From b487af2b50359e188825d595f59234ab7bd280a7 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: vr8hub Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2019 21:45:46 -0600 Subject: [PATCH] [StrictlyBus] Initial commit --- LICENSE.md | 3 + images/cover.jpg | Bin 0 -> 9036 bytes images/cover.svg | 28 + images/titlepage.svg | 21 + src/META-INF/container.xml | 6 + src/epub/content.opf | 90 + src/epub/css/core.css | 196 + src/epub/css/local.css | 2 + src/epub/images/logo.svg | 60 + src/epub/onix.xml | 38 + src/epub/text/body.xhtml | 7989 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ src/epub/text/colophon.xhtml | 42 + src/epub/text/imprint.xhtml | 20 + src/epub/text/titlepage.xhtml | 13 + src/epub/text/uncopyright.xhtml | 28 + src/epub/toc.xhtml | 48 + src/mimetype | 1 + 17 files changed, 8585 insertions(+) create mode 100644 LICENSE.md create mode 100644 images/cover.jpg create mode 100644 images/cover.svg create mode 100644 images/titlepage.svg create mode 100644 src/META-INF/container.xml create mode 100644 src/epub/content.opf create mode 100644 src/epub/css/core.css create mode 100644 src/epub/css/local.css create mode 100644 src/epub/images/logo.svg create mode 100644 src/epub/onix.xml create mode 100644 src/epub/text/body.xhtml create mode 100644 src/epub/text/colophon.xhtml create mode 100644 src/epub/text/imprint.xhtml create mode 100644 src/epub/text/titlepage.xhtml create mode 100644 src/epub/text/uncopyright.xhtml create mode 100644 src/epub/toc.xhtml create mode 100644 src/mimetype diff --git a/LICENSE.md b/LICENSE.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..98f3d87 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.md @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +The source text and artwork in this repository are believed to be in the United States public domain; that is, they are believed to be free of copyright restrictions in the United States. Copyright laws vary from country to country, so check your local laws before downloading or using the content in this repository. + +The creators of, and contributors to, this repository hereby dedicate their contributions to the worldwide public domain under the terms in the CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication, available at . diff --git a/images/cover.jpg b/images/cover.jpg new file mode 100644 index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..d451b82ea88be1fa19b50067c0a7c43100c05630 GIT binary patch literal 9036 zcmeI&KMKMy6bA5@7Nuhgx^)samkbfQxs;+VUZ6t{(ZNyBu}A3W;4K8{0Xq6`=;SqG zlNN~%g1B_}zAhoWmhdY)LWn%eiri(ih=?(wdHs;Q(T;o_?)yCCoQH8(Cr)FPG)r}| zHV2(T<^BpAjmLoq5+RaDzR4dyN1n)Y9MN0bY($pFY>&x;hI*M~rZ2DLsKpcQ&3TL= z009U<00Izz00bZa0SG_<0uX=z1Rwwb2tWV=e+$${(}U&=+WeG0nYLVW3S$UB00I!` ztiYFEZljlX_P1eS5P$##-UQT@5%+UrURLdu5jLZvq}4=qd{5sXF + + The cover for the Standard Ebooks edition of Strictly Business, by O. Henry + + + + STRICTLY BUSINESS + O. 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STRICTLY BUSINESS

+

I suppose you know all about the stage and stage people. You've been +touched with and by actors, and you read the newspaper criticisms and +the jokes in the weeklies about the Rialto and the chorus girls and the +long-haired tragedians. And I suppose that a condensed list of your +ideas about the mysterious stageland would boil down to something like +this:

+ +

Leading ladies have five husbands, paste diamonds, and figures no better +than your own (madam) if they weren't padded. Chorus girls are +inseparable from peroxide, Panhards and Pittsburg. All shows walk back +to New York on tan oxford and railroad ties. Irreproachable actresses +reserve the comic-landlady part for their mothers on Broadway and their +step-aunts on the road. Kyrle Bellew's real name is Boyle O'Kelley. The +ravings of John McCullough in the phonograph were stolen from the first +sale of the Ellen Terry memoirs. Joe Weber is funnier than E. H. +Sothern; but Henry Miller is getting older than he was.

+ +

All theatrical people on leaving the theatre at night drink champagne +and eat lobsters until noon the next day. After all, the moving pictures +have got the whole bunch pounded to a pulp.

+ +

Now, few of us know the real life of the stage people. If we did, the +profession might be more overcrowded than it is. We look askance at the +players with an eye full of patronizing superiority—and we go home and +practise all sorts of elocution and gestures in front of our looking +glasses.

+ +

Latterly there has been much talk of the actor people in a new light. It +seems to have been divulged that instead of being motoring bacchanalians +and diamond-hungry loreleis they are businesslike folk, students and +ascetics with childer and homes and libraries, owning real estate, and +conducting their private affairs in as orderly and unsensational a +manner as any of us good citizens who are bound to the chariot wheels of +the gas, rent, coal, ice, and wardmen.

+ +

Whether the old or the new report of the sock-and-buskiners be the true +one is a surmise that has no place here. I offer you merely this little +story of two strollers; and for proof of its truth I can show you only +the dark patch above the cast-iron of the stage-entrance door of +Keetor's old vaudeville theatre made there by the petulant push of +gloved hands too impatient to finger the clumsy thumb-latch—and where I +last saw Cherry whisking through like a swallow into her nest, on time +to the minute, as usual, to dress for her act.

