[Editorial] Modernize spelling
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Alex Cabal
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<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
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<article id="an-odd-character" epub:type="se:short-story">
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<h2 epub:type="title">An Odd Character</h2>
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<p>A <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Post</i> 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 semi-darkness, 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:</p>
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<p>A <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Post</i> 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:</p>
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<blockquote epub:type="z3998:poem">
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<p>
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<span>“Oh, moon, and darkening river, ye are wondrous strong;</span>
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<p>“Brace up,” said the writer. “I guess I think as much of her as you do. It’s for her benefit as well as mine. I’ve got to get a market for my stories in some way. It won’t hurt Louise. She’s healthy and sound. Her heart goes as strong as a ninety-eight-cent watch. It’ll last for only a minute, and then I’ll step out and explain to her. You really owe it to me to give me the chance, Westbrook.”</p>
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<p>Editor Westbrook at length yielded, though but half willingly. And in the half of him that consented lurked the vivisectionist that is in all of us. Let him who has not used the scalpel rise and stand in his place. Pity ’tis that there are not enough rabbits and guinea-pigs to go around.</p>
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<p>The two experimenters in Art left the Square and hurried eastward and then to the south until they arrived in the Gramercy neighborhood. Within its high iron railings the little park had put on its smart coat of vernal green, and was admiring itself in its fountain mirror. Outside the railings the hollow square of crumbling houses, shells of a bygone gentry, leaned as if in ghostly gossip over the forgotten doings of the vanished quality. <i xml:lang="la">Sic transit gloria urbis.</i></p>
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<p>A block or two north of the Park, Dawe steered the editor again eastward, then, after covering a short distance, into a lofty but narrow flathouse burdened with a floridly over-decorated facade. To the fifth story they toiled, and Dawe, panting, pushed his latchkey into the door of one of the front flats.</p>
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<p>A block or two north of the Park, Dawe steered the editor again eastward, then, after covering a short distance, into a lofty but narrow flathouse burdened with a floridly over-decorated façade. To the fifth story they toiled, and Dawe, panting, pushed his latchkey into the door of one of the front flats.</p>
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<p>When the door opened Editor Westbrook saw, with feelings of pity, how meanly and meagerly the rooms were furnished.</p>
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<p>“Get a chair, if you can find one,” said Dawe, “while I hunt up pen and ink. Hello, what’s this? Here’s a note from Louise. She must have left it there when she went out this morning.”</p>
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<p>He picked up an envelope that lay on the centre-table and tore it open. He began to read the letter that he drew out of it; and once having begun it aloud he so read it through to the end. These are the words that Editor Westbrook heard:</p>
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<p>“Solly puts six thousand dollars in century bills in one pocket of his brown ducks, and bills of lading for ten thousand dollars on Eastern banks in another. Then I resume diplomatic relations with the <abbr>S.A. & A.P.</abbr>, and we hike in a northwesterly direction on our circuitous route to the spice gardens of the Yankee Orient.</p>
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<p>“We stopped in San Antonio long enough for Solly to buy some clothes, and eight rounds of drinks for the guests and employees of the Menger Hotel, and order four Mexican saddles with silver trimmings and white Angora <i xml:lang="es">suaderos</i> to be shipped down to the ranch. From there we made a big jump to <abbr>St.</abbr> Louis. We got there in time for dinner; and I put our thumbprints on the register of the most expensive hotel in the city.</p>
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<p>“ ‘Now,’ says I to Solly, with a wink at myself, ‘here’s the first dinner-station we’ve struck where we can get a real good plate of beans.’ And while he was up in his room trying to draw water out of the gas-pipe, I got one finger in the buttonhole of the head waiter’s Tuxedo, drew him apart, inserted a two-dollar bill, and closed him up again.</p>
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<p>“ ‘Frankoyse,’ says I, ‘I have a pal here for dinner that’s been subsisting for years on cereals and short stogies. You see the chef and order a dinner for us such as you serve to Dave Francis and the general passenger agent of the Iron Mountain when they eat here. We’ve got more than Bernhardt’s tent full of money; and we want the nose-bags crammed with all the Chief Deveries de cuisine. Object is no expense. Now, show us.’</p>
