the lilies of the conservatory, with his high silk hat close to his hand. Nobody yet ever saw Buck outside of an instantaneous reach for his hat.
|
||||
|
||||
And you might perceive the president and general manager, Mr. R. G. Atterbury, with his priceless polished poll, busy in the main office room dictating letters to a shorthand countess, who has got pomp and a pompadour that is no less than a guarantee to investors.
|
||||
|
||||
There is a bookkeeper and an assistant, and a general atmosphere of varnish and culpability.
|
||||
|
||||
At another desk the eye is relieved by the sight of an ordinary man, attired with unscrupulous plainness, sitting with his feet up, eating apples, with his obnoxious hat on the back of his head. That man is no other than Colonel Tecumseh (once "Parleyvoo") Pickens, the vice-president of the company.
|
||||
|
||||
"No recherché rags for me," I says to Atterbury, when we was organizing the stage properties of the robbery. "I'm a plain man," says I, "and I do not use pajamas, French, or military hairbrushes. Cast me for the role of the rhinestone-in-the-rough or I don't go on exhibition. If you can use me in my natural, though displeasing form, do so."
|
||||
|
||||
"Dress you up?" says Atterbury; "I should say not! Just as you are you're worth more to the business than a whole roomful of the things they pin chrysanthemums on. You're to play the part of the solid but disheveled capitalist from the Far West. You despise the conventions. You've got so many stocks you can afford to shake socks. Conservative, homely, rough, shrewd, saving---that's your pose. It's a winner in New York. Keep your feet on the desk and eat apples. Whenever anybody comes in eat an apple. Let 'em see you stuff the peelings in a drawer of your desk. Look as economical and rich and rugged as you can."
|
||||
|
||||
I followed out Atterbury's instructions. I played the Rocky Mountain capitalist without ruching or frills. The way I deposited apple peelings to my credit in a drawer when any customers came in made Hetty Green look like a spendthrift. I could hear Atterbury saying to victims, as he smiled at me, indulgent and venerating, "That's our vice-president, Colonel Pickens ... fortune in Western investments ... delightfully plain manners, but ... could sign his check for half a million ... simple as a child ... wonderful head ... conservative and careful almost to a fault."
|
||||
|
||||
Atterbury managed the business. Me and Buck never quite understood all of it, though he explained it to us in full. It seems the company was a kind of cooperative one, and everybody that bought stock shared in the profits. First, we officers bought up a controlling interest---we had to have that---of the shares at 50 cents a hundred---just what the printer charged us---and the rest went to the public at a dollar each. The company guaranteed the stockholders a profit of ten percent each month, payable on the last day thereof.
|
||||
|
||||
When any stockholder had paid in as much as \$100, the company issued him a Gold Bond and he became a bondholder. I asked Atterbury one day what benefits and appurtenances these Gold Bonds was to an investor more so than the immunities and privileges enjoyed by the common sucker who only owned stock. Atterbury picked up one of them Gold Bonds, all gilt and lettered up with flourishes and a big red seal tied with a blue ribbon in a bowknot, and he looked at me like his feelings was hurt.
|
||||
|
||||
"My dear Colonel Pickens," says he, "you have no soul for Art. Think of a thousand homes made happy by possessing one of these beautiful gems of the lithographer's skill! Think of the joy in the household where one of these Gold Bonds hangs by a pink cord to the whatnot, or is chewed by the baby, caroling gleefully upon the floor! Ah, I see your eye growing moist, Colonel---I have touched you, have I not?"
|
||||
|
||||
"You have not," says I, "for I've been watching you. The moisture you see is apple juice. You can't expect one man to act as a human cider-press and an art connoisseur too."
|
||||
|
||||
Atterbury attended to the details of the concern. As I understand it, they was simple. The investors in stock paid in their money, and---well, I guess that's all they had to do. The company received it, and---I don't call to mind anything else. Me and Buck knew more about selling corn salve than we did about Wall Street, but even we could see how the Golconda Gold Bond Investment Company was making money. You take in money and pay back ten percent of it; it's plain enough that you make a clean, legitimate profit of 90 percent, less expenses, as long as the fish bite.
|
||||
|
||||
Atterbury wanted to be president and treasurer too, but Buck winks an eye at him and says: "You was to furnish the brains. Do you call it good brain work when you propose to take in money at the door, too? Think again. I hereby nominate myself treasurer ad valorem, [sine die]{lang="la"}, and by acclamation. I chip in that much brain work free. Me and Pickens, we furnished the capital, and we'll handle the unearned increment as it incremates."
|
||||
|
||||
It costs us \$500 for office rent and first payment on furniture; \$1,500 more went for printing and advertising. Atterbury knew his business. "Three months to a minute we'll last," says he. "A day longer than that and we'll have to either go under or go under an alias. By that time we ought to clean up \$60,000. And then a money belt and a lower berth for me, and the yellow journals and the furniture men can pick the bones."
|
||||
|
||||
Our ads done the work. "Country weeklies and Washington hand-press dailies, of course," says I when we was ready to make contracts.
|
||||
|
||||
"Man," says Atterbury, "as its advertising manager you would cause a Limburger cheese factory to remain undiscovered during a hot summer. The game we're after is right here in New York and Brooklyn and the Harlem reading-rooms. They're the people that the streetcar fenders and the Answers to Correspondents columns and the pickpocket notices are made for. We want our ads in the biggest city dailies, top of column, next to editorials on radium and pictures of the girl doing health exercises."
|
||||
|
||||
Pretty soon the money begins to roll in. Buck didn't have to pretend to be busy; his desk was piled high up with money orders and checks and greenbacks. People began to drop in the office and buy stock every day.
|
||||
|
||||
Most of the shares went in small amounts---\$10 and \$25 and \$50, and a good many \$2 and \$3 lots. And the bald and inviolate cranium of President Atterbury shines with enthusiasm and demerit, while Colonel Tecumseh Pickens, the rude but reputable Croesus of the West, consumes so many apples that the peelings hang to the floor from the mahogany garbage chest that he calls his desk.
|
||||
|
||||
Just as Atterbury said, we ran along about three months without being troubled. Buck cashed the paper as fast as it came in and kept the money in a safe deposit vault a block or so away. Buck never thought much of banks for such purposes. We paid the interest regular on the stock we'd sold, so there was nothing for anybody to squeal about. We had nearly \$50,000 on hand and all three of us had been living as high as prize fighters out of training.
|
||||
|
||||
One morning, as me and Buck sauntered into the office, fat and flippant, from our noon grub, we met an easy-looking fellow, with a bright eye and a pipe in his mouth, coming out. We found Atterbury looking like he'd been caught a mile from home in a wet shower.
|
||||
|
||||
"Know that man?" he asked us.
|
||||
|
||||
We said we didn't.
|
||||
|
||||
"I don't either," says Atterbury, wiping off his head; "but I'll bet enough Gold Bonds to paper a cell in the Tombs that he's a newspaper reporter."
|
||||
|
||||
"What did he want?" asks Buck.
|
||||
|
||||
"Information," says our president. "Said he was thinking of buying some stock. He asked me about nine hundred questions, and every one of 'em hit some sore place in the business. I know he's on a paper. You can't fool me. You see a man about half shabby, with an eye like a gimlet, smoking cut plug, with dandruff on his coat collar, and knowing more than J. P. Morgan and Shakespeare put together---if that ain't a reporter I never saw one. I was afraid of this. I don't mind detectives and post-office inspectors---I talk to 'em eight minutes and then sell 'em stock---but them reporters take the starch out of my collar. Boys, I recommend that we declare a dividend and fade away. The signs point that way."
|
||||
|
||||
Me and Buck talked to Atterbury and got him to stop sweating and stand still. That fellow didn't look like a reporter to us. Reporters always pull out a pencil and tablet on you, and tell you a story you've heard, and strikes you for the drinks. But Atterbury was shaky and nervous all day.
|
||||
|
||||
The next day me and Buck comes down from the hotel about ten-thirty. On the way we buys the papers, and the first thing we see is a column on the front page about our little imposition. It was a shame the way that reporter intimated that we were no blood relatives of the late George W. Childs. He tells all about the scheme as he sees it, in a rich, racy kind of a guying style that might amuse most anybody except a stockholder. Yes, Atterbury was right; it behooveth the gaily clad treasurer and the pearly pated president and the rugged vice-president of the Golconda Gold Bond and Investment Company to go away real sudden and quick that their days might be longer upon the land.
|
||||
|
||||
Me and Buck hurries down to the office. We finds on the stairs and in the hall a crowd of people trying to squeeze into our office, which is already jammed full inside to the railing. They've nearly all got Golconda stock and Gold Bonds in their hands. Me and Buck judged they'd been reading the papers, too.
|
||||
|
||||
We stopped and looked at our stockholders, some surprised. It wasn't quite the kind of a gang we supposed had been investing. They all looked like poor people; there was plenty of old women and lots of young girls that you'd say worked in factories and mills. Some was old men that looked like war veterans, and some was crippled, and a good many was just kids---bootblacks and newsboys and messengers. Some was workingmen in overalls, with their sleeves rolled up. Not one of the gang looked like a stockholder in anything unless it was a peanut stand. But they all had Golconda stock and looked as sick as you please.
|
||||
|
||||
I saw a queer kind of a pale look come on Buck's face when he sized up the crowd. He stepped up to a sickly looking woman and says: "Madam, do you own any of this stock?"
|
||||
|
||||
"I put in a hundred dollars," says the woman, faint like. "It was all I had saved in a year. One of my children is dying at home now and I haven't a cent in the house. I came to see if I could draw out some. The circulars said you could draw it at any time. But they say now I will lose it all."
|
||||
|
||||
There was a smart kind of kid in the gang---I guess he was a newsboy. "I got in twenty-fi', mister," he says, looking hopeful at Buck's silk hat and clothes. "Dey paid me two-fifty a mont' on it. Say, a man tells me dey can't do dat and be on de square. Is dat straight? Do you guess I can get out my twenty-fi'?"
|
||||
|
||||
Some of the old women was crying. The factory girls was plumb distracted. They'd lost all their savings and they'd be docked for the time they lost coming to see about it.
|
||||
|
||||
There was one girl---a pretty one---in a red shawl, crying in a corner like her heart would dissolve. Buck goes over and asks her about it.
|
||||
|
||||
"It ain't so much losing the money, mister," says she, shaking all over, "though I've been two years saving it up; but Jakey won't marry me now. He'll take Rosa Steinfeld. I know J---J---Jakey. She's got \$400 in the savings bank. Ai, ai, ai---" she sings out.
|
||||
|
||||
Buck looks all around with that same funny look on his face. And then we see leaning against the wall, puffing at his pipe, with his eye shining at us, this newspaper reporter. Buck and me walks over to him.
|
||||
|
||||
"You're a real interesting writer," says Buck. "How far do you mean to carry it? Anything more up your sleeve?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh, I'm just waiting around," says the reporter, smoking away, "in case any news turns up. It's up to your stockholders now. Some of them might complain, you know. Isn't that the patrol wagon now?" he says, listening to a sound outside. "No," he goes on, "that's Doc. Whittleford's old cadaver coupé from the Roosevelt. I ought to know that gong. Yes, I suppose I've written some interesting stuff at times."
|
||||
|
||||
"You wait," says Buck; "I'm going to throw an item of news in your way."
|
||||
|
||||
Buck reaches in his pocket and hands me a key. I knew what he meant before he spoke. Confounded old buccaneer---I knew what he meant. They don't make them any better than Buck.
|
||||
|
||||
"Pick," says he, looking at me hard, "ain't this graft a little out of our line? Do we want Jakey to marry Rosa Steinfeld?"
|
||||
|
||||
"You've got my vote," says I. "I'll have it here in ten minutes." And I starts for the safe deposit vaults.
|
||||
|
||||
I comes back with the money done up in a big bundle, and then Buck and me takes the journalist reporter around to another door and we let ourselves into one of the office rooms.
|
||||
|
||||
"Now, my literary friend," says Buck, "take a chair, and keep still, and I'll give you an interview. You see before you two grafters from Graftersville, Grafter County, Arkansas. Me and Pick have sold brass jewelry, hair tonic, song books, marked cards, patent medicines, Connecticut Smyrna rugs, furniture polish, and albums in every town from Old Point Comfort to the Golden Gate. We've grafted a dollar whenever we saw one that had a surplus look to it. But we never went after the simoleon in the toe of the sock under the loose brick in the corner of the kitchen hearth. There's an old saying you may have heard---'fussily decency averni'---which means it's an easy slide from the street faker's dry goods box to a desk in Wall Street. We've took that slide, but we didn't know exactly what was at the bottom of it. Now, you ought to be wise, but you ain't. You've got New York wiseness, which means that you judge a man by the outside of his clothes. That ain't right. You ought to look at the lining and seams and the buttonholes. While we are waiting for the patrol wagon you might get out your little stub pencil and take notes for another funny piece in the paper."
|
||||
|
||||
And then Buck turns to me and says: "I don't care what Atterbury thinks. He only put in brains, and if he gets his capital out he's lucky. But what do you say, Pick?"
|
||||
|
||||
"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.
|
||||
|
||||
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.
|
||||
|
||||
"A wedding present," says our treasurer, "from the Golconda Company. And say---if Jakey ever follows his nose, even at a respectful distance, around the corner where Rosa Steinfeld lives, you are hereby authorized to knock a couple of inches of it off."
|
||||
|
||||
When they was all paid off and gone, Buck calls the newspaper reporter and shoves the rest of the money over to him.
|
||||
|
||||
"You begun this," says Buck; "now finish it. Over there are the books, showing every share and bond issued. Here's the money to cover, except what we've spent to live on. You'll have to act as receiver. I guess you'll do the square thing on account of your paper. This is the best way we know how to settle it. Me and our substantial but apple-weary vice-president are going to follow the example of our revered president, and skip. Now, have you got enough news for today, or do you want to interview us on etiquette and the best way to make over an old taffeta skirt?"
|
||||
|
||||
"News!" says the newspaper man, taking his pipe out; "do you think I could use this? I don't want to lose my job. Suppose I go around to the office and tell 'em this happened. What'll the managing editor say? He'll just hand me a pass to Bellevue and tell me to come back when I get cured. I might turn in a story about a sea serpent wiggling up Broadway, but I haven't got the nerve to try 'em with a pipe like this. A get-rich-quick scheme---excuse me---gang giving back the boodle! Oh, no. I'm not on the comic supplement."
|
||||
|
||||
"You can't understand it, of course," says Buck, with his hand on the door knob. "Me and Pick ain't Wall Streeters like you know 'em. We never allowed to swindle sick old women and working girls and take nickels off of kids. In the lines of graft we've worked we took money from the people the Lord made to be buncoed---sports and rounders and smart Alecks and street crowds, that always have a few dollars to throw away, and farmers that wouldn't ever be happy if the grafters didn't come around and play with 'em when they sold their crops. We never cared to fish for the kind of suckers that bite here. No, sir. We got too much respect for the profession and for ourselves. Goodbye to you, Mr. Receiver."
|
||||
|
||||
"Here!" says the journalist reporter; "wait a minute. There's a broker I know on the next floor. Wait till I put this truck in his safe. I want you fellows to take a drink on me before you go."
|
||||
|
||||
"On you?" says Buck, winking solemn. "Don't you go and try to make 'em believe at the office you said that. Thanks. We can't spare the time, I reckon. So long."
|
||||
|
||||
And me and Buck slides out the door; and that's the way the Golconda Company went into involuntary liquefaction.
|
||||
|
||||
If you had seen me and Buck the next night you'd have had to go to a little bum hotel over near the West Side ferry landings. We was in a little back room, and I was filling up a gross of six-ounce bottles with hydrant water colored red with aniline and flavored with cinnamon. Buck was smoking, contented, and he wore a decent brown derby in place of his silk hat.
|
||||
|
||||
"It's a good thing, Pick," says he, as he drove in the corks, "that we got Brady to lend us his horse and wagon for a week. We'll rustle up the stake by then. This hair tonic'll sell right along over in Jersey. Bald heads ain't popular over there on account of the mosquitoes."
|
||||
|
||||
Directly I dragged out my valise and went down in it for labels.
|
||||
|
||||
"Hair tonic labels are out," says I. "Only about a dozen on hand."
|
||||
|
||||
"Buy some more," says Buck.
|
||||
|
||||
We investigated our pockets and found we had just enough money to settle our hotel bill in the morning and pay our passage over the ferry.
|
||||
|
||||
"Plenty of the 'Shake-the-Shakes Chill Cure' labels," says I, after looking.
|
||||
|
||||
"What more do you want?" says Buck. "Slap 'em on. The chill season is just opening up in the Hackensack low grounds. What's hair, anyway, if you have to shake it off?"
|
||||
|
||||
We pasted on the Chill Cure labels about half an hour and Buck says:
|
||||
|
||||
"Making an honest livin's better than that Wall Street, anyhow; ain't it, Pick?"
|
||||
|
||||
"You bet," says I.
|
||||
32
src/epub/text/a-tragedy.md
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32
src/epub/text/a-tragedy.md
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@ -0,0 +1,32 @@
|
||||
A Tragedy {#a-tragedy type="title"}
|
||||
---------
|
||||
|
||||
"By the beard of the Prophet. Oh, Scheherezade, right well hast thou done," said the Caliph, leaning back and biting off the end of a three-for.
|
||||
|
||||
For one thousand nights Scheherezade No. 2, daughter of the Grand Vizier, had sat at the feet of the mighty Caliph of the Indies relating tales that held the court entranced and breathless.
|
||||
|
||||
The soft, melodious sound of falling water from the fountain tinkled pleasantly upon the ear. Slaves sprinkled attar of roses upon the tessellated floor, and waved jeweled fans of peacock's feathers in the air. Outside, in the palace gardens the bulbul warbled in the date trees, the hoodoo flitted among the banyan branches, and the dying song of the goo-goo floated in upon the breeze from New York.
|
||||
|
||||
"And, now, oh, Scheherezade," continued the Caliph, "your contract calls for one more tale. One thousand have you told unto us, and we have rejoiced exceedingly at your narrative powers. Your stories are all new and do not weary us as do the chestnuts of Marshall P. Wilder. You are quite a peach. But, listen, oh, Daughter of the Moon, and first cousin to a phonograph, there is one more yet to come. Let it be one that has never before been related in the Kingdom. If it be thus, thou shalt have 10,000 gold pieces and a hundred slaves at thy command, but if it bear whiskers, then shall thy head pay the forfeit."
|
||||
|
||||
The Caliph made a sign, and Mesrour, the executioner, stepped to the side of Scheherezade. In his dark hand he held a glittering scimeter. He folded his arms and stood like a statue as the Caliph spoke again.
|
||||
|
||||
"Now, oh, Scheherezade, let her go. If it be that thou givest us something like that tale No. 475, where the Bagdad merchant was found by his favorite wife at the roof-garden concert, with his typewriter, or No. 684, where the Qadi of a certain town came home late from the lodge with his shoes off and stepped upon a tack, all will be well, but if you work off a Joe Miller on us, verily you get it in the neck."
|
||||
|
||||
Scheherezade took a fresh chew of gum, sat down on one foot and began.
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh, mighty Caliph, I have one story that would hold you spellbound. I call it my 288 story. But I really can not tell it. I---"
|
||||
|
||||
"And why not, oh, Scheherezade?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh, Brother to the Sun, and Private Secretary to the Milky Way, I am a modest woman, it is too gross, too gross to relate."
|
||||
|
||||
Scheherezade covered her face in confusion.
|
||||
|
||||
"Speak, I command you," said the Caliph, drawing nearer. "You need not mind me. I have read Laura Lean Jibbey and Isben. Go on with 288."
|
||||
|
||||
"I have said it, oh, Caliph. It is too gross."
|
||||
|
||||
The Caliph made a sign: Mesrour, the executioner, whirled his scimeter through the air and the head of Scheherezade rolled upon the floor. The Caliph pulled his beard and muttered softly to himself:
|
||||
|
||||
"I knew all the time that 288 is two gross, but puns don't go anywhere in my jurisdiction at present."
|
||||
8
src/epub/text/a-universal-favorite.md
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8
src/epub/text/a-universal-favorite.md
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@ -0,0 +1,8 @@
|
||||
A Universal Favorite {#a-universal-favorite type="title"}
|
||||
--------------------
|
||||
|
||||
The most popular and best loved young lady in the United States is Miss Annie Williams of Philadelphia. Her picture is possessed by more men, and is more eagerly sought after than that of Lillian Russell, Mrs. Langtry, or any other famous beauty. There is more demand for her pictures than for the counterfeit presentments of all the famous men and women in the world combined. And yet she is a modest, charming, and rather retiring young lady, with a face less beautiful than of a clear and classic outline.
|
||||
|
||||
Miss Williams is soon to be married, but it is expected that the struggle for her pictures will go on as usual.
|
||||
|
||||
She is the lady the profile of whose face served as the model for the head of Liberty on our silver dollar.
|
||||
12
src/epub/text/a-valedictory.md
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12
src/epub/text/a-valedictory.md
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@ -0,0 +1,12 @@
|
||||
A Valedictory {#a-valedictory type="title"}
|
||||
-------------
|
||||
|
||||
> The "Some Postscripts" man on the *Post* has about reached the end of > his vein. These spurts of brilliancy many are capable of, but the > sustained light that burns for years to gladden and instruct is a rare > quality, and the possessor should be appreciated by the people, for he > is the true Messiah---the eldest son of the great intellectual lord > of the universe. > > Brenham *Press*
|
||||
|
||||
Brother, you should not have given us away. We just had to salt that vein before we could get it in the market, and when the "salt" gave out, and the end of the vein was reached, we hoped you wouldn't notice the fact. If you hadn't mentioned it we might have gone on for years gladdening and instructing and drawing princely salary, but now our little spurt of our brilliancy will have to put on its pajamas and retire between the cold sheets of oblivion. We do not blame you at all for calling the public's attention to the played-out lode, for it is a terrible responsibility to guide the footsteps of innocent purchasers who may be taken in by glittering quartz and seductive pyrites of iron. To have one whom we regarded as a friend jerk us backward by the left leg when we had made such a successful sneak, and were about to scramble over the back fence of the temple of fame makes us sad, but we do not repine for:
|
||||
|
||||
> " 'Twere better to have spurted and lost\ > Than never to have spurted at all."
|
||||
|
||||
We really intended our light to burn for years, and to have the wick snuffed so quickly, although done in sorrowing kindness, causes us to sputter and smoke a little as we go out.
|
||||
|
||||
When the true Messiah comes along and shies his valise over to the night clerk, and turns back his cuffs ready to fill the long-felt want; if he should ever hear the whoops of those unappreciative critics who would crucify him, these few lines may teach him to fly to Brenham where his papa, the great intellectual lord of the universe, will protect him.
|
||||
8
src/epub/text/a-villainous-trick.md
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8
src/epub/text/a-villainous-trick.md
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@ -0,0 +1,8 @@
|
||||
A Villainous Trick {#a-villainous-trick type="title"}
|
||||
------------------
|
||||
|
||||
When it becomes necessary for an actor to write a letter during the performance of a play, it is a custom to read the words aloud as he writes them. It is necessary to do this in order that the audience may be apprised of its contents, otherwise the clearness of the plot might be obscured. The writing of a letter upon the stage, therefore, generally has an important bearing upon the situation being presented, and of course the writer is forced to read aloud what he writes for the benefit of the audience. During the production of "Monbars" in Houston some days ago, the gentleman who assumed the character of the heavy villain took advantage of a situation of this description in a most cowardly manner.
|
||||
|
||||
In the last act, Mantell, as Monbars, writes a letter of vital importance, and, as customary, reads the lines aloud as he writes them. The villain hides behind the curtains of a couch and listens in fiendish glee to the contents of the letter as imparted by Mr. Mantell in strict confidence to the audience. He then uses the information obtained in this underhanded manner to further his own devilish designs.
|
||||
|
||||
Mr. Mantell ought not to allow this. A man who is a member of his own company, and who, no doubt is drawing a good salary, should be above taking a mean advantage of a mere stage technicality.
|
||||
42
src/epub/text/a-years-supply.md
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42
src/epub/text/a-years-supply.md
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@ -0,0 +1,42 @@
|
||||
A Years Supply {#a-years-supply type="title"}
|
||||
--------------
|
||||
|
||||
He was one of the city's wealthiest men, but he made no ostentatious display of his wealth. A little, thin, poorly clad girl stood looking in the window of the restaurant at the good things to eat. The man approached and touched her on the shoulder.
|
||||
|
||||
"What is your name, little girl?" he asked.
|
||||
|
||||
"Susie Tompkins, sir," she answered, looking up at him with great, haunting, blue eyes.
|
||||
|
||||
There was something in her pleading, innocent voice that stirred a strange feeling in the millionaire's heart. Still it may have been indigestion.
|
||||
|
||||
"Have you a father?" he asked.
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh, no, sir, mother has only me to support."
|
||||
|
||||
"Is your mother very poor?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh, yes, sir."
|
||||
|
||||
"What is your mother's name?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Susan, sir. Just like mine."
|
||||
|
||||
"Tell me, child," said the wealthy man, clutching her arm in an agony of suspense. "Has your mother a wart on her nose, and does her breath smell of onions?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Yes, sir."
|
||||
|
||||
The millionaire covered his face with his hands for a moment, and then said in a trembling voice:
|
||||
|
||||
"Little one, your mother and I once knew each other. You have her voice, her hair, and her eyes. If it had not been for a misunderstanding---perhaps---but that is all past now."
|
||||
|
||||
The man unbuttoned his overcoat and took from his vest pocket a package.
|
||||
|
||||
"Take this," he said. "I have more than I want. It will last you and your mother a year."
|
||||
|
||||
The little girl took the package and ran home in glee.
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh, see, mama!" she cried. "A gentleman gave me this. He said it would last us a whole year."
|
||||
|
||||
The pale woman unrolled the package with trembling hands.
|
||||
|
||||
It was a nice new calendar.
|
||||
124
src/epub/text/according-to-their-lights.md
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124
src/epub/text/according-to-their-lights.md
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@ -0,0 +1,124 @@
|
||||
According to Their Lights {#according-to-their-lights type="title"}
|
||||
-------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
Somewhere in the depths of the big city, where the unquiet dregs are forever being shaken together, young Murray and the Captain had met and become friends. Both were at the lowest ebb possible to their fortunes; both had fallen from at least an intermediate Heaven of respectability and importance, and both were typical products of the monstrous and peculiar social curriculum of their overweening and bumptious civic alma mater.
|
||||
|
||||
The captain was no longer a captain. One of those sudden moral cataclysms that sometimes sweep the city had hurled him from a high and profitable position in the Police Department, ripping off his badge and buttons and washing into the hands of his lawyers the solid pieces of real estate that his frugality had enabled him to accumulate. The passing of the flood left him low and dry. One month after his dishabilitation a saloon-keeper plucked him by the neck from his free-lunch counter as a tabby plucks a strange kitten from her nest, and cast him asphaltward. This seems low enough. But after that he acquired a pair of cloth top, button Congress gaiters and wrote complaining letters to the newspapers. And then he fought the attendant at the Municipal Lodging House who tried to give him a bath. When Murray first saw him he was holding the hand of an Italian woman who sold apples and garlic on Essex Street, and quoting the words of a song book ballad.
|
||||
|
||||
Murray's fall had been more Luciferian, if less spectacular. All the pretty, tiny little kickshaws of Gotham had once been his. The megaphone man roars out at you to observe the house of his uncle on a grand and revered avenue. But there had been an awful row about something, and the prince had been escorted to the door by the butler, which, in said avenue, is equivalent to the impact of the avuncular shoe. A weak Prince Hal, without inheritance or sword, he drifted downward to meet his humorless Falstaff, and to pick the crusts of the streets with him.
|
||||
|
||||
One evening they sat on a bench in a little downtown park. The great bulk of the Captain, which starvation seemed to increase---drawing irony instead of pity to his petitions for aid---was heaped against the arm of the bench in a shapeless mass. His red face, spotted by tufts of vermilion, week-old whiskers and topped by a sagging white straw hat, looked, in the gloom, like one of those structures that you may observe in a dark Third Avenue window, challenging your imagination to say whether it be something recent in the way of ladies' hats or a strawberry shortcake. A tight-drawn belt---last relic of his official spruceness---made a deep furrow in his circumference. The Captain's shoes were buttonless. In a smothered bass he cursed his star of ill-luck.
|
||||
|
||||
Murray, at his side, was shrunk into his dingy and ragged suit of blue serge. His hat was pulled low; he sat quiet and a little indistinct, like some ghost that had been dispossessed.
|
||||
|
||||
"I'm hungry," growled the Captain---"by the top sirloin of the Bull of Bashan, I'm starving to death. Right now I could eat a Bowery restaurant clear through to the stovepipe in the alley. Can't you think of nothing, Murray? You sit there with your shoulders scrunched up, giving an imitation of Reginald Vanderbilt driving his coach---what good are them airs doing you now? Think of some place we can get something to chew."
|
||||
|
||||
"You forget, my dear Captain," said Murray, without moving, "that our last attempt at dining was at my suggestion."
|
||||
|
||||
"You bet it was," groaned the Captain, "you bet your life it was. Have you got any more like that to make---hey?"
|
||||
|
||||
"I admit we failed," sighed Murray. "I was sure Malone would be good for one more free lunch after the way he talked baseball with me the last time I spent a nickel in his establishment."
|
||||
|
||||
"I had this hand," said the Captain, extending the unfortunate member---"I had this hand on the drumstick of a turkey and two sardine sandwiches when them waiters grabbed us."
|
||||
|
||||
"I was within two inches of the olives," said Murray. "Stuffed olives. I haven't tasted one in a year."
|
||||
|
||||
"What'll we do?" grumbled the Captain. "We can't starve."
|
||||
|
||||
"Can't we?" said Murray quietly. "I'm glad to hear that. I was afraid we could."
|
||||
|
||||
"You wait here," said the Captain, rising, heavily and puffily to his feet. "I'm going to try to make one more turn. You stay here till I come back, Murray. I won't be over half an hour. If I turn the trick I'll come back flush."
|
||||
|
||||
He made some elephantine attempts at smartening his appearance. He gave his fiery mustache a heavenward twist; he dragged into sight a pair of black-edged cuffs, deepened the crease in his middle by tightening his belt another hole, and set off, jaunty as a zoo rhinoceros, across the south end of the park.
|
||||
|
||||
When he was out of sight Murray also left the park, hurrying swiftly eastward. He stopped at a building whose steps were flanked by two green lights.
|
||||
|
||||
"A police captain named Maroney," he said to the desk sergeant, "was dismissed from the force after being tried under charges three years ago. I believe sentence was suspended. Is this man wanted now by the police?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Why are ye asking?" inquired the sergeant, with a frown.
|
||||
|
||||
"I thought there might be a reward standing," explained Murray, easily. "I know the man well. He seems to be keeping himself pretty shady at present. I could lay my hands on him at any time. If there should be a reward---"
|
||||
|
||||
"There's no reward," interrupted the sergeant, shortly. "The man's not wanted. And neither are ye. So, get out. Ye are frindly with um, and ye would be selling um. Out with ye quick, or I'll give ye a start."
|
||||
|
||||
Murray gazed at the officer with serene and virtuous dignity.
|
||||
|
||||
"I would be simply doing my duty as a citizen and gentleman," he said, severely, "if I could assist the law in laying hold of one of its offenders."
|
||||
|
||||
Murray hurried back to the bench in the park. He folded his arms and shrank within his clothes to his ghostlike presentment.
|
||||
|
||||
Ten minutes afterward the Captain arrived at the rendezvous, windy and thunderous as a dog-day in Kansas. His collar had been torn away; his straw hat had been twisted and battered; his shirt with ox-blood stripes split to the waist. And from head to knee he was drenched with some vile and ignoble greasy fluid that loudly proclaimed to the nose its component leaven of garlic and kitchen stuff.
|
||||
|
||||
"For Heaven's sake, Captain," sniffed Murray, "I doubt that I would have waited for you if I had suspected you were so desperate as to resort to swill barrels. I---"
|
||||
|
||||
"Cheese it," said the Captain, harshly. "I'm not hogging it yet. It's all on the outside. I went around on Essex and proposed marriage to that Catrina that's got the fruit shop there. Now, that business could be built up. She's a peach as far as a Dago could be. I thought I had that señoreena mashed sure last week. But look what she done to me! I guess I got too fresh. Well there's another scheme queered."
|
||||
|
||||
"You don't mean to say," said Murray, with infinite contempt, "that you would have married that woman to help yourself out of your disgraceful troubles!"
|
||||
|
||||
"Me?" said the Captain. "I'd marry the Empress of China for one bowl of chop suey. I'd commit murder for a plate of beef stew. I'd steal a wafer from a waif. I'd be a Mormon for a bowl of chowder."
|
||||
|
||||
"I think," said Murray, resting his head on his hands, "that I would play Judas for the price of one drink of whiskey. For thirty pieces of silver I would---"
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh, come now!" exclaimed the Captain in dismay. "You wouldn't do that, Murray! I always thought that Kike's squeal on his boss was about the lowest-down play that ever happened. A man that gives his friend away is worse than a pirate."
|
||||
|
||||
Through the park stepped a large man scanning the benches where the electric light fell.
|
||||
|
||||
"Is that you, Mac?" he said, halting before the derelicts. His diamond stickpin dazzled. His diamond-studded fob chain assisted. He was big and smooth and well fed. "Yes, I see it's you," he continued. "They told me at Mike's that I might find you over here. Let me see you a few minutes, Mac."
|
||||
|
||||
The Captain lifted himself with a grunt of alacrity. If Charlie Finnegan had come down in the bottomless pit to seek him there must be something doing. Charlie guided him by an arm into a patch of shadow.
|
||||
|
||||
"You know, Mac," he said, "they're trying Inspector Pickering on graft charges."
|
||||
|
||||
"He was my inspector," said the Captain.
|
||||
|
||||
"O'Shea wants the job," went on Finnegan. "He must have it. It's for the good of the organization. Pickering must go under. Your testimony will do it. He was your 'man higher up' when you were on the force. His share of the boodle passed through your hands. You must go on the stand and testify against him."
|
||||
|
||||
"He was"---began the Captain.
|
||||
|
||||
"Wait a minute," said Finnegan. A bundle of yellowish stuff came out of his inside pocket. "Five hundred dollars in it for you. Two-fifty on the spot, and the rest---"
|
||||
|
||||
"He was my friend, I say," finished the Captain. "I'll see you and the gang, and the city, and the party in the flames of Hades before I'll take the stand against Dan Pickering. I'm down and out; but I'm no traitor to a man that's been my friend." The Captain's voice rose and boomed like a split trombone. "Get out of this park, Charlie Finnegan, where us thieves and tramps and boozers are your betters; and take your dirty money with you."
|
||||
|
||||
Finnegan drifted out by another walk. The Captain returned to his seat.
|
||||
|
||||
"I couldn't avoid hearing," said Murray, drearily. "I think you are the biggest fool I ever saw."
|
||||
|
||||
"What would you have done?" asked the Captain.
|
||||
|
||||
"Nailed Pickering to the cross," said Murray.
|
||||
|
||||
"Sonny," said the Captain, huskily and without heat. "You and me are different. New York is divided into two parts---above Forty-second Street, and below Fourteenth. You come from the other part. We both act according to our lights."
|
||||
|
||||
An illuminated clock above the trees retailed the information that it lacked the half hour of twelve. Both men rose from the bench and moved away together as if seized by the same idea. They left the park, struck through a narrow cross street, and came into Broadway, at this hour as dark, echoing and de-peopled as a byway in Pompeii.
|
||||
|
||||
Northward they turned; and a policeman who glanced at their unkempt and slinking figures withheld the attention and suspicion that he would have granted them at any other hour and place. For on every street in that part of the city other unkempt and slinking figures were shuffling and hurrying toward a converging point---a point that is marked by no monument save that groove on the pavement worn by tens of thousands of waiting feet.
|
||||
|
||||
At Ninth Street a tall man wearing an opera hat alighted from a Broadway car and turned his face westward. But he saw Murray, pounced upon him and dragged him under a street light. The Captain lumbered slowly to the corner, like a wounded bear, and waited, growling.
|
||||
|
||||
"Jerry!" cried the hatted one. "How fortunate! I was to begin a search for you tomorrow. The old gentleman has capitulated. You're to be restored to favor. Congratulate you. Come to the office in the morning and get all the money you want. I've liberal instructions in that respect."
|
||||
|
||||
"And the little matrimonial arrangement?" said Murray, with his head turned sidewise.
|
||||
|
||||
"Why---er---well, of course, your uncle understands---expects that the engagement between you and Miss Vanderhurst shall be---"
|
||||
|
||||
"Good night," said Murray, moving away.
|
||||
|
||||
"You madman!" cried the other, catching his arm. "Would you give up two millions on account of---"
|
||||
|
||||
"Did you ever see her nose, old man?" asked Murray, solemnly.
|
||||
|
||||
"But, listen to reason, Jerry. Miss Vanderhurst is an heiress, and---"
|
||||
|
||||
"Did you ever see it?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Yes, I admit that her nose isn't---"
|
||||
|
||||
"Good night!" said Murray. "My friend is waiting for me. I am quoting him when I authorize you to report that there is 'nothing doing.' Good night."
|
||||
|
||||
A wriggling line of waiting men extended from a door in Tenth Street far up Broadway, on the outer edge of the pavement. The Captain and Murray fell in at the tail of the quivering millipede.
|
||||
|
||||
"Twenty feet longer than it was last night," said Murray, looking up at his measuring angle of Grace Church.
|
||||
|
||||
"Half an hour," growled the Captain, "before we get our punk."
|
||||
|
||||
The city clocks began to strike 12; the Bread Line moved forward slowly, its leathern feet sliding on the stones with the sound of a hissing serpent, as they who had lived according to their lights closed up in the rear.
|
||||
6
src/epub/text/after-supper.md
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|
||||
After Supper {#after-supper type="title"}
|
||||
------------
|
||||
|
||||
Mr. Sharp: "My darling, it seems to me that every year that passes over your head but brings out some new charm, some hidden beauty, some added grace. There is a look in your eyes tonight that is as charming and girllike as when I first met you. What a blessing it is when two hearts can grow but fonder as time flies. You are scarcely less beautiful now than when---"
|
||||
|
||||
Mrs. Sharp: "I had forgotten it was lodge night, Robert. Don't be out much after twelve, if you can help it."
|
||||
68
src/epub/text/after-twenty-years.md
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|
||||
After Twenty Years {#after-twenty-years type="title"}
|
||||
------------------
|
||||
|
||||
The policeman on the beat moved up the avenue impressively. The impressiveness was habitual and not for show, for spectators were few. The time was barely 10 o'clock at night, but chilly gusts of wind with a taste of rain in them had well nigh de-peopled the streets.
|
||||
|
||||
Trying doors as he went, twirling his club with many intricate and artful movements, turning now and then to cast his watchful eye adown the pacific thoroughfare, the officer, with his stalwart form and slight swagger, made a fine picture of a guardian of the peace. The vicinity was one that kept early hours. Now and then you might see the lights of a cigar store or of an all-night lunch counter; but the majority of the doors belonged to business places that had long since been closed.
|
||||
|
||||
When about midway of a certain block the policeman suddenly slowed his walk. In the doorway of a darkened hardware store a man leaned, with an unlighted cigar in his mouth. As the policeman walked up to him the man spoke up quickly.
|
||||
|
||||
"It's all right, officer," he said, reassuringly. "I'm just waiting for a friend. It's an appointment made twenty years ago. Sounds a little funny to you, doesn't it? Well, I'll explain if you'd like to make certain it's all straight. About that long ago there used to be a restaurant where this store stands---'Big Joe' Brady's restaurant."
|
||||
|
||||
"Until five years ago," said the policeman. "It was torn down then."
|
||||
|
||||
The man in the doorway struck a match and lit his cigar. The light showed a pale, square-jawed face with keen eyes, and a little white scar near his right eyebrow. His scarfpin was a large diamond, oddly set.
|
||||
|
||||
"Twenty years ago tonight," said the man, "I dined here at 'Big Joe' Brady's with Jimmy Wells, my best chum, and the finest chap in the world. He and I were raised here in New York, just like two brothers, together. I was eighteen and Jimmy was twenty. The next morning I was to start for the West to make my fortune. You couldn't have dragged Jimmy out of New York; he thought it was the only place on earth. Well, we agreed that night that we would meet here again exactly twenty years from that date and time, no matter what our conditions might be or from what distance we might have to come. We figured that in twenty years each of us ought to have our destiny worked out and our fortunes made, whatever they were going to be."
|
||||
|
||||
"It sounds pretty interesting," said the policeman. "Rather a long time between meets, though, it seems to me. Haven't you heard from your friend since you left?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Well, yes, for a time we corresponded," said the other. "But after a year or two we lost track of each other. You see, the West is a pretty big proposition, and I kept hustling around over it pretty lively. But I know Jimmy will meet me here if he's alive, for he always was the truest, stanchest old chap in the world. He'll never forget. I came a thousand miles to stand in this door tonight, and it's worth it if my old partner turns up."
|
||||
|
||||
The waiting man pulled out a handsome watch, the lids of it set with small diamonds.
|
||||
|
||||
"Three minutes to ten," he announced. "It was exactly ten o'clock when we parted here at the restaurant door."
|
||||
|
||||
"Did pretty well out West, didn't you?" asked the policeman.
|
||||
|
||||
"You bet! I hope Jimmy has done half as well. He was a kind of plodder, though, good fellow as he was. I've had to compete with some of the sharpest wits going to get my pile. A man gets in a groove in New York. It takes the West to put a razor-edge on him."
|
||||
|
||||
The policeman twirled his club and took a step or two.
|
||||
|
||||
"I'll be on my way. Hope your friend comes around all right. Going to call time on him sharp?"
|
||||
|
||||
"I should say not!" said the other. "I'll give him half an hour at least. If Jimmy is alive on earth he'll be here by that time. So long, officer."
|
||||
|
||||
"Good night, sir," said the policeman, passing on along his beat, trying doors as he went.
|
||||
|
||||
There was now a fine, cold drizzle falling, and the wind had risen from its uncertain puffs into a steady blow. The few foot passengers astir in that quarter hurried dismally and silently along with coat collars turned high and pocketed hands. And in the door of the hardware store the man who had come a thousand miles to fill an appointment, uncertain almost to absurdity, with the friend of his youth, smoked his cigar and waited.
|
||||
|
||||
About twenty minutes he waited, and then a tall man in a long overcoat, with collar turned up to his ears, hurried across from the opposite side of the street. He went directly to the waiting man.
|
||||
|
||||
"Is that you, Bob?" he asked, doubtfully.
|
||||
|
||||
"Is that you, Jimmy Wells?" cried the man in the door.
|
||||
|
||||
"Bless my heart!" exclaimed the new arrival, grasping both the other's hands with his own. "It's Bob, sure as fate. I was certain I'd find you here if you were still in existence. Well, well, well!---twenty years is a long time. The old restaurant's gone, Bob; I wish it had lasted, so we could have had another dinner there. How has the West treated you, old man?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Bully; it has given me everything I asked it for. You've changed lots, Jimmy. I never thought you were so tall by two or three inches."