+ +

The vaudeville team of Hart & Cherry was an inspiration. Bob Hart had +been roaming through the Eastern and Western circuits for four years +with a mixed-up act comprising a monologue, three lightning changes +with songs, a couple of imitations of celebrated imitators, and a +buck-and-wing dance that had drawn a glance of approval from the +bass-viol player in more than one house—than which no performer ever +received more satisfactory evidence of good work.

+ +

The greatest treat an actor can have is to witness the pitiful +performance with which all other actors desecrate the stage. In order to +give himself this pleasure he will often forsake the sunniest Broadway +corner between Thirty-fourth and Forty-fourth to attend a matinée +offering by his less gifted brothers. Once during the lifetime of a +minstrel joke one comes to scoff and remains to go through with that +most difficult exercise of Thespian muscles—the audible contact of the +palm of one hand against the palm of the other.

+ +

One afternoon Bob Hart presented his solvent, serious, well-known +vaudevillian face at the box-office window of a rival attraction and got +his d. h. coupon for an orchestra seat.

+ +

A, B, C, and D glowed successively on the announcement spaces and passed +into oblivion, each plunging Mr. Hart deeper into gloom. Others of the +audience shrieked, squirmed, whistled, and applauded; but Bob Hart, "All +the Mustard and a Whole Show in Himself," sat with his face as long and +his hands as far apart as a boy holding a hank of yarn for his +grandmother to wind into a ball.

+ +

But when H came on, "The Mustard" suddenly sat up straight. H was the +happy alphabetical prognosticator of Winona Cherry, in Character Songs +and Impersonations. There were scarcely more than two bites to Cherry; +but she delivered the merchandise tied with a pink cord and charged to +the old man's account. She first showed you a deliciously dewy and +ginghamy country girl with a basket of property daisies who informed you +ingenuously that there were other things to be learned at the old log +school-house besides cipherin' and nouns, especially "When the Teach-er +Kept Me in." Vanishing, with a quick flirt of gingham apron-strings, +she reappeared in considerably less than a "trice" as a fluffy +"Parisienne"—so near does Art bring the old red mill to the Moulin +Rouge. And then—

+ +

But you know the rest. And so did Bob Hart; but he saw somebody else. He +thought he saw that Cherry was the only professional on the short order +stage that he had seen who seemed exactly to fit the part of "Helen +Grimes" in the sketch he had written and kept tucked away in the tray +of his trunk. Of course Bob Hart, as well as every other normal actor, +grocer, newspaper man, professor, curb broker, and farmer, has a play +tucked away somewhere. They tuck 'em in trays of trunks, trunks of +trees, desks, haymows, pigeonholes, inside pockets, safe-deposit vaults, +handboxes, and coal cellars, waiting for Mr. Frohman to call. They +belong among the fifty-seven different kinds.

+ +

But Bob Hart's sketch was not destined to end in a pickle jar. He called +it "Mice Will Play." He had kept it quiet and hidden away ever since he +wrote it, waiting to find a partner who fitted his conception of "Helen +Grimes." And here was "Helen" herself, with all the innocent abandon, +the youth, the sprightliness, and the flawless stage art that his +critical taste demanded.

+ +

After the act was over Hart found the manager in the box office, and got +Cherry's address. At five the next afternoon he called at the musty old +house in the West Forties and sent up his professional card.

+ +

By daylight, in a secular shirtwaist and plain voile skirt, with her +hair curbed and her Sister of Charity eyes, Winona Cherry might have +been playing the part of Prudence Wise, the deacon's daughter, in the +great (unwritten) New England drama not yet entitled anything.

+ +

"I know your act, Mr. Hart," she said after she had looked over his card +carefully. "What did you wish to see me about?"

+ +

"I saw you work last night," said Hart. "I've written a sketch that I've +been saving up. It's for two; and I think you can do the other part. I +thought I'd see you about it."

+ +

"Come in the parlor," said Miss Cherry. "I've been wishing for something +of the sort. I think I'd like to act instead of doing turns."

+ +

Bob Hart drew his cherished "Mice Will Play" from his pocket, and read +it to her.

+ +

"Read it again, please," said Miss Cherry.

+ +

And then she pointed out to him clearly how it could be improved by +introducing a messenger instead of a telephone call, and cutting the +dialogue just before the climax while they were struggling with the +pistol, and by completely changing the lines and business of Helen +Grimes at the point where her jealousy overcomes her. Hart yielded to +all her strictures without argument. She had at once put her finger on +the sketch's weaker points. That was her woman's intuition that he had +lacked. At the end of their talk Hart was willing to stake the judgment, +experience, and savings of his four years of vaudeville that "Mice Will +Play" would blossom into a perennial flower in the garden of the +circuits. Miss Cherry was slower to decide. After many puckerings of her +smooth young brow and tappings on her small, white teeth with the end of +a lead pencil she gave out her dictum.