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<p>“ ‘Frankoyse,’ says I, ‘I have a pal here for dinner that’s been subsisting for years on cereals and short stogies. You see the chef and order a dinner for us such as you serve to Dave Francis and the general passenger agent of the Iron Mountain when they eat here. We’ve got more than Bernhardt’s tent full of money; and we want the nosebags crammed with all the Chief Deveries de cuisine. Object is no expense. Now, show us.’</p>
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<p>“At six o’clock me and Solly sat down to dinner. Spread! There’s nothing been seen like it since the Cambon snack. It was all served at once. The chef called it <em>dinnay à la poker</em>. It’s a famous thing among the gormands of the West. The dinner comes in threes of a kind. There was guinea-fowls, guinea-pigs, and Guinness’s stout; roast veal, mock turtle soup, and chicken pâté; shad-roe, caviar, and tapioca; canvasback duck, canvasback ham, and cottontail rabbit; Philadelphia capon, fried snails, and sloe-gin—and so on, in threes. The idea was that you eat nearly all you can of them, and then the waiter takes away the discard and gives you pears to fill on.</p>
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<p>“I was sure Solly would be tickled to death with these hands, after the bobtail flushes he’d been eating on the ranch; and I was a little anxious that he should, for I didn’t remember his having honoured my efforts with a smile since we left Atascosa City.</p>
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<p>“We were in the main dining-room, and there was a fine-dressed crowd there, all talking loud and enjoyable about the two <abbr>St.</abbr> Louis topics, the water supply and the colour line. They mix the two subjects so fast that strangers often think they are discussing watercolours; and that has given the old town something of a rep as an art centre. And over in the corner was a fine brass band playing; and now, thinks I, Solly will become conscious of the spiritual oats of life nourishing and exhilarating his system. But <i>nong, mong frang</i>.</p>
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<p>“In a few minutes Paisley drops around, with oil of bergamot on his hair, and sits on the other side of <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Jessup, and inaugurates a sad tale of adventure in which him and Pieface Lumley has a skinning-match of dead cows in ’95 for a silver-mounted saddle in the Santa Rita valley during the nine months’ drought.</p>
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<p>“Now, from the start of that courtship I had Paisley Fish hobbled and tied to a post. Each one of us had a different system of reaching out for the easy places in the female heart. Paisley’s scheme was to petrify ’em with wonderful relations of events that he had either come across personally or in large print. I think he must have got his idea of subjugation from one of Shakespeare’s shows I see once called ‘Othello.’ There is a coloured man in it who acquires a duke’s daughter by disbursing to her a mixture of the talk turned out by Rider Haggard, Lew Dockstader, and <abbr>Dr.</abbr> Parkhurst. But that style of courting don’t work well off the stage.</p>
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<p>“Now, I give you my own recipe for inveigling a woman into that state of affairs when she can be referred to as ‘née Jones.’ Learn how to pick up her hand and hold it, and she’s yours. It ain’t so easy. Some men grab at it so much like they was going to set a dislocation of the shoulder that you can smell the arnica and hear ’em tearing off bandages. Some take it up like a hot horseshoe, and hold it off at arm’s length like a druggist pouring tincture of asafoetida in a bottle. And most of ’em catch hold of it and drag it right out before the lady’s eyes like a boy finding a baseball in the grass, without giving her a chance to forget that the hand is growing on the end of her arm. Them ways are all wrong.</p>
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<p>“I’ll tell you the right way. Did you ever see a man sneak out in the back yard and pick up a rock to throw at a tomcat that was sitting on a fence looking at him? He pretends he hasn’t got a thing in his hand, and that the cat don’t see him, and that he don’t see the cat. That’s the idea. Never drag her hand out where she’ll have to take notice of it. Don’t let her know that you think she knows you have the least idea she is aware you are holding her hand. That was my rule of tactics; and as far as Paisley’s serenade about hostilities and misadventure went, he might as well have been reading to her a time-table of the Sunday trains that stop at Ocean Grove, New Jersey.</p>
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<p>“I’ll tell you the right way. Did you ever see a man sneak out in the back yard and pick up a rock to throw at a tomcat that was sitting on a fence looking at him? He pretends he hasn’t got a thing in his hand, and that the cat don’t see him, and that he don’t see the cat. That’s the idea. Never drag her hand out where she’ll have to take notice of it. Don’t let her know that you think she knows you have the least idea she is aware you are holding her hand. That was my rule of tactics; and as far as Paisley’s serenade about hostilities and misadventure went, he might as well have been reading to her a timetable of the Sunday trains that stop at Ocean Grove, New Jersey.</p>
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<p>“One night when I beat Paisley to the bench by one pipeful, my friendship gets subsidised for a minute, and I asks <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Jessup if she didn’t think a <i epub:type="z3998:grapheme">H</i> was easier to write than a <i epub:type="z3998:grapheme">J</i>.’ In a second her head was mashing the oleander flower in my buttonhole, and I leaned over and—but I didn’t.</p>