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh, I grew a bit after I was twenty."
|
||||
|
||||
"Doing well in New York, Jimmy?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Moderately. I have a position in one of the city departments. Come on, Bob; we'll go around to a place I know of, and have a good long talk about old times."
|
||||
|
||||
The two men started up the street, arm in arm. The man from the West, his egotism enlarged by success, was beginning to outline the history of his career. The other, submerged in his overcoat, listened with interest.
|
||||
|
||||
At the corner stood a drug store, brilliant with electric lights. When they came into this glare each of them turned simultaneously to gaze upon the other's face.
|
||||
|
||||
The man from the West stopped suddenly and released his arm.
|
||||
|
||||
"You're not Jimmy Wells," he snapped. "Twenty years is a long time, but not long enough to change a man's nose from a Roman to a pug."
|
||||
|
||||
"It sometimes changes a good man into a bad one," said the tall man. "You've been under arrest for ten minutes, 'Silky' Bob. Chicago thinks you may have dropped over our way and wires us she wants to have a chat with you. Going quietly, are you? That's sensible. Now, before we go on to the station here's a note I was asked to hand you. You may read it here at the window. It's from Patrolman Wells."
|
||||
|
||||
The man from the West unfolded the little piece of paper handed him. His hand was steady when he began to read, but it trembled a little by the time he had finished. The note was rather short.
|
||||
|
||||
> [Bob]{type="z3998:salutation"}: I was at the appointed place on time. > When you struck the match to light your cigar I saw it was the face of > the man wanted in Chicago. Somehow I couldn't do it myself, so I went > around and got a plainclothes man to do the job. > > Jimmy.
|
||||
82
src/epub/text/an-adjustment-of-nature.md
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|
||||
An Adjustment of Nature {#an-adjustment-of-nature type="title"}
|
||||
-----------------------
|
||||
|
||||
In an art exhibition the other day I saw a painting that had been sold for \$5,000. The painter was a young scrub out of the West named Kraft, who had a favourite food and a pet theory. His pabulum was an unquenchable belief in the Unerring Artistic Adjustment of Nature. His theory was fixed around corned-beef hash with poached egg. There was a story behind the picture, so I went home and let it drip out of a fountain-pen. The idea of Kraft---but that is not the beginning of the story.
|
||||
|
||||
Three years ago Kraft, Bill Judkins (a poet), and I took our meals at Cipher's, on Eighth Avenue. I say "took." When we had money, Cipher got it "off of" us, as he expressed it. We had no credit; we went in, called for food and ate it. We paid or we did not pay. We had confidence in Cipher's sullenness and smouldering ferocity. Deep down in his sunless soul he was either a prince, a fool or an artist. He sat at a worm-eaten desk, covered with files of waiters' checks so old that I was sure the bottomest one was for clams that Hendrik Hudson had eaten and paid for. Cipher had the power, in common with Napoleon [III]{type="z3998:roman"} and the goggle-eyed perch, of throwing a film over his eyes, rendering opaque the windows of his soul. Once when we left him unpaid, with egregious excuses, I looked back and saw him shaking with inaudible laughter behind his film. Now and then we paid up back scores.
|
||||
|
||||
But the chief thing at Cipher's was Milly. Milly was a waitress. She was a grand example of Kraft's theory of the artistic adjustment of nature. She belonged, largely, to waiting, as Minerva did to the art of scrapping, or Venus to the science of serious flirtation. Pedestalled and in bronze she might have stood with the noblest of her heroic sisters as "Liver-and-Bacon Enlivening the World." She belonged to Cipher's. You expected to see her colossal figure loom through that reeking blue cloud of smoke from frying fat just as you expect the Palisades to appear through a drifting Hudson River fog. There amid the steam of vegetables and the vapours of acres of "ham and," the crash of crockery, the clatter of steel, the screaming of "short orders," the cries of the hungering and all the horrid tumult of feeding man, surrounded by swarms of the buzzing winged beasts bequeathed us by Pharaoh, Milly steered her magnificent way like some great liner cleaving among the canoes of howling savages.
|
||||
|
||||
Our Goddess of Grub was built on lines so majestic that they could be followed only with awe. Her sleeves were always rolled above her elbows. She could have taken us three musketeers in her two hands and dropped us out of the window. She had seen fewer years than any of us, but she was of such superb Evehood and simplicity that she mothered us from the beginning. Cipher's store of eatables she poured out upon us with royal indifference to price and quantity, as from a cornucopia that knew no exhaustion. Her voice rang like a great silver bell; her smile was many-toothed and frequent; she seemed like a yellow sunrise on mountain tops. I never saw her but I thought of the Yosemite. And yet, somehow, I could never think of her as existing outside of Cipher's. There nature had placed her, and she had taken root and grown mightily. She seemed happy, and took her few poor dollars on Saturday nights with the flushed pleasure of a child that receives an unexpected donation.
|
||||
|
||||
It was Kraft who first voiced the fear that each of us must have held latently. It came up apropos, of course, of certain questions of art at which we were hammering. One of us compared the harmony existing between a Haydn symphony and pistache ice cream to the exquisite congruity between Milly and Cipher's.
|
||||
|
||||
"There is a certain fate hanging over Milly," said Kraft, "and if it overtakes her she is lost to Cipher's and to us."
|
||||
|
||||
"She will grow fat?" asked Judkins, fearsomely.
|
||||
|
||||
"She will go to night school and become refined?" I ventured anxiously.
|
||||
|
||||
"It is this," said Kraft, punctuating in a puddle of spilled coffee with a stiff forefinger. "Caesar had his Brutus---the cotton has its bollworm, the chorus girl has her Pittsburger, the summer boarder has his poison ivy, the hero has his Carnegie medal, art has its Morgan, the rose has its---"
|
||||
|
||||
"Speak," I interrupted, much perturbed. "You do not think that Milly will begin to lace?"
|
||||
|
||||
"One day," concluded Kraft, solemnly, "there will come to Cipher's for a plate of beans a millionaire lumberman from Wisconsin, and he will marry Milly."
|
||||
|
||||
"Never!" exclaimed Judkins and I, in horror.
|
||||
|
||||
"A lumberman," repeated Kraft, hoarsely.
|
||||
|
||||
"And a millionaire lumberman!" I sighed, despairingly.
|
||||
|
||||
"From Wisconsin!" groaned Judkins.
|
||||
|
||||
We agreed that the awful fate seemed to menace her. Few things were less improbable. Milly, like some vast virgin stretch of pine woods, was made to catch the lumberman's eye. And well we knew the habits of the Badgers, once fortune smiled upon them. Straight to New York they hie, and lay their goods at the feet of the girl who serves them beans in a beanery. Why, the alphabet itself connives. The Sunday newspaper's headliner's work is cut for him.
|
||||
|
||||
"Winsome Waitress Wins Wealthy Wisconsin Woodsman."
|
||||
|
||||
For a while we felt that Milly was on the verge of being lost to us.
|
||||
|
||||
It was our love of the Unerring Artistic Adjustment of Nature that inspired us. We could not give her over to a lumberman, doubly accursed by wealth and provincialism. We shuddered to think of Milly, with her voice modulated and her elbows covered, pouring tea in the marble teepee of a tree murderer. No! In Cipher's she belonged---in the bacon smoke, the cabbage perfume, the grand, Wagnerian chorus of hurled ironstone china and rattling casters.
|
||||
|
||||
Our fears must have been prophetic, for on that same evening the wildwood discharged upon us Milly's preordained confiscator---our fee to adjustment and order. But Alaska and not Wisconsin bore the burden of the visitation.
|
||||
|
||||
We were at our supper of beef stew and dried apples when he trotted in as if on the heels of a dog team, and made one of the mess at our table. With the freedom of the camps he assaulted our ears and claimed the fellowship of men lost in the wilds of a hash house. We embraced him as a specimen, and in three minutes we had all but died for one another as friends.
|
||||
|
||||
He was rugged and bearded and wind-dried. He had just come off the "trail," he said, at one of the North River ferries. I fancied I could see the snow dust of Chilcoot yet powdering his shoulders. And then he strewed the table with the nuggets, stuffed ptarmigans, bead work and seal pelts of the returned Klondiker, and began to prate to us of his millions.
|
||||
|
||||
"Bank drafts for two millions," was his summing up, "and a thousand a day piling up from my claims. And now I want some beef stew and canned peaches. I never got off the train since I mushed out of Seattle, and I'm hungry. The stuff the niggers feed you on Pullmans don't count. You gentlemen order what you want."
|
||||
|
||||
And then Milly loomed up with a thousand dishes on her bare arm---loomed up big and white and pink and awful as Mount Saint Elias---with a smile like day breaking in a gulch. And the Klondiker threw down his pelts and nuggets as dross, and let his jaw fall halfway, and stared at her. You could almost see the diamond tiaras on Milly's brow and the hand-embroidered silk Paris gowns that he meant to buy for her.
|
||||
|
||||
At last the bollworm had attacked the cotton---the poison ivy was reaching out its tendrils to entwine the summer boarder---the millionaire lumberman, thinly disguised as the Alaskan miner, was about to engulf our Milly and upset Nature's adjustment.
|
||||
|
||||
Kraft was the first to act. He leaped up and pounded the Klondiker's back. "Come out and drink," he shouted. "Drink first and eat afterward." Judkins seized one arm and I the other. Gaily, roaringly, irresistibly, in jolly-good-fellow style, we dragged him from the restaurant to a café, stuffing his pockets with his embalmed birds and indigestible nuggets.
|
||||
|
||||
There he rumbled a roughly good-humoured protest. "That's the girl for my money," he declared. "She can eat out of my skillet the rest of her life. Why, I never see such a fine girl. I'm going back there and ask her to marry me. I guess she won't want to sling hash any more when she sees the pile of dust I've got."
|
||||
|
||||
"You'll take another whiskey and milk now," Kraft persuaded, with Satan's smile. "I thought you upcountry fellows were better sports."
|
||||
|
||||
Kraft spent his puny store of coin at the bar and then gave Judkins and me such an appealing look that we went down to the last dime we had in toasting our guest.
|
||||
|
||||
Then, when our ammunition was gone and the Klondiker, still somewhat sober, began to babble again of Milly, Kraft whispered into his ear such a polite, barbed insult relating to people who were miserly with their funds, that the miner crashed down handful after handful of silver and notes, calling for all the fluids in the world to drown the imputation.
|
||||
|
||||
Thus the work was accomplished. With his own guns we drove him from the field. And then we had him carted to a distant small hotel and put to bed with his nuggets and baby seal-skins stuffed around him.
|
||||
|
||||
"He will never find Cipher's again," said Kraft. "He will propose to the first white apron he sees in a dairy restaurant tomorrow. And Milly---I mean the Natural Adjustment---is saved!"
|
||||
|
||||
And back to Cipher's went we three, and, finding customers scarce, we joined hands and did an Indian dance with Milly in the centre.
|
||||
|
||||
This, I say, happened three years ago. And about that time a little luck descended upon us three, and we were enabled to buy costlier and less wholesome food than Cipher's. Our paths separated, and I saw Kraft no more and Judkins seldom.
|
||||
|
||||
But, as I said, I saw a painting the other day that was sold for \$5,000. The title was "Boadicea," and the figure seemed to fill all out-of-doors. But of all the picture's admirers who stood before it, I believe I was the only one who longed for Boadicea to stalk from her frame, bringing me corned-beef hash with poached egg.
|
||||
|
||||
I hurried away to see Kraft. His satanic eyes were the same, his hair was worse tangled, but his clothes had been made by a tailor.
|
||||
|
||||
"I didn't know," I said to him.
|
||||
|
||||
"We've bought a cottage in the Bronx with the money," said he. "Any evening at 7."
|
||||
|
||||
"Then," said I, "when you led us against the lumberman---the---Klondiker---it wasn't altogether on account of the Unerring Artistic Adjustment of Nature?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Well, not altogether," said Kraft, with a grin.
|
||||
160
src/epub/text/an-afternoon-miracle.md
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|
||||
An Afternoon Miracle {#an-afternoon-miracle type="title"}
|
||||
--------------------
|
||||
|
||||
At the United States end of an international river bridge, four armed rangers sweltered in a little 'dobe hut, keeping a fairly faithful espionage upon the lagging trail of passengers from the Mexican side.
|
||||
|
||||
Bud Dawson, proprietor of the Top Notch Saloon, had, on the evening previous, violently ejected from his premises one Leandro Garcia, for alleged violation of the Top Notch code of behaviour. Garcia had mentioned twenty-four hours as a limit, by which time he would call and collect a painful indemnity for personal satisfaction.
|
||||
|
||||
This Mexican, although a tremendous braggart, was thoroughly courageous, and each side of the river respected him for one of these attributes. He and a following of similar bravoes were addicted to the pastime of retrieving towns from stagnation.
|
||||
|
||||
The day designated by Garcia for retribution was to be further signalised on the American side by a cattlemen's convention, a bull fight, and an old settlers' barbecue and picnic. Knowing the avenger to be a man of his word, and believing it prudent to court peace while three such gently social relaxations were in progress, Captain McNulty, of the ranger company stationed there, detailed his lieutenant and three men for duty at the end of the bridge. Their instructions were to prevent the invasion of Garcia, either alone or attended by his gang.
|
||||
|
||||
Travel was slight that sultry afternoon, and the rangers swore gently, and mopped their brows in their convenient but close quarters. For an hour no one had crossed save an old woman enveloped in a brown wrapper and a black mantilla, driving before her a burro loaded with kindling wood tied in small bundles for peddling. Then three shots were fired down the street, the sound coming clear and snappy through the still air.
|
||||
|
||||
The four rangers quickened from sprawling, symbolic figures of indolence to alert life, but only one rose to his feet. Three turned their eyes beseechingly but hopelessly upon the fourth, who had gotten nimbly up and was buckling his cartridge-belt around him. The three knew that Lieutenant Bob Buckley, in command, would allow no man of them the privilege of investigating a row when he himself might go.
|
||||
|
||||
The agile, broad-chested lieutenant, without a change of expression in his smooth, yellow-brown, melancholy face, shot the belt strap through the guard of the buckle, hefted his sixes in their holsters as a belle gives the finishing touches to her toilette, caught up his Winchester, and dived for the door. There he paused long enough to caution his comrades to maintain their watch upon the bridge, and then plunged into the broiling highway.
|
||||
|
||||
The three relapsed into resigned inertia and plaintive comment.
|
||||
|
||||
"I've heard of fellows," grumbled Broncho Leathers, "what was wedded to danger, but if Bob Buckley ain't committed bigamy with trouble, I'm a son of a gun."
|
||||
|
||||
"Peculiarness of Bob is," inserted the Nueces Kid, "he ain't had proper trainin'. He never learned how to git skeered. Now, a man ought to be skeered enough when he tackles a fuss to hanker after readin' his name on the list of survivors, anyway."
|
||||
|
||||
"Buckley," commented Ranger No. 3, who was a misguided Eastern man, burdened with an education, "scraps in such a solemn manner that I have been led to doubt its spontaneity. I'm not quite onto his system, but he fights, like Tybalt, by the book of arithmetic."
|
||||
|
||||
"I never heard," mentioned Broncho, "about any of Dibble's ways of mixin' scrappin' and cipherin'."
|
||||
|
||||
"Triggernometry?" suggested the Nueces infant.
|
||||
|
||||
"That's rather better than I hoped from you," nodded the Easterner, approvingly. "The other meaning is that Buckley never goes into a fight without giving away weight. He seems to dread taking the slightest advantage. That's quite close to foolhardiness when you are dealing with horse-thieves and fence-cutters who would ambush you any night, and shoot you in the back if they could. Buckley's too full of sand. He'll play Horatius and hold the bridge once too often some day."
|
||||
|
||||
"I'm on there," drawled the Kid; "I mind that bridge gang in the reader. Me, I go instructed for the other chap---Spurious Somebody---the one that fought and pulled his freight, to fight 'em on some other day."
|
||||
|
||||
"Anyway," summed up Broncho, "Bob's about the gamest man I ever see along the Rio Bravo. Great Sam Houston! If she gets any hotter she'll sizzle!" Broncho whacked at a scorpion with his four-pound Stetson felt, and the three watchers relapsed into comfortless silence.
|
||||
|
||||
How well Bob Buckley had kept his secret, since these men, for two years his side comrades in countless border raids and dangers, thus spake of him, not knowing that he was the most arrant physical coward in all that Rio Bravo country! Neither his friends nor his enemies had suspected him of aught else than the finest courage. It was purely a physical cowardice, and only by an extreme, grim effort of will had he forced his craven body to do the bravest deeds. Scourging himself always, as a monk whips his besetting sin, Buckley threw himself with apparent recklessness into every danger, with the hope of some day ridding himself of the despised affliction. But each successive test brought no relief, and the ranger's face, by nature adapted to cheerfulness and good-humour, became set to the guise of gloomy melancholy. Thus, while the frontier admired his deeds, and his prowess was celebrated in print and by word of mouth in many campfires in the valley of the Bravo, his heart was sick within him. Only himself knew of the horrible tightening of the chest, the dry mouth, the weakening of the spine, the agony of the strung nerves---the never-railing symptoms of his shameful malady.
|
||||
|
||||
One mere boy in his company was wont to enter a fray with a leg perched flippantly about the horn of his saddle, a cigarette hanging from his lips, which emitted smoke and original slogans of clever invention. Buckley would have given a year's pay to attain that devil-lay-care method. Once the debonair youth said to him: "Buck, you go into a scrap like it was a funeral. Not," he added, with a complimentary wave of his tin cup, "but what it generally is."
|
||||
|
||||
Buckley's conscience was of the New England order with Western adjustments, and he continued to get his rebellious body into as many difficulties as possible; wherefore, on that sultry afternoon he chose to drive his own protesting limbs to investigation of that sudden alarm that had startled the peace and dignity of the State.
|
||||
|
||||
Two squares down the street stood the Top Notch Saloon. Here Buckley came upon signs of recent upheaval. A few curious spectators pressed about its front entrance, grinding beneath their heels the fragments of a plate-glass window. Inside, Buckley found Bud Dawson utterly ignoring a bullet wound in his shoulder, while he feelingly wept at having to explain why he failed to drop the "blamed masquerooter," who shot him. At the entrance of the ranger Bud turned appealingly to him for confirmation of the devastation he might have dealt.
|
||||
|
||||
"You know, Buck, I'd 'a' plum got him, first rattle, if I'd thought a minute. Come in a-masque-rootin', playin' female till he got the drop, and turned loose. I never reached for a gun, thinkin' it was sure Chihuahua Betty, or Mrs. Atwater, or anyhow one of the Mayfield girls comin' a-gunnin', which they might, liable as not. I never thought of that blamed Garcia until---"
|
||||
|
||||
"Garcia!" snapped Buckley. "How did he get over here?"
|
||||
|
||||
Bud's bartender took the ranger by the arm and led him to the side door. There stood a patient grey burro cropping the grass along the gutter, with a load of kindling wood tied across its back. On the ground lay a black shawl and a voluminous brown dress.
|
||||
|
||||
"Masquerootin' in them things," called Bud, still resisting attempted ministrations to his wounds. "Thought he was a lady till he gave a yell and winged me."
|
||||
|
||||
"He went down this side street," said the bartender. "He was alone, and he'll hide out till night when his gang comes over. You ought to find him in that Mexican layout below the depot. He's got a girl down there---Pancha Sales."
|
||||
|
||||
"How was he armed?" asked Buckley.
|
||||
|
||||
"Two pearl-handled sixes, and a knife."
|
||||
|
||||
"Keep this for me, Billy," said the ranger, handing over his Winchester. Quixotic, perhaps, but it was Bob Buckley's way. Another man---and a braver one---might have raised a posse to accompany him. It was Buckley's rule to discard all preliminary advantage.
|
||||
|
||||
The Mexican had left behind him a wake of closed doors and an empty street, but now people were beginning to emerge from their places of refuge with assumed unconsciousness of anything having happened. Many citizens who knew the ranger pointed out to him with alacrity the course of Garcia's retreat.
|
||||
|
||||
As Buckley swung along upon the trail he felt the beginning of the suffocating constriction about his throat, the cold sweat under the brim of his hat, the old, shameful, dreaded sinking of his heart as it went down, down, down in his bosom.
|
||||
|
||||
------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
The morning train of the Mexican Central had that day been three hours late, thus failing to connect with the I. & G. N. on the other side of the river. Passengers for *Los Estados Unidos* grumblingly sought entertainment in the little swaggering mongrel town of two nations, for, until the morrow, no other train would come to rescue them. Grumblingly, because two days later would begin the great fair and races in San Antone. Consider that at that time San Antone was the hub of the wheel of Fortune, and the names of its spokes were Cattle, Wool, Faro, Running Horses, and Ozone. In those times cattlemen played at crack-loo on the sidewalks with double-eagles, and gentlemen backed their conception of the fortuitous card with stacks limited in height only by the interference of gravity. Wherefore, thither journeyed the sowers and the reapers---they who stampeded the dollars, and they who rounded them up. Especially did the caterers to the amusement of the people haste to San Antone. Two greatest shows on earth were already there, and dozens of smallest ones were on the way.
|
||||
|
||||
On a side track near the mean little 'dobe depot stood a private car, left there by the Mexican train that morning and doomed by an ineffectual schedule to ignobly await, amid squalid surroundings, connection with the next day's regular.
|
||||
|
||||
The car had been once a common day-coach, but those who had sat in it and gringed to the conductor's hatband slips would never have recognised it in its transformation. Paint and gilding and certain domestic touches had liberated it from any suspicion of public servitude. The whitest of lace curtains judiciously screened its windows. From its fore end drooped in the torrid air the flag of Mexico. From its rear projected the Stars and Stripes and a busy stovepipe, the latter reinforcing in its suggestion of culinary comforts the general suggestion of privacy and ease. The beholder's eye, regarding its gorgeous sides, found interest to culminate in a single name in gold and blue letters extending almost its entire length---a single name, the audacious privilege of royalty and genius. Doubly, then, was this arrogant nomenclature here justified; for the name was that of "Alvarita, Queen of the Serpent Tribe." This, her car, was back from a triumphant tour of the principal Mexican cities, and now headed for San Antonio, where, according to promissory advertisement, she would exhibit her "Marvellous Dominion and Fearless Control over Deadly and Venomous Serpents, Handling them with Ease as they Coil and Hiss to the Terror of Thousands of Tongue-tied Tremblers!"
|
||||
|
||||
One hundred in the shade kept the vicinity somewhat depeopled. This quarter of the town was a ragged edge; its denizens the bubbling froth of five nations; its architecture tent, jacal, and 'dobe; its distractions the hurdy-gurdy and the informal contribution to the sudden stranger's store of experience. Beyond this dishonourable fringe upon the old town's jowl rose a dense mass of trees, surmounting and filling a little hollow. Through this bickered a small stream that perished down the sheer and disconcerting side of the great canon of the Rio Bravo del Norte.
|
||||
|
||||
In this sordid spot was condemned to remain for certain hours the impotent transport of the Queen of the Serpent Tribe.
|
||||
|
||||
The front door of the car was open. Its forward end was curtained off into a small reception-room. Here the admiring and propitiatory reporters were wont to sit and transpose the music of Señorita Alvarita's talk into the more florid key of the press. A picture of Abraham Lincoln hung against a wall; one of a cluster of schoolgirls grouped upon stone steps was in another place; a third was Easter lilies in a blood-red frame. A neat carpet was under foot. A pitcher, sweating cold drops, and a glass stood on a fragile stand. In a willow rocker, reading a newspaper, sat Alvarita.
|
||||
|
||||
Spanish, you would say; Andalusian, or, better still, Basque; that compound, like the diamond, of darkness and fire. Hair, the shade of purple grapes viewed at midnight. Eyes, long, dusky, and disquieting with their untroubled directness of gaze. Face, haughty and bold, touched with a pretty insolence that gave it life. To hasten conviction of her charm, but glance at the stacks of handbills in the corner, green, and yellow, and white. Upon them you see an incompetent presentment of the señorita in her professional garb and pose. Irresistible, in black lace and yellow ribbons, she faces you; a blue racer is spiralled upon each bare arm; coiled twice about her waist and once about her neck, his horrid head close to hers, you perceive Kuku, the great eleven-foot Asian python.
|
||||
|
||||
A hand drew aside the curtain that partitioned the car, and a middle-eged, faded woman holding a knife and a half-peeled potato looked in and said:
|
||||
|
||||
"Alviry, are you right busy?"
|
||||
|
||||
"I'm reading the home paper, ma. What do you think! that pale, tow-weaded Matilda Price got the most votes in the *News* for the prettiest girl in Gallipo---*lees*."
|
||||
|
||||
"Shush! She wouldn't of done it if *you'd* been home, Alviry. Lord knows, I hope we'll be there before fall's over. I'm tired gallopin' round the world playin' we are dagoes, and givin' snake shows. But that ain't what I wanted to say. That there biggest snake's gone again. I've looked all over the car and can't find him. He must have been gone an hour. I remember hearin' somethin' rustlin' along the floor, but I thought it was you."
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh, blame that old rascal!" exclaimed the Queen, throwing down her paper. "This is the third time he's got away. George never *will* fasten down the lid to his box properly. I do believe he's *afraid* of Kuku. Now I've got to go hunt him."
|
||||
|
||||
"Better hurry; somebody might hurt him."
|
||||
|
||||
The Queen's teeth showed in a gleaming, contemptuous smile. "No danger. When they see Kuku outside they simply scoot away and buy bromides. There's a crick over between here and the river. That old scamp'd swap his skin any time for a drink of running water. I guess I'll find him there, all right."
|
||||
|
||||
A few minutes later Alvarita stopped upon the forward platform, ready for her quest. Her handsome black skirt was shaped to the most recent proclamation of fashion. Her spotless shirtwaist gladdened the eye in that desert of sunshine, a swelling oasis, cool and fresh. A man's split-straw hat sat firmly on her coiled, abundant hair. Beneath her serene, round, impudent chin a man's four-in-hand tie was jauntily knotted about a man's high, stiff collar. A parasol she carried, of white silk, and its fringe was lace, yellowly genuine.
|
||||
|
||||
I will grant Gallipolis as to her costume, but firmly to Seville or Valladolid I am held by her eyes; castanets, balconies, mantillas, serenades, ambuscades, escapades---all these their dark depths guaranteed.
|
||||
|
||||
"Ain't you afraid to go out alone, Alviry?" queried the Queen-mother anxiously. "There's so many rough people about. Mebbe you'd better---"
|
||||
|
||||
"I never saw anything I was afraid of yet, ma. 'Specially people. And men in particular. Don't you fret. I'll trot along back as soon as I find that runaway scamp."
|
||||
|
||||
The dust lay thick upon the bare ground near the tracks. Alvarita's eye soon discovered the serrated trail of the escaped python. It led across the depot grounds and away down a smaller street in the direction of the little canon, as predicted by her. A stillness and lack of excitement in the neighbourhood encouraged the hope that, as yet, the inhabitants were unaware that so formidable a guest traversed their highways. The heat had driven them indoors, whence outdrifted occasional shrill laughs, or the depressing whine of a maltreated concertina. In the shade a few Mexican children, like vivified stolid idols in clay, stared from their play, vision-struck and silent, as Alvarita came and went. Here and there a woman peeped from a door and stood dumb, reduced to silence by the aspect of the white silk parasol.
|
||||
|
||||
A hundred yards and the limits of the town were passed, scattered chaparral succeeding, and then a noble grove, overflowing the bijou canon. Through this a small bright stream meandered. Park-like it was, with a kind of cockney ruralness further endorsed by the waste papers and rifled tins of picnickers. Up this stream, and down it, among its pseudo-sylvan glades and depressions, wandered the bright and unruffled Alvarita. Once she saw evidence of the recreant reptile's progress in his distinctive trail across a spread of fine sand in the arroyo. The living water was bound to lure him; he could not be far away.
|
||||
|
||||
So sure was she of his immediate proximity that she perched herself to idle for a time in the curve of a great creeper that looped down from a giant water-elm. To reach this she climbed from the pathway a little distance up the side of a steep and rugged incline. Around her chaparral grew thick and high. A late-blooming ratama tree dispensed from its yellow petals a sweet and persistent odour. Adown the ravine rustled a seductive wind, melancholy with the taste of sodden, fallen leaves.
|
||||
|
||||
Alvarita removed her hat, and undoing the oppressive convolutions of her hair, began to slowly arrange it in two long, dusky plaits.
|
||||
|
||||
From the obscure depths of a thick clump of evergreen shrubs five feet away, two small jewel-bright eyes were steadfastly regarding her. Coiled there lay Kuku, the great python; Kuku, the magnificent, he of the plated muzzle, the grooved lips, the eleven-foot stretch of elegantly and brilliantly mottled skin. The great python was viewing his mistress without a sound or motion to disclose his presence. Perhaps the splendid truant forefelt his capture, but, screened by the foliage, thought to prolong the delight of his escapade. What pleasure it was, after the hot and dusty car, to lie thus, smelling the running water, and feeling the agreeable roughness of the earth and stones against his body! Soon, very soon the Queen would find him, and he, powerless as a worm in her audacious hands, would be returned to the dark chest in the narrow house that ran on wheels.
|
||||
|
||||
Alvarita heard a sudden crunching of the gravel below her. Turning her head she saw a big, swarthy Mexican, with a daring and evil expression, contemplating her with an ominous, dull eye.
|
||||
|
||||
"What do you want?" she asked as sharply as five hairpins between her lips would permit, continuing to plait her hair, and looking him over with placid contempt. The Mexican continued to gaze at her, and showed his teeth in a white, jagged smile.
|
||||
|
||||
"I no hurt-y you, Señorita," he said.
|
||||
|
||||
"You bet you won't," answered the Queen, shaking back one finished, massive plait. "But don't you think you'd better move on?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Not hurt-y you---no. But maybeso take one *beso*---one li'l kees, you call him."
|
||||
|
||||
The man smiled again, and set his foot to ascend the slope. Alvarita leaned swiftly and picked up a stone the size of a coconut.
|
||||
|
||||
"Vamoose, quick," she ordered peremptorily, "you *coon*!"
|
||||
|
||||
The red of insult burned through the Mexican's dark skin.
|
||||
|
||||
"*Hidalgo, Yo!*" he shot between his fangs. "I am not neg-r-ro! *Diabla bonita*, for that you shall pay me."
|
||||
|
||||
He made two quick upward steps this time, but the stone, hurled by no weak arm, struck him square in the chest. He staggered back to the footway, swerved half around, and met another sight that drove all thoughts of the girl from his head. She turned her eyes to see what had diverted his interest. A man with red-brown, curling hair and a melancholy, sunburned, smooth-shaven face was coming up the path, twenty yards away. Around the Mexican's waist was buckled a pistol belt with two empty holsters. He had laid aside his sixes---possibly in the [jacal]{lang="es"} of the fair Pancha---and had forgotten them when the passing of the fairer Alvarita had enticed him to her trail. His hands now flew instinctively to the holsters, but finding the weapons gone, he spread his fingers outward with the eloquent, abjuring, deprecating Latin gesture, and stood like a rock. Seeing his plight, the newcomer unbuckled his own belt containing two revolvers, threw it upon the ground, and continued to advance.
|
||||
|
||||
"Splendid!" murmured Alvarita, with flashing eyes.
|
||||
|
||||
------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
As Bob Buckley, according to the mad code of bravery that his sensitive conscience imposed upon his cowardly nerves, abandoned his guns and closed in upon his enemy, the old, inevitable nausea of abject fear wrung him. His breath whistled through his constricted air passages. His feet seemed like lumps of lead. His mouth was dry as dust. His heart, congested with blood, hurt his ribs as it thumped against them. The hot June day turned to moist November. And still he advanced, spurred by a mandatory pride that strained its uttermost against his weakling flesh.
|
||||
|
||||
The distance between the two men slowly lessened. The Mexican stood, immovable, waiting. When scarce five yards separated them a little shower of loosened gravel rattled down from above to the ranger's feet. He glanced upward with instinctive caution. A pair of dark eyes, brilliantly soft, and fierily tender, encountered and held his own. The most fearful heart and the boldest one in all the Rio Bravo country exchanged a silent and inscrutable communication. Alvarita, still seated within her vine, leaned forward above the breast-high chaparral. One hand was laid across her bosom. One great dark braid curved forward over her shoulder. Her lips were parted; her face was lit with what seemed but wonder---great and absolute wonder. Her eyes lingered upon Buckley's. Let no one ask or presume to tell through what subtle medium the miracle was performed. As by a lightning flash two clouds will accomplish counterpoise and compensation of electric surcharge, so on that eyeglance the man received his complement of manhood, and the maid conceded what enriched her womanly grace by its loss.
|
||||
|
||||
The Mexican, suddenly stirring, ventilated his attitude of apathetic waiting by conjuring swiftly from his bootleg a long knife. Buckley cast aside his hat, and laughed once aloud, like a happy schoolboy at a frolic. Then, empty-handed, he sprang nimbly, and Garcia met him without default.
|
||||
|
||||
So soon was the engagement ended that disappointment imposed upon the ranger's warlike ecstasy. Instead of dealing the traditional downward stroke, the Mexican lunged straight with his knife. Buckley took the precarious chance, and caught his wrist, fair and firm. Then he delivered the good Saxon knockout blow---always so pathetically disastrous to the fistless Latin races---and Garcia was down and out, with his head under a clump of prickly pears. The ranger looked up again to the Queen of the Serpents.
|
||||
|
||||
Alvarita scrambled down to the path.
|
||||
|
||||
"I'm mighty glad I happened along when I did," said the ranger.
|
||||
|
||||
"He---he frightened me so!" cooed Alvarita.
|
||||
|
||||
They did not hear the long, low hiss of the python under the shrubs. Wiliest of the beasts, no doubt he was expressing the humiliation he felt at having so long dwelt in subjection to this trembling and colouring mistress of his whom he had deemed so strong and potent and fearsome.
|
||||
|
||||
Then came galloping to the spot the civic authorities; and to them the ranger awarded the prostrate disturber of the peace, whom they bore away limply across the saddle of one of their mounts. But Buckley and Alvarita lingered.
|
||||
|
||||
Slowly, slowly they walked. The ranger regained his belt of weapons. With a fine timidity she begged the indulgence of fingering the great .45's, with little "Ohs" and "Ahs" of newborn, delicious shyness.
|
||||
|
||||
The *cañoncito* was growing dusky. Beyond its terminus in the river bluff they could see the outer world yet suffused with the waning glory of sunset.
|
||||
|
||||
A scream---a piercing scream of fright from Alvarita. Back she cowered, and the ready, protecting arm of Buckley formed her refuge. What terror so dire as to thus beset the close of the reign of the never-before-daunted Queen?
|
||||
|
||||
Across the path there crawled a caterpillar---a horrid, fuzzy, two-inch caterpillar! Truly, Kuku, thou wert avenged. Thus abdicated the Queen of the Serpent Tribe---*viva la reina!*
|
||||
24
src/epub/text/an-expensive-veracity.md
Normal file
24
src/epub/text/an-expensive-veracity.md
Normal file
@ -0,0 +1,24 @@
|
||||
An Expensive Veracity {#an-expensive-veracity type="title"}
|
||||
---------------------
|
||||
|
||||
A Houston man who attended a great many of Sam Jones's sermons was particularly impressed with his denunciation of prevaricators, and of lies of all kinds, white, variegated, and black.
|
||||
|
||||
So strongly was he affected and in such fertile ground did the seed sown by the great evangelist fall, that the Houston man, who had been accustomed occasionally to evade the truth, determined one morning he would turn over a new leaf and tell the truth in all things, big and little. So he commenced the day by scorning to speak even a word that did not follow the exact truth for a model.
|
||||
|
||||
At breakfast, his wife said:
|
||||
|
||||
"How are the biscuit, Henry?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Rather heavy," he answered, "and about half done."
|
||||
|
||||
His wife flounced out of the dining room and he ate breakfast with the children. Ordinarily Henry would have said, "They are very fine, my dear," and all would have been well.
|
||||
|
||||
As he went out the gate, his rich old aunt, with whom he had always been a favorite, drove up. She was curled, and stayed, and powdered to look as young as possible.
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh, Henry," she simpered. "How are Ella and the children? I would come in but I'm looking such a fright today I'm not fit to be seen."
|
||||
|
||||
"Yes," said Henry, "you do. It's a good thing your horse has a blind bridle on, for if he got a sight of you he'd run away and break your neck."
|
||||
|
||||
His aunt glared furiously at him and drove away without saying a word.
|
||||
|
||||
Henry figured it up afterward and found that every word he said to her cost him \$8,000.
|
||||
38
src/epub/text/an-inspiration.md
Normal file
38
src/epub/text/an-inspiration.md
Normal file
@ -0,0 +1,38 @@
|
||||
An Inspiration {#an-inspiration type="title"}
|
||||
--------------
|
||||
|
||||
He was seated on an empty box on Main Street late yesterday evening during the cold drizzling rain. He was poorly clad and his thick coat was buttoned up high under his chin. He had a woeful, harassed appearance, and there was something about him that indicated that he was different from the average tramp who beats his way by lies and fraud.
|
||||
|
||||
The *Post* man felt a touch of sympathy and went up to him and said:
|
||||
|
||||
"There's a place around the corner where you can get a lunch and lodging for a small sum. When did you strike town?"
|
||||
|
||||
The man gazed at the reporter out of his small, keen eyes and said:
|
||||
|
||||
"You're a new man on the *Post*, are you not?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Yes, comparatively."
|
||||
|
||||
"Do you see that block of three-story buildings over there?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Yes."
|
||||
|
||||
"Well, I own them and was just sitting here studying what I'm going to do."
|
||||
|
||||
"What's the trouble?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Why, the walls are cracking and bulging out on the sides, and I'm afraid I'm going to have to put a lot of money into repairs. I've got over one hundred tenants in those buildings."
|
||||
|
||||
"I'll tell you what to do."
|
||||
|
||||
"What?"
|
||||
|
||||
"You say the walls are bulging out?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Yes."
|
||||
|
||||
"Well, that makes more room everywhere. You just raise all your tenants' rent on account of the extra space."
|
||||
|
||||
"Young man, you're a genius. I'll put rents up twenty percent tomorrow."
|
||||
|
||||
And one more capitalist was saved.
|
||||
74
src/epub/text/an-odd-character.md
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74
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|
||||
An Odd Character {#an-odd-character type="title"}
|
||||
----------------
|
||||
|
||||
A *Post* Reporter stood on the San Jacinto Street bridge last night. Half of a May moon swam in a sea of buttermilky clouds high in the east. Below, the bayou gleamed dully in the semidarkness, merging into inky blackness farther down. A steam tug glided noiselessly down the sluggish waters, leaving a shattered trail of molten silver. Foot passengers across the bridge were scarce. A few belated Fifth-Warders straggled past, clattering along the uneven planks of the footway. The reporter took off his hat and allowed a cool breath of a great city to fan his brow. A mellow voice, with, however, too much dramatic inflection, murmured at his elbow, and quoted incorrectly from Byron:
|
||||
|
||||
> "Oh, moon, and darkening river, ye are wondrous strong;\ > Yet lovely in your strength as is the light of a dark eye in woman."
|
||||
|
||||
The reporter turned and saw a magnificent specimen of the genus tramp. He was attired in a garb to be viewed with wonder, and even awe. His coat was a black frock, fallen into decay some years ago. Under it he wore a jaunty striped blazer, too tight to button, and the ghost of a collar peered above its intricacies. His trousers were patched, and torn, and frayed, and faded away at the bottom into ghostly, indescribable feet shod in shapeless leather and dust.
|
||||
|
||||
His face, however, was the face of a hilarious faun. His eyes were brilliant and piercing, and a godlike smile lit up a face that owed little to art or soap.
|
||||
|
||||
His nose was classic, and his nostrils thin and nervous, betokening either race or fever. His brow was high and smooth, and his regard lofty and superior, though a bristly beard of uncertain cut and grisly effect covered the lower part of his countenance.
|
||||
|
||||
"Do you know what I am, sir?" asked this strange being. The reporter gazed at his weird form and shook his head.
|
||||
|
||||
"Your reply reassures me," said the wanderer. "It convinces me that I have not made a mistake in addressing you. You have some of the instincts of a gentleman, because you forbore to say what you know well, namely, that I am a tramp. I look like a tramp and I am one, but no ordinary one. I have a university education, I am a Greek and Latin scholar, and I have held the chair of English literature in a college known all over the world. I am a biologist, and more than all, I am a student of the wonderful book, man. The last accomplishment is the only one I still practice. If I am not grown unskilled, I can read you."
|
||||
|
||||
He bent a discriminating look upon the reporter. The reporter puffed at his cigar and submitted to the scrutiny.
|
||||
|
||||
"You are a newspaper man," said the tramp. "I will tell you how I reached the conclusion. I have been watching you for ten minutes. I knew you were not a man of leisure, for you walked upon the bridge with a somewhat rapid step. You stopped and began to watch the effect of the moon upon the water. A business man would have been hurrying along to supper. When you got your cigar out you had to feel in three or four pockets before you found one. A newspaper man has many cigars forced upon him in the course of a day, and he has to distribute them among several pockets. Again, you have no pencil sticking out of your pocket. No newspaper man ever has. Am I right in my conjecture?"
|
||||
|
||||
The reporter made a shrewd guess.
|
||||
|
||||
"You are right," he said, "and your having seen me going into a newspaper office some time ago no doubt assisted you in your diagnosis."
|
||||
|
||||
The tramp laughed.
|
||||
|
||||
"You are wrong," he said. "You were coming out when I saw you yesterday. I like a man like you. You can give and take. I have been in Houston now for three months, and you are the first man to whom I have spoken of myself. You have not offered me money, and by that have won my esteem. I am a tramp, but I never accept money from anyone. Why should I? The richest man in your town is a pauper compared with me. I see you smile. Come, sir, indulge me for a while. I am afflicted at times with *cacoethes loquendi*, and rarely do I meet a gentleman who will give me an ear."
|
||||
|
||||
The *Post* Man had seen so many people with the corners rubbed off, so many men who always say and do what they are expected to, that he fell into the humor of listening to this man who said unexpected things. And then he was so strange to look upon.
|
||||
|
||||
The tramp was not drunk, and his appearance was not that of a drinking man. His features were refined and clear-cut in the moonlight; and his voice---well, his voice was queer. It sounded like a man talking plainly in his sleep.
|
||||
|
||||
The *Post* Man concluded that his mind was unbalanced.
|
||||
|
||||
The tramp spoke again.
|
||||
|
||||
"I said I had plenty of money," he continued, "and I have. I will show a few---a very few of the wonders that you respectable, plodding, well-dressed people do not imagine to exist. Look at this ring."
|
||||
|
||||
He took from his finger a curious carved ring of beaten copper, wrought into a design that the moonlight did not suffer to be deciphered, and handed it to the reporter.
|
||||
|
||||
"Rub that ring thrice with the thumb of your left hand," said the tramp.
|
||||
|
||||
The reporter did so, with a creepy feeling that made him smile to himself. The tramp's eyes beamed, and he pointed into the air, following with his finger the movements of some invisible object.
|
||||
|
||||
"It is Artamela," he said, "the slave of the ring---catch!"
|
||||
|
||||
He swept his hollowed hand into space, scooping up something, and handed it to the reporter.
|
||||
|
||||
"See!" he said, "golden coins. I can bring them at will in unlimited numbers. Why should I beg?"
|
||||
|
||||
He held his empty hand with a gesture toward the reporter, who pretended to accept its visionary contents.
|
||||
|
||||
The tramp took off his hat and let the breeze sift through his tangled hair.