+ +

"Mr. Hart," said she, "I believe your sketch is going to win out. That +Grimes part fits me like a shrinkable flannel after its first trip to a +handless hand laundry. I can make it stand out like the colonel of the +Forty-fourth Regiment at a Little Mothers' Bazaar. And I've seen you +work. I know what you can do with the other part. But business is +business. How much do you get a week for the stunt you do now?"

+ +

"Two hundred," answered Hart.

+ +

"I get one hundred for mine," said Cherry. "That's about the natural +discount for a woman. But I live on it and put a few simoleons every +week under the loose brick in the old kitchen hearth. The stage is all +right. I love it; but there's something else I love better—that's a +little country home, some day, with Plymouth Rock chickens and six ducks +wandering around the yard.

+ +

"Now, let me tell you, Mr. Hart, I am STRICTLY BUSINESS. If you want me +to play the opposite part in your sketch, I'll do it. And I believe we +can make it go. And there's something else I want to say: There's no +nonsense in my make-up; I'm on the level, and I'm on the stage for +what it pays me, just as other girls work in stores and offices. I'm +going to save my money to keep me when I'm past doing my stunts. No Old +Ladies' Home or Retreat for Imprudent Actresses for me.

+ +

"If you want to make this a business partnership, Mr. Hart, with all +nonsense cut out of it, I'm in on it. I know something about vaudeville +teams in general; but this would have to be one in particular. I want +you to know that I'm on the stage for what I can cart away from it every +pay-day in a little manila envelope with nicotine stains on it, where +the cashier has licked the flap. It's kind of a hobby of mine to want to +cravenette myself for plenty of rainy days in the future. I want you to +know just how I am. I don't know what an all-night restaurant looks +like; I drink only weak tea; I never spoke to a man at a stage entrance +in my life, and I've got money in five savings banks."

+ +

"Miss Cherry," said Bob Hart in his smooth, serious tones, "you're in +on your own terms. I've got 'strictly business' pasted in my hat and +stenciled on my make-up box. When I dream of nights I always see a +five-room bungalow on the north shore of Long Island, with a Jap cooking +clam broth and duckling in the kitchen, and me with the title deeds to +the place in my pongee coat pocket, swinging in a hammock on the side +porch, reading Stanley's 'Explorations into Africa.' And nobody else +around. You never was interested in Africa, was you, Miss Cherry?"

+ +

"Not any," said Cherry. "What I'm going to do with my money is to bank +it. You can get four per cent. on deposits. Even at the salary I've been +earning, I've figured out that in ten years I'd have an income of about +$50 a month just from the interest alone. Well, I might invest some of +the principal in a little business—say, trimming hats or a beauty +parlor, and make more."

+ +

"Well," said Hart, "You've got the proper idea all right, all right, +anyhow. There are mighty few actors that amount to anything at all who +couldn't fix themselves for the wet days to come if they'd save their +money instead of blowing it. I'm glad you've got the correct business +idea of it, Miss Cherry. I think the same way; and I believe this sketch +will more than double what both of us earn now when we get it shaped +up."

+ +

The subsequent history of "Mice Will Play" is the history of all +successful writings for the stage. Hart & Cherry cut it, pieced it, +remodeled it, performed surgical operations on the dialogue and +business, changed the lines, restored 'em, added more, cut 'em out, +renamed it, gave it back the old name, rewrote it, substituted a dagger +for the pistol, restored the pistol—put the sketch through all the +known processes of condensation and improvement.

+ +

They rehearsed it by the old-fashioned boardinghouse clock in the rarely +used parlor until its warning click at five minutes to the hour would +occur every time exactly half a second before the click of the unloaded +revolver that Helen Grimes used in rehearsing the thrilling climax of +the sketch.

+ +

Yes, that was a thriller and a piece of excellent work. In the act a +real 32-caliber revolver was used loaded with a real cartridge. Helen +Grimes, who is a Western girl of decidedly Buffalo Billish skill and +daring, is tempestuously in love with Frank Desmond, the private +secretary and confidential prospective son-in-law of her father, +"Arapahoe" Grimes, quarter-million-dollar cattle king, owning a ranch +that, judging by the scenery, is in either the Bad Lands or Amagansett, +L. I. Desmond (in private life Mr. Bob Hart) wears puttees and Meadow +Brook Hunt riding trousers, and gives his address as New York, leaving +you to wonder why he comes to the Bad Lands or Amagansett (as the case +may be) and at the same time to conjecture mildly why a cattleman should +want puttees about his ranch with a secretary in 'em.

+ +

Well, anyhow, you know as well as I do that we all like that kind of +play, whether we admit it or not—something along in between "Bluebeard, +Jr.," and "Cymbeline" played in the Russian.

+ +

There were only two parts and a half in "Mice Will Play." Hart and +Cherry were the two, of course; and the half was a minor part always +played by a stage hand, who merely came in once in a Tuxedo coat and a +panic to announce that the house was surrounded by Indians, and to turn +down the gas fire in the grate by the manager's orders.

+ +

There was another girl in the sketch—a Fifth Avenue society +swelless—who was visiting the ranch and who had sirened Jack Valentine +when he was a wealthy club-man on lower Third Avenue before he lost +his money. This girl appeared on the stage only in the photographic +state—Jack had her Sarony stuck up on the mantel of the Amagan—of the +Bad Lands droring room. Helen was jealous, of course.