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<p>“ ‘If you don’t mind,’ says I, standing up, ‘we’ll wait for Paisley to come before finishing this. I’ve never done anything dishonourable yet to our friendship, and this won’t be quite fair.’</p>
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<p>“ ‘<abbr>Mr.</abbr> Hicks,’ says <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Jessup, looking at me peculiar in the dark, ‘if it wasn’t for but one thing, I’d ask you to hike yourself down the gulch and never disresume your visits to my house.’</p>
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<hr/>
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<p>“De boys an’ de tinhorns gimme de laugh and called me ‘Pious Jake,’ but today I went to der big church where you preaches, reverend. I says to myself dat I showed you round de Tenderloin, and stood by you when de rounders guyed you, and never let de coves work de flimflam on yer, and when I heard tell of the big sermons yer was preachin’ and de hot shot yer was shootin’ into de tough gang, I was real proud, and I felt like I kinder had a share in de business fer havin’ gone de rounds with yer. I says I’ll hear dat cove preach, and maybe de bruised reed’ll git a chance to straighten up—‘scuse me, reverend, don’t git skeared, I ain’t goin’ to fall and spile yer carpet. I’m a little groggy. That cut on my head is bled a heap, but I ain’t drunk.”</p>
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<p>“Perhaps you would like—possibly, if you would sit—just for a moment—”</p>
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<p>“Thanks, reverend, I won’t sit down. I’ve jest about finished shootin’ in my dye stuff. I goes to dat church and I goes in. I hears music playin’, and I suppose them was angels singin’ up in de peanut gallery, an’ I smelt—such a smell ov violets and stuff like de hay when we used to cut it in de meaders when I wuz a kid. Dey wuz fine people in welvets and folde-rols, and way over at de oder end was you, reverend, standin’ in de gran’ stan’, lookin’ carm and fur away like, jest as yer did at Gilligan’s ball when de duck tried to guy yer, and I went in fur to hear yer preach.”</p>
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<p>“Thanks, reverend, I won’t sit down. I’ve jest about finished shootin’ in my dye stuff. I goes to dat church and I goes in. I hears music playin’, and I suppose them was angels singin’ up in de peanut gallery, an’ I smelt—such a smell ov violets and stuff like de hay when we used to cut it in de meaders when I wuz a kid. Dey wuz fine people in welvets and folderols, and way over at de oder end was you, reverend, standin’ in de gran’ stan’, lookin’ carm and fur away like, jest as yer did at Gilligan’s ball when de duck tried to guy yer, and I went in fur to hear yer preach.”</p>
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<hr/>
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<p>A flattering sentence from the report of his sermon in the morning paper came to the preacher’s mind:</p>
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<p>“His wonderful, magnetic influence is as powerful to move the hearts of his roughest, most unlettered hearer, as it is to touch a responsive chord in the cultured brain of the man of refinement and taste.”</p>
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<p>“Boys,” said Ranse, “I’m much obliged. I was hoping you would. But I didn’t like to ask.”</p>
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<p>Half a dozen six-shooters began to pop—awful yells rent the air—Long Collins galloped wildly across Curly’s bed, dragging the saddle after him. That was merely their way of gently awaking their victim. Then they hazed him for an hour, carefully and ridiculously, after the code of cow camps. Whenever he uttered protest they held him stretched over a roll of blankets and thrashed him woefully with a pair of leather leggings.</p>
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<p>And all this meant that Curly had won his spurs, that he was receiving the puncher’s accolade. Nevermore would they be polite to him. But he would be their “pardner” and stirrup-brother, foot to foot.</p>
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<p>When the fooling was ended all hands made a raid on Joe’s big coffee-pot by the fire for a java nightcap. Ranse watched the new knight carefully to see if he understood and was worthy. Curly limped with his cup of coffee to a log and sat upon it. Long Collins followed and sat by his side. Buck Rabb went and sat at the other. Curly—grinned.</p>
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<p>When the fooling was ended all hands made a raid on Joe’s big coffeepot by the fire for a java nightcap. Ranse watched the new knight carefully to see if he understood and was worthy. Curly limped with his cup of coffee to a log and sat upon it. Long Collins followed and sat by his side. Buck Rabb went and sat at the other. Curly—grinned.</p>
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<p>And then Ranse furnished Curly with mounts and saddle and equipment, and turned him over to Buck Rabb, instructing him to finish the job.</p>
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<p>Three weeks later Ranse rode from the ranch into Rabb’s camp, which was then in Snake Valley. The boys were saddling for the day’s ride. He sought out Long Collins among them.</p>
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<p>“How about that bronco?” he asked.</p>
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