|
||||
|
||||
"What would you think," he said, "if I should tell you that I am 241 years old?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Knock off a couple of centuries," said the reporter, "and it will go all right."
|
||||
|
||||
"This ring," said the tramp, "was given me by a Buddhist priest in Benares, India, a hundred years before America was discovered. It is an inexhaustible source of wealth, life and good luck. It has brought me every blessing that man can enjoy. With such fortune as that there is no one on earth that I envy. I am blissfully happy and I lead the only ideal life."
|
||||
|
||||
The tramp leaned on the railing and gazed down the bayou for a long time without speaking. The reporter made a movement as if to go, and he started violently and faced around. A change had come over him. His brow was lowering and his manner cringing. He shivered and pulled his coat tight about him.
|
||||
|
||||
"Wot wuz I sayin'?" he said in a gruff, husky voice. "Wuz I a talkin'? Hello, there, mister, can't you give a feller a dime to get him some supper?"
|
||||
|
||||
The reporter, struck by the transformation, gazed at him in silence.
|
||||
|
||||
The tramp muttered to himself, and with shaking hands drew from his pocket something wrapped in paper.
|
||||
|
||||
He unrolled it, took something from it between his thumb and finger and thrust it into his mouth.
|
||||
|
||||
The sickly, faint, sweet odor of gum opium reached the reporter.
|
||||
|
||||
The mystery about the tramp was solved.
|
||||
20
src/epub/text/an-opportunity-declined.md
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20
src/epub/text/an-opportunity-declined.md
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@ -0,0 +1,20 @@
|
||||
An Opportunity Declined {#an-opportunity-declined type="title"}
|
||||
-----------------------
|
||||
|
||||
A farmer who lives about four miles from Houston noticed a stranger in his front yard one afternoon last week acting in a rather unusual manner. He wore a pair of duck trousers stuffed in his boots, and had a nose the color of Elgin pressed brick. In his hand he held a sharpened stake about two feet long, which he would stick into the ground, and after sighting over it at various objects would pull it up and go through the same performance at another place.
|
||||
|
||||
The farmer went out in the yard and inquired what he wanted.
|
||||
|
||||
"Wait just a minute," said the stranger, squinting his eye over the stick at the chicken house. "Now, that's it to a *T*. You see, I'm one of de odnance corps of engineers what's runnin' de line of the new railroad from Columbus, Ohio, to Houston. See? De other fellers is over de hill wid de transit and de baggage. Dere's over a million dollars in de company. See? Dey sent me on ahead to locate a place for a big passenger depot, to cost \$27,000. De foundation will commence right by your chicken house. Say, I gives you a pointer. You charge 'em high for dis land. Dey'll stand fifty thousand. 'Cause why? 'Cause dey's got de money and dey's got to build de depot right where I says. See? I've got to go on into Houston to record a deed for a right of way, and I never thought to get fifty cents from de treasurer. He's a little man with light pants. You might let me have de fifty cents and when de boys comes along in de mornin' tell 'em what you did, and any one of 'em' hand you a dollar. You might ask 'em fifty-five thousand, if you---"
|
||||
|
||||
"You throw that stick over the fence, and get the axe and cut up exactly half a cord of that wood, stove length, and I'll give you a quarter and your supper," said the farmer. "Does the proposition strike you favorably?"
|
||||
|
||||
"And are you goin' to t'row away de opportunity of havin' dat depot built right here, and sellin' out---"
|
||||
|
||||
"Yes, I need the ground for my chicken coop."
|
||||
|
||||
"You refuse to take \$50,000 for de ground, den?"
|
||||
|
||||
"I do. Are you going to chop that wood, or shall I whistle for Tige?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Gimme dat axe, mister, and show me dat wood, and tell de missus to bake an extra pan of biscuits for supper. When dat Columbus and Houston grand trunk railway runs up against your front fence you'll be sorry you didn't take up dat offer. And tell her to fill up the molasses pitcher, too, and not to mind about putting the dish of cooking butter on de table. See?"
|
||||
66
src/epub/text/an-original-idea.md
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66
src/epub/text/an-original-idea.md
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@ -0,0 +1,66 @@
|
||||
An Original Idea {#an-original-idea type="title"}
|
||||
----------------
|
||||
|
||||
There is a lady in Houston who is always having original ideas.
|
||||
|
||||
Now, this is a very reprehensible thing in a woman and should be frowned down. A woman should find out what her husband thinks about everything and regulate her thoughts to conform with his. Of course, it would not be so bad if she would keep her independent ideas to herself, but who ever knew a woman to do that?
|
||||
|
||||
This lady in particular had a way of applying her original ideas to practical use, and her family, and even neighbors, were kept constantly on the lookout for something startling at her hands.
|
||||
|
||||
One day she read in the columns of an Austin newspaper an article that caused her at once to conceive an original idea. The article called attention to the well-known fact that if men's homes supplied their wants and desires they would have no propensity to wander abroad, seeking distraction in gilded saloons. This struck the lady as a forcible truth, and she boldly plagiarized the idea and resolved to put it into immediate execution as an original invention.
|
||||
|
||||
That night when her husband came home he noticed a curtain stretched across one end of the sitting room, but he had so long been used to innovations of all sorts that he was rather afraid to investigate.
|
||||
|
||||
It might be stated apropos to the story that the lady's husband was addicted to the use of beer.
|
||||
|
||||
He not only liked beer, but he fondly loved beer. Beer never felt the slightest jealousy when this gentleman was out of its sight.
|
||||
|
||||
After supper the lady said: "Now, Robert, I have a little surprise for you. There is no need of your going downtown tonight, as you generally do, because I have arranged our home so that it will supply all the pleasures that you go out to seek."
|
||||
|
||||
With that she drew the curtain and Robert saw that one end of the sitting room had been fitted up as a bar---or rather his wife's idea of a bar.
|
||||
|
||||
A couple of strips of the carpet had been taken up and sawdust strewn on the floor. The kitchen table extended across the end of the room, and back of this on a shelf were arranged a formidable display of bottles, of all shapes and sizes, while the mirror of the best dresser had been taken off and placed artistically in the center.
|
||||
|
||||
On a trestle stood a fresh keg of beer and his wife, who had put on a coquettish-looking cap and apron, tripped lightly behind the bar, and waving a beer mug coyly at him said:
|
||||
|
||||
"It's an idea I had, Robert. I thought it would be much nicer to have you spend your money at home, and at the same time have all the amusement and pleasure that you do downtown. What will you have, sir?" she continued, with fine, commercial politeness.
|
||||
|
||||
Robert leaned against the bar and pawed the floor fruitlessly three or four times, trying to find the foot rest. He was a little stunned, as he always was at his wife's original ideas. Then he braced himself and tried to conjure up a ghastly imitation of a smile.
|
||||
|
||||
"I'll take a beer, please," he said.
|
||||
|
||||
His wife drew the beer, laid the nickel on the shelf and leaned on the bar, chatting familiarly on the topics of the day after the manner of bartenders.
|
||||
|
||||
"You must buy plenty, now," she said archly, "for you are the only customer I have tonight."
|
||||
|
||||
Robert felt a strong oppression of spirits, which he tried to hide. Besides the beer, which was first rate, there was little to remind him of the saloons where he had heretofore spent his money.
|
||||
|
||||
The lights, the glittering array of crystal, the rattle of dice, the funny stories of Brown, Jones, and Robinson, the motion and color that he found in the other places were wanting.
|
||||
|
||||
Robert stood still for quite a while and then an original idea struck him.
|
||||
|
||||
He pulled a handful of change from his pocket and began to call for glass after glass of beer. The lady behind the bar was beaming with pleasure at the success of her experiment. Ordinarily she had made quite a row, if her husband came home smelling of beer---but now, when the profits were falling into her own hands, she made no complaint.
|
||||
|
||||
It is not known how many glasses she sold her husband but there was quite a little pile of nickels and dimes on the shelf, and two or three quarters.
|
||||
|
||||
Robert was leaning rather heavily against the bar, now and then raising his foot and making a dab for the rod that was not there, but he was saying very little. His wife ought to have known better, but the profits rendered her indiscreet.
|
||||
|
||||
Presently Robert remarked in a very loud tone:
|
||||
|
||||
"Gozzamighty, se' 'm up all roun' barkeep'n puzzom on slate 'm busted."
|
||||
|
||||
His wife looked at him in surprise.
|
||||
|
||||
"Indeed, I will not, Robert," she said. "You must pay me for everything you have. I thought you understood that."
|
||||
|
||||
Robert looked in the mirror as straight as he could, counted his reflections, and then yelled loud enough to be heard a block away:
|
||||
|
||||
"Gosh dang it, gi' us six glasses beer and put 'em on ice, Susie, old girl, or I'll clean out your joint, 'n bus' up business. Whoopee!"
|
||||
|
||||
"Robert!" said his wife, in a tone implying a growing suspicion, "you've been drinking!"
|
||||
|
||||
"Zas d⸺d lie!" said Robert, as he threw a beer glass through the mirror. "Been down t' office helpin' friend pos' up books 'n missed last car. Say, now, Susie, old girl, you owe me two beers from las' time. Give 'em to me or I'll kick down bar."
|
||||
|
||||
Robert's wife was named Henrietta. When he made this remark she came around to the front and struck him over the eye with a lemon squeezer. Robert then kicked over the table, broke about half the bottles, spilled the beer, and used language not suited for the mailable edition.
|
||||
|
||||
Ten minutes later his wife had him tied with the clothes line, and during the intervals between pounding him on the head with a potato masher she was trying to think how to get rid of her last great original idea.
|
||||
62
src/epub/text/an-unfinished-christmas-story.md
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62
src/epub/text/an-unfinished-christmas-story.md
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@ -0,0 +1,62 @@
|
||||
An Unfinished Christmas Story {#an-unfinished-christmas-story type="title"}
|
||||
-----------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
Now, a Christmas story should be one. For a good many years the ingenious writers have been putting forth tales for the holiday numbers that employed every subtle, evasive, indirect and strategic scheme they could invent to disguise the Christmas flavor. So far has this new practice been carried that nowadays when you read a story in a holiday magazine the only way you can tell it is a Christmas story is to look at the footnote which reads: \["The incidents in the above story happened on December 25th.---**Ed**."\]
|
||||
|
||||
There is progress in this; but it is all very sad. There are just as many real Christmas stories as ever, if we would only dig 'em up. Me, I am for the Scrooge and Marley Christmas story, and the Annie and Willie's prayer poem, and the long lost son coming home on the stroke of twelve to the poorly thatched cottage with his arms full of talking dolls and popcorn balls and---Zip! you hear the second mortgage on the cottage go flying off it into the deep snow.
|
||||
|
||||
So, this is to warn you that there is no subterfuge about this story---and you might come upon stockings hung to the mantel and plum puddings and hark! the chimes! and wealthy misers loosening up and handing over penny whistles to lame newsboys if you read further.
|
||||
|
||||
Once I knocked at a door (I have so many things to tell you I keep on losing sight of the story). It was the front door of a furnished room house in West 'Teenth Street. I was looking for a young illustrator named Paley originally and irrevocably from Terre Haute. Paley doesn't enter even into the first serial rights of this Christmas story; I mention him simply in explaining why I came to knock at the door---some people have so much curiosity.
|
||||
|
||||
The door was opened by the landlady. I had seen hundreds like her. And I had smelled before that cold, dank, furnished draught of air that hurried by her to escape immurement in the furnished house.
|
||||
|
||||
She was stout, and her face and lands were as white as though she had been drowned in a barrel of vinegar. One hand held together at her throat a buttonless flannel dressing sacque whose lines had been cut by no tape or butterick known to mortal woman. Beneath this a too-long, flowered, black sateen skirt was draped about her, reaching the floor in stiff wrinkles and folds.
|
||||
|
||||
The rest of her was yellow. Her hair, in some bygone age, had been dipped in the fountain of folly presided over by the merry nymph Hydrogen; but now, except at the roots, it had returned to its natural grim and grizzled white.
|
||||
|
||||
Her eyes and teeth and finger nails were yellow. Her chops hung low and shook when she moved. The look on her face was exactly that smileless look of fatal melancholy that you may have seen on the countenance of a hound left sitting on the doorstep of a deserted cabin.
|
||||
|
||||
I inquired for Paley. After a long look of cold suspicion the landlady spoke, and her voice matched the dingy roughness of her flannel sacque.
|
||||
|
||||
Paley? Was I sure that was the name? And wasn't it, likely, Mr. Sanderson I meant, in the third floor rear? No; it was Paley I wanted. Again that frozen, shrewd, steady study of my soul from her pale-yellow, unwinking eyes, trying to penetrate my mask of deception and rout out my true motives from my lying lips. There was a Mr. Tompkins in the front hall bedroom two flights up. Perhaps it was he I was seeking. He worked of nights; he never came in till seven in the morning. Or if it was really Mr. Tucker (thinly disguised as Paley) that I was hunting I would have to call between five and---
|
||||
|
||||
But no; I held firmly to Paley. There was no such name among her lodgers. Click! the door closed swiftly in my face; and I heard through the panels the clanking of chains and bolts.
|
||||
|
||||
I went down the steps and stopped to consider. The number of this house was 43. I was sure Paley had said 43---or perhaps it was 45 or 47---I decided to try 47, the second house farther along.
|
||||
|
||||
I rang the bell. The door opened; and there stood the same woman. I wasn't confronted by just a resemblance---it was the *same* woman holding together the same old sacque at her throat and looking at me with the same yellow eyes as if she had never seen me before on earth. I saw on the knuckle of her second finger the same red-and-black spot made, probably, by a recent burn against a hot stove.
|
||||
|
||||
I stood speechless and gaping while one with moderate haste might have told fifty. I couldn't have spoken Paley's name even if I had remembered it. I did the only thing that a brave man who believes there are mysterious forces in nature that we do not yet fully comprehend could have done in the circumstances. I backed down the steps to the sidewalk and then hurried away frontward, fully understanding how incidents like that must bother the psychical research people and the census takers.
|
||||
|
||||
Of course I heard an explanation of it afterward, as we always do about inexplicable things.
|
||||
|
||||
The landlady was Mrs. Kannon; and she leased three adjoining houses, which she made into one by cutting arched doorways through the walls. She sat in the middle house and answered the three bells.
|
||||
|
||||
I wonder why I have maundered so slowly through the prologue. I have it! it was simply to say to you, in the form of introduction rife through the Middle West: "Shake hands with Mrs. Kannon."
|
||||
|
||||
For, it was in her triple house that the Christmas story happened; and it was there where I picked up the incontrovertible facts from the gossip of many roomers and met Stickney---and saw the necktie.
|
||||
|
||||
Christmas came that year on Thursday, and snow came with it.
|
||||
|
||||
Stickney (Harry Clarence Fowler Stickney to whomsoever his full baptismal cognominal burdens may be of interest) reached his address at six-thirty Wednesday afternoon. "Address" is New Yorkese for "home." Stickney roomed at 45 West 'Teenth Street, third floor rear hall room. He was twenty years and four months old, and he worked in a cameras-of-all-kinds, photographic supplies and films-developed store. I don't know what kind of work he did in the store; but you must have seen him. He is the young man who always comes behind the counter to wait on you and lets you talk for five minutes, telling him what you want. When you are done, he calls the proprietor at the top of his voice to wait on you, and walks away whistling between his teeth.
|
||||
|
||||
I don't want to bother about describing to you his appearance; but, if you are a man reader, I will say that Stickncy looked precisely like the young chap that you always find sitting in your chair smoking a cigarette after you have missed a shot while playing pool---not billiards but pool---when you want to sit down yourself.
|
||||
|
||||
There are some to whom Christmas gives no Christmassy essence. Of course, prosperous people and comfortable people who have homes or flats or rooms with meals, and even people who live in apartment houses with hotel service get something of the Christmas flavor. They give one another presents with the cost mark scratched off with a penknife; and they hang holly wreaths in the front windows and when they are asked whether they prefer light or dark meat from the turkey they say: "Both, please," and giggle and have lots of fun. And the very poorest people have the best time of it. The Army gives 'em a dinner, and the 10 a.m. issue of the Night Final edition of the newspaper with the largest circulation in the city leaves a basket at their door full of an apple, a Lake Ronkonkoma squab, a scrambled eggplant and a bunch of Kalamazoo bleached parsley. The poorer you are the more Christmas does for you.
|
||||
|
||||
But, I'll tell you to what kind of a mortal Christmas seems to be only the day before the twenty-sixth day of December. It's the chap in the big city earning sixteen dollars a week, with no friends and few acquaintances, who finds himself with only fifty cents in his pocket on Christmas eve. He can't accept charity; he can't borrow; he knows no one who would invite him to dinner. I have a fancy that when the shepherds left their flocks to follow the star of Bethlehem there was a bandy-legged young fellow among them who was just learning the sheep business. So they said to him, "Bobby, we're going to investigate this star route and see what's in it. If it should turn out to be the first Christmas day we don't want to miss it. And, as you are not a wise man, and as you couldn't possibly purchase a present to take along, suppose you stay behind and mind the sheep."
|
||||
|
||||
So as we may say, Harry Stickney was a direct descendant of the shepherd who was left behind to take care of the flocks.
|
||||
|
||||
Getting back to facts, Stickney rang the doorbell of 45. He had a habit of forgetting his latchkey.
|
||||
|
||||
Instantly the door opened and there stood Mrs. Kannon, clutching her sacque together at the throat and gorgonizing him with her opaque, yellow eyes.
|
||||
|
||||
(To give you good measure, here is a story within a story. Once a roomer in 47 who had the Scotch habit---not kilts, but a habit of drinking Scotch---began to figure to himself what might happen if two persons should ring the doorbells of 43 and 47 at the same time. Visions of two halves of Mrs. Kannon appearing respectively and simultaneously at the two entrances, each clutching at a side of an open, flapping sacque that could never meet, overpowered him. Bellevue got him.)
|
||||
|
||||
"Evening," said Stickney cheerlessly, as he distributed little piles of muddy slush along the hall matting. "Think we'll have snow?"
|
||||
|
||||
"You left your key," said---
|
||||
|
||||
> \[Here the manuscript ends.\]
|
||||
94
src/epub/text/an-unfinished-story.md
Normal file
94
src/epub/text/an-unfinished-story.md
Normal file
@ -0,0 +1,94 @@
|
||||
An Unfinished Story {#an-unfinished-story type="title"}
|
||||
-------------------
|
||||
|
||||
We no longer groan and heap ashes upon our heads when the flames of Tophet are mentioned. For, even the preachers have begun to tell us that God is radium, or ether or some scientific compound, and that the worst we wicked ones may expect is a chemical reaction. This is a pleasing hypothesis; but there lingers yet some of the old, goodly terror of orthodoxy.
|
||||
|
||||
There are but two subjects upon which one may discourse with a free imagination, and without the possibility of being controverted. You may talk of your dreams; and you may tell what you heard a parrot say. Both Morpheus and the bird are incompetent witnesses; and your listener dare not attack your recital. The baseless fabric of a vision, then, shall furnish my theme---chosen with apologies and regrets instead of the more limited field of pretty Polly's small talk.
|
||||
|
||||
I had a dream that was so far removed from the higher criticism that it had to do with the ancient, respectable, and lamented bar-of-judgment theory.
|
||||
|
||||
Gabriel had played his trump; and those of us who could not follow suit were arraigned for examination. I noticed at one side a gathering of professional bondsmen in solemn black and collars that buttoned behind; but it seemed there was some trouble about their real estate titles; and they did not appear to be getting any of us out.
|
||||
|
||||
A fly cop---an angel policeman---flew over to me and took me by the left wing. Near at hand was a group of very prosperous-looking spirits arraigned for judgment.
|
||||
|
||||
"Do you belong with that bunch?" the policeman asked.
|
||||
|
||||
"Who are they?" was my answer.
|
||||
|
||||
"Why," said he, "they are---"
|
||||
|
||||
But this irrelevant stuff is taking up space that the story should occupy.
|
||||
|
||||
Dulcie worked in a department store. She sold Hamburg edging, or stuffed peppers, or automobiles, or other little trinkets such as they keep in department stores. Of what she earned, Dulcie received six dollars per week. The remainder was credited to her and debited to somebody else's account in the ledger kept by G⸺ Oh, primal energy, you say, Reverend Doctor---Well then, in the Ledger of Primal Energy.
|
||||
|
||||
During her first year in the store, Dulcie was paid five dollars per week. It would be instructive to know how she lived on that amount. Don't care? Very well; probably you are interested in larger amounts. Six dollars is a larger amount. I will tell you how she lived on six dollars per week.
|
||||
|
||||
One afternoon at six, when Dulcie was sticking her hatpin within an eighth of an inch of her [medulla oblongata]{lang="la"}, she said to her chum, Sadie---the girl that waits on you with her left side:
|
||||
|
||||
"Say, Sade, I made a date for dinner this evening with Piggy."
|
||||
|
||||
"You never did!" exclaimed Sadie admiringly. "Well, ain't you the lucky one? Piggy's an awful swell; and he always takes a girl to swell places. He took Blanche up to the Hoffman House one evening, where they have swell music, and you see a lot of swells. You'll have a swell time, Dulce."
|
||||
|
||||
Dulcie hurried homeward. Her eyes were shining, and her cheeks showed the delicate pink of life's---real life's---approaching dawn. It was Friday; and she had fifty cents left of her last week's wages.
|
||||
|
||||
The streets were filled with the rush-hour floods of people. The electric lights of Broadway were glowing---calling moths from miles, from leagues, from hundreds of leagues out of darkness around to come in and attend the singeing school. Men in accurate clothes, with faces like those carved on cherry stones by the old salts in sailors' homes, turned and stared at Dulcie as she sped, unheeding, past them. Manhattan, the night-blooming cereus, was beginning to unfold its dead-white, heavy-odoured petals.
|
||||
|
||||
Dulcie stopped in a store where goods were cheap and bought an imitation lace collar with her fifty cents. That money was to have been spent otherwise---fifteen cents for supper, ten cents for breakfast, ten cents for lunch. Another dime was to be added to her small store of savings; and five cents was to be squandered for licorice drops---the kind that made your cheek look like the toothache, and last as long. The licorice was an extravagance---almost a carouse---but what is life without pleasures?
|
||||
|
||||
Dulcie lived in a furnished room. There is this difference between a furnished room and a boardinghouse. In a furnished room, other people do not know it when you go hungry.
|
||||
|
||||
Dulcie went up to her room---the third floor back in a West Side brownstone-front. She lit the gas. Scientists tell us that the diamond is the hardest substance known. Their mistake. Landladies know of a compound beside which the diamond is as putty. They pack it in the tips of gas-burners; and one may stand on a chair and dig at it in vain until one's fingers are pink and bruised. A hairpin will not remove it; therefore let us call it immovable.
|
||||
|
||||
So Dulcie lit the gas. In its one-fourth-candlepower glow we will observe the room.
|
||||
|
||||
Couch-bed, dresser, table, washstand, chair---of this much the landlady was guilty. The rest was Dulcie's. On the dresser were her treasures---a gilt china vase presented to her by Sadie, a calendar issued by a pickle works, a book on the divination of dreams, some rice powder in a glass dish, and a cluster of artificial cherries tied with a pink ribbon.
|
||||
|
||||
Against the wrinkly mirror stood pictures of General Kitchener, William Muldoon, the Duchess of Marlborough, and Benvenuto Cellini. Against one wall was a plaster of Paris plaque of an O'Callahan in a Roman helmet. Near it was a violent oleograph of a lemon-coloured child assaulting an inflammatory butterfly. This was Dulcie's final judgment in art; but it had never been upset. Her rest had never been disturbed by whispers of stolen copes; no critic had elevated his eyebrows at her infantile entomologist.
|
||||
|
||||
Piggy was to call for her at seven. While she swiftly makes ready, let us discreetly face the other way and gossip.
|
||||
|
||||
For the room, Dulcie paid two dollars per week. On weekdays her breakfast cost ten cents; she made coffee and cooked an egg over the gaslight while she was dressing. On Sunday mornings she feasted royally on veal chops and pineapple fritters at "Billy's" restaurant, at a cost of twenty-five cents---and tipped the waitress ten cents. New York presents so many temptations for one to run into extravagance. She had her lunches in the department-store restaurant at a cost of sixty cents for the week; dinners were \$1.05. The evening papers---show me a New Yorker going without his daily paper!---came to six cents; and two Sunday papers---one for the personal column and the other to read---were ten cents. The total amounts to \$4.76. Now, one has to buy clothes, and---
|
||||
|
||||
I give it up. I hear of wonderful bargains in fabrics, and of miracles performed with needle and thread; but I am in doubt. I hold my pen poised in vain when I would add to Dulcie's life some of those joys that belong to woman by virtue of all the unwritten, sacred, natural, inactive ordinances of the equity of heaven. Twice she had been to Coney Island and had ridden the hobbyhorses. 'Tis a weary thing to count your pleasures by summers instead of by hours.
|
||||
|
||||
Piggy needs but a word. When the girls named him, an undeserving stigma was cast upon the noble family of swine. The words-of-three-letters lesson in the old blue spelling book begins with Piggy's biography. He was fat; he had the soul of a rat, the habits of a bat, and the magnanimity of a cat ... He wore expensive clothes; and was a connoisseur in starvation. He could look at a shop-girl and tell you to an hour how long it had been since she had eaten anything more nourishing than marshmallows and tea. He hung about the shopping districts, and prowled around in department stores with his invitations to dinner. Men who escort dogs upon the streets at the end of a string look down upon him. He is a type; I can dwell upon him no longer; my pen is not the kind intended for him; I am no carpenter.
|
||||
|
||||
At ten minutes to seven Dulcie was ready. She looked at herself in the wrinkly mirror. The reflection was satisfactory. The dark blue dress, fitting without a wrinkle, the hat with its jaunty black feather, the but-slightly-soiled gloves---all representing self-denial, even of food itself---were vastly becoming.
|
||||
|
||||
Dulcie forgot everything else for a moment except that she was beautiful, and that life was about to lift a corner of its mysterious veil for her to observe its wonders. No gentleman had ever asked her out before. Now she was going for a brief moment into the glitter and exalted show.
|
||||
|
||||
The girls said that Piggy was a "spender." There would be a grand dinner, and music, and splendidly dressed ladies to look at, and things to eat that strangely twisted the girls' jaws when they tried to tell about them. No doubt she would be asked out again. There was a blue pongee suit in a window that she knew---by saving twenty cents a week instead of ten, in---let's see---Oh, it would run into years! But there was a secondhand store in Seventh Avenue where---
|
||||
|
||||
Somebody knocked at the door. Dulcie opened it. The landlady stood there with a spurious smile, sniffing for cooking by stolen gas.
|
||||
|
||||
"A gentleman's downstairs to see you," she said. "Name is Mr. Wiggins."
|
||||
|
||||
By such epithet was Piggy known to unfortunate ones who had to take him seriously.
|
||||
|
||||
Dulcie turned to the dresser to get her handkerchief; and then she stopped still, and bit her underlip hard. While looking in her mirror she had seen fairyland and herself, a princess, just awakening from a long slumber. She had forgotten one that was watching her with sad, beautiful, stern eyes---the only one there was to approve or condemn what she did. Straight and slender and tall, with a look of sorrowful reproach on his handsome, melancholy face, General Kitchener fixed his wonderful eyes on her out of his gilt photograph frame on the dresser.
|
||||
|
||||
Dulcie turned like an automatic doll to the landlady.
|
||||
|
||||
"Tell him I can't go," she said dully. "Tell him I'm sick, or something. Tell him I'm not going out."
|
||||
|
||||
After the door was closed and locked, Dulcie fell upon her bed, crushing her black tip, and cried for ten minutes. General Kitchener was her only friend. He was Dulcie's ideal of a gallant knight. He looked as if he might have a secret sorrow, and his wonderful moustache was a dream, and she was a little afraid of that stern yet tender look in his eyes. She used to have little fancies that he would call at the house sometime, and ask for her, with his sword clanking against his high boots. Once, when a boy was rattling a piece of chain against a lamppost she had opened the window and looked out. But there was no use. She knew that General Kitchener was away over in Japan, leading his army against the savage Turks; and he would never step out of his gilt frame for her. Yet one look from him had vanquished Piggy that night. Yes, for that night.
|
||||
|
||||
When her cry was over Dulcie got up and took off her best dress, and put on her old blue kimono. She wanted no dinner. She sang two verses of "Sammy." Then she became intensely interested in a little red speck on the side of her nose. And after that was attended to, she drew up a chair to the rickety table, and told her fortune with an old deck of cards.
|
||||
|
||||
"The horrid, impudent thing!" she said aloud. "And I never gave him a word or a look to make him think it!"
|
||||
|
||||
At nine o'clock Dulcie took a tin box of crackers and a little pot of raspberry jam out of her trunk, and had a feast. She offered General Kitchener some jam on a cracker; but he only looked at her as the sphinx would have looked at a butterfly---if there are butterflies in the desert.
|
||||
|
||||
"Don't eat it if you don't want to," said Dulcie. "And don't put on so many airs and scold so with your eyes. I wonder if you'd be so superior and snippy if you had to live on six dollars a week."
|
||||
|
||||
It was not a good sign for Dulcie to be rude to General Kitchener. And then she turned Benvenuto Cellini face downward with a severe gesture. But that was not inexcusable; for she had always thought he was Henry [VIII]{type="z3998:roman"}, and she did not approve of him.
|
||||
|
||||
At half-past nine Dulcie took a last look at the pictures on the dresser, turned out the light, and skipped into bed. It's an awful thing to go to bed with a good night look at General Kitchener, William Muldoon, the Duchess of Marlborough, and Benvenuto Cellini. This story really doesn't get anywhere at all. The rest of it comes later---sometime when Piggy asks Dulcie again to dine with him, and she is feeling lonelier than usual, and General Kitchener happens to be looking the other way; and then---
|
||||
|
||||
As I said before, I dreamed that I was standing near a crowd of prosperous-looking angels, and a policeman took me by the wing and asked if I belonged with them.
|
||||
|
||||
"Who are they?" I asked.
|
||||
|
||||
"Why," said he, "they are the men who hired working-girls, and paid 'em five or six dollars a week to live on. Are you one of the bunch?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Not on your immortality," said I. "I'm only the fellow that set fire to an orphan asylum, and murdered a blind man for his pennies."
|
||||
36
src/epub/text/an-unknown-romance.md
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src/epub/text/an-unknown-romance.md
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|
||||
An Unknown Romance {#an-unknown-romance type="title"}
|
||||
------------------
|
||||
|
||||
The first pale star peeped down the gorge. Above, to illimitable heights reached the Alps, snow-white above, shadowy around, and black in the depths of the gorge.
|
||||
|
||||
A young and stalwart man, clad in the garb of a chamois hunter, passed up the path. His face was bronzed with sun and wind, his eye was frank and clear, his step agile and firm. He was singing fragments of a Bavarian hunting song, and in his hand he held a white blossom of the edelweiss he had plucked from the cliff. Suddenly he paused, and the song broke, and dropped from his lips. A girl, costumed as the Swiss peasants are, crossed the path along one that bisected his, carrying a small stone pitcher full of water. Her hair was of the lightest gold and hung far below her trim waist in a heavy braid. Her eyes shone through the gathering twilight, and her lips, slightly parted, showed a faint gleam of the whitest teeth.
|
||||
|
||||
As if impelled by a common impulse, the hunter and the maiden paused, each with their eyes fixed upon the other. Then the man advanced, and doffing his feathered hat, bowed low and spake some words in the German language. The maiden answered, speaking haltingly and low.
|
||||
|
||||
Then a door opened in a cottage almost hidden among the trees, and a babble of voices was heard. The maiden's cheeks turned crimson, and she started to go, but as she went, she turned her eyes and looked at the hunter still. He took a step after her, and stretched out his hand as if to stay her. She tore a bunch of blue gentians from her bosom and threw them towards him. He caught them as they fell, then ran lightly and gave into her hand the edelweiss bloom that he carried. She thrust it into her bosom, then ran like a mountain sprite into the cottage, where the voices were.
|
||||
|
||||
The hunter stopped for a while, then went his way more slowly up the mountain path, and he sang no more. As he went he pressed the flowers frequently to his lips.
|
||||
|
||||
------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
The wedding was to be one of the showiest, and the society of the metropolis was almost begging for invitations.
|
||||
|
||||
The groom-elect brought the ancient lineage of the Van Winklers and a position at the top notch of society for his portion. The bride brought a beauty that was flawless, and five million dollars. The arrangement had been made in a businesslike manner. There had been no question of love. He had been courteous, and politely attentive, and she had acquiesced listlessly. They had first met at a fashionable summer resort. The family of the Van Winklers and the money of the Vances were about to unite.
|
||||
|
||||
The wedding was to be at high noon.
|
||||
|
||||
Pelham Van Winkler had had a fire built in the ancient tiled fireplace of one of his rooms, although the weather was warm. He sat on the edge of a writing table, and tossed handfuls of square-shaped letters, some tied with ribbons, into the fire. He smiled a little ironically as they flamed up, or as here and there among them he would find a withered flower, a scented glove or a lock of beribboned hair.
|
||||
|
||||
The last sacrifice to the flames was a dried and pressed cluster of blue gentians.
|
||||
|
||||
Van Winkler sighed, and the smile left his face. He recalled the twilight scene among the Alps mountains, where he was wandering with three or four companions on a summer tour, gay and careless, and dressed in the picturesque garb of chamois hunters. He recalled the picture of a lovely peasant girl with eyes that held him with a charm of power, crossing the mountain road, and pausing for a moment to toss him the bunch of gentian flowers. Had he not been a Van Winkler and owed a duty to the name, he would have sought her out and married her, for her image had never left his eyes or his heart since that twilight eve. But society and the family name claimed him, and today, at high noon, he was to marry Miss Vance, the daughter of the millionaire iron founder.
|
||||
|
||||
Pelham Van Winkler tossed the bunch of blue gentians into the fire and rang for his valet.
|
||||
|
||||
------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
Miss Augusta Vance had flown from the irritating presence of fussy female friends and hysterical relatives to her boudoir for a few moments' quiet. She had no letters to burn; no past to bury. Her mother was in an ecstasy of delight, for the family millions had brought them places in the front row of Vanity Fair.
|
||||
|
||||
Her marriage to Pelham Van Winkler was to be at high noon. Miss Vance fell suddenly into a dreamy reverie. She recalled a trip she had taken with her family a year before, to Europe, and her mind dwelt lingeringly upon a week they had spent among the foothills of the Alps in the cottage of a Swiss mountaineer. One evening at twilight she had gone with a pitcher across the road and filled it from a spring. She had fancied to put on that day the peasant costume of Babette, the daughter of their host. It had become her well, with her long braid of light-gold hair and blue eyes. A hunter had crossed the road as she was returning---an Alpine chamois hunter, strong, stalwart, bronzed and free. She had looked up and caught his eyes, and his held hers. She went on, and still those magnetic eyes claimed her own. The door of the cottage had opened and voices called. She started and obeyed the impulse to tear a bunch of gentians from her bosom and throw them to him. He had caught them, and springing forward gave her an edelweiss flower. Not since that evening had the image of that chamois hunter left her. Surely fate had led him to her, and he seemed a man among men. But Miss Augusta Vance, with a dowry of five millions, could not commit the folly of thinking of a common hunter of the Alps mountains.
|
||||
|
||||
Miss Vance arose and opened a gold locket that lay upon her dressing case. She took from it a faded edelweiss flower and slowly crumpled it to dust between her fingers. Then she rang for her maid, as the church bells began to chime outside for the marriage.
|
||||
28
src/epub/text/an-unsuccessful-experiment.md
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28
src/epub/text/an-unsuccessful-experiment.md
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@ -0,0 +1,28 @@
|
||||
An Unsuccessful Experiment {#an-unsuccessful-experiment type="title"}
|
||||
--------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
There is an old colored preacher in Texas who is a great admirer of the Rev. Sam Jones.[2](endnotes.xhtml#note-2){#noteref-2} Last Sunday he determined to drop his old style of exhorting the brethren, and pitch hot shot plump into the middle of their camp, after the manner so successfully followed by the famous Georgia evangelist. After the opening hymn had been sung, and the congregation led in prayer by a worthy deacon, the old preacher laid his spectacles on his Bible, and let out straight from the shoulder.
|
||||
|
||||
"My dearly belubbed," he said, "I has been preachin' to you fo' mo' dan five years, and de grace ob God hab failed to percolate in yo' obstreperous hearts. I hab nebber seen a more or'nery lot dan dis belubbed congregation. Now dar is Sam Wadkins in de fo'th bench on de left. Kin anybody show me a no'counter, trashier, lowdowner buck nigger in dis community? Whar does the chicken feathers come from what I seen in his back yard dis mawnin'? Kin Brudder Wadkins rise and explain?"
|
||||
|
||||
Brother Wadkins sat in his pew with his eyes rolling and breathing hard, but was taken by surprise and did not respond.
|
||||
|
||||
"And dar is Elder Hoskins, on de right. Everybody knows he's er lying, shiftless, beer-drinking bum. His wife supports him takin' in washin'. What good is de blood of de Lamb done for him? Wonder ef he thinks dat he kin keep a lofin' 'round in de kitchen ob de New Jerusalem?"
|
||||
|
||||
Elder Hoskins, goaded by these charges, rose in his seat, and said:
|
||||
|
||||
"Dat reminds me ob one thing. I doesn't remember dat I hab ebber worked on de county road fur thirty days down in Bastrop County fur stealin' a bale of cotton."
|
||||
|
||||
"Who did? Who did?" said the parson, putting on his specs and glaring at the elder. "Who stole dat cotton? You shet yo' mouf, niggah, fo' I come down dah and bust you wide open. Den dar sets Miss Jinny Simpson. Look at dem fine clo'es she got on. Look at dem yallar shoes, and dem ostrick feathers, and dat silk waist and de white glubs. Whar she git de money to buy dem clo'es? She don't work none. De Lawd am got his eye on dat triflin' hussy, and He's gwine ter fling her in de burnin' brimstone and de squenchable pit."
|
||||
|
||||
Miss Simpson arose, her ostrich plumes trembling with indignation.
|
||||
|
||||
"You mis'able lyin' ol' niggah," she said. "You don' pay fur none ob my clo'es. S'pose you tells dis 'sembled congregation who was it handed dat big bouquet and dat jib ob cider ober de fence to Liza Jackson yisterday mawnin' when her old man gone to work?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Dat's a lie, you sneakin', low-down spyin' daughter ob de debble. I wuz in my house ras'lin in pra'er fur de wicked sisters and brudders ob dis church. I come down dah an' smack you in de mouf ef you don't shet up. You is all boun' for de fire ob destruction. You am all nothin' but vile sweepins ob de yearth. I see Bill Rodgers ober dar, who am known to hab loaded dice fur playin' craps, and he nebber pays a cent fur what his family eats. De Lawd am shore gwine ter smote him in de neck. De judgment ob de Spirit am gwine ter rise up an' call him down."
|
||||
|
||||
Bill Rodgers stood up and put his thumbs in the armholes of his vest. "I could name, sah," he said, "a certain party who wuz run off ob Colonel Yancy's fahm fo' playin' sebben up wid marked cya'ds, ef I choosed to."
|
||||
|
||||
"Dat's anudder lie," said the preacher, closing his Bible and turning up his cuffs. "Look out, Bill Rodgers, I'm comin' down dar to you."
|
||||
|
||||
The preacher got out of his pulpit and made for Bill, but Miss Simpson got her hands in his wool first, and Sam Wadkins and Elder Hoskins came quickly to her assistance. Then the rest of the brothers and sisters joined in, and the flying hymn books and the sound of ripping clothes testified to the fact that Sam Jones's style of preaching did not go in that particular church.
|
||||
20
src/epub/text/an-x-ray-fable.md
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20
src/epub/text/an-x-ray-fable.md
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|
||||
An X-Ray Fable {#an-x-ray-fable type="title"}
|
||||
--------------
|
||||
|
||||
And it came to pass that a man with a Cathode Ray went about the country finding out and showing the people, for a consideration, the insides of folks' heads and what they were thinking about. And he never made a mistake.
|
||||
|
||||
And in a certain town lived a man whose name was Reuben and a maid whose name was Ruth. And the two were sweethearts and were soon to be married.
|
||||
|
||||
And Reuben came to the man and hired him with coin to take a snap shot at Ruth's head, and find out whom she truly loved.
|
||||
|
||||
And later on Ruth came and also hired the man to find out whom Reuben truly loved. And the man did so and got two good negatives.
|
||||
|
||||
In the meantime Reuben and Ruth confessed to each other what they had done, and the next day they came together, hand in hand, to the man with the Ray, for their answer. The man saw them, and he wrote two names on two slips of paper and gave them into their hands.
|
||||
|
||||
"On these slips of paper," he said, "you will find the name of the one whom each of you loves best in the world, as truly discovered by my wonderful Cathode Ray."
|
||||
|
||||
And the man and the maid opened the pieces of paper and saw written on one "Reuben" and on the other "Ruth," and they were filled with joy and happiness, and went away with arms about each other's waists.
|
||||
|
||||
But the man with the Ray neglected to mention the fact that the photographs he had taken showed that Reuben's head was full of deep and abiding love for Reuben and Ruth's showed her to be passionately enamored of Ruth.
|
||||
|
||||
The moral is that the proprietor of the Ray probably knew his business.
|
||||
6
src/epub/text/answers-to-inquiries.md
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6
src/epub/text/answers-to-inquiries.md
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|
||||
Answers to Inquiries {#answers-to-inquiries type="title"}
|
||||
--------------------
|
||||
|
||||
> [Dear Editor]{type="z3998:salutation"}: I want to ask a question in > arithmetic. I am a school boy and am anxious to know the solution. If > my pa, who keeps a grocery on Milam Street, sells four cans of > tomatoes for twenty-five cents, and twenty-two pounds of sugar, and > one can of extra evaporated apples and three cans of superior > California plums, for only---
|
||||
|
||||
There! There! little boy; that will do. Tell your pa to come around and see the advertising manager, who is quite an arithmetician, and will doubtless work the sum for you at the usual rates.
|
||||
36
src/epub/text/aristocracy-versus-hash.md
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36
src/epub/text/aristocracy-versus-hash.md
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|
||||
Aristocracy Versus Hash {#aristocracy-versus-hash type="title"}
|
||||
-----------------------
|
||||
|
||||
The snake reporter of *The Rolling Stone* was wandering up the avenue last night on his way home from the Y.M.C.A. rooms when he was approached by a gaunt, hungry-looking man with wild eyes and dishevelled hair. He accosted the reporter in a hollow, weak voice.
|
||||
|
||||
"Can you tell me, Sir, where I can find in this town a family of scrubs?"
|
||||
|
||||
"I don't understand exactly."
|
||||
|
||||
"Let me tell you how it is," said the stranger, inserting his forefinger in the reporter's buttonhole and badly damaging his chrysanthemum. "I am a representative from Soapstone County, and I and my family are houseless, homeless, and shelterless. We have not tasted food for over a week. I brought my family with me, as I have indigestion and could not get around much with the boys. Some days ago I started out to find a boarding house, as I cannot afford to put up at a hotel. I found a nice aristocratic-looking place, that suited me, and went in and asked for the proprietress. A very stately lady with a Roman nose came in the room. She had one hand laid across her stom---across her waist, and the other held a lace handkerchief. I told her I wanted board for myself and family, and she condescended to take us. I asked for her terms, and she said \$300 per week.