+ +

And now for the thriller. Old "Arapahoe" Grimes dies of angina pectoris +one night—so Helen informs us in a stage-ferryboat whisper over the +footlights—while only his secretary was present. And that same day he +was known to have had $647,000 in cash in his (ranch) library just +received for the sale of a drove of beeves in the East (that accounts +for the price we pay for steak!). The cash disappears at the same time. +Jack Valentine was the only person with the ranchman when he made his +(alleged) croak.

+ +

"Gawd knows I love him; but if he has done this deed—" you sabe, don't +you? And then there are some mean things said about the Fifth Avenue +Girl—who doesn't come on the stage—and can we blame her, with the +vaudeville trust holding down prices until one actually must be buttoned +in the back by a call boy, maids cost so much?

+ +

But, wait. Here's the climax. Helen Grimes, chaparralish as she can be, +is goaded beyond imprudence. She convinces herself that Jack Valentine +is not only a falsetto, but a financier. To lose at one fell swoop +$647,000 and a lover in riding trousers with angles in the sides like +the variations on the chart of a typhoid-fever patient is enough to make +any perfect lady mad. So, then!

+ +

They stand in the (ranch) library, which is furnished with mounted elk +heads (didn't the Elks have a fish fry in Amagensett once?), and the +dénouement begins. I know of no more interesting time in the run of a +play unless it be when the prologue ends.

+ +

Helen thinks Jack has taken the money. Who else was there to take it? +The box-office manager was at the front on his job; the orchestra hadn't +left their seats; and no man could get past "Old Jimmy," the stage +door-man, unless he could show a Skye terrier or an automobile as a +guarantee of eligibility.

+ +

Goaded beyond imprudence (as before said), Helen says to Jack Valentine: +"Robber and thief—and worse yet, stealer of trusting hearts, this +should be your fate!"

+ +

With that out she whips, of course, the trusty 32-caliber.

+ +

"But I will be merciful," goes on Helen. "You shall live—that will be +your punishment. I will show you how easily I could have sent you to the +death that you deserve. There is her picture on the mantel. I will +send through her more beautiful face the bullet that should have pierced +your craven heart."

+ +

And she does it. And there's no fake blank cartridges or assistants +pulling strings. Helen fires. The bullet—the actual bullet—goes +through the face of the photograph—and then strikes the hidden spring +of the sliding panel in the wall—and lo! the panel slides, and there is +the missing $647,000 in convincing stacks of currency and bags of gold. +It's great. You know how it is. Cherry practised for two months at a +target on the roof of her boarding house. It took good shooting. In the +sketch she had to hit a brass disk only three inches in diameter, +covered by wall paper in the panel; and she had to stand in exactly the +same spot every night, and the photo had to be in exactly the same spot, +and she had to shoot steady and true every time.

+ +

Of course old "Arapahoe" had tucked the funds away there in the secret +place; and, of course, Jack hadn't taken anything except his salary +(which really might have come under the head of "obtaining money under"; +but that is neither here nor there); and, of course, the New York girl +was really engaged to a concrete house contractor in the Bronx; and, +necessarily, Jack and Helen ended in a half-Nelson—and there you are.

+ +

After Hart and Cherry had gotten "Mice Will Play" flawless, they had a +try-out at a vaudeville house that accommodates. The sketch was a house +wrecker. It was one of those rare strokes of talent that inundates a +theatre from the roof down. The gallery wept; and the orchestra seats, +being dressed for it, swam in tears.

+ +

After the show the booking agents signed blank checks and pressed +fountain pens upon Hart and Cherry. Five hundred dollars a week was what +it panned out.

+ +

That night at 11:30 Bob Hart took off his hat and bade Cherry good night +at her boarding-house door.

+ +

"Mr. Hart," said she thoughtfully, "come inside just a few minutes. +We've got our chance now to make good and make money. What we want to do +is to cut expenses every cent we can, and save all we can."

+ +

"Right," said Bob. "It's business with me. You've got your scheme for +banking yours; and I dream every night of that bungalow with the Jap +cook and nobody around to raise trouble. Anything to enlarge the net +receipts will engage my attention."

+ +

"Come inside just a few minutes," repeated Cherry, deeply thoughtful. +"I've got a proposition to make to you that will reduce our expenses a +lot and help you work out your own future and help me work out mine—and +all on business principles." + +


+ +

"Mice Will Play" had a tremendously successful run in New York for ten +weeks—rather neat for a vaudeville sketch—and then it started on the +circuits. Without following it, it may be said that it was a solid +drawing card for two years without a sign of abated popularity.

+ +

Sam Packard, manager of one of Keetor's New York houses, said of Hart & +Cherry:

+ +

"As square and high-toned a little team as ever came over the circuit. +It's a pleasure to read their names on the booking list. Quiet, hard +workers, no Johnny and Mabel nonsense, on the job to the minute, +straight home after their act, and each of 'em as gentlemanlike as a +lady. I don't expect to handle any attractions that give me less trouble +or more respect for the profession."