|
||||
|
||||
"I had two dollars in my pocket and I gave her that for a fine teapot that I broke when I fell over the table when she spoke.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'You appear surprised,' says she. 'You will please remembah that I am the widow of Governor Riddle of Georgiah; my family is very highly connected; I give you board as a favah; I nevah considah money any equivalent for the advantage of my society, I---'
|
||||
|
||||
"Well, I got out of there, and I went to some other places. The next lady was a cousin of General Mahone of Virginia, and wanted four dollars an hour for a back room with a pink motto and a Burnet granite bed in it. The next one was an aunt of Davy Crockett, and asked eight dollars a day for a room furnished in imitation of the Alamo, with prunes for breakfast and one hour's conversation with her for dinner. Another one said she was a descendant of Benedict Arnold on her father's side and Captain Kidd on the other.
|
||||
|
||||
"She took more after Captain Kidd.
|
||||
|
||||
"She only had one meal and prayers a day, and counted her society worth \$100 a week.
|
||||
|
||||
"I found nine widows of Supreme Judges, twelve relicts of Governors and Generals, and twenty-two ruins left by various happy Colonels, Professors, and Majors, who valued their aristocratic worth from \$90 to \$900 per week, with weak-kneed hash and dried apples on the side. I admire people of fine descent, but my stomach yearns for pork and beans instead of culture. Am I not right?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Your words," said the reporter, "convince me that you have uttered what you have said."
|
||||
|
||||
"Thanks. You see how it is. I am not wealthy; I have only my per diem and my perquisites, and I cannot afford to pay for high lineage and moldy ancestors. A little corned beef goes further with me than a coronet, and when I am cold a coat of arms does not warm me."
|
||||
|
||||
"I greatly fear," said the reporter, with a playful hiccup, "that you have run against a high-toned town. Most all the first-class boarding houses here are run by ladies of the old Southern families, the very first in the land."
|
||||
|
||||
"I am now desperate," said the Representative, as he chewed a tack awhile, thinking it was a clove. "I want to find a boarding house where the proprietress was an orphan found in a livery stable, whose father was a dago from East Austin, and whose grandfather was never placed on the map. I want a scrubby, ornery, low-down, snuff-dipping, back-woodsy, piebald gang, who never heard of finger bowls or Ward McAllister, but who can get up a mess of hot cornbread and Irish stew at regular market quotations.
|
||||
|
||||
"Is there such a place in Austin?"
|
||||
|
||||
The snake reporter sadly shook his head. "I do not know," he said, "but I will shake you for the beer."
|
||||
|
||||
Ten minutes later the slate in the Blue Ruin saloon bore two additional characters: 10.
|
||||
114
src/epub/text/art-and-the-bronco.md
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|
||||
Art and the Bronco {#art-and-the-bronco type="title"}
|
||||
------------------
|
||||
|
||||
Out of the wilderness had come a painter. Genius, whose coronations alone are democratic, had woven a chaplet of chaparral for the brow of Lonny Briscoe. Art, whose divine expression flows impartially from the fingertips of a cowboy or a dilettante emperor, had chosen for a medium the Boy Artist of the San Saba. The outcome, seven feet by twelve of besmeared canvas, stood, gilt-framed, in the lobby of the Capitol.
|
||||
|
||||
The legislature was in session; the capital city of that great Western state was enjoying the season of activity and profit that the congregation of the solons bestowed. The boardinghouses were corralling the easy dollars of the gamesome lawmakers. The greatest state in the West, an empire in area and resources, had arisen and repudiated the old libel or barbarism, lawbreaking, and bloodshed. Order reigned within her borders. Life and property were as safe there, sir, as anywhere among the corrupt cities of the effete East. Pillow-shams, churches, strawberry feasts and habeas corpus flourished. With impunity might the tenderfoot ventilate his "stovepipe" or his theories of culture. The arts and sciences received nurture and subsidy. And, therefore, it behooved the legislature of this great state to make appropriation for the purchase of Lonny Briscoe's immortal painting.
|
||||
|
||||
Rarely has the San Saba country contributed to the spread of the fine arts. Its sons have excelled in the solider graces, in the throw of the lariat, the manipulation of the esteemed .45, the intrepidity of the one-card draw, and the nocturnal stimulation of towns from undue lethargy; but, hitherto, it had not been famed as a stronghold of aesthetics. Lonny Briscoe's brush had removed that disability. Here, among the limestone rocks, the succulent cactus, and the drought-parched grass of that arid valley, had been born the Boy Artist. Why he came to woo art is beyond postulation. Beyond doubt, some spore of the afflatus must have sprung up within him in spite of the desert soil of San Saba. The tricksy spirit of creation must have incited him to attempted expression and then have sat hilarious among the white-hot sands of the valley, watching its mischievous work. For Lonny's picture, viewed as a thing of art, was something to have driven away dull care from the bosoms of the critics.
|
||||
|
||||
The painting---one might almost say panorama---was designed to portray a typical Western scene, interest culminating in a central animal figure, that of a stampeding steer, life-size, wild-eyed, fiery, breaking away in a mad rush from the herd that, close-ridden by a typical cowpuncher, occupied a position somewhat in the right background of the picture. The landscape presented fitting and faithful accessories. Chaparral, mesquite, and pear were distributed in just proportions. A Spanish dagger-plant, with its waxen blossoms in a creamy aggregation as large as a water-bucket, contributed floral beauty and variety. The distance was undulating prairie, bisected by stretches of the intermittent streams peculiar to the region lined with the rich green of live-oak and water-elm. A richly mottled rattlesnake lay coiled beneath a pale green clump of prickly pear in the foreground. A third of the canvas was ultramarine and lake white---the typical Western sky and the flying clouds, rainless and feathery.
|
||||
|
||||
Between two plastered pillars in the commodious hallway near the door of the chamber of representatives stood the painting. Citizens and lawmakers passed there by twos and groups and sometimes crowds to gaze upon it. Many---perhaps a majority of them---had lived the prairie life and recalled easily the familiar scene. Old cattlemen stood, reminiscent and candidly pleased, chatting with brothers of former camps and trails of the days it brought back to mind. Art critics were few in the town, and there was heard none of that jargon of colour, perspective, and feeling such as the East loves to use as a curb and a rod to the pretensions of the artist. 'Twas a great picture, most of them agreed, admiring the gilt frame---larger than any they had ever seen.
|
||||
|
||||
Senator Kinney was the picture's champion and sponsor. It was he who so often stepped forward and asserted, with the voice of a broncobuster, that it would be a lasting blot, sir, upon the name of this great state if it should decline to recognize in a proper manner the genius that had so brilliantly transferred to imperishable canvas a scene so typical of the great sources of our state's wealth and prosperity, land---and---er---livestock.
|
||||
|
||||
Senator Kinney represented a section of the state in the extreme West---400 miles from the San Saba country---but the true lover of art is not limited by metes and bounds. Nor was Senator Mullens, representing the San Saba country, lukewarm in his belief that the state should purchase the painting of his constituent. He was advised that the San Saba country was unanimous in its admiration of the great painting by one of its own denizens. Hundreds of connoisseurs had straddled their broncos and ridden miles to view it before its removal to the capital. Senator Mullens desired reelection, and he knew the importance of the San Saba vote. He also knew that with the help of Senator Kinney---who was a power in the legislature---the thing could be put through. Now, Senator Kinney had an irrigation bill that he wanted passed for the benefit of his own section, and he knew Senator Mullens could render him valuable aid and information, the San Saba country already enjoying the benefits of similar legislation. With these interests happily dovetailed, wonder at the sudden interest in art at the state capital must, necessarily, be small. Few artists have uncovered their first picture to the world under happier auspices than did Lonny Briscoe.
|
||||
|
||||
Senators Kinney and Mullens came to an understanding in the matter of irrigation and art while partaking of long drinks in the café of the Empire Hotel.
|
||||
|
||||
"H'm!" said Senator Kinney, "I don't know. I'm no art critic, but it seems to me the thing won't work. It looks like the worst kind of a chromo to me. I don't want to cast any reflections upon the artistic talent of your constituent, Senator, but I, myself, wouldn't give six bits for the picture---without the frame. How are you going to cram a thing like that down the throat of a legislature that kicks about a little item in the expense bill of six hundred and eighty-one dollars for rubber erasers for only one term? It's wasting time. I'd like to help you, Mullens, but they'd laugh us out of the Senate chamber if we were to try it."
|
||||
|
||||
"But you don't get the point," said Senator Mullens, in his deliberate tones, tapping Kinney's glass with his long forefinger. "I have my own doubts as to what the picture is intended to represent, a bullfight or a Japanese allegory, but I want this legislature to make an appropriation to purchase. Of course, the subject of the picture should have been in the state historical line, but it's too late to have the paint scraped off and changed. The state won't miss the money and the picture can be stowed away in a lumber-room where it won't annoy anyone. Now, here's the point to work on, leaving art to look after itself---the chap that painted the picture is the grandson of Lucien Briscoe."
|
||||
|
||||
"Say it again," said Kinney, leaning his head thoughtfully. "Of the old, original Lucien Briscoe?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Of him. 'The man who,' you know. The man who carved the state out of the wilderness. The man who settled the Indians. The man who cleaned out the horse thieves. The man who refused the crown. The state's favourite son. Do you see the point now?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Wrap up the picture," said Kinney. "It's as good as sold. Why didn't you say that at first, instead of philandering along about art. I'll resign my seat in the Senate and go back to chain-carrying for the county surveyor the day I can't make this state buy a picture calcimined by a grandson of Lucien Briscoe. Did you ever hear of a special appropriation for the purchase of a home for the daughter of One-Eyed Smothers? Well, that went through like a motion to adjourn, and old One-Eyed never killed half as many Indians as Briscoe did. About what figure had you and the calciminer agreed upon to sandbag the treasury for?"
|
||||
|
||||
"I thought," said Mullens, "that maybe five hundred---"
|
||||
|
||||
"Five hundred!" interrupted Kinney, as he hammered on his glass for a lead pencil and looked around for a waiter. "Only five hundred for a red steer on the hoof delivered by a grandson of Lucien Briscoe! Where's your state pride, man? Two thousand is what it'll be. You'll introduce the bill and I'll get up on the floor of the Senate and wave the scalp of every Indian old Lucien ever murdered. Let's see, there was something else proud and foolish he did, wasn't there? Oh, yes; he declined all emoluments and benefits he was entitled to. Refused his head-right and veteran donation certificates. Could have been governor, but wouldn't. Declined a pension. Now's the state's chance to pay up. It'll have to take the picture, but then it deserves some punishment for keeping the Briscoe family waiting so long. We'll bring this thing up about the middle of the month, after the tax bill is settled. Now, Mullens, you send over, as soon as you can, and get me the figures on the cost of those irrigation ditches and the statistics about the increased production per acre. I'm going to need you when that bill of mine comes up. I reckon we'll be able to pull along pretty well together this session and maybe others to come, eh, Senator?"
|
||||
|
||||
Thus did fortune elect to smile upon the Boy Artist of the San Saba. Fate had already done her share when she arranged his atoms in the cosmogony of creation as the grandson of Lucien Briscoe.
|
||||
|
||||
The original Briscoe had been a pioneer both as to territorial occupation and in certain acts prompted by a great and simple heart. He had been one of the first settlers and crusaders against the wild forces of nature, the savage and the shallow politician. His name and memory were revered, equally with any upon the list comprising Houston, Boone, Crockett, Clark, and Green. He had lived simply, independently, and unvexed by ambition. Even a less shrewd man than Senator Kinney could have prophesied that his state would hasten to honour and reward his grandson, come out of the chaparral at even so late a day.
|
||||
|
||||
And so, before the great picture by the door of the chamber of representatives at frequent times for many days could be found the breezy, robust form of Senator Kinney and be heard his clarion voice reciting the past deeds of Lucien Briscoe in connection with the handiwork of his grandson. Senator Mullens's work was more subdued in sight and sound, but directed along identical lines.
|
||||
|
||||
Then, as the day for the introduction of the bill for appropriation draws nigh, up from the San Saba country rides Lonny Briscoe and a loyal lobby of cowpunchers, bronco-back, to boost the cause of art and glorify the name of friendship, for Lonny is one of them, a knight of stirrup and chaparreras, as handy with the lariat and .45 as he is with brush and palette.
|
||||
|
||||
On a March afternoon the lobby dashed, with a whoop, into town. The cowpunchers had adjusted their garb suitably from that prescribed for the range to the more conventional requirements of town. They had conceded their leather chaparreras and transferred their six-shooters and belts from their persons to the horns of their saddles. Among them rode Lonny, a youth of twenty-three, brown, solemn-faced, ingenuous, bowlegged, reticent, bestriding Hot Tamales, the most sagacious cow pony west of the Mississippi. Senator Mullens had informed him of the bright prospects of the situation; had even mentioned---so great was his confidence in the capable Kinney---the price that the state would, in all likelihood, pay. It seemed to Lonny that fame and fortune were in his hands. Certainly, a spark of the divine fire was in the little brown centaur's breast, for he was counting the two thousand dollars as but a means to future development of his talent. Some day he would paint a picture even greater than this---one, say, twelve feet by twenty, full of scope and atmosphere and action.
|
||||
|
||||
During the three days that yet intervened before the coming of the date fixed for the introduction of the bill, the centaur lobby did valiant service. Coatless, spurred, weather-tanned, full of enthusiasm expressed in bizarre terms, they loafed in front of the painting with tireless zeal. Reasoning not unshrewdly, they estimated that their comments upon its fidelity to nature would be received as expert evidence. Loudly they praised the skill of the painter whenever there were ears near to which such evidence might be profitably addressed. Lem Perry, the leader of the claque, had a somewhat set speech, being uninventive in the construction of new phrases.
|
||||
|
||||
"Look at that two-year-old, now," he would say, waving a cinnamon-brown hand toward the salient point of the picture. "Why, dang my hide, the critter's alive. I can jest hear him, 'lumpety-lump,' a-cuttin' away from the herd, pretendin' he's skeered. He's a mean scamp, that there steer. Look at his eyes a-wallin' and his tail a-wavin'. He's true and nat'ral to life. He's jest hankerin' fur a cow pony to round him up and send him scootin' back to the bunch. Dang my hide! jest look at that tail of his'n a-wavin'. Never knowed a steer to wave his tail any other way, dang my hide ef I did."
|
||||
|
||||
Jud Shelby, while admitting the excellence of the steer, resolutely confined himself to open admiration of the landscape, to the end that the entire picture receive its meed of praise.
|
||||
|
||||
"That piece of range," he declared, "is a dead ringer for Dead Hoss Valley. Same grass, same lay of land, same old Whipperwill Creek skallyhootin' in and out of them motts of timber. Them buzzards on the left is circlin' 'round over Sam Kildrake's old paint hoss that killed hisself over-drinkin' on a hot day. You can't see the hoss for that mott of ellums on the creek, but he's thar. Anybody that was goin' to look for Dead Hoss Valley and come across this picture, why, he'd just light off'n his bronco and hunt a place to camp."
|
||||
|
||||
Skinny Rogers, wedded to comedy, conceived a complimentary little piece of acting that never failed to make an impression. Edging quite near to the picture, he would suddenly, at favourable moments emit a piercing and awful "Yi-yi!" leap high and away, coming down with a great stamp of heels and whirring of rowels upon the stone-flagged floor.
|
||||
|
||||
"Jeeming Cristopher!"---so ran his lines---"thought that rattler was a gin-u-ine one. Ding baste my skin if I didn't. Seemed to me I heard him rattle. Look at the blamed, unconverted insect a-layin' under that pear. Little more, and somebody would a-been snake-bit."
|
||||
|
||||
With these artful dodges, contributed by Lonney's faithful coterie, with the sonorous Kinney perpetually sounding the picture's merits, and with the solvent prestige of the pioneer Briscoe covering it like a precious varnish, it seemed that the San Saba country could not fail to add a reputation as an art centre to its well-known superiority in steer-roping contests and achievements with the precarious busted flush. Thus was created for the picture an atmosphere, due rather to externals than to the artist's brush, but through it the people seemed to gaze with more of admiration. There was a magic in the name of Briscoe that counted high against faulty technique and crude colouring. The old Indian fighter and wolf slayer would have smiled grimly in his happy hunting grounds had he known that his dilettante ghost was thus figuring as an art patron two generations after his uninspired existence.
|
||||
|
||||
Came the day when the Senate was expected to pass the bill of Senator Mullens appropriating two thousand dollars for the purchase of the picture. The gallery of the Senate chamber was early preempted by Lonny and the San Saba lobby. In the front row of chairs they sat, wild-haired, self-conscious, jingling, creaking, and rattling, subdued by the majesty of the council hall.
|
||||
|
||||
The bill was introduced, went to the second reading, and then Senator Mullens spoke for it dryly, tediously, and at length. Senator Kinney then arose, and the welkin seized the bellrope preparatory to ringing. Oratory was at that time a living thing; the world had not quite come to measure its questions by geometry and the multiplication table. It was the day of the silver tongue, the sweeping gesture, the decorative apostrophe, the moving peroration.
|
||||
|
||||
The Senator spoke. The San Saba contingent sat, breathing hard, in the gallery, its disordered hair hanging down to its eyes, its sixteen-ounce hats shifted restlessly from knee to knee. Below, the distinguished Senators either lounged at their desks with the abandon of proven statesmanship or maintained correct attitudes indicative of a first term.
|
||||
|
||||
Senator Kinney spoke for an hour. History was his theme---history mitigated by patriotism and sentiment. He referred casually to the picture in the outer hall---it was unnecessary, he said, to dilate upon its merits---the Senators had seen for themselves. The painter of the picture was the grandson of Lucien Briscoe. Then came the word-pictures of Briscoe's life set forth in thrilling colours. His rude and venturesome life, his simple-minded love for the commonwealth he helped to upbuild, his contempt for rewards and praise, his extreme and sturdy independence, and the great services he had rendered the state. The subject of the oration was Lucien Briscoe; the painting stood in the background serving simply as a means, now happily brought forward, through which the state might bestow a tardy recompense upon the descendent of its favourite son. Frequent enthusiastic applause from the Senators testified to the well reception of the sentiment.
|
||||
|
||||
The bill passed without an opening vote. Tomorrow it would be taken up by the House. Already was it fixed to glide through that body on rubber tires. Blandford, Grayson, and Plummer, all wheel-horses and orators, and provided with plentiful memoranda concerning the deeds of pioneer Briscoe, had agreed to furnish the motive power.
|
||||
|
||||
The San Saba lobby and its protégé stumbled awkwardly down the stairs and out into the Capitol yard. Then they herded closely and gave one yell of triumph. But one of them---Buck-Kneed Summers it was---hit the key with the thoughtful remark:
|
||||
|
||||
"She cut the mustard," he said, "all right. I reckon they're goin' to buy Lon's steer. I ain't right much on the parlyment'ry, but I gather that's what the signs added up. But she seems to me, Lonny, the argyment ran principal to grandfather, instead of paint. It's reasonable calculatin' that you want to be glad you got the Briscoe brand on you, my son."
|
||||
|
||||
That remarked clinched in Lonny's mind an unpleasant, vague suspicion to the same effect. His reticence increased, and he gathered grass from the ground, chewing it pensively. The picture as a picture had been humiliatingly absent from the Senator's arguments. The painter had been held up as a grandson, pure and simple. While this was gratifying on certain lines, it made art look little and slab-sided. The Boy Artist was thinking.
|
||||
|
||||
The hotel Lonny stopped at was near the Capitol. It was near to the one o'clock dinner hour when the appropriation had been passed by the Senate. The hotel clerk told Lonny that a famous artist from New York had arrived in town that day and was in the hotel. He was on his way westward to New Mexico to study the effect of sunlight upon the ancient walls of the Zunis. Modern stones reflect light. Those ancient building materials absorb it. The artist wanted this effect in a picture he was painting, and was traveling two thousand miles to get it.
|
||||
|
||||
Lonny sought this man out after dinner and told his story. The artist was an unhealthy man, kept alive by genius and indifference to life. He went with Lonny to the Capitol and stood there before the picture. The artist pulled his beard and looked unhappy.
|
||||
|
||||
"Should like to have your sentiments," said Lonny, "just as they run out of the pen."
|
||||
|
||||
"It's the way they'll come," said the painter man. "I took three different kinds of medicine before dinner---by the tablespoonful. The taste still lingers. I am primed for telling the truth. You want to know if the picture is, or if it isn't?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Right," said Lonny. "Is it wool or cotton? Should I paint some more or cut it out and ride herd aplenty?"
|
||||
|
||||
"I heard a rumour during pie," said the artist, "that the state is about to pay you two thousand dollars for this picture."
|
||||
|
||||
"It's passed the Senate," said Lonny, "and the House rounds it up tomorrow."
|
||||
|
||||
"That's lucky," said the pale man. "Do you carry a rabbit's foot?"
|
||||
|
||||
"No," said Lonny, "but it seems I had a grandfather. He's considerable mixed up in the colour scheme. It took me a year to paint that picture. Is she entirely awful or not? Some says, now, that the steer's tail ain't badly drawed. They think it's proportioned nice. Tell me."
|
||||
|
||||
The artist glanced at Lonny's wiry figure and nut-brown skin. Something stirred him to a passing irritation.
|
||||
|
||||
"For Art's sake, son," he said, fractiously, "don't spend any more money for paint. It isn't a picture at all. It's a gun. You hold up the state with it, if you like, and get your two thousand, but don't get in front of any more canvas. Live under it. Buy a couple of hundred ponies with the money---I'm told they're that cheap---and ride, ride, ride. Fill your lungs and eat and sleep and be happy. No more pictures. You look healthy. That's genius. Cultivate it." He looked at his watch. "Twenty minutes to three. Four capsules and one tablet at three. That's all you wanted to know, isn't it?"
|
||||
|
||||
At three o'clock the cowpunchers rode up for Lonny, bringing Hot Tamales, saddled. Traditions must be observed. To celebrate the passage of the bill by the Senate the gang must ride wildly through the town, creating uproar and excitement. Liquor must be partaken of, the suburbs shot up, and the glory of the San Saba country vociferously proclaimed. A part of the programme had been carried out in the saloons on the way up.
|
||||
|
||||
Lonny mounted Hot Tamales, the accomplished little beast prancing with fire and intelligence. He was glad to feel Lonny's bowlegged grip against his ribs again. Lonny was his friend, and he was willing to do things for him.
|
||||
|
||||
"Come on, boys," said Lonny, urging Hot Tomales into a gallop with his knees. With a whoop, the inspired lobby tore after him through the dust. Lonny led his cohorts straight for the Capitol. With a wild yell, the gang endorsed his now evident intention of riding into it. Hooray for San Saba!
|
||||
|
||||
Up the six broad, limestone steps clattered the broncos of the cowpunchers. Into the resounding hallway they pattered, scattering in dismay those passing on foot. Lonny, in the lead, shoved Hot Tamales direct for the great picture. At that hour a downpouring, soft light from the second-story windows bathed the big canvas. Against the darker background of the hall the painting stood out with valuable effect. In spite of the defects of the art you could almost fancy that you gazed out upon a landscape. You might well flinch a step from the convincing figure of the life-size steer stampeding across the grass. Perhaps it seemed thus to Hot Tamales. The scene was in his line. Perhaps he only obeyed the will of his rider. His ears pricked up; he snorted. Lonny leaned forward in the saddle and elevated his elbows, winglike. Thus signals the cowpuncher to his steed to launch himself full speed ahead. Did Hot Tamales fancy he saw a steer, red and cavorting, that should be headed off and driven back to the herd? There was a fierce clatter of hoofs, a rush, a gathering of steely flank muscles, a leap to the jerk of the bridle rein, and Hot Tamales, with Lonny bending low in the saddle to dodge the top of the frame, ripped through the great canvas like a shell from a mortar, leaving the cloth hanging in ragged shreds about a monstrous hole.
|
||||
|
||||
Quickly Lonny pulled up his pony, and rounded the pillars. Spectators came running, too astounded to add speech to the commotion. The sergeant-at-arms of the House came forth, frowned, looked ominous, and then grinned. Many of the legislators crowded out to observe the tumult. Lonny's cowpunchers were stricken to silent horror by his mad deed.
|
||||
|
||||
Senator Kinney happened to be among the earliest to emerge. Before he could speak Lonny leaned in his saddle as Hot Tamales pranced, pointed his quirt at the Senator, and said, calmly:
|
||||
|
||||
"That was a fine speech you made today, mister, but you might as well let up on that 'propriation business. I ain't askin' the state to give me nothin'. I thought I had a picture to sell to it, but it wasn't one. You said a heap of things about Grandfather Briscoe that makes me kind of proud I'm his grandson. Well, the Briscoes ain't takin' presents from the state yet. Anybody can have the frame that wants it. Hit her up, boys."
|
||||
|
||||
Away scuttled the San Saba delegation out of the hall, down the steps, along the dusty street.
|
||||
|
||||
Halfway to the San Saba country they camped that night. At bedtime Lonny stole away from the campfire and sought Hot Tamales, placidly eating grass at the end of his stake rope. Lonny hung upon his neck, and his art aspirations went forth forever in one long, regretful sigh. But as he thus made renunciation his breath formed a word or two.
|
||||
|
||||
"You was the only one, Tamales, what seen anything in it. It *did* look like a steer, didn't it, old hoss?"
|
||||
80
src/epub/text/at-arms-with-morpheus.md
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|
||||
At Arms with Morpheus {#at-arms-with-morpheus type="title"}
|
||||
---------------------
|
||||
|
||||
I never could quite understand how Tom Hopkins came to make that blunder, for he had been through a whole term at a medical college---before he inherited his aunt's fortune---and had been considered strong in therapeutics.
|
||||
|
||||
We had been making a call together that evening, and afterward Tom ran up to my rooms for a pipe and a chat before going on to his own luxurious apartments. I had stepped into the other room for a moment when I heard Tom sing out:
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh, Billy, I'm going to take about four grains of quinine, if you don't mind---I'm feeling all blue and shivery. Guess I'm taking cold."
|
||||
|
||||
"All right," I called back. "The bottle is on the second shelf. Take it in a spoonful of that elixir of eucalyptus. It knocks the bitter out."
|
||||
|
||||
After I came back we sat by the fire and got our briars going. In about eight minutes Tom sank back into a gentle collapse.
|
||||
|
||||
I went straight to the medicine cabinet and looked.
|
||||
|
||||
"You unmitigated hayseed!" I growled. "See what money will do for a man's brains!"
|
||||
|
||||
There stood the morphine bottle with the stopple out, just as Tom had left it.
|
||||
|
||||
I routed out another young M.D. who roomed on the floor above, and sent him for old Doctor Gales, two squares away. Tom Hopkins has too much money to be attended by rising young practitioners alone.
|
||||
|
||||
When Gales came we put Tom through as expensive a course of treatment as the resources of the profession permit. After the more drastic remedies we gave him citrate of caffeine in frequent doses and strong coffee, and walked him up and down the floor between two of us. Old Gales pinched him and slapped his face and worked hard for the big check he could see in the distance. The young M.D. from the next floor gave Tom a most hearty, rousing kick, and then apologized to me.
|
||||
|
||||
"Couldn't help it," he said. "I never kicked a millionaire before in my life. I may never have another opportunity."
|
||||
|
||||
"Now," said Doctor Gales, after a couple of hours, "he'll do. But keep him awake for another hour. You can do that by talking to him and shaking him up occasionally. When his pulse and respiration are normal then let him sleep. I'll leave him with you now."
|
||||
|
||||
I was left alone with Tom, whom we had laid on a couch. He lay very still, and his eyes were half closed. I began my work of keeping him awake.
|
||||
|
||||
"Well, old man," I said, "you've had a narrow squeak, but we've pulled you through. When you were attending lectures, Tom, didn't any of the professors ever casually remark that m-o-r-p-h-i-a never spells 'quinia,' especially in four-grain doses? But I won't pile it up on you until you get on your feet. But you ought to have been a druggist, Tom; you're splendidly qualified to fill prescriptions."
|
||||
|
||||
Tom looked at me with a faint and foolish smile.
|
||||
|
||||
"B'ly," he murmured, "I feel jus' like a hum'n bird flyin' around a jolly lot of most 'shpensive roses. Don' bozzer me. Goin' sleep now."
|
||||
|
||||
And he went to sleep in two seconds. I shook him by the shoulder.
|
||||
|
||||
"Now, Tom," I said, severely, "this won't do. The big doctor said you must stay awake for at least an hour. Open your eyes. You're not entirely safe yet, you know. Wake up."
|
||||
|
||||
Tom Hopkins weighs one hundred and ninety-eight. He gave me another somnolent grin, and fell into deeper slumber. I would have made him move about, but I might as well have tried to make Cleopatra's needle waltz around the room with me. Tom's breathing became stertorous, and that, in connection with morphia poisoning, means danger.
|
||||
|
||||
Then I began to think. I could not rouse his body; I must strive to excite his mind. "Make him angry," was an idea that suggested itself. "Good!" I thought; but how? There was not a joint in Tom's armour. Dear old fellow! He was good nature itself, and a gallant gentleman, fine and true and clean as sunlight. He came from somewhere down South, where they still have ideals and a code. New York had charmed, but had not spoiled, him. He had that old-fashioned chivalrous reverence for women, that---Eureka!---there was my idea! I worked the thing up for a minute or two in my imagination. I chuckled to myself at the thought of springing a thing like that on old Tom Hopkins. Then I took him by the shoulder and shook him till his ears flopped. He opened his eyes lazily. I assumed an expression of scorn and contempt, and pointed my finger within two inches of his nose.
|
||||
|
||||
"Listen to me, Hopkins," I said, in cutting and distinct tones, "you and I have been good friends, but I want you to understand that in the future my doors are closed against any man who acts as much like a scoundrel as you have."
|
||||
|
||||
Tom looked the least bit interested.
|
||||
|
||||
"What's the matter, Billy?" he muttered, composedly. "Don't your clothes fit you?"
|
||||
|
||||
"If I were in your place," I went on, "which, thank God, I am not, I think I would be afraid to close my eyes. How about that girl you left waiting for you down among those lonesome Southern pines---the girl that you've forgotten since you came into your confounded money? Oh, I know what I'm talking about. While you were a poor medical student she was good enough for you. But now, since you are a millionaire, it's different. I wonder what she thinks of the performances of that peculiar class of people which she has been taught to worship---the Southern gentlemen? I'm sorry, Hopkins, that I was forced to speak about these matters, but you've covered it up so well and played your part so nicely that I would have sworn you were above such unmanly tricks."
|
||||
|
||||
Poor Tom. I could scarcely keep from laughing outright to see him struggling against the effects of the opiate. He was distinctly angry, and I didn't blame him. Tom had a Southern temper. His eyes were open now, and they showed a gleam or two of fire. But the drug still clouded his mind and bound his tongue.
|
||||
|
||||
"C-c-confound you," he stammered, "I'll s-smash you."
|
||||
|
||||
He tried to rise from the couch. With all his size he was very weak now. I thrust him back with one arm. He lay there glaring like a lion in a trap.
|
||||
|
||||
"That will hold you for a while, you old loony," I said to myself. I got up and lit my pipe, for I was needing a smoke. I walked around a bit, congratulating myself on my brilliant idea.
|
||||
|
||||
I heard a snore. I looked around. Tom was asleep again. I walked over and punched him on the jaw. He looked at me as pleasant and ungrudging as an idiot. I chewed my pipe and gave it to him hard.
|
||||
|
||||
"I want you to recover yourself and get out of my rooms as soon as you can," I said, insultingly. "I've told you what I think of you. If you have any honour or honesty left you will think twice before you attempt again to associate with gentlemen. She's a poor girl, isn't she?" I sneered. "Somewhat too plain and unfashionable for us since we got our money. Be ashamed to walk on Fifth Avenue with her, wouldn't you? Hopkins, you're forty-seven times worse than a cad. Who cares for your money? I don't. I'll bet that girl don't. Perhaps if you didn't have it you'd be more of a man. As it is you've made a cur of yourself, and"---I thought that quite dramatic---"perhaps broken a faithful heart." (Old Tom Hopkins breaking a faithful heart!) "Let me be rid of you as soon as possible."
|
||||
|
||||
I turned my back on Tom, and winked at myself in a mirror. I heard him moving, and I turned again quickly. I didn't want a hundred and ninety-eight pounds falling on me from the rear. But Tom had only turned partly over, and laid one arm across his face. He spoke a few words rather more distinctly than before.
|
||||
|
||||
"I couldn't have---talked this way---to you, Billy, even if I'd heard people---lyin' 'bout you. But jus' soon's I can s-stand up---I'll break your neck---don' f'get it."
|
||||
|
||||
I did feel a little ashamed then. But it was to save Tom. In the morning, when I explained it, we would have a good laugh over it together.
|
||||
|
||||
In about twenty minutes Tom dropped into a sound, easy slumber. I felt his pulse, listened to his respiration, and let him sleep. Everything was normal, and Tom was safe. I went into the other room and tumbled into bed.
|
||||
|
||||
I found Tom up and dressed when I awoke the next morning. He was entirely himself again with the exception of shaky nerves and a tongue like a white-oak chip.
|
||||
|
||||
"What an idiot I was," he said, thoughtfully. "I remember thinking that quinine bottle looked queer while I was taking the dose. Have much trouble in bringing me 'round?"
|
||||
|
||||
I told him no. His memory seemed bad about the entire affair. I concluded that he had no recollection of my efforts to keep him awake, and decided not to enlighten him. Some other time, I thought, when he was feeling better, we would have some fun over it.
|
||||
|
||||
When Tom was ready to go he stopped, with the door open, and shook my hand.
|
||||
|
||||
"Much obliged, old fellow," he said, quietly, "for taking so much trouble with me---and for what you said. I'm going down now to telegraph to the little girl."
|
||||
98
src/epub/text/babes-in-the-jungle.md
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|
||||
Babes in the Jungle {#babes-in-the-jungle type="title"}
|
||||
-------------------
|
||||
|
||||
Montague Silver, the finest street man and art grafter in the West, says to me once in Little Rock: "If you ever lose your mind, Billy, and get too old to do honest swindling among grown men, go to New York. In the West a sucker is born every minute; but in New York they appear in chunks of roe---you can't count 'em!"
|
||||
|
||||
Two years afterward I found that I couldn't remember the names of the Russian admirals, and I noticed some gray hairs over my left ear; so I knew the time had arrived for me to take Silver's advice.
|
||||
|
||||
I struck New York about noon one day, and took a walk up Broadway. And I run against Silver himself, all encompassed up in a spacious kind of haberdashery, leaning against a hotel and rubbing the half-moons on his nails with a silk handkerchief.
|
||||
|
||||
"Paresis or superannuated?" I asks him.
|
||||
|
||||
"Hello, Billy," says Silver; "I'm glad to see you. Yes, it seemed to me that the West was accumulating a little too much wiseness. I've been saving New York for dessert. I know it's a low-down trick to take things from these people. They only know this and that and pass to and fro and think ever and anon. I'd hate for my mother to know I was skinning these weak-minded ones. She raised me better."
|
||||
|
||||
"Is there a crush already in the waiting rooms of the old doctor that does skin grafting?" I asks.
|
||||
|
||||
"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!
|
||||
|
||||
"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."
|
||||
|
||||
"You've got it, Billy," says Silver. "All emigrants have it. New York's bigger than Little Rock or Europe, and it frightens a foreigner. You'll be all right. I tell you I feel like slapping the people here because they don't send me all their money in laundry baskets, with germicide sprinkled over it. I hate to go down on the street to get it. Who wears the diamonds in this town? Why, Winnie, the Wiretapper's wife, and Bella, the Buncosteerer's bride. New Yorkers can be worked easier than a blue rose on a tidy. The only thing that bothers me is I know I'll break the cigars in my vest pocket when I get my clothes all full of twenties."
|
||||
|
||||
"I hope you are right, Monty," says I; "but I wish all the same I had been satisfied with a small business in Little Rock. The crop of farmers is never so short out there but what you can get a few of 'em to sign a petition for a new post office that you can discount for \$200 at the county bank. The people here appear to possess instincts of self-preservation and illiberality. I fear me that we are not cultured enough to tackle this game."
|
||||
|
||||
"Don't worry," says Silver. "I've got this Jayville-near-Tarrytown correctly estimated as sure as North River is the Hudson and East River ain't a river. Why, there are people living in four blocks of Broadway who never saw any kind of a building except a skyscraper in their lives! A good, live hustling Western man ought to get conspicuous enough here inside of three months to incur either Jerome's clemency or Lawson's displeasure."
|
||||
|
||||
"Hyperbole aside," says I, "do you know of any immediate system of buncoing the community out of a dollar or two except by applying to the Salvation Army or having a fit on Miss Helen Gould's doorsteps?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Dozens of 'em," says Silver. "How much capital have you got, Billy?"
|
||||
|
||||
"A thousand," I told him.
|
||||
|
||||
"I've got \$1,200," says he. "We'll pool and do a big piece of business. There's so many ways we can make a million that I don't know how to begin."
|
||||
|
||||
The next morning Silver meets me at the hotel and he is all sonorous and stirred with a kind of silent joy.
|
||||
|
||||
"We're to meet J. P. Morgan this afternoon," says he. "A man I know in the hotel wants to introduce us. He's a friend of his. He says he likes to meet people from the West."
|
||||
|
||||
"That sounds nice and plausible," says I. "I'd like to know Mr. Morgan."
|
||||
|
||||
"It won't hurt us a bit," says Silver, "to get acquainted with a few finance kings. I kind of like the social way New York has with strangers."
|
||||
|
||||
The man Silver knew was named Klein. At three o'clock Klein brought his Wall Street friend to see us in Silver's room. "Mr. Morgan" looked some like his pictures, and he had a Turkish towel wrapped around his left foot, and he walked with a cane.
|
||||
|
||||
"Mr. Silver and Mr. Pescud," says Klein. "It sounds superfluous," says he, "to mention the name of the greatest financial---"
|
||||
|
||||
"Cut it out, Klein," says Mr. Morgan. "I'm glad to know you gents; I take great interest in the West. Klein tells me you're from Little Rock. I think I've a railroad or two out there somewhere. If either of you guys would like to deal a hand or two of stud poker I---"
|
||||
|
||||
"Now, Pierpont," cuts in Klein, "you forget!"
|
||||
|
||||
"Excuse me, gents!" says Morgan; "since I've had the gout so bad I sometimes play a social game of cards at my house. Neither of you never knew One-eyed Peters, did you, while you was around Little Rock? He lived in Seattle, New Mexico."
|
||||
|
||||
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."
|
||||
|
||||
"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.
|
||||
|
||||
After we got back to the hotel and Klein had gone, Silver jumps at me and waves his hands.
|
||||
|
||||
"Did you see it?" says he. "Did you see it, Billy?"
|
||||
|
||||
"What?" I asks.
|
||||
|
||||
"Why, that picture that Morgan wants. It's hanging in that pawnshop, behind the desk. I didn't say anything because Klein was there. It's the article sure as you live. The girls are as natural as paint can make them, all measuring 36 and 25 and 42 skirts, if they had any skirts, and they're doing a buck-and-wing on the bank of a river with the blues. What did Mr. Morgan say he'd give for it? Oh, don't make me tell you. They can't know what it is in that pawnshop."
|
||||
|
||||
When the pawnshop opened the next morning me and Silver was standing there as anxious as if we wanted to soak our Sunday suit to buy a drink. We sauntered inside, and began to look at watch-chains.
|
||||
|
||||
"That's a violent specimen of a chromo you've got up there," remarked Silver, casual, to the pawnbroker. "But I kind of enthuse over the girl with the shoulder-blades and red bunting. Would an offer of \$2.25 for it cause you to knock over any fragile articles of your stock in hurrying it off the nail?"
|
||||
|
||||
The pawnbroker smiles and goes on showing us plate watch-chains.
|
||||
|
||||
"That picture," says he, "was pledged a year ago by an Italian gentleman. I loaned him \$500 on it. It is called 'Love's Idle Hour,' and it is by Leonardo de Vinchy. Two days ago the legal time expired, and it became an unredeemed pledge. Here is a style of chain that is worn a great deal now."
|
||||
|
||||
At the end of half an hour me and Silver paid the pawnbroker \$2,000 and walked out with the picture. Silver got into a cab with it and started for Morgan's office. I goes to the hotel and waits for him. In two hours Silver comes back.
|
||||
|
||||
"Did you see Mr. Morgan?" I asks. "How much did he pay you for it?"
|
||||
|
||||
Silver sits down and fools with a tassel on the table cover.
|
||||
|
||||
"I never exactly saw Mr. Morgan," he says, "because Mr. Morgan's been in Europe for a month. But what's worrying me, Billy, is this: The department stores have all got that same picture on sale, framed, for \$3.48. And they charge \$3.50 for the frame alone---that's what I can't understand."
|
||||
130
src/epub/text/barbershop-adventure.md
Normal file
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src/epub/text/barbershop-adventure.md
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|
||||
Barbershop Adventure {#barbershop-adventure type="title"}
|
||||
--------------------
|
||||
|
||||
When the *Post* Man entered the shop yesterday the chairs were full of customers, and for a brief moment he felt a thrill of hope that he might escape, but the barber's eye, deadly and gloomy fixed itself upon him.
|
||||
|
||||
"You're next," he said, with a look of diabolical malevolence, and the *Post* Man sank into a hard chair nailed to the wall, with a feeling of hopeless despair.
|
||||
|
||||
In a few moments there was a rattle and a bang, the customer in the chair was thrown violently on his feet, and fled out of the shop pursued by the African who was making vicious dabs at him with a whisk broom full of tacks and splinters.
|
||||
|
||||
The *Post* Man took a long look at the sunlight, pinned a little note to his tie with his scarf pin, giving his address, in case the worst should happen, and settled into the chair.
|
||||
|
||||
He informed the barber, in answer to a stern inquiry, that he did not want his hair cut, and in turn received a look of cold incredulity and contempt.
|
||||
|
||||
The chair was hurled to a reclining position, the lather was mixed, and as the deadly brush successively stopped all sense of hearing, sight and smell, the *Post* Man sank into a state of collapse, from which he was aroused by the loud noise of a steel instrument with which the barber was scraping off the lather and wiping it on the *Post* Man's shirt sleeve.
|
||||
|
||||
------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
"Everybody's riding bicycles now," said the barber, "and it's going to be very difficult for the fashionable people to keep it an exclusive exercise. You see, you can't prevent anybody from riding a bicycle that wants to, and the streets are free for everyone. I don't see any harm in the sport, myself, and it's getting more popular every day. After a while, riding will become so general that a lady on a wheel will not create any more notice than she would walking. It's good exercise for the ladies, and that makes up for their looking like a bag full of fighting cats slung over a clothes line when they ride.
|
||||
|
||||
"But the pains they do take to make themselves mannish! Why can't a lady go in for athletics without trying to look and dress tough? If I should tell you what one of them did the other day you wouldn't believe it."
|
||||
|
||||
The barber here glared so fiercely at the *Post* Man that he struggled up to the top of the lather by a superhuman effort and assured the artist that anything he said would be received with implicit faith.
|
||||
|
||||
"I was sent for," continued the barber, "to go up on McKinney Avenue and was to bring my razor and shaving outfit. I went up and found the house.
|
||||
|
||||
"A good-looking young lady was riding a bicycle up and down in front of the gate. She had on a short skirt, leggings, and a sack coat, cut like a man's.
|
||||
|
||||
"I went in and knocked and they showed me into a side room. In a few minutes the young lady came in, sat down on a chair and an old lady whom I took to be her ma dropped in.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Shave,' said the young lady. 'Twice over, and be in a hurry; I've an engagement.'
|
||||
|
||||
"I was nearly knocked down with surprise, but I managed to get my outfit in shape. It was evident that that young lady ruled the house. The old lady said to me in a whisper that her daughter was one of the leaders among the girls who believed in the emancipation of women, and she had resolved to raise a moustache and thus get ahead of her young lady companions.
|
||||
|
||||
"The young lady leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes.
|
||||
|
||||
"I dipped my brush in the lather and ran it across her upper lip. As soon as I did so she sprang to her feet, her eyes flashing with rage.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'How dare you insult me!' she stormed, looking as if she would like to eat me up. 'Leave the house, immediately,' she went on.
|
||||
|
||||
"I was dumbfounded. I thought perhaps she was a trifle flighty, so I put up my utensils and started for the door. When I got there, I recovered my presence of mind enough to say:
|
||||
|
||||
"Miss, I am sure I have done nothing to offend you. I always try to act a gentleman whenever it is convenient. In what way have I insulted you?
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Take your departure,' she said angrily. 'I guess I know when a man kisses me.'
|
||||
|
||||
"And so I left. Now, what do you think of that?" asked the barber, as he pushed about an ounce of soap into the *Post* Man's mouth with his thumb.
|
||||
|
||||
"I think that's a pretty tough story to believe," said the *Post* Man, summoning up his courage.
|
||||
|
||||
The barber stopped shaving and bent a gaze of such malignant and cool ferocity upon his victim that the *Post* Man hastened to say:
|
||||
|
||||
"But no doubt it occurred as you have stated."
|
||||
|
||||
"It did," said the barber. "I don't ask you to take my word for it. I can prove it. Do you see that blue mug on the shelf, the third from the right? Well, that's the mug I carried with me that day. I guess you'll believe it now."
|
||||
|
||||
"Speaking of bald heads," went on the barber, although no one had said a word about bald heads, "reminds me of how a man worked a game on me once right here in Houston. You know there's nothing in the world that will make hair grow on a bald head. Lots of things are sold for that purpose, but if the roots are dead nothing can bring them to life. A man came into my shop one day last fall and had a shave. His head was as bald and smooth as a tea cup. All the tonics in the world couldn't have started one hair growing there. The man was a stranger to me, but said he ran a truck garden out on the edge of town. He came in about three times and got shaved and then he struck me to fix him up something to make his hair grow."
|
||||
|
||||
The barber here reached back upon a shelf and got a strip of sticking plaster. Then he cut a gash along the *Post* Man's chin and stuck the plaster over it.
|
||||
|
||||
"When a man asks for a hair tonic," continued the barber, "in a barbershop he always gets it. You can fix up a mixture that a man may use on his head for a long time before he finds it is doing him no good. In the meantime he continues to shave in your shop.
|
||||
|
||||
"I told my customer that I had invented a hair tonic that if its use were persisted in would certainly cause the hair to grow on the smoothest head. I sat down and wrote him out a formula and told him to have it prepared at a drug store and not to give away the information, as I intended after a while to have it patented and sell it on a large scale. The recipe contained a lot of harmless stuff, some salts of tartar, oil of almonds, bay rum, rose water, tincture of myrrh and some other ingredients. I wrote them down at random just as they came into my head, and half an hour afterwards I couldn't have told what it was composed of myself. The man took it, paid me a dollar for the formula and went off to get it filled at a drug store.
|
||||
|
||||
"He came back twice that week to get shaved, and he said he was using it faithfully. Then he didn't come any more for about two weeks. He dropped in one afternoon and hung his hat up, and it nearly knocked me down when I saw that the finest kind of a suit of hair had started on his head. It was growing splendidly, and only two weeks before his head had been as bald as a door knob.
|
||||
|
||||
"He said he was awfully pleased with my tonic, and well he might be. While I was shaving him I tried to think what the ingredients were that I had written down for him to use, but I couldn't remember the quantities or half the things I had used. I knew that I had accidentally struck upon a tonic that would make the hair grow, and I knew furthermore that that formula was worth a million dollars to any man if it would do the work. Making hair grow on bald heads, if it could be done, would be better than any gold mine ever worked. I made up my mind to have that formula. When he was about to start away I said carelessly:
|
||||
|
||||
" 'By the way, Mr. Plunket, I have mislaid my memorandum book that has the formula of my tonic in it and I want to have a bottle or two prepared this morning. If you have the one I gave you I'd like to make a copy of it while you are here.'
|
||||
|
||||
"I must have looked too anxious, for he looked at me for a few minutes and then broke out into a laugh.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'By Jiminy,' he said, 'I don't believe you've got a copy of it anywheres. I believe you just happend to hit on the right thing and you don't remember what it was. I ain't half as green as I look. That hair grower is worth a fortune, and a big one, too. I think I'll just keep my recipe and get somebody to put the stuff up and sell it.'
|
||||
|
||||
"He started out, and I called him into the back room and talked to him half an hour.
|
||||
|
||||
"I finally made a trade with him and bought the formula back for \$250 cash. I went up to the bank and got the money which I had there saving up to build a house. He then gave me back the recipe I had given him and signed a paper relinquishing all rights to it. He also agreed to sign a testimonial about the stuff having made his hair grow out in two weeks."
|
||||
|
||||
The barber began to look gloomy and ran his fingers inside the *Post* Man's shirt collar, tearing out the button hole, and the collar button flew out the door across the sidewalk into the gutter.
|
||||
|
||||
"I went to work next day," said the barber, "and filed application at Washington for a patent on my tonic and arranged with a big drug firm in Houston to put it on the market for me. I had a million dollars in sight. I fixed up a room where I mixed the tonic---for I wouldn't let the druggists or anybody else know what was in it---and then the druggists bottled and labeled it.
|
||||
|
||||
"I quit working in the shop and put all my time into my tonic.
|
||||
|
||||
"Mr. Plunket came into the shop once or twice within the next two weeks and his hair was still growing finely. Pretty soon I had about \$200 worth of the tonic ready for the market, and Mr. Plunket was to come in town on Saturday and give me his testimonial to print on advertising dodgers and circulars with which I was going to flood the country.
|
||||
|
||||
"I was waiting in the room where I mixed my tonic about 11 o'clock Saturday when the door opened and Mr. Plunket came in. He was very much excited and very angry.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Look here,' he cried, 'what's the matter with your infernal stuff?'
|
||||
|
||||
"He pulled off his hat, and his head was as shiny and bare as a china egg.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'It all came out,' he said roughly. 'It was growing all right until yesterday morning, when it commenced to fall out, and this morning there wasn't a hair left.'
|
||||
|
||||
"I examined his head and there wasn't the ghost of a hair to be found anywhere.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'What's the good of your stuff,' he asked angrily, 'if it makes your hair grow and then all fall out again?'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'For heaven's sake, Mr. Plunket,' I said, 'don't say anything about it or you'll ruin me. I've got every cent I've got in the world invested in this hair tonic, and I've got to get my money back. It made your hair grow, give me the testimonial and let me sell what I've got put up, anyway. You are \$250 ahead on it and you ought to help me out of it.'
|
||||
|
||||
"He was very mad and cut up quite roughly and said he had been swindled and would expose the tonic as a fraud and a lot of things like that. Finally he agreed that if I would pay him \$100 more he would give me the testimonial to the effect that the tonic had made his hair grow and say nothing about its having fallen out again. If I could sell what I had put up at \$1.00 per bottle I would come out about even.
|
||||
|
||||
"I went out and borrowed the money and paid it to him and he signed the testimonial and left."
|
||||
|
||||
------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
"Did you sell your tonic out?" asked the *Post* Man, trying to speak in a tone calculated not to give offense.
|
||||
|
||||
The barber gave him a look of derisive contempt and then said in a tone of the utmost sarcasm:
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh, yes, I sold it out. I sold exactly five bottles, and the purchasers, after using the mixture faithfully for a month, came back and demanded their money. Not one of them that used it ever had a new hair to start on his head."
|
||||
|
||||
"How do you account for its having made the hair grow on Mr. Plunket's head?" asked the *Post* Man.
|
||||
|
||||
"How do I account for it?" repeated the barber in so dangerous a tone that the *Post* Man shuddered. "How do I account for it? I'll tell you how I account for it. I went out one day to where Mr. Plunket lived on the edge of town and asked for him.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Which Mr. Plunket?' asked a man who came out to the gate?
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Come off,' I said, 'the Plunket that lives here.'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'They've both moved,' said the man.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'What do you mean by "both?" ' I said, and then I began to think, and I said to the man:
|
||||
|
||||
" 'What kind of looking men were the Plunkets?'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'As much like as two peas,' said the man. 'They were twins, and nobody could tell 'em apart from their faces or their talk. The only difference between 'em was that one of 'em was as bald-headed as a hen egg and the other had plenty of hair.' "
|
||||
|
||||
"Now," said the barber as he poured about two ounces of bay rum down the *Post* Man's shirt front, "that's how I account for it. The bald-headed Plunket would come in my shop one time and the one with hair would come in another, and I never knew the difference."
|
||||
|
||||
When the barber finished the *Post* Man saw the African with the whisk broom waiting for him near the front door, so he fled by the back entrance, climbed a brick wall and escaped by a side street.
|
||||
202
src/epub/text/bestseller.md
Normal file
202
src/epub/text/bestseller.md
Normal file
@ -0,0 +1,202 @@
|
||||
Bestseller {#bestseller type="title"}
|
||||
----------
|
||||
|
||||
### I {#i type="ordinal z3998:roman"}
|
||||
|
||||
One day last summer I went to Pittsburgh---well, I had to go there on business.
|
||||
|
||||
My chair-car was profitably well filled with people of the kind one usually sees on chair-cars. Most of them were ladies in brown-silk dresses cut with square yokes, with lace insertion, and dotted veils, who refused to have the windows raised. Then there was the usual number of men who looked as if they might be in almost any business and going almost anywhere. Some students of human nature can look at a man in a Pullman and tell you where he is from, his occupation and his stations in life, both flag and social; but I never could. The only way I can correctly judge a fellow-traveller is when the train is held up by robbers, or when he reaches at the same time I do for the last towel in the dressing-room of the sleeper.
|
||||
|
||||
The porter came and brushed the collection of soot on the windowsill off to the left knee of my trousers. I removed it with an air of apology. The temperature was eighty-eight. One of the dotted-veiled ladies demanded the closing of two more ventilators, and spoke loudly of Interlaken. I leaned back idly in chair No. 7, and looked with the tepidest curiosity at the small, black, bald-spotted head just visible above the back of No. 9.
|
||||
|
||||
Suddenly No. 9 hurled a book to the floor between his chair and the window, and, looking, I saw that it was *The Rose-Lady and Trevelyan*, one of the best-selling novels of the present day. And then the critic or Philistine, whichever he was, veered his chair toward the window, and I knew him at once for John A. Pescud, of Pittsburgh, travelling salesman for a plate-glass company---an old acquaintance whom I had not seen in two years.
|
||||
|
||||
In two minutes we were faced, had shaken hands, and had finished with such topics as rain, prosperity, health, residence, and destination. Politics might have followed next; but I was not so ill-fated.
|
||||
|
||||
I wish you might know John A. Pescud. He is of the stuff that heroes are not often lucky enough to be made of. He is a small man with a wide smile, and an eye that seems to be fixed upon that little red spot on the end of your nose. I never saw him wear but one kind of necktie, and he believes in cuff-holders and button-shoes. He is as hard and true as anything ever turned out by the Cambria Steel Works; and he believes that as soon as Pittsburgh makes smoke-consumers compulsory, St. Peter will come down and sit at the foot of Smithfield Street, and let somebody else attend to the gate up in the branch heaven. He believes that "our" plate-glass is the most important commodity in the world, and that when a man is in his home town he ought to be decent and law-abiding.
|
||||
|
||||
During my acquaintance with him in the City of Diurnal Night I had never known his views on life, romance, literature, and ethics. We had browsed, during our meetings, on local topics, and then parted, after Château Margaux, Irish stew, flannel-cakes, cottage-pudding, and coffee (hey, there!---with milk separate). Now I was to get more of his ideas. By way of facts, he told me that business had picked up since the party conventions, and that he was going to get off at Coketown.
|
||||
|
||||
### II {#ii type="ordinal z3998:roman"}
|
||||
|
||||
"Say," said Pescud, stirring his discarded book with the toe of his right shoe, "did you ever read one of these bestsellers? I mean the kind where the hero is an American swell---sometimes even from Chicago---who falls in love with a royal princess from Europe who is travelling under an alias, and follows her to her father's kingdom or principality? I guess you have. They're all alike. Sometimes this going-away masher is a Washington newspaper correspondent, and sometimes he is a Van Something from New York, or a Chicago wheat-broker worthy fifty millions. But he's always ready to break into the king row of any foreign country that sends over their queens and princesses to try the new plush seats on the Big Four or the B. and O. There doesn't seem to be any other reason in the book for their being here.
|
||||
|
||||
"Well, this fellow chases the royal chair-warmer home, as I said, and finds out who she is. He meets her on the *corso* or the *strasse* one evening and gives us ten pages of conversation. She reminds him of the difference in their stations, and that gives him a chance to ring in three solid pages about America's uncrowned sovereigns. If you'd take his remarks and set 'em to music, and then take the music away from 'em, they'd sound exactly like one of George Cohan's songs.
|
||||
|
||||
"Well, you know how it runs on, if you've read any of 'em---he slaps the king's Swiss bodyguards around like everything whenever they get in his way. He's a great fencer, too. Now, I've known of some Chicago men who were pretty notorious fences, but I never heard of any fencers coming from there. He stands on the first landing of the royal staircase in Castle Schutzenfestenstein with a gleaming rapier in his hand, and makes a Baltimore broil of six platoons of traitors who come to massacre the said king. And then he has to fight duels with a couple of chancellors, and foil a plot by four Austrian archdukes to seize the kingdom for a gasoline-station.
|
||||
|
||||
"But the great scene is when his rival for the princess' hand, Count Feodor, attacks him between the portcullis and the ruined chapel, armed with a mitrailleuse, a yataghan, and a couple of Siberian bloodhounds. This scene is what runs the bestseller into the twenty-ninth edition before the publisher has had time to draw a check for the advance royalties.
|
||||
|
||||
"The American hero shucks his coat and throws it over the heads of the bloodhounds, gives the mitrailleuse a slap with his mitt, says 'Yah!' to the yataghan, and lands in Kid McCoy's best style on the count's left eye. Of course, we have a neat little prizefight right then and there. The count---in order to make the go possible---seems to be an expert at the art of self-defence, himself; and here we have the Corbett-Sullivan fight done over into literature. The book ends with the broker and the princess doing a John Cecil Clay cover under the linden-trees on the Gorgonzola Walk. That winds up the love-story plenty good enough. But I notice that the book dodges the final issue. Even a bestseller has sense enough to shy at either leaving a Chicago grain broker on the throne of Lobsterpotsdam or bringing over a real princess to eat fish and potato salad in an Italian chalet on Michigan Avenue. What do you think about 'em?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Why," said I, "I hardly know, John. There's a saying: 'Love levels all ranks,' you know."
|
||||
|
||||
"Yes," said Pescud, "but these kind of love-stories are rank---on the level. I know something about literature, even if I am in plate-glass. These kind of books are wrong, and yet I never go into a train but what they pile 'em up on me. No good can come out of an international clinch between the Old-World aristocracy and one of us fresh Americans. When people in real life marry, they generally hunt up somebody in their own station. A fellow usually picks out a girl that went to the same high-school and belonged to the same singing-society that he did. When young millionaires fall in love, they always select the chorus-girl that likes the same kind of sauce on the lobster that he does. Washington newspaper correspondents always marry widow ladies ten years older than themselves who keep boardinghouses. No, sir, you can't make a novel sound right to me when it makes one of C. D. Gibson's bright young men go abroad and turn kingdoms upside down just because he's a Taft American and took a course at a gymnasium. And listen how they talk, too!"
|
||||
|
||||
Pescud picked up the bestseller and hunted his page.
|
||||
|
||||
"Listen at this," said he. "Trevelyan is chinning with the Princess Alwyna at the back end of the tulip-garden. This is how it goes:
|
||||
|
||||
> " 'Say not so, dearest and sweetest of earth's fairest flowers. Would > I aspire? You are a star set high above me in a royal heaven; I am > only---myself. Yet I am a man, and I have a heart to do and dare. I > have no title save that of an uncrowned sovereign; but I have an arm > and a sword that yet might free Schutzenfestenstein from the plots of > traitors.'
|
||||
|
||||
"Think of a Chicago man packing a sword, and talking about freeing anything that sounded as much like canned pork as that! He'd be much more likely to fight to have an import duty put on it."
|
||||
|
||||
"I think I understand you, John," said I. "You want fiction-writers to be consistent with their scenes and characters. They shouldn't mix Turkish pashas with Vermont farmers, or English dukes with Long Island clam-diggers, or Italian countesses with Montana cowboys, or Cincinnati brewery agents with the rajahs of India."
|
||||
|
||||
"Or plain business men with aristocracy high above 'em," added Pescud. "It don't jibe. People are divided into classes, whether we admit it or not, and it's everybody's impulse to stick to their own class. They do it, too. I don't see why people go to work and buy hundreds of thousands of books like that. You don't see or hear of any such didoes and capers in real life."
|
||||
|
||||
### III {#iii type="ordinal z3998:roman"}
|
||||
|
||||
"Well, John," said I, "I haven't read a bestseller in a long time. Maybe I've had notions about them somewhat like yours. But tell me more about yourself. Getting along all right with the company?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Bully," said Pescud, brightening at once. "I've had my salary raised twice since I saw you, and I get a commission, too. I've bought a neat slice of real estate out in the East End, and have run up a house on it. Next year the firm is going to sell me some shares of stock. Oh, I'm in on the line of General Prosperity, no matter who's elected!"
|
||||
|
||||
"Met your affinity yet, John?" I asked.
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh, I didn't tell you about that, did I?" said Pescud with a broader grin.
|
||||
|
||||
"O-ho!" I said. "So you've taken time enough off from your plate-glass to have a romance?"
|
||||
|
||||
"No, no," said John. "No romance---nothing like that! But I'll tell you about it.
|
||||
|
||||
"I was on the southbound, going to Cincinnati, about eighteen months ago, when I saw, across the aisle, the finest-looking girl I'd ever laid eyes on. Nothing spectacular, you know, but just the sort you want for keeps. Well, I never was up to the flirtation business, either handkerchief, automobile, postage-stamp, or doorstep, and she wasn't the kind to start anything. She read a book and minded her business, which was to make the world prettier and better just by residing on it. I kept on looking out of the side doors of my eyes, and finally the proposition got out of the Pullman class into a case of a cottage with a lawn and vines running over the porch. I never thought of speaking to her, but I let the plate-glass business go to smash for a while.
|
||||
|
||||
"She changed cars at Cincinnati, and took a sleeper to Louisville over the L. & N. There she bought another ticket, and went on through Shelbyville, Frankfort, and Lexington. Along there I began to have a hard time keeping up with her. The trains came along when they pleased, and didn't seem to be going anywhere in particular, except to keep on the track and the right of way as much as possible. Then they began to stop at junctions instead of towns, and at last they stopped altogether. I'll bet Pinkerton would outbid the plate-glass people for my services any time if they knew how I managed to shadow that young lady. I contrived to keep out of her sight as much as I could, but I never lost track of her.
|
||||
|
||||
"The last station she got off at was away down in Virginia, about six in the afternoon. There were about fifty houses and four hundred niggers in sight. The rest was red mud, mules, and speckled hounds.
|
||||
|
||||
"A tall old man, with a smooth face and white hair, looking as proud as Julius Caesar and Roscoe Conkling on the same postcard, was there to meet her. His clothes were frazzled, but I didn't notice that till later. He took her little satchel, and they started over the plank-walks and went up a road along the hill. I kept along a piece behind 'em, trying to look like I was hunting a garnet ring in the sand that my sister had lost at a picnic the previous Saturday.
|
||||
|
||||
"They went in a gate on top of the hill. It nearly took my breath away when I looked up. Up there in the biggest grove I ever saw was a tremendous house with round white pillars about a thousand feet high, and the yard was so full of rosebushes and box-bushes and lilacs that you couldn't have seen the house if it hadn't been as big as the Capitol at Washington.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Here's where I have to trail,' says I to myself. I thought before that she seemed to be in moderate circumstances, at least. This must be the Governor's mansion, or the Agricultural Building of a new World's Fair, anyhow. I'd better go back to the village and get posted by the postmaster, or drug the druggist for some information.
|
||||
|
||||
"In the village I found a pine hotel called the Bay View House. The only excuse for the name was a bay horse grazing in the front yard. I set my sample-case down, and tried to be ostensible. I told the landlord I was taking orders for plate-glass.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'I don't want no plates,' says he, 'but I do need another glass molasses-pitcher.'
|
||||
|
||||
"By-and-by I got him down to local gossip and answering questions.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Why,' says he, 'I thought everybody knowed who lived in the big white house on the hill. It's Colonel Allyn, the biggest man and the finest quality in Virginia, or anywhere else. They're the oldest family in the State. That was his daughter that got off the train. She's been up to Illinois to see her aunt, who is sick.'
|
||||
|
||||
"I registered at the hotel, and on the third day I caught the young lady walking in the front yard, down next to the paling fence. I stopped and raised my hat---there wasn't any other way.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Excuse me,' says I, 'can you tell me where Mr. Hinkle lives?'
|
||||
|
||||
"She looks at me as cool as if I was the man come to see about the weeding of the garden, but I thought I saw just a slight twinkle of fun in her eyes.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'No one of that name lives in Birchton,' says she. 'That is,' she goes on, 'as far as I know. Is the gentleman you are seeking white?'
|
||||
|
||||
"Well, that tickled me. 'No kidding,' says I. 'I'm not looking for smoke, even if I do come from Pittsburgh.'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'You are quite a distance from home,' says she.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'I'd have gone a thousand miles farther,' says I.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Not if you hadn't waked up when the train started in Shelbyville,' says she; and then she turned almost as red as one of the roses on the bushes in the yard. I remembered I had dropped off to sleep on a bench in the Shelbyville station, waiting to see which train she took, and only just managed to wake up in time.
|
||||
|
||||
"And then I told her why I had come, as respectful and earnest as I could. And I told her everything about myself, and what I was making, and how that all I asked was just to get acquainted with her and try to get her to like me.
|
||||
|
||||
"She smiles a little, and blushes some, but her eyes never get mixed up. They look straight at whatever she's talking to.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'I never had anyone talk like this to me before, Mr. Pescud,' says she. 'What did you say your name is---John?'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'John A.,' says I.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'And you came mighty near missing the train at Powhatan Junction, too,' says she, with a laugh that sounded as good as a mileage-book to me.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'How did you know?' I asked.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Men are very clumsy,' said she. 'I knew you were on every train. I thought you were going to speak to me, and I'm glad you didn't.'
|
||||
|
||||
"Then we had more talk; and at last a kind of proud, serious look came on her face, and she turned and pointed a finger at the big house.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'The Allyns,' says she, 'have lived in Elmcroft for a hundred years. We are a proud family. Look at that mansion. It has fifty rooms. See the pillars and porches and balconies. The ceilings in the reception-rooms and the ballroom are twenty-eight feet high. My father is a lineal descendant of belted earls.'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'I belted one of 'em once in the Duquesne Hotel, in Pittsburgh,' says I, 'and he didn't offer to resent it. He was there dividing his attentions between Monongahela whiskey and heiresses, and he got fresh.'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Of course,' she goes on, 'my father wouldn't allow a drummer to set his foot in Elmcroft. If he knew that I was talking to one over the fence he would lock me in my room.'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Would *you* let me come there?' says I. 'Would *you* talk to me if I was to call? For,' I goes on, 'if you said I might come and see you, the earls might be belted or suspendered, or pinned up with safety-pins, as far as I am concerned.'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'I must not talk to you,' she says, 'because we have not been introduced. It is not exactly proper. So I will say goodbye, Mr.---'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Say the name,' says I. 'You haven't forgotten it.'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Pescud,' says she, a little mad.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'The rest of the name!' I demands, cool as could be.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'John,' says she.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'John---what?' I says.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'John A.,' says she, with her head high. 'Are you through, now?'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'I'm coming to see the belted earl tomorrow,' I says.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'He'll feed you to his foxhounds,' says she, laughing.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'If he does, it'll improve their running,' says I. 'I'm something of a hunter myself.'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'I must be going in now,' says she. 'I oughtn't to have spoken to you at all. I hope you'll have a pleasant trip back to Minneapolis---or Pittsburgh, was it? Goodbye!'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Good night,' says I, 'and it wasn't Minneapolis. What's your name, first, please?'
|
||||
|
||||
"She hesitated. Then she pulled a leaf off a bush, and said:
|
||||
|
||||
" 'My name is Jessie,' says she.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Good night, Miss Allyn,' says I.
|
||||
|
||||
"The next morning at eleven, sharp, I rang the doorbell of that World's Fair main building. After about three-quarters of an hour an old nigger man about eighty showed up and asked what I wanted. I gave him my business card, and said I wanted to see the colonel. He showed me in.
|
||||
|
||||
"Say, did you ever crack open a wormy English walnut? That's what that house was like. There wasn't enough furniture in it to fill an eight-dollar flat. Some old horsehair lounges and three-legged chairs and some framed ancestors on the walls were all that met the eye. But when Colonel Allyn comes in, the place seemed to light up. You could almost hear a band playing, and see a bunch of old-timers in wigs and white stockings dancing a quadrille. It was the style of him, although he had on the same shabby clothes I saw him wear at the station.
|
||||
|
||||
"For about nine seconds he had me rattled, and I came mighty near getting cold feet and trying to sell him some plate-glass. But I got my nerve back pretty quick. He asked me to sit down, and I told him everything. I told him how I followed his daughter from Cincinnati, and what I did it for, and all about my salary and prospects, and explained to him my little code of living---to be always decent and right in your home town; and when you're on the road, never take more than four glasses of beer a day or play higher than a twenty-five-cent limit. At first I thought he was going to throw me out of the window, but I kept on talking. Pretty soon I got a chance to tell him that story about the Western Congressman who had lost his pocketbook and the grass widow---you remember that story. Well, that got him to laughing, and I'll bet that was the first laugh those ancestors and horsehair sofas had heard in many a day.
|
||||
|
||||
"We talked two hours. I told him everything I knew; and then he began to ask questions, and I told him the rest. All I asked of him was to give me a chance. If I couldn't make a hit with the little lady, I'd clear out, and not bother any more. At last he says:
|
||||
|
||||
" 'There was a Sir Courtenay Pescud in the time of Charles [I]{type="z3998:roman"}, if I remember rightly.'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'If there was,' says I, 'he can't claim kin with our bunch. We've always lived in and around Pittsburgh. I've got an uncle in the real-estate business, and one in trouble somewhere out in Kansas. You can inquire about any of the rest of us from anybody in old Smoky Town, and get satisfactory replies. Did you ever run across that story about the captain of the whaler who tried to make a sailor say his prayers?' says I.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'It occurs to me that I have never been so fortunate,' says the colonel.
|
||||
|
||||
"So I told it to him. Laugh! I was wishing to myself that he was a customer. What a bill of glass I'd sell him! And then he says:
|
||||
|
||||
" 'The relating of anecdotes and humorous occurrences has always seemed to me, Mr. Pescud, to be a particularly agreeable way of promoting and perpetuating amenities between friends. With your permission, I will relate to you a foxhunting story with which I was personally connected, and which may furnish you some amusement.'
|
||||
|
||||
"So he tells it. It takes forty minutes by the watch. Did I laugh? Well, say! When I got my face straight he calls in old Pete, the superannuated darky, and sends him down to the hotel to bring up my valise. It was Elmcroft for me while I was in the town.
|
||||
|
||||
"Two evenings later I got a chance to speak a word with Miss Jessie alone on the porch while the colonel was thinking up another story.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'It's going to be a fine evening,' says I.
|
||||
|
||||
" '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.'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Yes,' says I, 'I remember. My foot slipped as I was jumping on the step, and I nearly tumbled off.'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'I know,' says she. 'And---and I---*I was afraid you had, John A. I was afraid you had.*'
|
||||
|
||||
"And then she skips into the house through one of the big windows."
|
||||
|
||||
### IV {#iv type="ordinal z3998:roman"}
|
||||
|
||||
"Coketown!" droned the porter, making his way through the slowing car.
|
||||
|
||||
Pescud gathered his hat and baggage with the leisurely promptness of an old traveller.
|
||||
|
||||
"I married her a year ago," said John. "I told you I built a house in the East End. The belted---I mean the colonel---is there, too. I find him waiting at the gate whenever I get back from a trip to hear any new story I might have picked up on the road."
|
||||
|
||||
I glanced out of the window. Coketown was nothing more than a ragged hillside dotted with a score of black dismal huts propped up against dreary mounds of slag and clinkers. It rained in slanting torrents, too, and the rills foamed and splashed down through the black mud to the railroad-tracks.
|
||||
|
||||
"You won't sell much plate-glass here, John," said I. "Why do you get off at this end-o'-the-world?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Why," said Pescud, "the other day I took Jessie for a little trip to Philadelphia, and coming back she thought she saw some petunias in a pot in one of those windows over there just like some she used to raise down in the old Virginia home. So I thought I'd drop off here for the night, and see if I could dig up some of the cuttings or blossoms for her. Here we are. Good night, old man. I gave you the address. Come out and see us when you have time."
|
||||
|
||||
The train moved forward. One of the dotted brown ladies insisted on having windows raised, now that the rain beat against them. The porter came along with his mysterious wand and began to light the car.
|
||||
|
||||
I glanced downward and saw the bestseller. I picked it up and set it carefully farther along on the floor of the car, where the raindrops would not fall upon it. And then, suddenly, I smiled, and seemed to see that life has no geographical metes and bounds.
|
||||
|
||||
"Good-luck to you, Trevelyan," I said. "And may you get the petunias for your princess!"
|
||||
110
src/epub/text/between-rounds.md
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110
src/epub/text/between-rounds.md
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|
||||
Between Rounds {#between-rounds type="title"}
|
||||
--------------
|
||||
|
||||
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 *D*'s.
|
||||
|
||||
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."
|
||||
|
||||
"Woman!" said Mr. McCaskey, dashing his coat and hat upon a chair, "the noise of ye is an insult to me appetite. When ye run down politeness ye take the mortar from between the bricks of the foundations of society. 'Tis no more than exercisin' the acrimony of a gentleman when ye ask the dissent of ladies blockin' the way for steppin' between them. Will ye bring the pig's face of ye out of the windy and see to the food?"
|
||||
|
||||
Mrs. McCaskey arose heavily and went to the stove. There was something in her manner that warned Mr. McCaskey. When the corners of her mouth went down suddenly like a barometer it usually foretold a fall of crockery and tinware.
|
||||
|
||||
"Pig's face, is it?" said Mrs. McCaskey, and hurled a stewpan full of bacon and turnips at her lord.
|
||||
|
||||
Mr. McCaskey was no novice at repartee. He knew what should follow the entrée. On the table was a roast sirloin of pork, garnished with shamrocks. He retorted with this, and drew the appropriate return of a bread pudding in an earthen dish. A hunk of Swiss cheese accurately thrown by her husband struck Mrs. McCaskey below one eye. When she replied with a well-aimed coffeepot full of a hot, black, semi-fragrant liquid the battle, according to courses, should have ended.
|
||||
|
||||
But Mr. McCaskey was no 50-cent [table d'hôter]{lang="fr"}. Let cheap Bohemians consider coffee the end, if they would. Let them make that [faux pas]{lang="fr"}. He was foxier still. Finger-bowls were not beyond the compass of his experience. They were not to be had in the Pension Murphy; but their equivalent was at hand. Triumphantly he sent the graniteware wash basin at the head of his matrimonial adversary. Mrs. McCaskey dodged in time. She reached for a flatiron, with which, as a sort of cordial, she hoped to bring the gastronomical duel to a close. But a loud, wailing scream downstairs caused both her and Mr. McCaskey to pause in a sort of involuntary armistice.
|
||||
|
||||
On the sidewalk at the corner of the house Policeman Cleary was standing with one ear upturned, listening to the crash of household utensils.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Tis Jawn McCaskey and his missis at it again," meditated the policeman. "I wonder shall I go up and stop the row. I will not. Married folks they are; and few pleasures they have. 'Twill not last long. Sure, they'll have to borrow more dishes to keep it up with."
|
||||
|
||||
And just then came the loud scream below-stairs, betokening fear or dire extremity. " 'Tis probably the cat," said Policeman Cleary, and walked hastily in the other direction.
|
||||
|
||||
The boarders on the steps were fluttered. Mr. Toomey, an insurance solicitor by birth and an investigator by profession, went inside to analyse the scream. He returned with the news that Mrs. Murphy's little boy, Mike, was lost. Following the messenger, out bounced Mrs. Murphy---two hundred pounds in tears and hysterics, clutching the air and howling to the sky for the loss of thirty pounds of freckles and mischief. Bathos, truly; but Mr. Toomey sat down at the side of Miss Purdy, millinery, and their hands came together in sympathy. The two old maids, Misses Walsh, who complained every day about the noise in the halls, inquired immediately if anybody had looked behind the clock.
|
||||
|
||||
Major Grigg, who sat by his fat wife on the top step, arose and buttoned his coat. "The little one lost?" he exclaimed. "I will scour the city." His wife never allowed him out after dark. But now she said: "Go, Ludovic!" in a baritone voice. "Whoever can look upon that mother's grief without springing to her relief has a heart of stone." "Give me some thirty or---sixty cents, my love," said the Major. "Lost children sometimes stray far. I may need carfares."
|
||||
|
||||
Old man Denny, hall room, fourth floor back, who sat on the lowest step, trying to read a paper by the street lamp, turned over a page to follow up the article about the carpenters' strike. Mrs. Murphy shrieked to the moon: "Oh, ar-r-Mike, f'r Gawd's sake, where is me little bit av a boy?"
|
||||
|
||||
"When'd ye see him last?" asked old man Denny, with one eye on the report of the Building Trades League.
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh," wailed Mrs. Murphy, " 'twas yisterday, or maybe four hours ago! I dunno. But it's lost he is, me little boy Mike. He was playin' on the sidewalk only this mornin'---or was it Wednesday? I'm that busy with work, 'tis hard to keep up with dates. But I've looked the house over from top to cellar, and it's gone he is. Oh, for the love av Hiven---"
|
||||
|
||||
Silent, grim, colossal, the big city has ever stood against its revilers. They call it hard as iron; they say that no pulse of pity beats in its bosom; they compare its streets with lonely forests and deserts of lava. But beneath the hard crust of the lobster is found a delectable and luscious food. Perhaps a different simile would have been wiser. Still, nobody should take offence. We would call no one a lobster without good and sufficient claws.
|
||||
|
||||
No calamity so touches the common heart of humanity as does the straying of a little child. Their feet are so uncertain and feeble; the ways are so steep and strange.
|
||||
|
||||
Major Griggs hurried down to the corner, and up the avenue into Billy's place. "Gimme a rye-high," he said to the servitor. "Haven't seen a bowlegged, dirty-faced little devil of a six-year-old lost kid around here anywhere, have you?"
|
||||
|
||||
Mr. Toomey retained Miss Purdy's hand on the steps. "Think of that dear little babe," said Miss Purdy, "lost from his mother's side---perhaps already fallen beneath the iron hoofs of galloping steeds---oh, isn't it dreadful?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Ain't that right?" agreed Mr. Toomey, squeezing her hand. "Say I start out and help look for um!"
|
||||
|
||||
"Perhaps," said Miss Purdy, "you should. But, oh, Mr. Toomey, you are so dashing---so reckless---suppose in your enthusiasm some accident should befall you, then what---"
|
||||
|
||||
Old man Denny read on about the arbitration agreement, with one finger on the lines.
|
||||
|
||||
In the second floor front Mr. and Mrs. McCaskey came to the window to recover their second wind. Mr. McCaskey was scooping turnips out of his vest with a crooked forefinger, and his lady was wiping an eye that the salt of the roast pork had not benefited. They heard the outcry below, and thrust their heads out of the window.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Tis little Mike is lost," said Mrs. McCaskey, in a hushed voice, "the beautiful, little, trouble-making angel of a gossoon!"
|
||||
|
||||
"The bit of a boy mislaid?" said Mr. McCaskey, leaning out of the window. "Why, now, that's bad enough, entirely. The childer, they be different. If 'twas a woman I'd be willin', for they leave peace behind 'em when they go."
|
||||
|
||||
Disregarding the thrust, Mrs. McCaskey caught her husband's arm.
|
||||
|
||||
"Jawn," she said, sentimentally, "Missis Murphy's little bye is lost. 'Tis a great city for losing little boys. Six years old he was. Jawn, 'tis the same age our little bye would have been if we had had one six years ago."
|
||||
|
||||
"We never did," said Mr. McCaskey, lingering with the fact.
|
||||
|
||||
"But if we had, Jawn, think what sorrow would be in our hearts this night, with our little Phelan run away and stolen in the city nowheres at all."
|
||||
|
||||
"Ye talk foolishness," said Mr. McCaskey. " 'Tis Pat he would be named, after me old father in Cantrim."
|
||||
|
||||
"Ye lie!" said Mrs. McCaskey, without anger. "Me brother was worth tin dozen bog-trotting McCaskeys. After him would the bye be named." She leaned over the windowsill and looked down at the hurrying and bustle below.
|
||||
|
||||
"Jawn," said Mrs. McCaskey, softly, "I'm sorry I was hasty wid ye."
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Twas hasty puddin', as ye say," said her husband, "and hurry-up turnips and get-a-move-on-ye coffee. 'Twas what ye could call a quick lunch, all right, and tell no lie."
|
||||
|
||||
Mrs. McCaskey slipped her arm inside her husband's and took his rough hand in hers.
|
||||
|
||||
"Listen at the cryin' of poor Mrs. Murphy," she said. " 'Tis an awful thing for a bit of a bye to be lost in this great big city. If 'twas our little Phelan, Jawn, I'd be breakin' me heart."
|
||||
|
||||
Awkwardly Mr. McCaskey withdrew his hand. But he laid it around the nearing shoulder of his wife.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Tis foolishness, of course," said he, roughly, "but I'd be cut up some meself if our little Pat was kidnapped or anything. But there never was any childer for us. Sometimes I've been ugly and hard with ye, Judy. Forget it."
|
||||
|
||||
They leaned together, and looked down at the heart-drama being acted below.
|
||||
|
||||
Long they sat thus. People surged along the sidewalk, crowding, questioning, filling the air with rumours, and inconsequent surmises. Mrs. Murphy ploughed back and forth in their midst, like a soft mountain down which plunged an audible cataract of tears. Couriers came and went.
|
||||
|
||||
Loud voices and a renewed uproar were raised in front of the boardinghouse.
|
||||
|
||||
"What's up now, Judy?" asked Mr. McCaskey.