+ +

And now, after so much cracking of a nutshell, here is the kernel of the +story:

+ +

At the end of its second season "Mice Will Play" came back to New York +for another run at the roof gardens and summer theatres. There was never +any trouble in booking it at the top-notch price. Bob Hart had his +bungalow nearly paid for, and Cherry had so many savings-deposit bank +books that she had begun to buy sectional bookcases on the instalment +plan to hold them.

+ +

I tell you these things to assure you, even if you can't believe it, +that many, very many of the stage people are workers with abiding +ambitions—just the same as the man who wants to be president, or the +grocery clerk who wants a home in Flatbush, or a lady who is anxious +to flop out of the Count-pan into the Prince-fire. And I hope I may be +allowed to say, without chipping into the contribution basket, that they +often move in a mysterious way their wonders to perform.

+ +

But, listen.

+ +

At the first performance of "Mice Will Play" in New York at the +Westphalia (no hams alluded to) Theatre, Winona Cherry was nervous. When +she fired at the photograph of the Eastern beauty on the mantel, the +bullet, instead of penetrating the photo and then striking the disk, +went into the lower left side of Bob Hart's neck. Not expecting to get +it there, Hart collapsed neatly, while Cherry fainted in a most artistic +manner.

+ +

The audience, surmising that they viewed a comedy instead of a tragedy +in which the principals were married or reconciled, applauded with great +enjoyment. The Cool Head, who always graces such occasions, rang the +curtain down, and two platoons of scene shifters respectively and more +or less respectfully removed Hart & Cherry from the stage. The next turn +went on, and all went as merry as an alimony bell.

+ +

The stage hands found a young doctor at the stage entrance who was +waiting for a patient with a decoction of Am. B'ty roses. The doctor +examined Hart carefully and laughed heartily.

+ +

"No headlines for you, Old Sport," was his diagnosis. "If it had been +two inches to the left it would have undermined the carotid artery as +far as the Red Front Drug Store in Flatbush and Back Again. As it is, +you just get the property man to bind it up with a flounce torn from any +one of the girls' Valenciennes and go home and get it dressed by the +parlor-floor practitioner on your block, and you'll be all right. Excuse +me; I've got a serious case outside to look after."

+ +

After that, Bob Hart looked up and felt better. And then to where he lay +came Vincente, the Tramp Juggler, great in his line. Vincente, a solemn +man from Brattleboro, Vt., named Sam Griggs at home, sent toys and maple +sugar home to two small daughters from every town he played. Vincente +had moved on the same circuits with Hart & Cherry, and was their +peripatetic friend.

+ +

"Bob," said Vincente in his serious way, "I'm glad it's no worse. The +little lady is wild about you."

+ +

"Who?" asked Hart.

+ +

"Cherry," said the juggler. "We didn't know how bad you were hurt; and +we kept her away. It's taking the manager and three girls to hold her."

+ +

"It was an accident, of course," said Hart. "Cherry's all right. She +wasn't feeling in good trim or she couldn't have done it. There's no +hard feelings. She's strictly business. The doctor says I'll be on the +job again in three days. Don't let her worry."

+ +

"Man," said Sam Griggs severely, puckering his old, smooth, lined face, +"are you a chess automaton or a human pincushion? Cherry's crying her +heart out for you—calling 'Bob, Bob,' every second, with them holding +her hands and keeping her from coming to you."

+ +

"What's the matter with her?" asked Hart, with wide-open eyes. "The +sketch'll go on again in three days. I'm not hurt bad, the doctor says. +She won't lose out half a week's salary. I know it was an accident. +What's the matter with her?"

+ +

"You seem to be blind, or a sort of a fool," said Vincente. "The girl +loves you and is almost mad about your hurt. What's the matter with +you? Is she nothing to you? I wish you could hear her call you."

+ +

"Loves me?" asked Bob Hart, rising from the stack of scenery on which he +lay. "Cherry loves me? Why, it's impossible."

+ +

"I wish you could see her and hear her," said Griggs.

+ +

"But, man," said Bob Hart, sitting up, "it's impossible. It's +impossible, I tell you. I never dreamed of such a thing."

+ +

"No human being," said the Tramp Juggler, "could mistake it. She's wild +for love of you. How have you been so blind?"

+ +

"But, my God," said Bob Hart, rising to his feet, "it's too late. It's +too late, I tell you, Sam; it's too late. It can't be. You must be +wrong. It's impossible. There's some mistake.

+ +

"She's crying for you," said the Tramp Juggler. "For love of you she's +fighting three, and calling your name so loud they don't dare to raise +the curtain. Wake up, man."

+ +

"For love of me?" said Bob Hart with staring eyes. "Don't I tell you +it's too late? It's too late, man. Why, Cherry and I have been married +two years!" +

THE GOLD THAT GLITTERED

+

A story with a moral appended is like the bill of a mosquito. It bores +you, and then injects a stinging drop to irritate your conscience. +Therefore let us have the moral first and be done with it. All is not +gold that glitters, but it is a wise child that keeps the stopper in his +bottle of testing acid.

+ +

Where Broadway skirts the corner of the square presided over by George +the Veracious is the Little Rialto. Here stand the actors of that +quarter, and this is their shibboleth: "'Nit,' says I to Frohman, 'you +can't touch me for a kopeck less than two-fifty per,' and out I walks."