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Tis Missis Murphy's voice," said Mrs. McCaskey, harking. "She says she's after finding little Mike asleep behind the roll of old linoleum under the bed in her room."
|
||||
|
||||
Mr. McCaskey laughed loudly.
|
||||
|
||||
"That's yer Phelan," he shouted, sardonically. "Divil a bit would a Pat have done that trick. If the bye we never had is strayed and stole, by the powers, call him Phelan, and see him hide out under the bed like a mangy pup."
|
||||
|
||||
Mrs. McCaskey arose heavily, and went toward the dish closet, with the corners of her mouth drawn down.
|
||||
|
||||
Policeman Cleary came back around the corner as the crowd dispersed. Surprised, he upturned an ear toward the McCaskey apartment, where the crash of irons and chinaware and the ring of hurled kitchen utensils seemed as loud as before. Policeman Cleary took out his timepiece.
|
||||
|
||||
"By the deported snakes!" he exclaimed, "Jawn McCaskey and his lady have been fightin' for an hour and a quarter by the watch. The missis could give him forty pounds weight. Strength to his arm."
|
||||
|
||||
Policeman Cleary strolled back around the corner.
|
||||
|
||||
Old man Denny folded his paper and hurried up the steps just as Mrs. Murphy was about to lock the door for the night.
|
||||
258
src/epub/text/bexar-scrip-no-2692.md
Normal file
258
src/epub/text/bexar-scrip-no-2692.md
Normal file
@ -0,0 +1,258 @@
|
||||
Bexar Scrip No. 2692 {#bexar-scrip-no.-2692 type="title"}
|
||||
--------------------
|
||||
|
||||
Whenever you visit Austin you should by all means go to see the General Land Office.
|
||||
|
||||
As you pass up the avenue you turn sharp round the corner of the courthouse, and on a steep hill before you you see a medieval castle.
|
||||
|
||||
You think of the Rhine; the "castled crag of Drachenfels"; the Lorelei; and the vine-clad slopes of Germany. And German it is in every line of its architecture and design.
|
||||
|
||||
The plan was drawn by an old draftsman from the "Vaterland," whose heart still loved the scenes of his native land, and it is said he reproduced the design of a certain castle near his birthplace, with remarkable fidelity.
|
||||
|
||||
Under the present administration a new coat of paint has vulgarized its ancient and venerable walls. Modern tiles have replaced the limestone slabs of its floors, worn in hollows by the tread of thousands of feet, and smart and gaudy fixtures have usurped the place of the timeworn furniture that has been consecrated by the touch of hands that Texas will never cease to honor.
|
||||
|
||||
But even now, when you enter the building, you lower your voice, and time turns backward for you, for the atmosphere which you breathe is cold with the exudation of buried generations.
|
||||
|
||||
The building is stone with a coating of concrete; the walls are immensely thick; it is cool in the summer and warm in the winter; it is isolated and sombre; standing apart from the other state buildings, sullen and decaying, brooding on the past.
|
||||
|
||||
Twenty years ago it was much the same as now; twenty years from now the garish newness will be worn off and it will return to its appearance of gloomy decadence.
|
||||
|
||||
People living in other states can form no conception of the vastness and importance of the work performed and the significance of the millions of records and papers composing the archives of this office.
|
||||
|
||||
The title deeds, patents, transfers and legal documents connected with every foot of land owned in the state of Texas are filed here.
|
||||
|
||||
Volumes could be filled with accounts of the knavery, the double-dealing, the cross purposes, the perjury, the lies, the bribery, the alteration and erasing, the suppressing and destroying of papers, the various schemes and plots that for the sake of the almighty dollar have left their stains upon the records of the General Land Office.
|
||||
|
||||
No reference is made to the employees. No more faithful, competent and efficient force of men exists in the clerical portions of any government, but there is---or was, for their day is now over---a class of land speculators commonly called land sharks, unscrupulous and greedy, who have left their trail in every department of this office, in the shape of titles destroyed, patents cancelled, homes demolished and torn away, forged transfers and lying affidavits.
|
||||
|
||||
Before the modern tiles were laid upon the floors, there were deep hollows in the limestone slabs, worn by the countless feet that daily trod uneasily through its echoing corridors, pressing from file room to business room, from commissioner's sanctum to record books and back again.
|
||||
|
||||
The honest but ignorant settler, bent on saving the little plot of land he called home, elbowed the wary land shark who was searching the records for evidence to oust him; the lordly cattle baron, relying on his influence and money, stood at the Commissioner's desk side by side with the preemptor, whose little potato patch lay like a minute speck of island in the vast, billowy sea, of his princely pastures, and played the old game of "freeze-out," which is as old as Cain and Abel.
|
||||
|
||||
The trail of the serpent is through it all.
|
||||
|
||||
Honest, earnest men have wrought for generations striving to disentangle the shameful coil that certain years of fraud and infamy have wound. Look at the files and see the countless endorsements of those in authority:
|
||||
|
||||
"Transfer doubtful---locked up."
|
||||
|
||||
"Certificate a forgery---locked up."
|
||||
|
||||
"Signature a forgery."
|
||||
|
||||
"Patent refused---duplicate patented elsewhere."
|
||||
|
||||
"Field notes forged."
|
||||
|
||||
"Certificates stolen from office"---and so on *ad infinitum*.
|
||||
|
||||
The record books, spread upon long tables, in the big room upstairs, are open to the examination of all. Open them, and you will find the dark and greasy finger prints of half a century's handling. The quick hand of the land grabber has fluttered the leaves a million times; the damp clutch of the perturbed tiller of the soil has left traces of his calling on the ragged leaves.
|
||||
|
||||
Interest centres in the file room.
|
||||
|
||||
This is a large room, built as a vault, fireproof, and entered by but a single door.
|
||||
|
||||
There is "No Admission" on the portal; and the precious files are handed out by a clerk in charge only on presentation of an order signed by the Commissioner or chief clerk.
|
||||
|
||||
In years past too much laxity prevailed in its management, and the files were handled by all comers, simply on their request, and returned at their will, or not at all.
|
||||
|
||||
In these days most of the mischief was done. In the file room, there are about ⸻ files, each in a paper wrapper, and comprising the title papers of a particular tract of land.
|
||||
|
||||
You ask the clerk in charge for the papers relating to any survey in Texas. They are arranged simply in districts and numbers.
|
||||
|
||||
He disappears from the door, you hear the sliding of a tin box, the lid snaps, and the file is in your hand.
|
||||
|
||||
Go up there some day and call for Bexar Scrip No. 2692.
|
||||
|
||||
The file clerk stares at you for a second, says shortly:
|
||||
|
||||
"Out of file."
|
||||
|
||||
It has been missing twenty years.
|
||||
|
||||
The history of that file has never been written before.
|
||||
|
||||
Twenty years ago there was a shrewd land agent living in Austin who devoted his undoubted talents and vast knowledge of land titles, and the laws governing them, to the locating of surveys made by illegal certificates, or improperly made, and otherwise of no value through noncompliance with the statutes, or whatever flaws his ingenious and unscrupulous mind could unearth.
|
||||
|
||||
He found a fatal defect in the title of the land as on file in Bexar Scrip No. 2692 and placed a new certificate upon the survey in his own name.
|
||||
|
||||
The law was on his side.
|
||||
|
||||
Every sentiment of justice, of right, and humanity was against him.
|
||||
|
||||
The certificate by virtue of which the original survey had been made was missing.
|
||||
|
||||
It was not to be found in the file, and no memorandum or date on the wrapper to show that it had ever been filed.
|
||||
|
||||
Under the law the land was vacant, unappropriated public domain, and open to location.
|
||||
|
||||
The land was occupied by a widow and her only son, and she supposed her title good.
|
||||
|
||||
The railroad had surveyed a new line through the property, and it had doubled in value.
|
||||
|
||||
Sharp, the land agent, did not communicate with her in any way until he had filed his papers, rushed his claim through the departments and into the patent room for patenting.
|
||||
|
||||
Then he wrote her a letter, offering her the choice of buying from him or vacating at once.
|
||||
|
||||
He received no reply.
|
||||
|
||||
One day he was looking through some files and came across the missing certificate. Someone, probably an employee of the office, had by mistake, after making some examination, placed it in the wrong file, and curiously enough another inadvertence, in there being no record of its filing on the wrapper, had completed the appearance of its having never been filed.
|
||||
|
||||
Sharp called for the file in which it belonged and scrutinized it carefully, fearing he might have overlooked some endorsement regarding its return to the office.
|
||||
|
||||
On the back of the certificate was plainly endorsed the date of filing, according to law, and signed by the chief clerk.
|
||||
|
||||
If this certificate should be seen by the examining clerk, his own claim, when it came up for patenting, would not be worth the paper on which it was written.
|
||||
|
||||
Sharp glanced furtively around. A young man, or rather a boy about eighteen years of age, stood a few feet away regarding him closely with keen black eyes. Sharp, a little confused, thrust the certificate into the file where it properly belonged and began gathering up the other papers.
|
||||
|
||||
The boy came up and leaned on the desk beside him.
|
||||
|
||||
"A right interesting office, sir!" he said. "I have never been in here before. All those papers, now, they are about lands, are they not? The titles and deeds, and such things?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Yes," said Sharp. "They are supposed to contain all the title papers."
|
||||
|
||||
"This one, now," said the boy, taking up Bexar Scrip No. 2692, "what land does this represent the title of? Ah, I see 'Six hundred and forty acres in B⸺ country? Absalom Harris, original grantee.' Please tell me, I am so ignorant of these things, how can you tell a good survey from a bad one. I am told that there are a great many illegal and fraudulent surveys in this office. I suppose this one is all right?"
|
||||
|
||||
"No," said Sharp. "The certificate is missing. It is invalid."
|
||||
|
||||
"That paper I just saw you place in that file, I suppose is something else---field notes, or a transfer probably?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Yes," said Sharp, hurriedly, "corrected field notes. Excuse me, I am a little pressed for time."
|
||||
|
||||
The boy was watching him with bright, alert eyes.
|
||||
|
||||
It would never do to leave the certificate in the file; but he could not take it out with that inquisitive boy watching him.
|
||||
|
||||
He turned to the file room, with a dozen or more files in his hands, and accidentally dropped part of them on the floor. As he stooped to pick them up he swiftly thrust Bexar Scrip No. 2692 in the inside breast pocket of his coat.
|
||||
|
||||
This happened at just half-past four o'clock, and when the file clerk took the files he threw them in a pile in his room, came out and locked the door.
|
||||
|
||||
The clerks were moving out of the doors in long, straggling lines.
|
||||
|
||||
It was closing time.
|
||||
|
||||
Sharp did not desire to take the file from the Land Office.
|
||||
|
||||
The boy might have seen him place the file in his pocket, and the penalty of the law for such an act was very severe.
|
||||
|
||||
Some distance back from the file room was the draftsman's room now entirely vacated by its occupants.
|
||||
|
||||
Sharp dropped behind the outgoing stream of men, and slipped slyly into this room.
|
||||
|
||||
The clerks trooped noisily down the iron stairway, singing, whistling, and talking.
|
||||
|
||||
Below, the night watchman awaited their exit, ready to close and bar the two great doors to the south and cast.
|
||||
|
||||
It is his duty to take careful note each day that no one remains in the building after the hour of closing.
|
||||
|
||||
Sharp waited until all sounds had ceased.
|
||||
|
||||
It was his intention to linger until everything was quiet, and then to remove the certificate from the file, and throw the latter carelessly on some draftsman's desk as if it had been left there during the business of the day.
|
||||
|
||||
He knew also that he must remove the certificate from the office or destroy it, as the chance finding of it by a clerk would lead to its immediately being restored to its proper place, and the consequent discovery that his location over the old survey was absolutely worthless.
|
||||
|
||||
As he moved cautiously along the stone floor the loud barking of the little black dog, kept by the watchman, told that his sharp ears had heard the sounds of his steps.
|
||||
|
||||
The great, hollow rooms echoed loudly, move as lightly as he could.
|
||||
|
||||
Sharp sat down at a desk and laid the file before him.
|
||||
|
||||
In all his queer practices and cunning tricks he had not yet included any act that was downright criminal.
|
||||
|
||||
He had always kept on the safe side of the law, but in the deed he was about to commit there was no compromise to be made with what little conscience he had left.
|
||||
|
||||
There is no well-defined boundary line between honesty and dishonesty.
|
||||
|
||||
The frontiers of one blend with the outside limits of the other, and he who attempts to tread this dangerous ground may be sometimes in one domain and sometimes in the other; so the only safe road is the broad highway that leads straight through and has been well defined by line and compass.
|
||||
|
||||
Sharp was a man of what is called high standing in the community. That is, his word in a trade was as good as any man's; his check was as good as so much cash, and so regarded; he went to church regularly; went in good society and owed no man anything.
|
||||
|
||||
He was regarded as a sure winner in any land trade he chose to make, but that was his occupation.
|
||||
|
||||
The act he was about to commit now would place him forever in the ranks of those who chose evil for their portion---if it was found out.
|
||||
|
||||
More than that, it would rob a widow and her son of property soon to be of great value, which, if not legally theirs, was theirs certainly by every claim of justice.
|
||||
|
||||
But he had gone too far to hesitate.
|
||||
|
||||
His own survey was in the patent room for patenting. His own title was about to be perfected by the State's own hand.
|
||||
|
||||
The certificate must be destroyed.
|
||||
|
||||
He leaned his head on his hands for a moment, and as he did so a sound behind him caused his heart to leap with guilty fear, but before he could rise, a hand came over his shoulder and grasped the file.
|
||||
|
||||
He rose quickly, as white as paper, rattling his chair loudly on the stone floor.
|
||||
|
||||
The boy who land spoken to him earlier stood contemplating him with contemptuous and flashing eyes, and quietly placed the file in the left breast pocket of his coat.
|
||||
|
||||
"So, Mr. Sharp, by nature as well as by name," he said, "it seems that I was right in waiting behind the door in order to see you safely out. You will appreciate the pleasure I feel in having done so when I tell you my name is Harris. My mother owns the land on which you have filed, and if there is any justice in Texas she shall hold it. I am not certain, but I think I saw you place a paper in this file this afternoon, and it is barely possible that it may be of value to me. I was also impressed with the idea that you desired to remove it again, but had not the opportunity. Anyway, I shall keep it until tomorrow and let the Commissioner decide."
|
||||
|
||||
Far back among Mr. Sharp's ancestors there must have been some of the old berserker blood, for his caution, his presence of mind left him, and left him possessed of a blind, devilish, unreasoning rage that showed itself in a moment in the white glitter of his eye.
|
||||
|
||||
"Give me that file, boy," he said, thickly, holding out his hand.
|
||||
|
||||
"I am no such fool, Mr. Sharp," said the youth. "This file shall be laid before the Commissioner tomorrow for examination. If he finds---Help! Help!"
|
||||
|
||||
Sharp was upon him like a tiger and bore him to the floor. The boy was strong and vigorous, but the suddenness of the attack gave him no chance to resist. He struggled up again to his feet, but it was an animal, with blazing eyes and cruel-looking teeth that fought him, instead of a man.
|
||||
|
||||
Mr. Sharp, a man of high standing and good report, was battling for his reputation.
|
||||
|
||||
Presently there was a dull sound, and another, and still one more, and a blade flashing white and then red, and Edward Harris dropped down like some stuffed effigy of a man, that boys make for sport, with his limbs all crumpled and lax, on the stone floor of the Land Office.
|
||||
|
||||
The old watchman was deaf, and heard nothing.
|
||||
|
||||
The little dog barked at the foot of the stairs until his master made him come into his room.
|
||||
|
||||
Sharp stood there for several minutes holding in his hand his bloody clasp knife, listening to the cooing of the pigeons on the roof, and the loud ticking of the clock above the receiver's desk.
|
||||
|
||||
A map rustled on the wall and his blood turned to ice; a rat ran across some strewn papers, and his scalp prickled, and he could scarcely moisten his dry lips with his tongue.
|
||||
|
||||
Between the file room and the draftsman's room there is a door that opens on a small dark spiral stairway that winds from the lower floor to the ceiling at the top of the house.
|
||||
|
||||
This stairway was not used then, nor is it now.
|
||||
|
||||
It is unnecessary, inconvenient, dusty, and dark as night, and was a blunder of the architect who designed the building.
|
||||
|
||||
This stairway ends above at the tent-shaped space between the roof and the joists.
|
||||
|
||||
That space is dark and forbidding, and being useless is rarely visited.
|
||||
|
||||
Sharp opened this door and gazed for a moment up this narrow cobwebbed stairway.
|
||||
|
||||
------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
After dark that night a man opened cautiously one of the lower windows of the Land Office, crept out with great circumspection and disappeared in the shadows.
|
||||
|
||||
------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
One afternoon, a week after this time, Sharp lingered behind again after the clerks had left and the office closed. The next morning the first comers noticed a broad mark in the dust on the upstairs floor, and the same mark was observed below stairs near a window.
|
||||
|
||||
It appeared as if some heavy and rather bulky object had been dragged along through the limestone dust. A memorandum book with "E. Harris" written on the flyleaf was picked up on the stairs, but nothing particular was thought of any of these signs.
|
||||
|
||||
Circulars and advertisements appeared for a long time in the papers asking for information concerning Edward Harris, who left his mother's home on a certain date and had never been heard of since.
|
||||
|
||||
After a while these things were succeeded by affairs of more recent interest, and faded from the public mind.
|
||||
|
||||
------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
Sharp died two years ago, respected and regretted. The last two years of his life were clouded with a settled melancholy for which his friends could assign no reason. The bulk of his comfortable fortune was made from the land he obtained by fraud and crime.
|
||||
|
||||
The disappearance of the file was a mystery that created some commotion in the Land Office, but he got his patent.
|
||||
|
||||
------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
It is a well-known tradition in Austin and vicinity that there is a buried treasure of great value somewhere on the banks of Shoal Creek, about a mile west of the city.
|
||||
|
||||
Three young men living in Austin recently became possessed of what they thought was a clue of the whereabouts of the treasure, and Thursday night they repaired to the place after dark and plied the pickaxe and shovel with great diligence for about three hours.
|
||||
|
||||
At the end of that time their efforts were rewarded by the finding of a box buried about four feet below the surface, which they hastened to open.
|
||||
|
||||
The light of a lantern disclosed to their view the fleshless bones of a human skeleton with clothing still wrapping its uncanny limbs.
|
||||
|
||||
They immediately left the scene and notified the proper authorities of their ghastly find.
|
||||
|
||||
On closer examination, in the left breast pocket of the skeleton's coat, there was found a flat, oblong packet of papers, cut through and through in three places by a knife blade, and so completely soaked and clotted with blood that it had become an almost indistinguishable mass.
|
||||
|
||||
With the aid of a microscope and the exercise of a little imagination this much can be made out of the letter; at the top of the papers:
|
||||
|
||||
B⸺x a⸺ ⸺rip N⸺2⸺92.
|
||||
14
src/epub/text/bill-nye.md
Normal file
14
src/epub/text/bill-nye.md
Normal file
@ -0,0 +1,14 @@
|
||||
Bill Nye {#bill-nye type="title"}
|
||||
--------
|
||||
|
||||
Bill Nye, who recently laid down his pen for all time, was a unique figure in the field of humor. His best work probably more nearly represented American humor than that of any other writer. Mr. Nye had a sense of ludicrous that was keen and judicious. His humor was peculiarly American in that it depended upon sharp and unexpected contrasts, and the bringing of opposites into unlooked-for comparison for its effect. Again, he had the true essence of kindliness, without which humor is stripped of its greatest component part.
|
||||
|
||||
Bill Nye's jokes never had a sting. They played like summer lightning around the horizon of life, illuminating and spreading bright, if transitory, pictures upon the sky, but they were as harmless as the smile of a child. The brain of the man conceived the swift darts that he threw, but his great manly heart broke off their points.
|
||||
|
||||
He knew human nature as a scholar knows his book, and the knowledge did not embitter him. He saw all the goodness in frailty, and his clear eyes penetrated the frailty of goodness.
|
||||
|
||||
His was the child's heart, the scholar's knowledge, and the philosopher's view of life. He might have won laurels in other fields, for he was a careful reasoner, and a close observer, but he showed his greatness in putting aside cold and fruitless discussions that have wearied the world long ago, and set himself the task of arousing bubbling laughter instead of consuming doubt.
|
||||
|
||||
The world has been better for him, and when that can be said of a man, the tears that drop upon his grave are more potent than the loud huzzas that follow the requiem of the greatest conqueror or the most successful statesman.
|
||||
|
||||
The kindliest thoughts and the sincerest prayers follow the great humanitarian---for such he was into the great beyond, and such solace as the hearty condolement of a million people can bring to the bereaved loved ones of Bill Nye, is theirs.
|
||||
116
src/epub/text/binkleys-practical-school-of-journalism.md
Normal file
116
src/epub/text/binkleys-practical-school-of-journalism.md
Normal file
@ -0,0 +1,116 @@
|
||||
Binkley's Practical School of Journalism {#binkleys-practical-school-of-journalism type="title"}
|
||||
----------------------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
Last Tuesday afternoon a ragged and disreputable-looking man was noticed standing on a corner of Main Street. Several persons who had occasion to pass a second time along the street saw him still standing there on their return.
|
||||
|
||||
He seemed to be waiting for someone. Finally a young man came down the sidewalk, and the ragged man sprang upon him without saying a word and engaged him in fierce combat.
|
||||
|
||||
The young man defended himself as well as he could, but he had been severely handled before the bystanders could separate them. Of course no policeman was in sight, and the affair ended with as little noise and confusion as it began with. The young man slunk away with a black eye and a bruised cheek, and the ragged man with a look of intense satisfaction on his face turned off down a side street.
|
||||
|
||||
A *Post* Man who had viewed the occurrence was struck with something extraordinary in the man's appearance, and, satisfied that there was more in the situation than appeared on the face of it, followed the aggressor. As he came up behind him, the disreputable-looking man said aloud to himself in a voice that expressed a deep and triumphant joy:
|
||||
|
||||
"That's the last of the lot. After all, the pursuit of revenge gives more pleasure than its attainment. I have robbed my existence of its aim."
|
||||
|
||||
The man continued his course, turning corners in a hesitating way, with the manner of one unfamiliar with the town, and after a time entered an obscure saloon on Congress Street.
|
||||
|
||||
The *Post* Man also entered, and sipping a glass of water, which he begged of the saloon man, he saw the ragged man seat himself at a small table. Although his attire was mean and torn, and his hair disheveled and uncared for, his face showed evidence of much intelligence that rather belied his uncouth dress.
|
||||
|
||||
Spurred by curiosity, the *Post* Man also took a chair at the table. With the tact and enterprise of his craft he soon engaged the mysterious stranger in conversation and found him, as he had expected, to be a man of education and manners.
|
||||
|
||||
"When you tell me you are a newspaper man," said he with a graceful wave of his hand, "you compel my confidence. I shall tell you my story. I once ran a newspaper myself."
|
||||
|
||||
He rapped on the table, and when the waiter came he fished up from the depths of his rags a lean pocketbook, from which he shook upon the table a single dollar. Handing this to the waiter, he said:
|
||||
|
||||
"A bottle of your best wine and some good cigars."
|
||||
|
||||
"Really," said the *Post* Man, as he placed two fingers in his vest pocket, "I can not allow you---you must let me---"
|
||||
|
||||
"Not at all," said the ragged man with dignity, "I have ordered."
|
||||
|
||||
The *Post* Man gave a sigh of relief; the glasses were filled and emptied; filled again, and the cigars were lit, and the *Post* Man awaited with impatience the narrative of his strange entertainer.
|
||||
|
||||
------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
"My name is Binkley," said the ragged man. "I am the founder of Binkley's Practical School of Journalism: the dollar I have just spent is the last dollar I have in the world, and the man I licked up town is the last one of the editorial and reportorial staff of my newspaper that I have treated in the same manner.
|
||||
|
||||
"About a year ago I had \$15,000 in cash to invest. I could have invested it in many things that would have been safe and paid a fair percent, but I unluckily conceived an original idea for making a good deal more.
|
||||
|
||||
"I understood the newspaper business, as I had served eight or ten years on a first-class journal before I fell heir to the \$15,000 on the death of an aunt. I had noticed that every newspaper in the country is besieged with ambitious youths who desire a position in order that they may learn journalism. They are for the most part college graduates, and a great many of them care little for the salaries connected with the positions. They are after experience.
|
||||
|
||||
"The idea struck me that they would be willing to pay handsomely for situations where they could imbibe the art of practical journalism as found in a first-class newspaper office. Several Schools of Journalism had already been started in the country and were succeeding well. I believed that a school of this nature, combined with a live, prospering newspaper that had a good circulation would prove a gold mine to its originator. In a school they could only learn a theory, in my school both theory and practice would walk hand in hand.
|
||||
|
||||
"It was a great idea.
|
||||
|
||||
"I found a newspaper that would sell out. It was in a large Southern city: I don't care to give its name. The proprietor was in ill health and wanted to leave the country. It was a good plant, and it was clearing \$3,000 a year above expenses. I got it for \$12,000 cash, put \$3,000 in bank and sat down and wrote out a neat little advertisement to catch the young would-be journalists. I sent these advertisements to some big Northern and Eastern papers and waited for responses.
|
||||
|
||||
"My paper was well known, and the idea of getting a place on it to learn journalism seemed to strike the people just right. I advertised that as there were only a limited number of places to be filled, I would have to consider applications in the form of bids, and the one bidding highest for each position got it.
|
||||
|
||||
"You wouldn't believe it if I told the number of answers I got. I filed everything for about a week, and then I looked over the references they sent me, sized up the bids and selected my force. I ordered them to report on a certain day, and they were on time, eager to go to work. I got \$50 per week from my editorial writer; \$40 from my city editor; \$25 each from three reporters; \$20 from a dramatic critic; \$35 from a literary editor, and \$30 each from night and telegraph editors. I also accepted three special writers, who paid me \$15 per week each for doing special assignments. I was managing editor and was to direct, criticize and instruct the staff.
|
||||
|
||||
------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
"I discharged the old force, and after an hour's course of instruction I turned my new staff loose upon their duties. Most of them had graduated with high honors at college and were of wealthy families, who could afford to pay well for the splendid advantage of entering them in Binkley's Practical School of Journalism.
|
||||
|
||||
"When the staff dispersed, eager and anxious, to their several duties, I leaned back in my revolving chair with a smile of satisfaction. Here was an income of \$1,400 per month coming from and not paid to my staff, besides the \$3,000 yearly profit from the paper. Oh, it was a good thing.
|
||||
|
||||
"Of course, I expected a little crudeness and stiffness about the work of my staff at first, but I calculated that they would err on the side of fine writing rather than otherwise. I lit a cigar and strolled through the editorial rooms. The leader writer was at his desk working away, his high, intellectual forehead and broadcloth clothes presenting a fine appearance. The literary editor was consulting an encyclopedia with a knitted brow, and the dramatic critic was pasting a picture of Shakespeare above his desk. The city force were out news gathering.
|
||||
|
||||
"I began to feel sorry for people who were unable to think up such a fine scheme as I had. Everything was working as smooth as you please. I went downstairs and, rendered reckless by success, I hunted up an old friend and confided to him my wonderful scheme. He was impressed, and we hied ourselves to a caravansary and opened bottle after bottle in honor of the idea.
|
||||
|
||||
"When I returned to the office, the entire staff was there with their day's work turned in. The truth is I was so exhilarated by what I had taken that I hardly knew what I was reading when I looked over their copy, but with a mistaken confidence in the ability of my scholars, I let the stuff all go on the file, and shortly afterward the foreman carried it away. I instructed the night editor as to his duties and went home, to dream of my good fortune.
|
||||
|
||||
"The next morning I came down town about 9 o'clock, and it seemed to me I couldn't see anything but newsboys. The town was full of them, and people were buying my paper as fast as the boys could hand them out. I fairly swelled with satisfaction and pride. As I neared the office I saw five men with shotguns standing on the sidewalk.
|
||||
|
||||
"One of them caught sight of me, and took a snap shot at me as I turned the corner. A buckshot went through my ear and several through my hat. I didn't wait for explanation, as the other four men also tried to get a shot at me, and I cut around the corner and dodged into a back lot full of empty dry goods boxes.
|
||||
|
||||
"A newsboy went by, calling the paper, and I whistled him up to a crack in the fence and bought one. I thought perhaps there might be something in the paper that had offended somebody.
|
||||
|
||||
"I crawled into a big box and opened the paper. The more I read the wilder I became. Excuse me for changing the subject," continued the ragged man, "but you said something a while ago in reference to this liquid refreshment, which I perceive is already finished."
|
||||
|
||||
The *Post* Man stammered, hesitated, felt in his vest pocket once more and then arose, and taking the saloon man aside, whispered with him for about fifteen minutes. The result was that the saloon man brought another bottle of wine, but with a very bad grace, slamming the bottle and glasses upon the table in an ill-bred and ungracious manner.
|
||||
|
||||
The ragged man smiled, filled the glasses, and then, his face taking on a deep frown as his mind reverted to his story, he continued.
|
||||
|
||||
"I turned first to the local page. The first item that met my eyes was this:
|
||||
|
||||
> " 'Colonel J. Henry Gwinn, the administrator of the Perkins estate, > has robbed the family of the deceased of over \$75,000. The heirs will > bring suit for that amount at an early date.'
|
||||
|
||||
"I remembered that the man who fired at me looked a good deal like Colonel J. Henry Gwinn. The next item was as follows:
|
||||
|
||||
> " 'A certain city alderman residing not many miles from No. 1204 West > Thirty-Second Street, has recently built a \$10,000 residence. Votes > in the city council must be getting higher.'
|
||||
|
||||
"There were about fifteen items of the same kind and every one of them was a dead shot for big damages. I glanced at the society columns and saw a few harmless little squibs like the following:
|
||||
|
||||
> 'Mrs. General Crowder gave a big ball last night on Johnson Avenue. It > does seem like she would get a divorce from that ticket agent in > Kansas City before she tried to cut such a swell as old Crowder's > wife.'
|
||||
|
||||
> " 'Henry Baumgarten beat his wife again last night.'
|
||||
|
||||
> " 'The Ladies' Histrionic Society met last evening over Klein's music > store. Miss Sadie Dodson was overcome by the heat and was taken home > in a hack. Heat! That's a new name for it.'
|
||||
|
||||
"These are some of the least objectionable items. There were some that made my hair rise slowly on my head as I read them.
|
||||
|
||||
"Mechanically I turned to the editorial page, thinking it hardly possible there could be anything wrong with it. The first article charged every city and county official with corruption in office, calling them by name, and wound up by offering to give \$10,000 to any charity fund if the paper did not prove every charge within ten days.
|
||||
|
||||
"I crept through the lot, knocked a board off the next fence and made my way to the back stairway of the office. I found two of my reporters cursing and kicking in the back yard. One of them was in a heap of soft coal dust and the other was hanging by his coat tail on a picket fence. Somebody had thrown them out the window.
|
||||
|
||||
"Sick at heart I crept upstairs to the editorial rooms. There was considerable noise going on. I went in easy as I could and looked around. My \$50 editorial writer was in a corner with half a chair in his hands defending himself manfully against a quorum of the city council. He had laid out three of them and was putting up a great fight. The city editor was lying on the floor with four men sitting on him, and a large, angry German was trying to punch the dramatic editor off the top of the book case with a piece of gas pipe.
|
||||
|
||||
"It is enough to discourage any man to have a staff that is paying him \$1,400 per month treated that way.
|
||||
|
||||
"I went into my private office, and the enraged public followed me there. I knew it was no use to argue with them, so I pulled out my checkbook and tried to compromise. When all the money I had in the bank was exhausted, and another batch of infuriated citizens came in, I gave up in despair.
|
||||
|
||||
"At 11 o'clock the business office force came up in a body and resigned. At 12 o'clock damage suits were filed against the paper to the amount of \$200,000, and I knew every one of them was good for a judgment. I went downstairs and got about nine drinks and came back. I met the editorial writer on the stairs, and I hit him on the point of the chin without saying a word. He still held one leg of the chair in his hand, and he swiped me over the head with it and ran. When I got inside I found that the dramatic critic was about to win the day. He was a college man and a great football player. He had thrashed the big German and had pulled the four citizens off the city editor, and they were waging great battle with the foe. Just then the society editor dashed into the room barefooted, in his shirt and trousers, and I heard a tremendous screeching and chattering, as if a thousand parrots were talking at once.
|
||||
|
||||
------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Run!' he gasped out. 'The women are coming.'
|
||||
|
||||
"I looked out the window and saw that the sidewalk was full of them. I made a break for a back window, jumped off onto a shed, and never stopped until I was a mile out of town. That was the end of Binkley's Practical School of Journalism. I have been tramping about the country ever since.
|
||||
|
||||
"The fellow I attacked on the street today was a special Houston correspondent I had engaged. I had a little grudge against him on account of the first communication he sent the paper. I gave him [carte blanche]{lang="fr"} to send in what he thought best, and he wired us 40,000 words the first day about the mockingbirds singing in the trees by the courthouse, while the snow was three feet deep in Dakota. Do you not think I have had some hard luck?"
|
||||
|
||||
"I must tell you," said the *Post* Man, "that I don't believe your story at all."
|
||||
|
||||
The ragged man replied sadly and reproachfully: "Did I not pay my last dollar for refreshments while telling it to you? Have I asked you for anything?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Well," said the *Post* Man, after reflecting a while, "it may be true, but---"
|
||||
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|
||||
Blind Man's Holiday {#blind-mans-holiday type="title"}
|
||||
-------------------
|
||||
|
||||
Alas for the man and for the artist with the shifting point of perspective! Life shall be a confusion of ways to the one; the landscape shall rise up and confound the other. Take the case of Lorison. At one time he appeared to himself to be the feeblest of fools; at another he conceived that he followed ideals so fine that the world was not yet ready to accept them. During one mood he cursed his folly; possessed by the other, he bore himself with a serene grandeur akin to greatness: in neither did he attain the perspective.
|
||||
|
||||
Generations before, the name had been "Larsen." His race had bequeathed him its fine-strung, melancholy temperament, its saving balance of thrift and industry.
|
||||
|
||||
From his point of perspective he saw himself an outcast from society, forever to be a shady skulker along the ragged edge of respectability; a denizen *des trois-quartz de monde*, that pathetic spheroid lying between the [haut]{lang="fr"} and the demi, whose inhabitants envy each of their neighbours, and are scorned by both. He was self-condemned to this opinion, as he was self-exiled, through it, to this quaint Southern city a thousand miles from his former home. Here he had dwelt for longer than a year, knowing but few, keeping in a subjective world of shadows which was invaded at times by the perplexing bulks of jarring realities. Then he fell in love with a girl whom he met in a cheap restaurant, and his story begins.
|
||||
|
||||
------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
The Rue Chartres, in New Orleans, is a street of ghosts. It lies in the quarter where the Frenchman, in his prime, set up his translated pride and glory; where, also, the arrogant don had swaggered, and dreamed of gold and grants and ladies' gloves. Every flagstone has its grooves worn by footsteps going royally to the wooing and the fighting. Every house has a princely heartbreak; each doorway its untold tale of gallant promise and slow decay.
|
||||
|
||||
By night the Rue Chartres is now but a murky fissure, from which the groping wayfarer sees, flung against the sky, the tangled filigree of Moorish iron balconies. The old houses of monsieur stand yet, indomitable against the century, but their essence is gone. The street is one of ghosts to whosoever can see them.
|
||||
|
||||
A faint heartbeat of the street's ancient glory still survives in a corner occupied by the Café Carabine d'Or. Once men gathered there to plot against kings, and to warn presidents. They do so yet, but they are not the same kind of men. A brass button will scatter these; those would have set their faces against an army. Above the door hangs the sign board, upon which has been depicted a vast animal of unfamiliar species. In the act of firing upon this monster is represented an unobtrusive human levelling an obtrusive gun, once the colour of bright gold. Now the legend above the picture is faded beyond conjecture; the gun's relation to the title is a matter of faith; the menaced animal, wearied of the long aim of the hunter, has resolved itself into a shapeless blot.
|
||||
|
||||
The place is known as "Antonio's," as the name, white upon the red-lit transparency, and gilt upon the windows, attests. There is a promise in "Antonio"; a justifiable expectancy of savoury things in oil and pepper and wine, and perhaps an angel's whisper of garlic. But the rest of the name is "O'Riley." Antonio O'Riley!
|
||||
|
||||
The Carabine d'Or is an ignominious ghost of the Rue Chartres. The café where Bienville and Conti dined, where a prince has broken bread, is become a "family ristaurant."
|
||||
|
||||
Its customers are working men and women, almost to a unit. Occasionally you will see chorus girls from the cheaper theatres, and men who follow avocations subject to quick vicissitudes; but at Antonio's---name rich in Bohemian promise, but tame in fulfillment---manners debonair and gay are toned down to the "family" standard. Should you light a cigarette, mine host will touch you on the "arrum" and remind you that the proprieties are menaced. "Antonio" entices and beguiles from fiery legend without, but "O'Riley" teaches decorum within.
|
||||
|
||||
It was at this restaurant that Lorison first saw the girl. A flashy fellow with a predatory eye had followed her in, and had advanced to take the other chair at the little table where she stopped, but Lorison slipped into the seat before him. Their acquaintance began, and grew, and now for two months they had sat at the same table each evening, not meeting by appointment, but as if by a series of fortuitous and happy accidents. After dining, they would take a walk together in one of the little city parks, or among the panoramic markets where exhibits a continuous vaudeville of sights and sounds. Always at eight o'clock their steps led them to a certain street corner, where she prettily but firmly bade him good night and left him. "I do not live far from here," she frequently said, "and you must let me go the rest of the way alone."
|
||||
|
||||
But now Lorison had discovered that he wanted to go the rest of the way with her, or happiness would depart, leaving, him on a very lonely corner of life. And at the same time that he made the discovery, the secret of his banishment from the society of the good laid its finger in his face and told him it must not be.
|
||||
|
||||
Man is too thoroughly an egoist not to be also an egotist; if he love, the object shall know it. During a lifetime he may conceal it through stress of expediency and honour, but it shall bubble from his dying lips, though it disrupt a neighbourhood. It is known, however, that most men do not wait so long to disclose their passion. In the case of Lorison, his particular ethics positively forbade him to declare his sentiments, but he must needs dally with the subject, and woo by innuendo at least.
|
||||
|
||||
On this night, after the usual meal at the Carabine d'Or, he strolled with his companion down the dim old street toward the river.
|
||||
|
||||
The Rue Chartres perishes in the old Place d'Armes. The ancient Cabildo, where Spanish justice fell like hail, faces it, and the Cathedral, another provincial ghost, overlooks it. Its centre is a little, iron-railed park of flowers and immaculate gravelled walks, where citizens take the air of evenings. Pedestalled high above it, the general sits his cavorting steed, with his face turned stonily down the river toward English Turn, whence come no more Britons to bombard his cotton bales.
|
||||
|
||||
Often the two sat in this square, but tonight Lorison guided her past the stone-stepped gate, and still riverward. As they walked, he smiled to himself to think that all he knew of her---except that he loved her---was her name, Norah Greenway, and that she lived with her brother. They had talked about everything except themselves. Perhaps her reticence had been caused by his.
|
||||
|
||||
They came, at length, upon the levee, and sat upon a great, prostrate beam. The air was pungent with the dust of commerce. The great river slipped yellowly past. Across it Algiers lay, a longitudinous black bulk against a vibrant electric haze sprinkled with exact stars.
|
||||
|
||||
The girl was young and of the piquant order. A certain bright melancholy pervaded her; she possessed an untarnished, pale prettiness doomed to please. Her voice, when she spoke, dwarfed her theme. It was the voice capable of investing little subjects with a large interest. She sat at ease, bestowing her skirts with the little womanly touch, serene as if the begrimed pier were a summer garden. Lorison poked the rotting boards with his cane.
|
||||
|
||||
He began by telling her that he was in love with someone to whom he durst not speak of it. "And why not?" she asked, accepting swiftly his fatuous presentation of a third person of straw. "My place in the world," he answered, "is none to ask a woman to share. I am an outcast from honest people; I am wrongly accused of one crime, and am, I believe, guilty of another."
|
||||
|
||||
Thence he plunged into the story of his abdication from society. The story, pruned of his moral philosophy, deserves no more than the slightest touch. It is no new tale, that of the gambler's declension. During one night's sitting he lost, and then had imperilled a certain amount of his employer's money, which, by accident, he carried with him. He continued to lose, to the last wager, and then began to gain, leaving the game winner to a somewhat formidable sum. The same night his employer's safe was robbed. A search was had; the winnings of Lorison were found in his room, their total forming an accusative nearness to the sum purloined. He was taken, tried and, through incomplete evidence, released, smutched with the sinister devoirs of a disagreeing jury.
|
||||
|
||||
"It is not in the unjust accusation," he said to the girl, "that my burden lies, but in the knowledge that from the moment I staked the first dollar of the firm's money I was a criminal---no matter whether I lost or won. You see why it is impossible for me to speak of love to her."
|
||||
|
||||
"It is a sad thing," said Norah, after a little pause, "to think what very good people there are in the world."
|
||||
|
||||
"Good?" said Lorison.
|
||||
|
||||
"I was thinking of this superior person whom you say you love. She must be a very poor sort of creature."
|
||||
|
||||
"I do not understand."
|
||||
|
||||
"Nearly," she continued, "as poor a sort of creature as yourself."
|
||||
|
||||
"You do not understand," said Lorison, removing his hat and sweeping back his fine, light hair. "Suppose she loved me in return, and were willing to marry me. Think, if you can, what would follow. Never a day would pass but she would be reminded of her sacrifice. I would read a condescension in her smile, a pity even in her affection, that would madden me. No. The thing would stand between us forever. Only equals should mate. I could never ask her to come down upon my lower plane."
|
||||
|
||||
An arc light faintly shone upon Lorison's face. An illumination from within also pervaded it. The girl saw the rapt, ascetic look; it was the face either of Sir Galahad or Sir Fool.
|
||||
|
||||
"Quite starlike," she said, "is this unapproachable angel. Really too high to be grasped."
|
||||
|
||||
"By me, yes."
|
||||
|
||||
She faced him suddenly. "My dear friend, would you prefer your star fallen?" Lorison made a wide gesture.
|
||||
|
||||
"You push me to the bald fact," he declared; "you are not in sympathy with my argument. But I will answer you so. If I could reach my particular star, to drag it down, I would not do it; but if it were fallen, I would pick it up, and thank Heaven for the privilege."
|
||||
|
||||
They were silent for some minutes. Norah shivered, and thrust her hands deep into the pockets of her jacket. Lorison uttered a remorseful exclamation.
|
||||
|
||||
"I'm not cold," she said. "I was just thinking. I ought to tell you something. You have selected a strange confidante. But you cannot expect a chance acquaintance, picked up in a doubtful restaurant, to be an angel."
|
||||
|
||||
"Norah!" cried Lorison.
|
||||
|
||||
"Let me go on. You have told me about yourself. We have been such good friends. I must tell you now what I never wanted you to know. I am---worse than you are. I was on the stage ... I sang in the chorus ... I was pretty bad, I guess ... I stole diamonds from the prima donna ... they arrested me ... I gave most of them up, and they let me go ... I drank wine every night ... a great deal ... I was very wicked, but---"
|
||||
|
||||
Lorison knelt quickly by her side and took her hands.
|
||||
|
||||
"Dear Norah!" he said, exultantly. "It is you, it is you I love! You never guessed it, did you? 'Tis you I meant all the time. Now I can speak. Let me make you forget the past. We have both suffered; let us shut out the world, and live for each other. Norah, do you hear me say I love you?"
|
||||
|
||||
"In spite of---"
|
||||
|
||||
"Rather say because of it. You have come out of your past noble and good. Your heart is an angel's. Give it to me."
|
||||
|
||||
"A little while ago you feared the future too much to even speak."
|
||||
|
||||
"But for you; not for myself. Can you love me?"
|
||||
|
||||
She cast herself, wildly sobbing, upon his breast.
|
||||
|
||||
"Better than life---than truth itself---than everything."
|
||||
|
||||
"And my own past," said Lorison, with a note of solicitude---"can you forgive and---"
|
||||
|
||||
"I answered you that," she whispered, "when I told you I loved you." She leaned away, and looked thoughtfully at him. "If I had not told you about myself, would you have---would you---"
|
||||
|
||||
"No," he interrupted; "I would never have let you know I loved you. I would never have asked you this---Norah, will you be my wife?"
|
||||
|
||||
She wept again.
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh, believe me; I am good now---I am no longer wicked! I will be the best wife in the world. Don't think I am---bad any more. If you do I shall die, I shall die!"
|
||||
|
||||
While he was consoling, her, she brightened up, eager and impetuous. "Will you marry me tonight?" she said. "Will you prove it that way. I have a reason for wishing it to be tonight. Will you?"
|
||||
|
||||
Of one of two things was this exceeding frankness the outcome: either of importunate brazenness or of utter innocence. The lover's perspective contained only the one.
|
||||
|
||||
"The sooner," said Lorison, "the happier I shall be."
|
||||
|
||||
"What is there to do?" she asked. "What do you have to get? Come! You should know."
|
||||
|
||||
Her energy stirred the dreamer to action.
|
||||
|
||||
"A city directory first," he cried, gayly, "to find where the man lives who gives licenses to happiness. We will go together and rout him out. Cabs, cars, policemen, telephones and ministers shall aid us."
|
||||
|
||||
"Father Rogan shall marry us," said the girl, with ardour. "I will take you to him."
|
||||
|
||||
------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
An hour later the two stood at the open doorway of an immense, gloomy brick building in a narrow and lonely street. The license was tight in Norah's hand.
|
||||
|
||||
"Wait here a moment," she said, "till I find Father Rogan."
|
||||
|
||||
She plunged into the black hallway, and the lover was left standing, as it were, on one leg, outside. His impatience was not greatly taxed. Gazing curiously into what seemed the hallway to Erebus, he was presently reassured by a stream of light that bisected the darkness, far down the passage. Then he heard her call, and fluttered lampward, like the moth. She beckoned him through a doorway into the room whence emanated the light. The room was bare of nearly everything except books, which had subjugated all its space. Here and there little spots of territory had been reconquered. An elderly, bald man, with a superlatively calm, remote eye, stood by a table with a book in his hand, his finger still marking a page. His dress was sombre and appertained to a religious order. His eye denoted an acquaintance with the perspective.
|
||||
|
||||
"Father Rogan," said Norah, "this is *he*."
|
||||
|
||||
"The two of ye," said Father Rogan, "want to get married?"
|
||||
|
||||
They did not deny it. He married them. The ceremony was quickly done. One who could have witnessed it, and felt its scope, might have trembled at the terrible inadequacy of it to rise to the dignity of its endless chain of results.
|
||||
|
||||
Afterward the priest spake briefly, as if by rote, of certain other civil and legal addenda that either might or should, at a later time, cap the ceremony. Lorison tendered a fee, which was declined, and before the door closed after the departing couple Father Rogan's book popped open again where his finger marked it.
|
||||
|
||||
In the dark hall Norah whirled and clung to her companion, tearful.
|
||||
|
||||
"Will you never, never be sorry?"
|
||||
|
||||
At last she was reassured.
|
||||
|
||||
At the first light they reached upon the street, she asked the time, just as she had each night. Lorison looked at his watch. Half-past eight.
|
||||
|
||||
Lorison thought it was from habit that she guided their steps toward the corner where they always parted. But, arrived there, she hesitated, and then released his arm. A drug store stood on the corner; its bright, soft light shone upon them.
|
||||
|
||||
"Please leave me here as usual tonight," said Norah, sweetly. "I must---I would rather you would. You will not object? At six tomorrow evening I will meet you at Antonio's. I want to sit with you there once more. And then---I will go where you say." She gave him a bewildering, bright smile, and walked swiftly away.
|
||||
|
||||
Surely it needed all the strength of her charm to carry off this astounding behaviour. It was no discredit to Lorison's strength of mind that his head began to whirl. Pocketing his hands, he rambled vacuously over to the druggist's windows, and began assiduously to spell over the names of the patent medicines therein displayed.
|
||||
|
||||
As soon as he had recovered his wits, he proceeded along the street in an aimless fashion. After drifting for two or three squares, he flowed into a somewhat more pretentious thoroughfare, a way much frequented by him in his solitary ramblings. For here was a row of shops devoted to traffic in goods of the widest range of choice---handiworks of art, skill and fancy, products of nature and labour from every zone.
|
||||
|
||||
Here, for a time, he loitered among the conspicuous windows, where was set, emphasized by congested floods of light, the cunningest spoil of the interiors. There were few passers, and of this Lorison was glad. He was not of the world. For a long time he had touched his fellow man only at the gear of a levelled cogwheel---at right angles, and upon a different axis. He had dropped into a distinctly new orbit. The stroke of ill fortune had acted upon him, in effect, as a blow delivered upon the apex of a certain ingenious toy, the musical top, which, when thus buffeted while spinning, gives forth, with scarcely retarded motion, a complete change of key and chord.
|
||||
|
||||
Strolling along the pacific avenue, he experienced singular, supernatural calm, accompanied by an unusual activity of brain. Reflecting upon recent affairs, he assured himself of his happiness in having won for a bride the one he had so greatly desired, yet he wondered mildly at his dearth of active emotion. Her strange behaviour in abandoning him without valid excuse on his bridal eve aroused in him only a vague and curious speculation. Again, he found himself contemplating, with complaisant serenity, the incidents of her somewhat lively career. His perspective seemed to have been queerly shifted.
|
||||
|
||||
As he stood before a window near a corner, his ears were assailed by a waxing clamour and commotion. He stood close to the window to allow passage to the cause of the hubbub---a procession of human beings, which rounded the corner and headed in his direction. He perceived a salient hue of blue and a glitter of brass about a central figure of dazzling white and silver, and a ragged wake of black, bobbing figures.
|
||||
|
||||
Two ponderous policemen were conducting between them a woman dressed as if for the stage, in a short, white, satiny skirt reaching to the knees, pink stockings, and a sort of sleeveless bodice bright with relucent, armour-like scales. Upon her curly, light hair was perched, at a rollicking angle, a shining tin helmet. The costume was to be instantly recognized as one of those amazing conceptions to which competition has harried the inventors of the spectacular ballet. One of the officers bore a long cloak upon his arm, which, doubtless, had been intended to veil the candid attractions of their effulgent prisoner, but, for some reason, it had not been called into use, to the vociferous delight of the tail of the procession.
|
||||
|
||||
Compelled by a sudden and vigorous movement of the woman, the parade halted before the window by which Lorison stood. He saw that she was young, and, at the first glance, was deceived by a sophistical prettiness of her face, which waned before a more judicious scrutiny. Her look was bold and reckless, and upon her countenance, where yet the contours of youth survived, were the fingermarks of old age's credentialed courier, Late Hours.
|
||||
|
||||
The young woman fixed her unshrinking gaze upon Lorison, and called to him in the voice of the wronged heroine in straits:
|
||||
|
||||
"Say! You look like a good fellow; come and put up the bail, won't you? I've done nothing to get pinched for. It's all a mistake. See how they're treating me! You won't be sorry, if you'll help me out of this. Think of your sister or your girl being dragged along the streets this way! I say, come along now, like a good fellow."
|
||||
|
||||
It may be that Lorison, in spite of the unconvincing bathos of this appeal, showed a sympathetic face, for one of the officers left the woman's side, and went over to him.
|
||||
|
||||
"It's all right, Sir," he said, in a husky, confidential tone; "she's the right party. We took her after the first act at the Green Light Theatre, on a wire from the chief of police of Chicago. It's only a square or two to the station. Her rig's pretty bad, but she refused to change clothes---or, rather," added the officer, with a smile, "to put on some. I thought I'd explain matters to you so you wouldn't think she was being imposed upon."
|
||||
|
||||
"What is the charge?" asked Lorison.
|
||||
|
||||
"Grand larceny. Diamonds. Her husband is a jeweller in Chicago. She cleaned his show case of the sparklers, and skipped with a comic-opera troupe."
|
||||
|
||||
The policeman, perceiving that the interest of the entire group of spectators was centred upon himself and Lorison---their conference being regarded as a possible new complication---was fain to prolong the situation---which reflected his own importance---by a little afterpiece of philosophical comment.
|
||||
|
||||
"A gentleman like you, Sir," he went on affably, "would never notice it, but it comes in my line to observe what an immense amount of trouble is made by that combination---I mean the stage, diamonds and lightheaded women who aren't satisfied with good homes. I tell you, Sir, a man these days and nights wants to know what his womenfolks are up to."
|
||||
|
||||
The policeman smiled a good night, and returned to the side of his charge, who had been intently watching Lorison's face during the conversation, no doubt for some indication of his intention to render succour. Now, at the failure of the sign, and at the movement made to continue the ignominious progress, she abandoned hope, and addressed him thus, pointedly:
|
||||
|
||||
"You damn chalk-faced quitter! You was thinking of giving me a hand, but you let the cop talk you out of it the first word. You're a dandy to tie to. Say, if you ever get a girl, she'll have a picnic. Won't she work you to the queen's taste! Oh, my!" She concluded with a taunting, shrill laugh that rasped Lorison like a saw. The policemen urged her forward; the delighted train of gaping followers closed up the rear; and the captive Amazon, accepting her fate, extended the scope of her maledictions so that none in hearing might seem to be slighted.
|
||||
|
||||
Then there came upon Lorison an overwhelming revulsion of his perspective. It may be that he had been ripe for it, that the abnormal condition of mind in which he had for so long existed was already about to revert to its balance; however, it is certain that the events of the last few minutes had furnished the channel, if not the impetus, for the change.
|
||||
|
||||
The initial determining influence had been so small a thing as the fact and manner of his having been approached by the officer. That agent had, by the style of his accost, restored the loiterer to his former place in society. In an instant he had been transformed from a somewhat rancid prowler along the fishy side streets of gentility into an honest gentleman, with whom even so lordly a guardian of the peace might agreeably exchange the compliments.
|
||||
|
||||
This, then, first broke the spell, and set thrilling in him a resurrected longing for the fellowship of his kind, and the rewards of the virtuous. To what end, he vehemently asked himself, was this fanciful self-accusation, this empty renunciation, this moral squeamishness through which he had been led to abandon what was his heritage in life, and not beyond his deserts? Technically, he was uncondemned; his sole guilty spot was in thought rather than deed, and cognizance of it unshared by others. For what good, moral or sentimental, did he slink, retreating like the hedgehog from his own shadow, to and fro in this musty Bohemia that lacked even the picturesque?
|
||||
|
||||
But the thing that struck home and set him raging was the part played by the Amazonian prisoner. To the counterpart of that astounding belligerent---identical at least, in the way of experience---to one, by her own confession, thus far fallen, had he, not three hours since, been united in marriage. How desirable and natural it had seemed to him then, and how monstrous it seemed now! How the words of diamond thief number two yet burned in his ears: "If you ever get a girl, she'll have a picnic." What did that mean but that women instinctively knew him for one they could hoodwink? Still again, there reverberated the policeman's sapient contribution to his agony: "A man these days and nights wants to know what his womenfolks are up to." Oh, yes, he had been a fool; he had looked at things from the wrong standpoint.
|
||||
|
||||
But the wildest note in all the clamour was struck by pain's forefinger, jealousy. Now, at least, he felt that keenest sting---a mounting love unworthily bestowed. Whatever she might be, he loved her; he bore in his own breast his doom. A grating, comic flavour to his predicament struck him suddenly, and he laughed creakingly as he swung down the echoing pavement. An impetuous desire to act, to battle with his fate, seized him. He stopped upon his heel, and smote his palms together triumphantly. His wife was---where? But there was a tangible link; an outlet more or less navigable, through which his derelict ship of matrimony might yet be safely towed---the priest!
|
||||
|
||||
Like all imaginative men with pliable natures, Lorison was, when thoroughly stirred, apt to become tempestuous. With a high and stubborn indignation upon him, be retraced his steps to the intersecting street by which he had come. Down this he hurried to the corner where he had parted with---an astringent grimace tinctured the thought---his wife. Thence still back he harked, following through an unfamiliar district his stimulated recollections of the way they had come from that preposterous wedding. Many times he went abroad, and nosed his way back to the trail, furious.
|
||||
|
||||
At last, when he reached the dark, calamitous building in which his madness had culminated, and found the black hallway, he dashed down it, perceiving no light or sound. But he raised his voice, hailing loudly; reckless of everything but that he should find the old mischief-maker with the eyes that looked too far away to see the disaster he had wrought. The door opened, and in the stream of light Father Rogan stood, his book in hand, with his finger marking the place.
|
||||
|
||||
"Ah!" cried Lorison. "You are the man I want. I had a wife of you a few hours ago. I would not trouble you, but I neglected to note how it was done. Will you oblige me with the information whether the business is beyond remedy?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Come inside," said the priest; "there are other lodgers in the house, who might prefer sleep to even a gratified curiosity."
|
||||
|
||||
Lorison entered the room and took the chair offered him. The priest's eyes looked a courteous interrogation.
|
||||
|
||||
"I must apologize again," said the young man, "for so soon intruding upon you with my marital infelicities, but, as my wife has neglected to furnish me with her address, I am deprived of the legitimate recourse of a family row."
|
||||
|
||||
"I am quite a plain man," said Father Rogan, pleasantly; "but I do not see how I am to ask you questions."
|
||||
|
||||
"Pardon my indirectness," said Lorison; "I will ask one. In this room tonight you pronounced me to be a husband. You afterward spoke of additional rites or performances that either should or could be effected. I paid little attention to your words then, but I am hungry to hear them repeated now. As matters stand, am I married past all help?"
|
||||
|
||||
"You are as legally and as firmly bound," said the priest, "as though it had been done in a cathedral, in the presence of thousands. The additional observances I referred to are not necessary to the strictest legality of the act, but were advised as a precaution for the future---for convenience of proof in such contingencies as wills, inheritances and the like."
|
||||
|
||||
Lorison laughed harshly.
|
||||
|
||||
"Many thanks," he said. "Then there is no mistake, and I am the happy benedict. I suppose I should go stand upon the bridal corner, and when my wife gets through walking the streets she will look me up."
|
||||
|
||||
Father Rogan regarded him calmly.
|
||||
|
||||
"My son," he said, "when a man and woman come to me to be married I always marry them. I do this for the sake of other people whom they might go away and marry if they did not marry each other. As you see, I do not seek your confidence; but your case seems to me to be one not altogether devoid of interest. Very few marriages that have come to my notice have brought such well-expressed regret within so short a time. I will hazard one question: were you not under the impression that you loved the lady you married, at the time you did so?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Loved her!" cried Lorison, wildly. "Never so well as now, though she told me she deceived and sinned and stole. Never more than now, when, perhaps, she is laughing at the fool she cajoled and left, with scarcely a word, to return to God only knows what particular line of her former folly."
|
||||
|
||||
Father Rogan answered nothing. During the silence that succeeded, he sat with a quiet expectation beaming in his full, lambent eye.
|
||||
|
||||
"If you would listen---" began Lorison. The priest held up his hand.
|
||||
|
||||
"As I hoped," he said. "I thought you would trust me. Wait but a moment." He brought a long clay pipe, filled and lighted it.
|
||||
|
||||
"Now, my son," he said.
|
||||
|
||||
Lorison poured a twelve month's accumulated confidence into Father Rogan's ear. He told all; not sparing himself or omitting the facts of his past, the events of the night, or his disturbing conjectures and fears.
|
||||
|
||||
"The main point," said the priest, when he had concluded, "seems to me to be this---are you reasonably sure that you love this woman whom you have married?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Why," exclaimed Lorison, rising impulsively to his feet---"why should I deny it? But look at me---am I fish, flesh or fowl? That is the main point to me, I assure you."
|
||||
|
||||
"I understand you," said the priest, also rising, and laying down his pipe. "The situation is one that has taxed the endurance of much older men than you---in fact, especially much older men than you. I will try to relieve you from it, and this night. You shall see for yourself into exactly what predicament you have fallen, and how you shall, possibly, be extricated. There is no evidence so credible as that of the eyesight."
|
||||
|
||||
Father Rogan moved about the room, and donned a soft black hat. Buttoning his coat to his throat, he laid his hand on the doorknob. "Let us walk," he said.
|
||||
|
||||
The two went out upon the street. The priest turned his face down it, and Lorison walked with him through a squalid district, where the houses loomed, awry and desolate-looking, high above them. Presently they turned into a less dismal side street, where the houses were smaller, and, though hinting of the most meagre comfort, lacked the concentrated wretchedness of the more populous byways.
|
||||
|
||||
At a segregated, two-story house Father Rogan halted, and mounted the steps with the confidence of a familiar visitor. He ushered Lorison into a narrow hallway, faintly lighted by a cobwebbed hanging lamp. Almost immediately a door to the right opened and a dingy Irishwoman protruded her head.
|
||||
|
||||
"Good evening to ye, Mistress Geehan," said the priest, unconsciously, it seemed, falling into a delicately flavoured brogue. "And is it yourself can tell me if Norah has gone out again, the night, maybe?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh, it's yer blissid riverence! Sure and I can tell ye the same. The purty darlin' wint out, as usual, but a bit later. And she says: 'Mother Geehan,' says she, 'it's me last noight out, praise the saints, this noight is!' And, oh, yer riverence, the swate, beautiful drame of a dress she had this toime! White satin and silk and ribbons, and lace about the neck and arrums---'twas a sin, yer reverence, the gold was spint upon it."
|
||||
|
||||
The priest heard Lorison catch his breath painfully, and a faint smile flickered across his own clean-cut mouth.
|
||||
|
||||
"Well, then, Mistress Geehan," said he, "I'll just step upstairs and see the bit boy for a minute, and I'll take this gentleman up with me."
|
||||
|
||||
"He's awake, thin," said the woman. "I've just come down from sitting wid him the last hour, tilling him fine shtories of ould County Tyrone. 'Tis a greedy gossoon, it is, yer riverence, for me shtories."
|
||||
|
||||
"Small the doubt," said Father Rogan. "There's no rocking would put him to slape the quicker, I'm thinking."
|
||||
|
||||
Amid the woman's shrill protest against the retort, the two men ascended the steep stairway. The priest pushed open the door of a room near its top.
|
||||
|
||||
"Is that you already, sister?" drawled a sweet, childish voice from the darkness.
|
||||
|
||||
"It's only ould Father Denny come to see ye, darlin'; and a foine gentleman I've brought to make ye a gr-r-and call. And ye resaves us fast aslape in bed! Shame on yez manners!"
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh, Father Denny, is that you? I'm glad. And will you light the lamp, please? It's on the table by the door. And quit talking like Mother Geehan, Father Denny."
|
||||
|
||||
The priest lit the lamp, and Lorison saw a tiny, towsled-haired boy, with a thin, delicate face, sitting up in a small bed in a corner. Quickly, also, his rapid glance considered the room and its contents. It was furnished with more than comfort, and its adornments plainly indicated a woman's discerning taste. An open door beyond revealed the blackness of an adjoining room's interior.
|
||||
|
||||
The boy clutched both of Father Rogan's hands. "I'm so glad you came," he said; "but why did you come in the night? Did sister send you?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Off wid ye! Am I to be sint about, at me age, as was Terence McShane, of Ballymahone? I come on me own r-r-responsibility."
|
||||
|
||||
Lorison had also advanced to the boy's bedside. He was fond of children; and the wee fellow, laying himself down to sleep alone in that dark room, stirred his heart.
|
||||
|
||||
"Aren't you afraid, little man?" he asked, stooping down beside him.
|
||||
|
||||
"Sometimes," answered the boy, with a shy smile, "when the rats make too much noise. But nearly every night, when sister goes out, Mother Geehan stays a while with me, and tells me funny stories. I'm not often afraid, sir."
|
||||
|
||||
"This brave little gentleman," said Father Rogan, "is a scholar of mine. Every day from half-past six to half-past eight---when sister comes for him---he stops in my study, and we find out what's in the inside of books. He knows multiplication, division and fractions; and he's troubling me to begin wid the chronicles of Ciaran of Clonmacnoise, Corurac McCullenan and Cuan O'Lochain, the gr-r-reat Irish histhorians." The boy was evidently accustomed to the priest's Celtic pleasantries. A little, appreciative grin was all the attention the insinuation of pedantry received.
|
||||
|
||||
Lorison, to have saved his life, could not have put to the child one of those vital questions that were wildly beating about, unanswered, in his own brain. The little fellow was very like Norah; he had the same shining hair and candid eyes.
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh, Father Denny," cried the boy, suddenly, "I forgot to tell you! Sister is not going away at night any more! She told me so when she kissed me good night as she was leaving. And she said she was so happy, and then she cried. Wasn't that queer? But I'm glad; aren't you?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Yes, lad. And now, ye omadhaun, go to sleep, and say good night; we must be going."
|
||||
|
||||
"Which shall I do first, Father Denny?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Faith, he's caught me again! Wait till I get the sassenach into the annals of Tageruach, the hagiographer; I'll give him enough of the Irish idiom to make him more respectful."
|
||||
|
||||
The light was out, and the small, brave voice bidding them good night from the dark room. They groped downstairs, and tore away from the garrulity of Mother Geehan.
|
||||
|
||||
Again the priest steered them through the dim ways, but this time in another direction. His conductor was serenely silent, and Lorison followed his example to the extent of seldom speaking. Serene he could not be. His heart beat suffocatingly in his breast. The following of this blind, menacing trail was pregnant with he knew not what humiliating revelation to be delivered at its end.
|
||||
|
||||
They came into a more pretentious street, where trade, it could be surmised, flourished by day. And again the priest paused; this time before a lofty building, whose great doors and windows in the lowest floor were carefully shuttered and barred. Its higher apertures were dark, save in the third story, the windows of which were brilliantly lighted. Lorison's ear caught a distant, regular, pleasing thrumming, as of music above. They stood at an angle of the building. Up, along the side nearest them, mounted an iron stairway. At its top was an upright, illuminated parallelogram. Father Rogan had stopped, and stood, musing.
|
||||
|
||||
"I will say this much," he remarked, thoughtfully: "I believe you to be a better man than you think yourself to be, and a better man than I thought some hours ago. But do not take this," he added, with a smile, "as much praise. I promised you a possible deliverance from an unhappy perplexity. I will have to modify that promise. I can only remove the mystery that enhanced that perplexity. Your deliverance depends upon yourself. Come."
|
||||
|
||||
He led his companion up the stairway. Halfway up, Lorison caught him by the sleeve. "Remember," he gasped, "I love that woman."
|
||||
|
||||
"You desired to know."
|
||||
|
||||
"I---Go on."
|
||||
|
||||
The priest reached the landing at the top of the stairway. Lorison, behind him, saw that the illuminated space was the glass upper half of a door opening into the lighted room. The rhythmic music increased as they neared it; the stairs shook with the mellow vibrations.
|
||||
|
||||
Lorison stopped breathing when he set foot upon the highest step, for the priest stood aside, and motioned him to look through the glass of the door.
|
||||
|
||||
His eye, accustomed to the darkness, met first a blinding glare, and then he made out the faces and forms of many people, amid an extravagant display of splendid robings---billowy laces, brilliant-hued finery, ribbons, silks and misty drapery. And then he caught the meaning of that jarring hum, and he saw the tired, pale, happy face of his wife, bending, as were a score of others, over her sewing machine---toiling, toiling. Here was the folly she pursued, and the end of his quest.
|
||||
|
||||
But not his deliverance, though even then remorse struck him. His shamed soul fluttered once more before it retired to make room for the other and better one. For, to temper his thrill of joy, the shine of the satin and the glimmer of ornaments recalled the disturbing figure of the bespangled Amazon, and the base duplicate histories lit by the glare of footlights and stolen diamonds. It is past the wisdom of him who only sets the scenes, either to praise or blame the man. But this time his love overcame his scruples. He took a quick step, and reached out his hand for the doorknob. Father Rogan was quicker to arrest it and draw him back.
|
||||
|
||||
"You use my trust in you queerly," said the priest sternly. "What are you about to do?"
|
||||
|
||||
"I am going to my wife," said Lorison. "Let me pass."
|
||||
|
||||
"Listen," said the priest, holding him firmly by the arm. "I am about to put you in possession of a piece of knowledge of which, thus far, you have scarcely proved deserving. I do not think you ever will; but I will not dwell upon that. You see in that room the woman you married, working for a frugal living for herself, and a generous comfort for an idolized brother. This building belongs to the chief costumer of the city. For months the advance orders for the coming [Mardi Gras]{lang="fr"} festivals have kept the work going day and night. I myself secured employment here for Norah. She toils here each night from nine o'clock until daylight, and, besides, carries home with her some of the finer costumes, requiring more delicate needlework, and works there part of the day. Somehow, you two have remained strangely ignorant of each other's lives. Are you convinced now that your wife is not walking the streets?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Let me go to her," cried Lorison, again struggling, "and beg her forgiveness!"
|
||||
|
||||
"Sir," said the priest, "do you owe me nothing? Be quiet. It seems so often that Heaven lets fall its choicest gifts into hands that must be taught to hold them. Listen again. You forgot that repentant sin must not compromise, but look up, for redemption, to the purest and best. You went to her with the finespun sophistry that peace could be found in a mutual guilt; and she, fearful of losing what her heart so craved, thought it worth the price to buy it with a desperate, pure, beautiful lie. I have known her since the day she was born; she is as innocent and unsullied in life and deed as a holy saint. In that lowly street where she dwells she first saw the light, and she has lived there ever since, spending her days in generous self-sacrifice for others. Och, ye spalpeen!" continued Father Rogan, raising his finger in kindly anger at Lorison. "What for, I wonder, could she be after making a fool of hersilf, and shamin' her swate soul with lies, for the like of you!"
|
||||
|
||||
"Sir," said Lorison, trembling, "say what you please of me. Doubt it as you must, I will yet prove my gratitude to you, and my devotion to her. But let me speak to her once now, let me kneel for just one moment at her feet, and---"
|
||||
|
||||
"Tut, tut!" said the priest. "How many acts of a love drama do you think an old bookworm like me capable of witnessing? Besides, what kind of figures do we cut, spying upon the mysteries of midnight millinery! Go to meet your wife tomorrow, as she ordered you, and obey her thereafter, and maybe some time I shall get forgiveness for the part I have played in this night's work. Off wid yez down the shtairs, now! 'Tis late, and an ould man like me should be takin' his rest."
|
||||
36
src/epub/text/board-and-ancestors.md
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36
src/epub/text/board-and-ancestors.md
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@ -0,0 +1,36 @@
|
||||
Board and Ancestors {#board-and-ancestors type="title"}
|
||||
-------------------
|
||||
|
||||
The snake reporter of the Post was wending his way homeward last night when he was approached by a very gaunt, hungry-looking man with wild eyes and an emaciated face.
|
||||
|
||||
"Can you tell me, sir," he inquired, "where I can find in Houston a family of lowborn scrubs?"
|
||||
|
||||
"I don't exactly understand," said the reporter.
|
||||
|
||||
"Let me tell you how it is," said the emaciated man. "I came to Houston a month ago, and I hunted up a boarding house, as I can not afford to live at a hotel. I found a nice, aristocratic-looking place that suited me, and went inside. The landlady came in the parlor and she was a very stately lady with a Roman nose. I asked the price of board, and she said: 'Eighty dollars per month.' I fell against the door jamb with a dull thud, and she said:
|
||||
|
||||
" 'You seem surprised, sah. You will please remember that I am the widow of Governah Riddle of Virginia. My family is very highly connected; give you board as a favah; I never consider money an equivalent to advantage of my society. Will you have a room with a door in it?'
|
||||
|
||||
" 'I'll call again,' I said, and got out of the house, somehow, and went to another fine, three-storied house, with a sign 'Board and Rooms' on it.
|
||||
|
||||
"The next lady I saw had gray curls, and a soft gazelle-like eye. She was a cousin of General Mahone of Virginia and wanted \$16 per week for a little back room with a pink motto and a picture of the battle of Chancellorsville in it.
|
||||
|
||||
"I went to some more boarding houses.
|
||||
|
||||
"The next lady said she was descended from Aaron Burr on one side and Captain Kidd on the other. She was using the Captain Kidd side in her business. She wanted to charge me sixty cents an hour for board and lodging. I traveled around all over Houston and found nine widows of Supreme Court judges, twelve relicts of governors and generals, and twenty-two ruins left by happy departed colonels, professors, and majors, who put fancy figures on the benefits of their society, and carried victuals as a side line.
|
||||
|
||||
"I finally grew desperately hungry and engaged a week's board at a nice, stylish mansion in the third ward. The lady who kept it was tall and imposing. She kept one hand lying across her waist and the other held a prayer book and a pair of ice hooks. She said she was an aunt of Davy Crockett, and was still in mourning for him. Her family was one of the first in Texas. It was then supper time and I went in to supper. Supper was from six-fifty to seven, and consisted of baker's bread, prayer, and cold slaw. I was so fatigued that I begged to be shown to my room immediately after the meal.
|
||||
|
||||
"I took the candle, went into the room she showed me, and locked the door quickly. The room was furnished in imitation of the Alamo. The walls and the floor were bare, and the bed was something like a monument only harder. About midnight I felt something as if I had fallen into a prickly pear bush, and jumped up and lit the candle. I looked in the bed and then put on my clothes, and exclaimed:
|
||||
|
||||
" 'Thermopylae had her messenger of defeat, but the Alamo had a thousand.'
|
||||
|
||||
"I slipped out of the door and left the house.
|
||||
|
||||
"Now, my dear sir, I am not wealthy, and I can not afford to pay for high lineage and moldy ancestors with my board. Corned beef goes further with me than a coronet, and when I am cold a coat-of-arms does not warm me. I am desperate and hungry, and I hate everybody who can trace their ancestors farther back than the late Confederate Reunion. I want to find a boarding house whose proprietress was left while an infant in a basket at a livery stable, whose father was an unnaturalized dago from the fifth ward, and whose grandfather was never placed upon the map. I want to strike a low-down, scrubby, piebald, sans-culotte outfit that never heard of finger bowls or grace before meals but who can get up a mess of hot corn bread and Irish stew at regular market quotations. Is there any such place in Houston?"
|
||||
|
||||
The snake reporter shook his head sadly. "I never heard of any," he said. "The boarding houses here are run by ladies who do not take boarders to make a living; they are all trying to get a better rating in Bradstreet's than Hetty Green."
|
||||
|
||||
"Then," said the emaciated man desperately, "I will shake you for a long toddy."
|
||||
|
||||
The snake reporter felt in his vest pocket haughtily for a moment, and then refusing the proposition scornfully, moved away down the dimly lighted street.
|
||||
12
src/epub/text/book-reviews.md
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12
src/epub/text/book-reviews.md
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@ -0,0 +1,12 @@
|
||||
Book Reviews {#book-reviews type="title"}
|
||||
------------
|
||||
|
||||
*Unabridged Dictionary by Noah Webster*, LL.D.F.R.S.X.Y.Z.
|
||||
|
||||
We find on our table quite an exhaustive treatise on various subjects, written in Mr. Webster's well-known, lucid, and piquant style. There is not a dull line between the covers of the book. The range of subjects is wide, and the treatment light and easy without being flippant. A valuable feature of the work is the arranging of the articles in alphabetical order, thus facilitating the finding of any particular word desired. Mr. Webster's vocabulary is large, and he always uses the right word in the right place. Mr. Webster's work is thorough and we predict that he will be heard from again.
|
||||
|
||||
*Houston's City Directory*, by Morrison and Fourmy.
|
||||
|
||||
This new book has the decided merit of being non-sensational. In these days of erratic and ultra-imaginative literature of the modern morbid self-analytical school it is a relief to peruse a book with so little straining after effect, so well balanced, and so pure in sentiment. It is a book that a man can place in the hands of the most innocent member of his family with the utmost confidence. Its material is healthy, and its literary style excellent, as it adheres to the methods used with such thrilling effect by Mr. Webster in his famous dictionary, viz: alphabetical arrangement.
|
||||
|
||||
We venture to assert that no one can carefully and conscientiously read this little volume without being a better man, or lady, as circumstances over which they have no control may indicate.
|
||||
154
src/epub/text/brickdust-row.md
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154
src/epub/text/brickdust-row.md
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@ -0,0 +1,154 @@
|
||||
Brickdust Row {#brickdust-row type="title"}
|
||||
-------------
|
||||
|
||||
Blinker was displeased. A man of less culture and poise and wealth would have sworn. But Blinker always remembered that he was a gentleman---a thing that no gentleman should do. So he merely looked bored and sardonic while he rode in a hansom to the center of disturbance, which was the Broadway office of Lawyer Oldport, who was agent for the Blinker estate.
|
||||
|
||||
"I don't see," said Blinker, "why I should be always signing confounded papers. I am packed, and was to have left for the North Woods this morning. Now I must wait until tomorrow morning. I hate night trains. My best razors are, of course, at the bottom of some unidentifiable trunk. It is a plot to drive me to bay rum and a monologueing, thumb-handed barber. Give me a pen that doesn't scratch. I hate pens that scratch."
|
||||
|
||||
"Sit down," said double-chinned, gray Lawyer Oldport. "The worst has not been told you. Oh, the hardships of the rich! The papers are not yet ready to sign. They will be laid before you tomorrow at eleven. You will miss another day. Twice shall the barber tweak the helpless nose of a Blinker. Be thankful that your sorrows do not embrace a haircut."
|
||||
|
||||
"If," said Blinker, rising, "the act did not involve more signing of papers I would take my business out of your hands at once. Give me a cigar, please."
|
||||
|
||||
"If," said Lawyer Oldport, "I had cared to see an old friend's son gulped down at one mouthful by sharks I would have ordered you to take it away long ago. Now, let's quit fooling, Alexander. Besides the grinding task of signing your name some thirty times tomorrow, I must impose upon you the consideration of a matter of business---of business, and I may say humanity or right. I spoke to you about this five years ago, but you would not listen---you were in a hurry for a coaching trip, I think. The subject has come up again. The property---"
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh, property!" interrupted Blinker. "Dear Mr. Oldport, I think you mentioned tomorrow. Let's have it all at one dose tomorrow---signatures and property and snappy rubber bands and that smelly sealing-wax and all. Have luncheon with me? Well, I'll try to remember to drop in at eleven tomorrow. Morning."
|
||||
|
||||
The Blinker wealth was in lands, tenements and hereditaments, as the legal phrase goes. Lawyer Oldport had once taken Alexander in his little pulmonary gasoline runabout to see the many buildings and rows of buildings that he owned in the city. For Alexander was sole heir. They had amused Blinker very much. The houses looked so incapable of producing the big sums of money that Lawyer Oldport kept piling up in banks for him to spend.
|
||||
|
||||
In the evening Blinker went to one of his clubs, intending to dine. Nobody was there except some old fogies playing whist who spoke to him with grave politeness and glared at him with savage contempt. Everybody was out of town. But here he was kept in like a schoolboy to write his name over and over on pieces of paper. His wounds were deep.
|
||||
|
||||
Blinker turned his back on the fogies, and said to the club steward who had come forward with some nonsense about cold fresh salmon roe:
|
||||
|
||||
"Symons, I'm going to Coney Island." He said it as one might say: "All's off; I'm going to jump into the river."
|
||||
|
||||
The joke pleased Symons. He laughed within a sixteenth of a note of the audibility permitted by the laws governing employees.
|
||||
|
||||
"Certainly, sir," he tittered. "Of course, sir, I think I can see you at Coney, Mr. Blinker."
|
||||
|
||||
Blinker got a pager and looked up the movements of Sunday steamboats. Then he found a cab at the first corner and drove to a North River pier. He stood in line, as democratic as you or I, and bought a ticket, and was trampled upon and shoved forward until, at last, he found himself on the upper deck of the boat staring brazenly at a girl who sat alone upon a camp stool. But Blinker did not intend to be brazen; the girl was so wonderfully good looking that he forgot for one minute that he was the prince incog, and behaved just as he did in society.
|
||||
|
||||
She was looking at him, too, and not severely. A puff of wind threatened Blinker's straw hat. He caught it warily and settled it again. The movement gave the effect of a bow. The girl nodded and smiled, and in another instant he was seated at her side. She was dressed all in white, she was paler than Blinker imagined milkmaids and girls of humble stations to be, but she was as tidy as a cherry blossom, and her steady, supremely frank gray eyes looked out from the intrepid depths of an unshadowed and untroubled soul.
|
||||
|
||||
"How dare you raise your hat to me?" she asked, with a smile-redeemed severity.
|
||||
|
||||
"I didn't," Blinker said, but he quickly covered the mistake by extending it to "I didn't know how to keep from it after I saw you."
|
||||
|
||||
"I do not allow gentlemen to sit by me to whom I have not been introduced," she said, with a sudden haughtiness that deceived him. He rose reluctantly, but her clear, teasing laugh brought him down to his chair again.
|
||||
|
||||
"I guess you weren't going far," she declared, with beauty's magnificent self-confidence.
|
||||
|
||||
"Are you going to Coney Island?" asked Blinker.
|
||||
|
||||
"Me?" She turned upon him wide-open eyes full of bantering surprise. "Why, what a question! Can't you see that I'm riding a bicycle in the park?" Her drollery took the form of impertinence.
|
||||
|
||||
"And I am laying brick on a tall factory chimney," said Blinker. "Mayn't we see Coney together? I'm all alone and I've never been there before." "It depends," said the girl, "on how nicely you behave. I'll consider your application until we get there."
|
||||
|
||||
Blinker took pains to provide against the rejection of his application. He strove to please. To adopt the metaphor of his nonsensical phrase, he laid brick upon brick on the tall chimney of his devoirs until, at length, the structure was stable and complete. The manners of the best society come around finally to simplicity; and as the girl's way was that naturally, they were on a mutual plane of communication from the beginning.
|
||||
|
||||
He learned that she was twenty, and her name was Florence; that she trimmed hats in a millinery shop; that she lived in a furnished room with her best chum Ella, who was cashier in a shoe store; and that a glass of milk from the bottle on the windowsill and an egg that boils itself while you twist up your hair makes a breakfast good enough for anyone. Florence laughed when she heard "Blinker."
|
||||
|
||||
"Well," she said. "It certainly shows that you have imagination. It gives the 'Smiths' a chance for a little rest, anyhow."
|
||||
|
||||
They landed at Coney, and were dashed on the crest of a great human wave of mad pleasure-seekers into the walks and avenues of Fairyland gone into vaudeville.
|
||||
|
||||
With a curious eye, a critical mind and a fairly withheld judgment Blinker considered the temples, pagodas and kiosks of popularized delights. Hoi polloi trampled, hustled and crowded him. Basket parties bumped him; sticky children tumbled, howling, under his feet, candying his clothes. Insolent youths strolling among the booths with hard-won canes under one arm and easily won girls on the other, blew defiant smoke from cheap cigars into his face. The publicity gentlemen with megaphones, each before his own stupendous attraction, roared like Niagara in his ears. Music of all kinds that could be tortured from brass, reed, hide or string, fought in the air to gain space for its vibrations against its competitors. But what held Blinker in awful fascination was the mob, the multitude, the proletariat shrieking, struggling, hurrying, panting, hurling itself in incontinent frenzy, with unabashed abandon, into the ridiculous sham palaces of trumpery and tinsel pleasures. The vulgarity of it, its brutal overriding of all the tenets of repression and taste that were held by his caste, repelled him strongly.
|
||||
|
||||
In the midst of his disgust he turned and looked down at Florence by his side. She was ready with her quick smile and upturned, happy eyes, as bright and clear as the water in trout pools. The eyes were saying that they had the right to be shining and happy, for was their owner not with her (for the present) Man, her Gentleman Friend and holder of the keys to the enchanted city of fun?
|
||||
|
||||
Blinker did not read her look accurately, but by some miracle he suddenly saw Coney aright.
|
||||
|
||||
He no longer saw a mass of vulgarians seeking gross joys. He now looked clearly upon a hundred thousand true idealists. Their offenses were wiped out. Counterfeit and false though the garish joys of these spangled temples were, he perceived that deep under the gilt surface they offered saving and apposite balm and satisfaction to the restless human heart. Here, at least, was the husk of Romance, the empty but shining casque of Chivalry, the breath-catching though safeguarded dip and flight of Adventure, the magic carpet that transports you to the realms of fairyland, though its journey be through but a few poor yards of space. He no longer saw a rabble, but his brothers seeking the ideal. There was no magic of poesy here or of art; but the glamour of their imagination turned yellow calico into cloth of gold and the megaphones into the silver trumpets of joy's heralds.
|
||||
|
||||
Almost humbled, Blinker rolled up the shirt sleeves of his mind and joined the idealists.
|
||||
|
||||
"You are the lady doctor," he said to Florence. "How shall we go about doing this jolly conglomeration of fairy tales, incorporated?"
|
||||
|
||||
"We will begin there," said the Princess, pointing to a fun pagoda on the edge of the sea, "and we will take them all in, one by one."
|
||||
|
||||
They caught the eight o'clock returning boat and sat, filled with pleasant fatigue, against the rail in the bow, listening to the Italians' fiddle and harp. Blinker had thrown off all care. The North Woods seemed to him an uninhabitable wilderness. What a fuss he had made over signing his name---pooh! he could sign it a hundred times. And her name was as pretty as she was---"Florence," he said it to himself a great many times.
|
||||
|
||||
As the boat was nearing its pier in the North River a two-funnelled, drab, foreign-looking seagoing steamer was dropping down toward the bay. The boat turned its nose in toward its slip. The steamer veered as if to seek midstream, and then yawed, seemed to increase its speed and struck the Coney boat on the side near the stern, cutting into it with a terrifying shock and crash.
|
||||
|
||||
While the six hundred passengers on the boat were mostly tumbling about the decks in a shrieking panic the captain was shouting at the steamer that it should not back off and leave the rent exposed for the water to enter. But the steamer tore its way out like a savage sawfish and cleaved its heartless way, full speed ahead.
|
||||
|
||||
The boat began to sink at its stern, but moved slowly toward the slip. The passengers were a frantic mob, unpleasant to behold.
|
||||
|
||||
Blinker held Florence tightly until the boat had righted itself. She made no sound or sign of fear. He stood on a camp stool, ripped off the slats above his head and pulled down a number of the life preservers. He began to buckle one around Florence. The rotten canvas split and the fraudulent granulated cork came pouring out in a stream. Florence caught a handful of it and laughed gleefully.
|
||||
|
||||
"It looks like breakfast food," she said. "Take it off. They're no good."
|
||||
|
||||
She unbuckled it and threw it on the deck. She made Blinker sit down and sat by his side and put her hand in his. "What'll you bet we don't reach the pier all right?" she said and began to hum a song.
|
||||
|
||||
And now the captain moved among the passengers and compelled order. The boat would undoubtedly make her slip, he said, and ordered the women and children to the bow, where they could land first. The boat, very low in the water at the stern, tried gallantly to make his promise good.
|
||||
|
||||
"Florence," said Blinker, as she held him close by an arm and hand, "I love you."
|
||||
|
||||
"That's what they all say," she replied, lightly.
|
||||
|
||||
"I am not one of 'they all,' " he persisted. "I never knew anyone I could love before. I could pass my life with you and be happy every day. I am rich. I can make things all right for you."
|
||||
|
||||
"That's what they all say," said the girl again, weaving the words into her little, reckless song.
|
||||
|
||||
"Don't say that again," said Blinker in a tone that made her look at him in frank surprise.
|
||||
|
||||
"Why shouldn't I say it?" she asked calmly. "They all do."
|
||||
|
||||
"Who are 'they'?" he asked, jealous for the first time in his existence.
|
||||
|
||||
"Why, the fellows I know."
|
||||
|
||||
"Do you know so many?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh, well, I'm not a wall flower," she answered with modest complacency.
|
||||
|
||||
"Where do you see these---these men? At your home?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Of course not. I meet them just as I did you. Sometimes on the boat, sometimes in the park, sometimes on the street. I'm a pretty good judge of a man. I can tell in a minute if a fellow is one who is likely to get fresh."
|
||||
|
||||
"What do you mean by 'fresh?' "
|
||||
|
||||
"Why, try to kiss you---me, I mean."
|
||||
|
||||
"Do any of them try that?" asked Blinker, clenching his teeth.
|
||||
|
||||
"Sure. All men do. You know that."
|
||||
|
||||
"Do you allow them?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Some. Not many. They won't take you out anywhere unless you do."
|
||||
|
||||
She turned her head and looked searchingly at Blinker. Her eyes were as innocent as a child's. There was a puzzled look in them, as though she did not understand him.
|
||||
|
||||
"What's wrong about my meeting fellows?" she asked, wonderingly.
|
||||
|
||||
"Everything," he answered, almost savagely. "Why don't you entertain your company in the house where you live? Is it necessary to pick up Tom, Dick and Harry on the streets?"
|
||||
|
||||
She kept her absolutely ingenuous eyes upon his. "If you could see the place where I live you wouldn't ask that. I live in Brickdust Row. They call it that because there's red dust from the bricks crumbling over everything. I've lived there for more than four years. There's no place to receive company. You can't have anybody come to your room. What else is there to do? A girl has got to meet the men, hasn't she?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Yes," he said, hoarsely. "A girl has got to meet a---has got to meet the men."
|
||||
|
||||
"The first time one spoke to me on the street," she continued, "I ran home and cried all night. But you get used to it. I meet a good many nice fellows at church. I go on rainy days and stand in the vestibule until one comes up with an umbrella. I wish there was a parlor, so I could ask you to call, Mr. Blinker---are you really sure it isn't 'Smith,' now?"
|
||||
|
||||
The boat landed safely. Blinker had a confused impression of walking with the girl through quiet crosstown streets until she stopped at a corner and held out her hand.
|
||||
|
||||
"I live just one more block over," she said. "Thank you for a very pleasant afternoon."
|
||||
|
||||
Blinker muttered something and plunged northward till he found a cab. A big, gray church loomed slowly at his right. Blinker shook his fist at it through the window.
|
||||
|
||||
"I gave you a thousand dollars last, week," he cried under his breath, "and she meets them in your very doors. There is something wrong; there is something wrong."
|
||||
|
||||
At eleven the next day Blinker signed his name thirty times with a new pen provided by Lawyer Oldport.
|
||||
|
||||
"Now let me go to the woods," he said surlily.
|
||||
|
||||
"You are not looking well," said Lawyer Oldport. "The trip will do you good. But listen, if you will, to that little matter of business of which I spoke to you yesterday, and also five years ago. There are some buildings, fifteen in number, of which there are new five-year leases to be signed. Your father contemplated a change in the lease provisions, but never made it. He intended that the parlors of these houses should not be sublet, but that the tenants should be allowed to use them for reception rooms. These houses are in the shopping district, and are mainly tenanted by young working girls. As it is they are forced to seek companionship outside. This row of red brick---"
|
||||
|
||||
Blinker interrupted him with a loud, discordant laugh.
|
||||
|
||||
"Brickdust Row for an even hundred," he cried. "And I own it. Have I guessed right?"
|
||||
|
||||
"The tenants have some such name for it," said Lawyer Oldport.