+ +

Westward and southward from the Thespian glare are one or two streets +where a Spanish-American colony has huddled for a little tropical +warmth in the nipping North. The centre of life in this precinct is "El +Refugio," a café and restaurant that caters to the volatile exiles from +the South. Up from Chili, Bolivia, Colombia, the rolling republics of +Central America and the ireful islands of the Western Indies flit the +cloaked and sombreroed señores, who are scattered like burning lava by +the political eruptions of their several countries. Hither they come to +lay counterplots, to bide their time, to solicit +funds, to enlist filibusterers, to smuggle out arms and ammunitions, to +play the game at long taw. In El Refugio, they find the atmosphere in +which they thrive.

+ +

In the restaurant of El Refugio are served compounds delightful to the +palate of the man from Capricorn or Cancer. Altruism must halt the story +thus long. On, diner, weary of the culinary subterfuges of the Gallic +chef, hie thee to El Refugio! There only will you find a fish—bluefish, +shad or pompano from the Gulf—baked after the Spanish method. Tomatoes +give it color, individuality and soul; chili colorado bestows upon +it zest, originality and fervor; unknown herbs furnish piquancy and +mystery, and—but its crowning glory deserves a new sentence. Around +it, above it, beneath it, in its vicinity—but never in it—hovers an +ethereal aura, an effluvium so rarefied and delicate that only the +Society for Psychical Research could note its origin. Do not say that +garlic is in the fish at El Refugio. It is not otherwise than as if the +spirit of Garlic, flitting past, has wafted one kiss that lingers in the +parsley-crowned dish as haunting as those kisses in life, "by hopeless +fancy feigned on lips that are for others." And then, when Conchito, the +waiter, brings you a plate of brown frijoles and a carafe of wine that +has never stood still between Oporto and El Refugio—ah, Dios!

+ +

One day a Hamburg-American liner deposited upon Pier No. 55 Gen. Perrico +Ximenes Villablanca Falcon, a passenger from Cartagena. The General +was between a claybank and a bay in complexion, had a 42-inch waist and +stood 5 feet 4 with his Du Barry heels. He had the mustache of a +shooting-gallery proprietor, he wore the full dress of a Texas +congressman and had the important aspect of an uninstructed delegate.

+ +

Gen. Falcon had enough English under his hat to enable him to inquire +his way to the street in which El Refugio stood. When he reached that +neighborhood he saw a sign before a respectable red-brick house that +read, "Hotel Español." In the window was a card in Spanish, "Aqui se +habla Español." The General entered, sure of a congenial port.

+ +

In the cozy office was Mrs. O'Brien, the proprietress. She had +blond—oh, unimpeachably blond hair. For the rest she was amiability, +and ran largely to inches around. Gen. Falcon brushed the floor with +his broad-brimmed hat, and emitted a quantity of Spanish, the syllables +sounding like firecrackers gently popping their way down the string of +a bunch.

+ +

"Spanish or Dago?" asked Mrs. O'Brien, pleasantly.

+ +

"I am a Colombian, madam," said the General, proudly. "I speak the +Spanish. The advisement in your window say the Spanish he is spoken +here. How is that?"

+ +

"Well, you've been speaking it, ain't you?" said the madam. "I'm sure I +can't."

+ +

At the Hotel Español General Falcon engaged rooms and established +himself. At dusk he sauntered out upon the streets to view the wonders +of this roaring city of the North. As he walked he thought of the +wonderful golden hair of Mme. O'Brien. "It is here," said the General +to himself, no doubt in his own language, "that one shall find the most +beautiful señoras in the world. I have not in my Colombia viewed among +our beauties one so fair. But no! It is not for the General Falcon to +think of beauty. It is my country that claims my devotion."

+ +

At the corner of Broadway and the Little Rialto the General became +involved. The street cars bewildered him, and the fender of one upset +him against a pushcart laden with oranges. A cab driver missed him an +inch with a hub, and poured barbarous execrations upon his head. He +scrambled to the sidewalk and skipped again in terror when the whistle +of a peanut-roaster puffed a hot scream in his ear. "Válgame Dios! What +devil's city is this?"

+ +

As the General fluttered out of the streamers of passers like a wounded +snipe he was marked simultaneously as game by two hunters. One was +"Bully" McGuire, whose system of sport required the use of a strong arm +and the misuse of an eight-inch piece of lead pipe. The other Nimrod of +the asphalt was "Spider" Kelley, a sportsman with more refined methods.

+ +

In pouncing upon their self-evident prey, Mr. Kelley was a shade the +quicker. His elbow fended accurately the onslaught of Mr. McGuire.

+ +

"G'wan!" he commanded harshly. "I saw it first." McGuire slunk away, +awed by superior intelligence.

+ +

"Pardon me," said Mr. Kelley, to the General, "but you got balled up in +the shuffle, didn't you? Let me assist you." He picked up the General's +hat and brushed the dust from it.

+ +

The ways of Mr. Kelley could not but succeed. The General, bewildered +and dismayed by the resounding streets, welcomed his deliverer as a +caballero with a most disinterested heart.

+ +

"I have a desire," said the General, "to return to the hotel of O'Brien, +in which I am stop. Caramba! señor, there is a loudness and rapidness of +going and coming in the city of this Nueva York."

+ +

Mr. Kelley's politeness would not suffer the distinguished Colombian to +brave the dangers of the return unaccompanied. At the door of the Hotel +Español they paused. A little lower down on the opposite side of the +street shone the modest illuminated sign of El Refugio. Mr. Kelley, to +whom few streets were unfamiliar, knew the place exteriorly as a "Dago +joint." All foreigners Mr. Kelley classed under the two heads of +"Dagoes" and Frenchmen. He proposed to the General that they repair +thither and substantiate their acquaintance with a liquid foundation.

+ +

An hour later found General Falcon and Mr. Kelley seated at a table in +the conspirator's corner of El Refugio. Bottles and glasses were between +them. For the tenth time the General confided the secret of his mission +to the Estados Unidos. He was here, he declared, to purchase arms—2,000 +stands of Winchester rifles—for the Colombian revolutionists. He +had drafts in his pocket drawn by the Cartagena Bank on its New York +correspondent for $25,000. At other tables other revolutionists were +shouting their political secrets to their fellow-plotters; but none was +as loud as the General. He pounded the table; he hallooed for some wine; +he roared to his friend that his errand was a secret one, and not to be +hinted at to a living soul. Mr. Kelley himself was stirred to +sympathetic enthusiasm. He grasped the General's hand across the table.

+ +

"Monseer," he said, earnestly, "I don't know where this country of yours +is, but I'm for it. I guess it must be a branch of the United States, +though, for the poetry guys and the schoolmarms call us Columbia, too, +sometimes. It's a lucky thing for you that you butted into me to-night. +I'm the only man in New York that can get this gun deal through for you. +The Secretary of War of the United States is me best friend. He's in the +city now, and I'll see him for you to-morrow. In the meantime, monseer, +you keep them drafts tight in your inside pocket. I'll call for you +to-morrow, and take you to see him. Say! that ain't the District of +Columbia you're talking about, is it?" concluded Mr. Kelley, with a +sudden qualm. "You can't capture that with no 2,000 guns—it's been +tried with more."

+ +

"No, no, no!" exclaimed the General. "It is the Republic of Colombia—it +is a g-r-reat republic on the top side of America of the South. Yes. +Yes."

+ +

"All right," said Mr. Kelley, reassured. "Now suppose we trek along home +and go by-by. I'll write to the Secretary to-night and make a date with +him. It's a ticklish job to get guns out of New York. McClusky himself +can't do it."

+ +

They parted at the door of the Hotel Español. The General rolled his +eyes at the moon and sighed.

+ +

"It is a great country, your Nueva York," he said. "Truly the cars in +the streets devastate one, and the engine that cooks the nuts terribly +makes a squeak in the ear. But, ah, Señor Kelley—the señoras with hair +of much goldness, and admirable fatness—they are magnificas! Muy +magnificas!"

+ +

Kelley went to the nearest telephone booth and called up McCrary's café, +far up on Broadway. He asked for Jimmy Dunn.

+ +

"Is that Jimmy Dunn?" asked Kelley.

+ +

"Yes," came the answer.

+ +

"You're a liar," sang back Kelley, joyfully. "You're the Secretary of +War. Wait there till I come up. I've got the finest thing down here in +the way of a fish you ever baited for. It's a Colorado-maduro, with a +gold band around it and free coupons enough to buy a red hall lamp and a +statuette of Psyche rubbering in the brook. I'll be up on the next car."

+ +

Jimmy Dunn was an A. M. of Crookdom. He was an artist in the confidence +line. He never saw a bludgeon in his life; and he scorned knockout +drops. In fact, he would have set nothing before an intended victim but +the purest of drinks, if it had been possible to procure such a thing in +New York. It was the ambition of "Spider" Kelley to elevate himself into +Jimmy's class.

+ +

These two gentlemen held a conference that night at McCrary's. Kelley +explained.

+ +

"He's as easy as a gumshoe. He's from the Island of Colombia, where +there's a strike, or a feud, or something going on, and they've sent him +up here to buy 2,000 Winchesters to arbitrate the thing with. He showed +me two drafts for $10,000 each, and one for $5,000 on a bank here. 'S +truth, Jimmy, I felt real mad with him because he didn't have it in +thousand-dollar bills, and hand it to me on a silver waiter. Now, we've +got to wait till he goes to the bank and gets the money for us."

+ +

They talked it over for two hours, and then Dunn said; "Bring him to No. +–––– Broadway, at four o'clock to-morrow afternoon."

+ +

In due time Kelley called at the Hotel Español for the General. He found +the wily warrior engaged in delectable conversation with Mrs. O'Brien.

+ +

"The Secretary of War is waitin' for us," said Kelley.

+ +

The General tore himself away with an effort.

+ +

"Ay, señor," he said, with a sigh, "duty makes a call. But, señor, the +señoras of your Estados Unidos—how beauties! For exemplification, take +you la Madame O'Brien—que magnifica! She is one goddess—one Juno—what +you call one ox-eyed Juno."

+ +

Now Mr. Kelley was a wit; and better men have been shriveled by the fire +of their own imagination.

+ +

"Sure!" he said with a grin; "but you mean a peroxide Juno, don't you?"