|
||||
|
||||
Blinker arose and jammed his hat down to his eyes.
|
||||
|
||||
"Do what you please with it," he said harshly. "Remodel it, burn it, raze it to the ground. But, man, it's too late I tell you. It's too late. It's too late. It's too late."
|
||||
112
src/epub/text/bulgers-friend.md
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112
src/epub/text/bulgers-friend.md
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@ -0,0 +1,112 @@
|
||||
Bulger's Friend {#bulgers-friend type="title"}
|
||||
---------------
|
||||
|
||||
It was rare sport for a certain element in the town when old Bulger joined the Salvation Army. Bulger was the town's odd "character," a shiftless, eccentric old man, and a natural foe to social conventions. He lived on the bank of a brook that bisected the town, in a wonderful hut of his own contriving, made of scrap lumber, clapboards, pieces of tin, canvas and corrugated iron.
|
||||
|
||||
The most adventurous boys circled Bulger's residence at a respectful distance. He was intolerant of visitors, and repelled the curious with belligerent and gruff inhospitality. In return, the report was current that he was of unsound mind, something of a wizard, and a miser with a vast amount of gold buried in or near his hut. The old man worked at odd jobs, such as weeding gardens and whitewashing; and he collected old bones, scrap metal and bottles from alleys and yards.
|
||||
|
||||
One rainy night when the Salvation Army was holding a slenderly attended meeting in its hall, Bulger had appeared and asked permission to join the ranks. The sergeant in command of the post welcomed the old man with that cheerful lack of prejudice that distinguishes the peaceful militants of his order.
|
||||
|
||||
Bulger was at once assigned to the position of bass drummer, to his evident, although grimly expressed, joy. Possibly the sergeant, who had the success of his command at heart, perceived that it would be no mean token of successful warfare to have the new recruit thus prominently displayed, representing, as he did, if not a brand from the burning, at least a well-charred and sap-dried chunk.
|
||||
|
||||
So every night, when the Army marched from its quarters to the street corner where open-air services were held, Bulger stumbled along with his bass drum behind the sergeant and the corporal, who played "Sweet By and By" and "Only an Armor-Bearer" in unison upon their cornets. And never before in that town was bass drum so soundly whacked. Bulger managed to keep time with the cornets upon his instrument, but his feet were always wo-fully unrhythmic. He shuffled and staggered and rocked from side to side like a bear.
|
||||
|
||||
Truly, he was not pleasing to the sight. He was a bent, ungainly old man, with a face screwed to one side and wrinkled like a dry prune. The red shirt, which proclaimed his enlistment into the ranks, was a misfit, being the outer husk of a leviathan corporal who had died some time before. This garment hung upon Bulger in folds. His old brown cap was always pulled down over one eye. These and his wabbling gait gave him the appearance of some great simian, captured and imperfectly educated in pedestrian and musical manoeuvres.
|
||||
|
||||
The thoughtless boys and undeveloped men who gathered about the street services of the Army badgered Bulger incessantly. They called upon him to give oral testimony to his conversion, and criticized the technique and style of his drum performance. But the old man paid no attention whatever to their jeers. He rarely spoke to anyone except when, on coming and going, he gruffly saluted his comrades.
|
||||
|
||||
The sergeant had met many odd characters, and knew how to study them. He allowed the recruit to have his own silent way for a time. Every evening Bulger appeared at the hall, marched up the street with the squad and back again. Then he would place his drum in the comer where it belonged, and sit upon the last bench in the rear until the hall meeting was concluded.
|
||||
|
||||
But one night the sergeant followed the old man outside, and laid his hand upon his shoulder. "Comrade," he said, "is it well with you?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Not yet, sergeant," said Bulger. "I'm only tryin.' I'm glad you come outside. I've been wantin' to ask you: Do you believe the Lord would take a man in if he come to Him late like---kind of a last resort, you know? Say a man who'd lost everything---home and property and friends and health. Wouldn't it look mean to wait till then and try to come?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Bless His name---no!" said the sergeant. "Come ye that are heavy laden; that's what He says. The poorer, the more miserable, the more unfortunate---the greater His love and forgiveness."
|
||||
|
||||
"Yes, I'm poor," said Bulger. "Awful poor and miserable. You know when I can think best, sergeant? It's when I'm beating the drum. Other times there's a kind of muddled roarin' in my head. The drum seems to kind of soothe and calm it. There's a thing I'm tryin' to study out, but I ain't made it yet."
|
||||
|
||||
"Do you pray, comrade?" asked the sergeant.
|
||||
|
||||
"No, I don't," said Bulger. "What'd be the use? I know where the hitch is. Don't it say somewhere for a man to give up his own family or friends and serve the Lord?"
|
||||
|
||||
"If they stand in his way; not otherwise."
|
||||
|
||||
"I've got no family," continued the old man, "nor no friends---but one. And that one is what's driven me to ruin."
|
||||
|
||||
"Free yourself!" cried the sergeant. "He is no friend, but an enemy who stands between you and salvation."
|
||||
|
||||
"No," answered Bulger, emphatically, "no enemy. The best friend I ever had."
|
||||
|
||||
"But you say he's driven you to ruin!"
|
||||
|
||||
The old man chuckled dryly: "And keeps me in rags and livin' on scraps and sleepin' like a dog in a patched-up kennel. And yet I never had a better friend. You don't understand, sergeant. You lose all your friends but the best one, and then you'll know how to hold on to the last one."
|
||||
|
||||
"Do you drink, comrade?" asked the sergeant.
|
||||
|
||||
"Not a drop in twenty years," Bulger replied. The sergeant was puzzled.
|
||||
|
||||
"If this friend stands between you and your soul's peace, give him up," was all he could find to say.
|
||||
|
||||
"I can't---now," said the old man, dropping into a fretful whine. "But you just let me keep on beating the drum, sergeant, and maybe I will some time. I'm a-tryin'. Sometimes I come so near thinkin' it out that a dozen more licks on the drum would settle it. I get mighty nigh to the point, and then I have to quit. You'll give me more time, won't you, sergeant?"
|
||||
|
||||
"All you want, and God bless you, comrade. Pound away until you hit the right note."
|
||||
|
||||
Afterward the sergeant would often call to Bulger: "Time, comrade! Knocked that friend of yours out yet?" The answer was always unsatisfactory.
|
||||
|
||||
One night at a street corner the sergeant prayed loudly that a certain struggling comrade might be parted from an enemy who was leading him astray under the guise of friendship. Bulger, in sudden and plainly evident alarm, immediately turned his drum over to a fellow volunteer, and shuffled rapidly away down the street. The next night he was back again at his post, without any explanation of his strange behaviour.
|
||||
|
||||
The sergeant wondered what it all meant, and took occasion to question the old man more closely as to the influence that was retarding the peace his soul seemed to crave. But Bulger carefully avoided particularizing.
|
||||
|
||||
"It's my own fight," he said. "I've got to think it out myself. Nobody else don't understand."
|
||||
|
||||
The winter of 1892 was a memorable one in the South. The cold was almost unprecedented, and snow fell many inches deep where it had rarely whitened the ground before. Much suffering resulted among the poor, who had not anticipated the rigorous season. The little squad of Salvationists found more distress then they could relieve.
|
||||
|
||||
Charity in that town, while swift and liberal, lacked organization. Want, in that balmy and productive climate, existed only in sporadic cases, and these were nearly always quietly relieved by generous neighbours. But when some sudden disastrous onslaught of the elements---storm, fire or flood---occurred, the impoverished sufferers were often too slowly aided because system was lacking, and because charity was called upon too seldom to become a habit. At such times the Salvation Army was very useful. Its soldiers went down into alleys and byways to rescue those who, unused to extreme want, had never learned to beg.
|
||||
|
||||
At the end of three weeks of hard freezing a level foot of snow fell. Hunger and cold struck the improvident, and a hundred women, children and old men were gathered into the Army's quarters to be warmed and fed. Each day the blue-uniformed soldiers slipped in and out of the stores and offices of the town, gathering pennies and dimes and quarters to buy food for the starving. And in and out of private houses the Salvationists went with baskets of food and clothing, while day by day the mercury still crouched among the tens and twenties.
|
||||
|
||||
Alas! business, that scapegoat, was dull. The dimes and quarters came more reluctantly from tills that jingled not when they were opened. Yet in the big hall of the Army the stove was kept red-hot, and upon the long table, set in the rear, could always be found at least coffee and bread and cheese. The sergeant and the squad fought valiantly. At last the money on hand was all gone, and the daily collections were diminished to a variable sum, inadequate to the needs of the dependents of the Army.
|
||||
|
||||
Christmas was near at hand. There were fifty children in the hall, and many more outside, to whom that season brought no joy beyond what was brought by the Army. None of these little pensioners had thus far lacked necessary comforts, and they had already begun to chatter of the tree---that one bright vision in the sober monotony of the year. Never since the Army first came had it failed to provide a tree and gifts for the children.
|
||||
|
||||
The sergeant was troubled. He knew that an announcement of "no tree" would grieve the hearts under those thin cotton dresses and ragged jackets more than would stress of storm or scanty diet; and yet there was not money enough to meet the daily demands for food and fuel.
|
||||
|
||||
On the night of December the 20th the sergeant decided to announce that there could be no Christmas tree: it seemed unfair to allow the waxing anticipation of the children to reach too great a height.
|
||||
|
||||
The evening was colder, and the still deep snow was made deeper by another heavy fall swept upon the wings of a fierce and shrill-voiced northern gale. The sergeant, with sodden boots and reddened countenance, entered the hall at nightfall, and removed his threadbare overcoat. Soon afterward the rest of the faithful squad drifted in, the women heavily shawled, the men stamping their snow-crusted feet loudly upon the steep stairs. After the slender supper of cold meat, beans, bread, and coffee had been finished all joined in a short service of song and prayer, according to their daily habit.
|
||||
|
||||
Far back in the shadow sat Bulger. For weeks his ears had been deprived of that aid to thought, the booming of the big bass drum. His wrinkled face wore an expression of gloomy perplexity. The Army had been too busy for the regular services and parades. The silent drum, the banners, and the cornets were stored in a little room at the top of the stairway.
|
||||
|
||||
Bulger came to the hall every night and ate supper with the others. In such weather work of the kind that the old man usually did was not to be had, and he was bidden to share the benefits conferred upon the other unfortunates. He always left early, and it was surmised that he passed the nights in his patchwork hut, that structure being waterproof and weathertight beyond the promise of its outward appearance. Of late the sergeant had had no time to bestow upon the old man.
|
||||
|
||||
At seven o'clock the sergeant stood up and rapped upon the table with a lump of coal. When the room became still he began his talk, that rambled off into a halting discourse quite unlike his usual positive and direct speeches. The children had gathered about their friend in a ragged, wriggling, and wide-a-wake circle. Most of them had seen that fresh, ruddy countenance of his emerge, at the twelve-stroke of a night of splendour, from the whiskered mask of a magnificent Santa Claus. They knew now that he was going to speak of the Christmas tree.
|
||||
|
||||
They tiptoed and listened, flushed with a hopeful and eager awe. The sergeant saw it, frowned, and swallowed hard. Continuing, he planted the sting of disappointment in each expectant little bosom, and watched the light fade from their eyes.
|
||||
|
||||
There was to be no tree. Renunciation was no new thing to them; they had been born to it. Still a few little ones in whom hope died hard sobbed aloud, and wan, wretched mothers tried to hush and console them. A kind of voiceless wail went among them, scarcely a protest, rather the ghost of a lament for the childhood's pleasures they had never known. The sergeant sat down and figured cheerlessly with the stump of a pencil upon the blank border of a newspaper.
|
||||
|
||||
Bulger rose and shuffled out of the room without ceremony, as was his custom. He was heard fumbling in the little room in the hallway, and suddenly a thunderous roar broke out, filling the whole building with its booming din. The sergeant started, and then laughed as if his nerves welcomed the diversion.
|
||||
|
||||
"It's only Comrade Bulger," he said, "doing a little thinking in his own quiet way."
|
||||
|
||||
The norther rattled the windows and shrieked around the corners. The sergeant heaped more coal into the stove. The increase of that cutting wind bore the cold promise of days, perhaps weeks, of hard times to come. The children were slowly recovering the sad philosophy out of which the deceptive hope of one bright day had enticed them. The women were arranging things for the night; preparing to draw the long curtain across the width of the hall, separating the children's quarters and theirs from those of the men.
|
||||
|
||||
About eight o'clock the sergeant had seen that all was shipshape; and was wrapping his woolen comforter around his neck, ready for his cold journey homeward, when footsteps were heard upon the stairway. The door opened, and Bulger came in covered with snow like Santa Claus, and as red of face, but otherwise much unlike the jolly Christmas saint.
|
||||
|
||||
The old man shambled down the hall to where the sergeant stood, drew a wet, earth-soiled bag from under his coat, and laid it upon the table. "Open it," he said, and motioned to the sergeant.
|
||||
|
||||
That cheery official obeyed with an indulgent smile. He seized the bottom of the bag, turned it up, and stood, with his smile turned to a gape of amazement, gazing at a heap of gold and silver coin that rolled upon the table.
|
||||
|
||||
"Count it," said Bulger.
|
||||
|
||||
The jingling of the money and wonder at its source had produced a profound silence in the room. For a time nothing could be heard but the howling of the wind and the chink of the coins as the sergeant slowly laid them in little separate piles.
|
||||
|
||||
"Six hundred," said the sergeant, and stopped to clear his throat, "six hundred and twenty-three dollars and eighty-five cents!"
|
||||
|
||||
"Eighty," said Bulger. "Mistake of five cents. I've thought it out at last, sergeant, and I've give up that friend I told you about. That's him---dollars and cents. The boys was right when they said I was a miser. Take it, sergeant, and spend it the best way for them that needs it, not forgettin' a tree for the young 'uns, and---"
|
||||
|
||||
"Hallelujah!" cried the sergeant.
|
||||
|
||||
"And a new bass drum," concluded Bulger.
|
||||
|
||||
And then the sergeant made another speech.
|
||||
198
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|
||||
Buried Treasure {#buried-treasure type="title"}
|
||||
---------------
|
||||
|
||||
There are many kinds of fools. Now, will everybody please sit still until they are called upon specifically to rise?
|
||||
|
||||
I had been every kind of fool except one. I had expended my patrimony, pretended my matrimony, played poker, lawn-tennis, and bucket-shops---parted soon with my money in many ways. But there remained one rule of the wearer of cap and bells that I had not played. That was the Seeker after Buried Treasure. To few does the delectable furor come. But of all the would-be followers in the hoof-prints of King Midas none has found a pursuit so rich in pleasurable promise.
|
||||
|
||||
But, going back from my theme a while---as lame pens must do---I was a fool of the sentimental sort. I saw May Martha Mangum, and was hers. She was eighteen, the color of the white ivory keys of a new piano, beautiful, and possessed by the exquisite solemnity and pathetic witchery of an unsophisticated angel doomed to live in a small, dull, Texas prairie-town. She had a spirit and charm that could have enabled her to pluck rubies like raspberries from the crown of Belgium or any other sporty kingdom, but she did not know it, and I did not paint the picture for her.
|
||||
|
||||
You see, I wanted May Martha Mangum for to have and to hold. I wanted her to abide with me, and put my slippers and pipe away every day in places where they cannot be found of evenings.
|
||||
|
||||
May Martha's father was a man hidden behind whiskers and spectacles. He lived for bugs and butterflies and all insects that fly or crawl or buzz or get down your back or in the butter. He was an etymologist, or words to that effect. He spent his life seining the air for flying fish of the June-bug order, and then sticking pins through 'em and calling 'em names.
|
||||
|
||||
He and May Martha were the whole family. He prized her highly as a fine specimen of the *racibus humanus* because she saw that he had food at times, and put his clothes on right side before, and kept his alcohol-bottles filled. Scientists, they say, are apt to be absentminded.
|
||||
|
||||
There was another besides myself who thought May Martha Mangum one to be desired. That was Goodloe Banks, a young man just home from college. He had all the attainments to be found in books---Latin, Greek, philosophy, and especially the higher branches of mathematics and logic.
|
||||
|
||||
If it hadn't been for his habit of pouring out this information and learning on every one that he addressed, I'd have liked him pretty well. But, even as it was, he and I were, you would have thought, great pals.
|
||||
|
||||
We got together every time we could because each of us wanted to pump the other for whatever straws we could to find which way the wind blew from the heart of May Martha Mangum---rather a mixed metaphor; Goodloe Banks would never have been guilty of that. That is the way of rivals.
|
||||
|
||||
You might say that Goodloe ran to books, manners, culture, rowing, intellect, and clothes. I would have put you in mind more of baseball and Friday-night debating societies---by way of culture---and maybe of a good horseback rider.
|
||||
|
||||
But in our talks together, and in our visits and conversation with May Martha, neither Goodloe Banks nor I could find out which one of us she preferred. May Martha was a natural-born noncommittal, and knew in her cradle how to keep people guessing.
|
||||
|
||||
As I said, old man Mangum was absentminded. After a long time he found out one day---a little butterfly must have told him---that two young men were trying to throw a net over the head of the young person, a daughter, or some such technical appendage, who looked after his comforts.
|
||||
|
||||
I never knew scientists could rise to such occasions. Old Mangum orally labelled and classified Goodloe and myself easily among the lowest orders of the vertebrates; and in English, too, without going any further into Latin than the simple references to *Orgetorix, Rex Helvetii*---which is as far as I ever went, myself. And he told us that if he ever caught us around his house again he would add us to his collection.
|
||||
|
||||
Goodloe Banks and I remained away five days, expecting the storm to subside. When we dared to call at the house again May Martha Mangum and her father were gone. Gone! The house they had rented was closed. Their little store of goods and chattels was gone also.
|
||||
|
||||
And not a word of farewell to either of us from May Martha---not a white, fluttering note pinned to the hawthorn-bush; not a chalk-mark on the gatepost nor a postcard in the post-office to give us a clue.
|
||||
|
||||
For two months Goodloe Banks and I---separately---tried every scheme we could think of to track the runaways. We used our friendship and influence with the ticket-agent, with livery-stable men, railroad conductors, and our one lone, lorn constable, but without results.
|
||||
|
||||
Then we became better friends and worse enemies than ever. We forgathered in the back room of Snyder's saloon every afternoon after work, and played dominoes, and laid conversational traps to find out from each other if anything had been discovered. That is the way of rivals.
|
||||
|
||||
Now, Goodloe Banks had a sarcastic way of displaying his own learning and putting me in the class that was reading "Poor Jane Ray, her bird is dead, she cannot play." Well, I rather liked Goodloe, and I had a contempt for his college learning, and I was always regarded as good-natured, so I kept my temper. And I was trying to find out if he knew anything about May Martha, so I endured his society.
|
||||
|
||||
In talking things over one afternoon he said to me:
|
||||
|
||||
"Suppose you do find her, Ed, whereby would you profit? Miss Mangum has a mind. Perhaps it is yet uncultured, but she is destined for higher things than you could give her. I have talked with no one who seemed to appreciate more the enchantment of the ancient poets and writers and the modern cults that have assimilated and expended their philosophy of life. Don't you think you are wasting your time looking for her?"
|
||||
|
||||
"My idea," said I, "of a happy home is an eight-room house in a grove of live-oaks by the side of a charco on a Texas prairie. A piano," I went on, "with an automatic player in the sitting-room, three thousand head of cattle under fence for a starter, a buckboard and ponies always hitched at a post for 'the missus'---and May Martha Mangum to spend the profits of the ranch as she pleases, and to abide with me, and put my slippers and pipe away every day in places where they cannot be found of evenings. That," said I, "is what is to be; and a fig---a dried, Smyrna, dago-stand fig---for your curriculums, cults, and philosophy."
|
||||
|
||||
"She is meant for higher things," repeated Goodloe Banks.
|
||||
|
||||
"Whatever she is meant for," I answered, "just now she is out of pocket. And I shall find her as soon as I can without aid of the colleges."
|
||||
|
||||
"The game is blocked," said Goodloe, putting down a domino; and we had the beer.
|
||||
|
||||
Shortly after that a young farmer whom I knew came into town and brought me a folded blue paper. He said his grandfather had just died. I concealed a tear, and he went on to say that the old man had jealously guarded this paper for twenty years. He left it to his family as part of his estate, the rest of which consisted of two mules and a hypotenuse of non-arable land.
|
||||
|
||||
The sheet of paper was of the old, blue kind used during the rebellion of the abolitionists against the secessionists. It was dated June 14, 1863, and it described the hiding-place of ten burro-loads of gold and silver coin valued at three hundred thousand dollars. Old Rundle---grandfather of his grandson, Sam---was given the information by a Spanish priest who was in on the treasure-burying, and who died many years before---no, afterward---in old Rundle's house. Old Rundle wrote it down from dictation.
|
||||
|
||||
"Why didn't your father look this up?" I asked young Rundle.
|
||||
|
||||
"He went blind before he could do so," he replied.
|
||||
|
||||
"Why didn't you hunt for it yourself?" I asked.
|
||||
|
||||
"Well," said he, "I've only known about the paper for ten years. First there was the spring ploughin' to do, and then choppin' the weeds out of the corn; and then come takin' fodder; and mighty soon winter was on us. It seemed to run along that way year after year."
|
||||
|
||||
That sounded perfectly reasonable to me, so I took it up with young Lee Rundle at once.
|
||||
|
||||
The directions on the paper were simple. The whole burro cavalcade laden with the treasure started from an old Spanish mission in Dolores County. They travelled due south by the compass until they reached the Alamito River. They forded this, and buried the treasure on the top of a little mountain shaped like a packsaddle standing in a row between two higher ones. A heap of stones marked the place of the buried treasure. All the party except the Spanish priest were killed by Indians a few days later. The secret was a monopoly. It looked good to me.
|
||||
|
||||
Lee Rundle suggested that we rig out a camping outfit, hire a surveyor to run out the line from the Spanish mission, and then spend the three hundred thousand dollars seeing the sights in Fort Worth. But, without being highly educated, I knew a way to save time and expense.
|
||||
|
||||
We went to the State land-office and had a practical, what they call a "working," sketch made of all the surveys of land from the old mission to the Alamito River. On this map I drew a line due southward to the river. The length of lines of each survey and section of land was accurately given on the sketch. By these we found the point on the river and had a "connection" made with it and an important, well-identified corner of the Los Animos five-league survey---a grant made by King Philip of Spain.
|
||||
|
||||
By doing this we did not need to have the line run out by a surveyor. It was a great saving of expense and time.
|
||||
|
||||
So, Lee Rundle and I fitted out a two-horse wagon team with all the accessories, and drove a hundred and forty-nine miles to Chico, the nearest town to the point we wished to reach. There we picked up a deputy county surveyor. He found the corner of the Los Animos survey for us, ran out the five thousand seven hundred and twenty varas west that our sketch called for, laid a stone on the spot, had coffee and bacon, and caught the mail-stage back to Chico.
|
||||
|
||||
I was pretty sure we would get that three hundred thousand dollars. Lee Rundle's was to be only one-third, because I was paying all the expenses. With that two hundred thousand dollars I knew I could find May Martha Mangum if she was on earth. And with it I could flutter the butterflies in old man Mangum's dovecot, too. If I could find that treasure!
|
||||
|
||||
But Lee and I established camp. Across the river were a dozen little mountains densely covered by cedar-brakes, but not one shaped like a packsaddle. That did not deter us. Appearances are deceptive. A packsaddle, like beauty, may exist only in the eye of the beholder.
|
||||
|
||||
I and the grandson of the treasure examined those cedar-covered hills with the care of a lady hunting for the wicked flea. We explored every side, top, circumference, mean elevation, angle, slope, and concavity of every one for two miles up and down the river. We spent four days doing so. Then we hitched up the roan and the dun, and hauled the remains of the coffee and bacon the one hundred and forty-nine miles back to Concho City.
|
||||
|
||||
Lee Rundle chewed much tobacco on the return trip. I was busy driving, because I was in a hurry.
|
||||
|
||||
As shortly as could be after our empty return Goodloe Banks and I forgathered in the back room of Snyder's saloon to play dominoes and fish for information. I told Goodloe about my expedition after the buried treasure.
|
||||
|
||||
"If I could have found that three hundred thousand dollars," I said to him, "I could have scoured and sifted the surface of the earth to find May Martha Mangum."
|
||||
|
||||
"She is meant for higher things," said Goodloe. "I shall find her myself. But, tell me how you went about discovering the spot where this unearthed increment was imprudently buried."
|
||||
|
||||
I told him in the smallest detail. I showed him the draughtsman's sketch with the distances marked plainly upon it.
|
||||
|
||||
After glancing over it in a masterly way, he leaned back in his chair and bestowed upon me an explosion of sardonic, superior, collegiate laughter.
|
||||
|
||||
"Well, you *are* a fool, Jim," he said, when he could speak.
|
||||
|
||||
"It's your play," said I, patiently, fingering my double-six.
|
||||
|
||||
"Twenty," said Goodloe, making two crosses on the table with his chalk.
|
||||
|
||||
"Why am I a fool?" I asked. "Buried treasure has been found before in many places."
|
||||
|
||||
"Because," said he, "in calculating the point on the river where your line would strike you neglected to allow for the variation. The variation there would be nine degrees west. Let me have your pencil."
|
||||
|
||||
Goodloe Banks figured rapidly on the back of an envelope.
|
||||
|
||||
"The distance, from north to south, of the line run from the Spanish mission," said he, "is exactly twenty-two miles. It was run by a pocket-compass, according to your story. Allowing for the variation, the point on the Alamito River where you should have searched for your treasure is exactly six miles and nine hundred and forty-five varas farther west than the place you hit upon. Oh, what a fool you are, Jim!"
|
||||
|
||||
"What is this variation that you speak of?" I asked. "I thought figures never lied."
|
||||
|
||||
"The variation of the magnetic compass," said Goodloe, "from the true meridian."
|
||||
|
||||
He smiled in his superior way; and then I saw come out in his face the singular, eager, consuming cupidity of the seeker after buried treasure.
|
||||
|
||||
"Sometimes," he said with the air of the oracle, "these old traditions of hidden money are not without foundation. Suppose you let me look over that paper describing the location. Perhaps together we might---"
|
||||
|
||||
The result was that Goodloe Banks and I, rivals in love, became companions in adventure. We went to Chico by stage from Huntersburg, the nearest railroad town. In Chico we hired a team drawing a covered spring-wagon and camping paraphernalia. We had the same surveyor run out our distance, as revised by Goodloe and his variations, and then dismissed him and sent him on his homeward road.
|
||||
|
||||
It was night when we arrived. I fed the horses and made a fire near the bank of the river and cooked supper. Goodloe would have helped, but his education had not fitted him for practical things.
|
||||
|
||||
But while I worked he cheered me with the expression of great thoughts handed down from the dead ones of old. He quoted some translations from the Greek at much length.
|
||||
|
||||
"Anacreon," he explained. "That was a favorite passage with Miss Mangum---as I recited it."
|
||||
|
||||
"She is meant for higher things," said I, repeating his phrase.
|
||||
|
||||
"Can there be anything higher," asked Goodloe, "than to dwell in the society of the classics, to live in the atmosphere of learning and culture? You have often decried education. What of your wasted efforts through your ignorance of simple mathematics? How soon would you have found your treasure if my knowledge had not shown you your error?"
|
||||
|
||||
"We'll take a look at those hills across the river first," said I, "and see what we find. I am still doubtful about variations. I have been brought up to believe that the needle is true to the pole."
|
||||
|
||||
The next morning was a bright June one. We were up early and had breakfast. Goodloe was charmed. He recited---Keats, I think it was, and Kelly or Shelley---while I broiled the bacon. We were getting ready to cross the river, which was little more than a shallow creek there, and explore the many sharp-peaked cedar-covered hills on the other side.
|
||||
|
||||
"My good Ulysses," said Goodloe, slapping me on the shoulder while I was washing the tin breakfast-plates, "let me see the enchanted document once more. I believe it gives directions for climbing the hill shaped like a packsaddle. I never saw a packsaddle. What is it like, Jim?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Score one against culture," said I. "I'll know it when I see it."
|
||||
|
||||
Goodloe was looking at old Rundle's document when he ripped out a most uncollegiate swearword.
|
||||
|
||||
"Come here," he said, holding the paper up against the sunlight. "Look at that," he said, laying his finger against it.
|
||||
|
||||
On the blue paper---a thing I had never noticed before---I saw stand out in white letters the word and figures: "Malvern, 1898."
|
||||
|
||||
"What about it?" I asked.
|
||||
|
||||
"It's the watermark," said Goodloe. "The paper was manufactured in 1898. The writing on the paper is dated 1863. This is a palpable fraud."
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh, I don't know," said I. "The Rundles are pretty reliable, plain, uneducated country people. Maybe the paper manufacturers tried to perpetrate a swindle."
|
||||
|
||||
And then Goodloe Banks went as wild as his education permitted. He dropped the glasses off his nose and glared at me.
|
||||
|
||||
"I've often told you you were a fool," he said. "You have let yourself be imposed upon by a clodhopper. And you have imposed upon me."
|
||||
|
||||
"How," I asked, "have I imposed upon you?"
|
||||
|
||||
"By your ignorance," said he. "Twice I have discovered serious flaws in your plans that a common-school education should have enabled you to avoid. And," he continued, "I have been put to expense that I could ill afford in pursuing this swindling quest. I am done with it."
|
||||
|
||||
I rose and pointed a large pewter spoon at him, fresh from the dishwater.
|
||||
|
||||
"Goodloe Banks," I said, "I care not one parboiled navy bean for your education. I always barely tolerated it in anyone, and I despised it in you. What has your learning done for you? It is a curse to yourself and a bore to your friends. Away," I said---"away with your watermarks and variations! They are nothing to me. They shall not deflect me from the quest."
|
||||
|
||||
I pointed with my spoon across the river to a small mountain shaped like a packsaddle.
|
||||
|
||||
"I am going to search that mountain," I went on, "for the treasure. Decide now whether you are in it or not. If you wish to let a watermark or a variation shake your soul, you are no true adventurer. Decide."
|
||||
|
||||
A white cloud of dust began to rise far down the river road. It was the mail-wagon from Hesperus to Chico. Goodloe flagged it.
|
||||
|
||||
"I am done with the swindle," said he, sourly. "No one but a fool would pay any attention to that paper now. Well, you always were a fool, Jim. I leave you to your fate."
|
||||
|
||||
He gathered his personal traps, climbed into the mail-wagon, adjusted his glasses nervously, and flew away in a cloud of dust.
|
||||
|
||||
After I had washed the dishes and staked the horses on new grass, I crossed the shallow river and made my way slowly through the cedar-brakes up to the top of the hill shaped like a packsaddle.
|
||||
|
||||
It was a wonderful June day. Never in my life had I seen so many birds, so many butterflies, dragonflies, grasshoppers, and such winged and stinged beasts of the air and fields.
|
||||
|
||||
I investigated the hill shaped like a packsaddle from base to summit. I found an absolute absence of signs relating to buried treasure. There was no pile of stones, no ancient blazes on the trees, none of the evidences of the three hundred thousand dollars, as set forth in the document of old man Rundle.
|
||||
|
||||
I came down the hill in the cool of the afternoon. Suddenly, out of the cedar-brake I stepped into a beautiful green valley where a tributary small stream ran into the Alamito River.
|
||||
|
||||
And there I was startled to see what I took to be a wild man, with unkempt beard and ragged hair, pursuing a giant butterfly with brilliant wings.
|
||||
|
||||
"Perhaps he is an escaped madman," I thought; and wondered how he had strayed so far from seats of education and learning.
|
||||
|
||||
And then I took a few more steps and saw a vine-covered cottage near the small stream. And in a little grassy glade I saw May Martha Mangum plucking wild flowers.
|
||||
|
||||
She straightened up and looked at me. For the first time since I knew her I saw her face---which was the color of the white keys of a new piano---turn pink. I walked toward her without a word. She let the gathered flowers trickle slowly from her hand to the grass.
|
||||
|
||||
"I knew you would come, Jim," she said clearly. "Father wouldn't let me write, but I knew you would come."
|
||||
|
||||
What followed you may guess---there was my wagon and team just across the river.
|
||||
|
||||
------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||||
|
||||
I've often wondered what good too much education is to a man if he can't use it for himself. If all the benefits of it are to go to others, where does it come in?
|
||||
|
||||
For May Martha Mangum abides with me. There is an eight-room house in a live-oak grove, and a piano with an automatic player, and a good start toward the three thousand head of cattle is under fence.
|
||||
|
||||
And when I ride home at night my pipe and slippers are put away in places where they cannot be found.
|
||||
|
||||
But who cares for that? Who cares---who cares?
|
||||
38
src/epub/text/buying-a-piano.md
Normal file
38
src/epub/text/buying-a-piano.md
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@ -0,0 +1,38 @@
|
||||
Buying a Piano {#buying-a-piano type="title"}
|
||||
--------------
|
||||
|
||||
A Houston man decided a few days ago to buy his wife a piano for a Christmas present. Now, there is more competition, rivalry, and push among piano agents than any other class of men. The insurance and fruit tree businesses are mild and retiring in comparison with the piano industry. The Houston man, who is a prominent lawyer, knew this, and he was careful not to tell too many people of his intentions, for fear the agents would annoy him. He inquired in a music store only once, regarding prices, etc., and intended after a week or so to make his selection.
|
||||
|
||||
When he left the store he went around by the post-office before going back to work.
|
||||
|
||||
When he reached his office he found three agents perched on his desk and in his chair waiting for him.
|
||||
|
||||
One of them got his mouth open first, and said: "Hear you want to buy a piano, sir. For sweetness, durability, finish, tone, workmanship, style, and quality the Steingay is---"
|
||||
|
||||
"Nixy," said another agent, pushing in between them and seizing the lawyer's collar. "You get a Chitterling. Only piano in the world. For sweetness, durability, finish, tone, workmanship---"
|
||||
|
||||
"Excuse me," said the third agent. "I can't stand by and see a man swindled. The Chronic and Bark piano, for sweetness, durability, finish---"
|
||||
|
||||
"Get out, every one of you," shouted the lawyer. "When I want a piano I'll buy the one I please. Get out of the room!"
|
||||
|
||||
The agents left, and the lawyer went to work on a brief. During the afternoon, five of his personal friends called to recommend different makes of pianos, and the lawyer began to get snappish.
|
||||
|
||||
He went out and got a drink and the bartender said: "Say, gent, me brudder works in a piano factory and he gimme de tip dat you'se wants to buy one of de tum-tums. Me brudder says dat for sweetness, durability, finish---"
|
||||
|
||||
"Devil take your brother," said the lawyer.
|
||||
|
||||
He got on the street car to go home and four agents were already aboard waiting for him. He dodged back before they saw him and stood on the platform. Presently the brakeman leaned over and whispered in his ear:
|
||||
|
||||
"Frien', the Epperson piano what me uncle handles in East Texas, fur sweetness, durability---"
|
||||
|
||||
"Stop the car," said the lawyer. He got off and skulked in a dark doorway until the four agents, who had also got off the car, rushed past, and then he picked up a big stone from the gutter and put it in his pocket. He went around a back way to his home and slipped up to the gate feeling pretty safe.
|
||||
|
||||
The minister of his church had been calling at the house, and came out the gate just as the lawyer reached it. The lawyer was the proud father of a brand-new, two-weeks-old baby, and the minister had just been admiring it, and wanted to congratulate him.
|
||||
|
||||
"My dear brother," said the minister. "Your house will soon be filled with joy and music. I think it will be a great addition to your life. Now, there is nothing in the world that for sweetness---"
|
||||
|
||||
"Confound you, you're drumming for a piano, too, are you?" yelled the lawyer, drawing the stone from his pocket. He fired away and knocked the minister's tall hat across the street, and kicked him in the shin. The minister believed in the church militant, and he gave the lawyer a one-two on the nose, and they clinched and rolled off the sidewalk on a pile of loose bricks. The neighbors heard the row and came out with shotguns and lanterns, and finally an understanding was arrived at.
|
||||
|
||||
The lawyer was considerably battered up, and the family doctor was sent for to patch him. As the doctor bent over him with sticking-plaster and a bottle of arnica, he said:
|
||||
|
||||
"You'll be out in a day or two, and then I want you to come around and buy a piano from my brother. The one he is agent for is acknowledged to be the best one for sweetness, durability, style, quality, and action in the world."
|
||||
56
src/epub/text/by-courier.md
Normal file
56
src/epub/text/by-courier.md
Normal file
@ -0,0 +1,56 @@
|
||||
By Courier {#by-courier type="title"}
|
||||
----------
|
||||
|
||||
It was neither the season nor the hour when the Park had frequenters; and it is likely that the young lady, who was seated on one of the benches at the side of the walk, had merely obeyed a sudden impulse to sit for a while and enjoy a foretaste of coming Spring.
|
||||
|
||||
She rested there, pensive and still. A certain melancholy that touched her countenance must have been of recent birth, for it had not yet altered the fine and youthful contours of her cheek, nor subdued the arch though resolute curve of her lips.
|
||||
|
||||
A tall young man came striding through the park along the path near which she sat. Behind him tagged a boy carrying a suitcase. At sight of the young lady, the man's face changed to red and back to pale again. He watched her countenance as he drew nearer, with hope and anxiety mingled on his own. He passed within a few yards of her, but he saw no evidence that she was aware of his presence or existence.
|
||||
|
||||
Some fifty yards further on he suddenly stopped and sat on a bench at one side. The boy dropped the suitcase and stared at him with wondering, shrewd eyes. The young man took out his handkerchief and wiped his brow. It was a good handkerchief, a good brow, and the young man was good to look at. He said to the boy:
|
||||
|
||||
"I want you to take a message to that young lady on that bench. Tell her I am on my way to the station, to leave for San Francisco, where I shall join that Alaska moose-hunting expedition. Tell her that, since she has commanded me neither to speak nor to write to her, I take this means of making one last appeal to her sense of justice, for the sake of what has been. Tell her that to condemn and discard one who has not deserved such treatment, without giving him her reasons or a chance to explain is contrary to her nature as I believe it to be. Tell her that I have thus, to a certain degree, disobeyed her injunctions, in the hope that she may yet be inclined to see justice done. Go, and tell her that."
|
||||
|
||||
The young man dropped a half-dollar into the boy's hand. The boy looked at him for a moment with bright, canny eyes out of a dirty, intelligent face, and then set off at a run. He approached the lady on the bench a little doubtfully, but unembarrassed. He touched the brim of the old plaid bicycle cap perched on the back of his head. The lady looked at him coolly, without prejudice or favour.
|
||||
|
||||
"Lady," he said, "dat gent on de oder bench sent yer a song and dance by me. If yer don't know de guy, and he's tryin' to do de Johnny act, say de word, and I'll call a cop in t'ree minutes. If yer does know him, and he's on de square, w'y I'll spiel yer de bunch of hot air he sent yer."
|
||||
|
||||
The young lady betrayed a faint interest.
|
||||
|
||||
"A song and dance!" she said, in a deliberate sweet voice that seemed to clothe her words in a diaphanous garment of impalpable irony. "A new idea---in the troubadour line, I suppose. I---used to know the gentleman who sent you, so I think it will hardly be necessary to call the police. You may execute your song and dance, but do not sing too loudly. It is a little early yet for open-air vaudeville, and we might attract attention."
|
||||
|
||||
"Awe," said the boy, with a shrug down the length of him, "yer know what I mean, lady. 'Tain't a turn, it's wind. He told me to tell yer he's got his collars and cuffs in dat grip for a scoot clean out to 'Frisco. Den he's goin' to shoot snowbirds in de Klondike. He says yer told him not to send 'round no more pink notes nor come hangin' over de garden gate, and he takes dis means of puttin' yer wise. He says yer refereed him out like a has-been, and never give him no chance to kick at de decision. He says yer swiped him, and never said why."
|
||||
|
||||
The slightly awakened interest in the young lady's eyes did not abate. Perhaps it was caused by either the originality or the audacity of the snowbird hunter, in thus circumventing her express commands against the ordinary modes of communication. She fixed her eye on a statue standing disconsolate in the dishevelled park, and spoke into the transmitter:
|
||||
|
||||
"Tell the gentleman that I need not repeat to him a description of my ideals. He knows what they have been and what they still are. So far as they touch on this case, absolute loyalty and truth are the ones paramount. Tell him that I have studied my own heart as well as one can, and I know its weakness as well as I do its needs. That is why I decline to hear his pleas, whatever they may be. I did not condemn him through hearsay or doubtful evidence, and that is why I made no charge. But, since he persists in hearing what he already well knows, you may convey the matter.
|
||||
|
||||
"Tell him that I entered the conservatory that evening from the rear, to cut a rose for my mother. Tell him I saw him and Miss Ashburton beneath the pink oleander. The tableau was pretty, but the pose and juxtaposition were too eloquent and evident to require explanation. I left the conservatory, and, at the same time, the rose and my ideal. You may carry that song and dance to your impresario."
|
||||
|
||||
"I'm shy on one word, lady. Jux---jux---put me wise on dat, will yer?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Juxtaposition---or you may call it propinquity---or, if you like, being rather too near for one maintaining the position of an ideal."
|
||||
|
||||
The gravel spun from beneath the boy's feet. He stood by the other bench. The man's eyes interrogated him, hungrily. The boy's were shining with the impersonal zeal of the translator.
|
||||
|
||||
"De lady says dat she's on to de fact dat gals is dead easy when a feller comes spielin' ghost stories and tryin' to make up, and dat's why she won't listen to no soft-soap. She says she caught yer dead to rights, huggin' a bunch o' calico in de hothouse. She sidestepped in to pull some posies and yer was squeezin' de oder gal to beat de band. She says it looked cute, all right all right, but it made her sick. She says yer better git busy, and make a sneak for de train."
|
||||
|
||||
The young man gave a low whistle and his eyes flashed with a sudden thought. His hand flew to the inside pocket of his coat, and drew out a handful of letters. Selecting one, he handed it to the boy, following it with a silver dollar from his vest-pocket.
|
||||
|
||||
"Give that letter to the lady," he said, "and ask her to read it. Tell her that it should explain the situation. Tell her that, if she had mingled a little trust with her conception of the ideal, much heartache might have been avoided. Tell her that the loyalty she prizes so much has never wavered. Tell her I am waiting for an answer."
|
||||
|
||||
The messenger stood before the lady.
|
||||
|
||||
"De gent says he's had de ski-bunk put on him widout no cause. He says he's no bum guy; and, lady, yer read dat letter, and I'll bet yer he's a white sport, all right."
|
||||
|
||||
The young lady unfolded the letter; somewhat doubtfully, and read it.
|
||||
|
||||
> [Dear Dr. Arnold]{type="z3998:salutation"}: I want to thank you for > your most kind and opportune aid to my daughter last Friday evening, > when she was overcome by an attack of her old heart-trouble in the > conservatory at Mrs. Waldron's reception. Had you not been near to > catch her as she fell and to render proper attention, we might have > lost her. I would be glad if you would call and undertake the > treatment of her case. > > Gratefully yours, > > Robert Ashburton.
|
||||
|
||||
The young lady refolded the letter, and handed it to the boy.
|
||||
|
||||
"De gent wants an answer," said the messenger. "Wot's de word?"
|
||||
|
||||
The lady's eyes suddenly flashed on him, bright, smiling and wet.
|
||||
|
||||
"Tell that guy on the other bench," she said, with a happy, tremulous laugh, "that his girl wants him."
|
||||
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