+ +

Mrs. O'Brien heard, and lifted an auriferous head. Her businesslike eye +rested for an instant upon the disappearing form of Mr. Kelley. Except +in street cars one should never be unnecessarily rude to a lady.

+ +

When the gallant Colombian and his escort arrived at the Broadway +address, they were held in an anteroom for half an hour, and then +admitted into a well-equipped office where a distinguished looking man, +with a smooth face, wrote at a desk. General Falcon was presented to the +Secretary of War of the United States, and his mission made known by his +old friend, Mr. Kelley.

+ +

"Ah—Colombia!" said the Secretary, significantly, when he was made to +understand; "I'm afraid there will be a little difficulty in that case. +The President and I differ in our sympathies there. He prefers the +established government, while I—" the secretary gave the General a +mysterious but encouraging smile. "You, of course, know, General Falcon, +that since the Tammany war, an act of Congress has been passed requiring +all manufactured arms and ammunition exported from this country to pass +through the War Department. Now, if I can do anything for you I will be +glad to do so to oblige my old friend, Mr. Kelley. But it must be in +absolute secrecy, as the President, as I have said, does not regard +favorably the efforts of your revolutionary party in Colombia. I will +have my orderly bring a list of the available arms now in the +warehouse."

+ +

The Secretary struck a bell, and an orderly with the letters A. D. T. on +his cap stepped promptly into the room.

+ +

"Bring me Schedule B of the small arms inventory," said the Secretary.

+ +

The orderly quickly returned with a printed paper. The Secretary studied +it closely.

+ +

"I find," he said, "that in Warehouse 9, of Government stores, there is +shipment of 2,000 stands of Winchester rifles that were ordered by the +Sultan of Morocco, who forgot to send the cash with his order. Our rule +is that legal-tender money must be paid down at the time of purchase. My +dear Kelley, your friend, General Falcon, shall have this lot of arms, if +he desires it, at the manufacturer's price. And you will forgive me, I am +sure, if I curtail our interview. I am expecting the Japanese Minister +and Charles Murphy every moment!"

+ +

As one result of this interview, the General was deeply grateful to his +esteemed friend, Mr. Kelley. As another, the nimble Secretary of War was +extremely busy during the next two days buying empty rifle cases and +filling them with bricks, which were then stored in a warehouse rented +for that purpose. As still another, when the General returned to the +Hotel Español, Mrs. O'Brien went up to him, plucked a thread from his +lapel, and said:

+ +

"Say, señor, I don't want to 'butt in,' but what does that monkey-faced, +cat-eyed, rubber-necked tin horn tough want with you?"

+ +

"Sangre de mi vida!" exclaimed the General. "Impossible it is that you +speak of my good friend, Señor Kelley."

+ +

"Come into the summer garden," said Mrs. O'Brien. "I want to have a talk +with you."

+ +

Let us suppose that an hour has elapsed.

+ +

"And you say," said the General, "that for the sum of $18,000 can be +purchased the furnishment of the house and the lease of one year with +this garden so lovely—so resembling unto the patios of my cara +Colombia?"

+ +

"And dirt cheap at that," sighed the lady.

+ +

"Ah, Dios!" breathed General Falcon. "What to me is war and politics? +This spot is one paradise. My country it have other brave heroes to +continue the fighting. What to me should be glory and the shooting of +mans? Ah! no. It is here I have found one angel. Let us buy the Hotel +Español and you shall be mine, and the money shall not be waste on +guns."

+ +

Mrs. O'Brien rested her blond pompadour against the shoulder of the +Colombian patriot.

+ +

"Oh, señor," she sighed, happily, "ain't you terrible!"

+ +

Two days later was the time appointed for the delivery of the arms to +the General. The boxes of supposed rifles were stacked in the rented +warehouse, and the Secretary of War sat upon them, waiting for his +friend Kelley to fetch the victim.

+ +

Mr. Kelley hurried, at the hour, to the Hotel Español. He found the +General behind the desk adding up accounts.

+ +

"I have decide," said the General, "to buy not guns. I have to-day buy +the insides of this hotel, and there shall be marrying of the General +Perrico Ximenes Villablanca Falcon with la Madame O'Brien."

+ +

Mr. Kelley almost strangled.

+ +

"Say, you old bald-headed bottle of shoe polish," he spluttered, "you're +a swindler—that's what you are! You've bought a boarding house with +money belonging to your infernal country, wherever it is."

+ +

"Ah," said the General, footing up a column, "that is what you call +politics. War and revolution they are not nice. Yes. It is not best that +one shall always follow Minerva. No. It is of quite desirable to keep +hotels and be with that Juno—that ox-eyed Juno. Ah! what hair of the +gold it is that she have!"

+ +

Mr. Kelley choked again.

+ +

"Ah, Senor Kelley!" said the General, feelingly and finally, "is it that +you have never eaten of the corned beef hash that Madame O'Brien she +make?" +

BABES IN THE JUNGLE

+

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 to-day. +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, S. C. 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 to-day 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 to-day that it +ain't to be found in all Italy. I'd pay $50,000 to-morrow for that +picture—yes, $75,000. I give the agent a 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." +

THE DAY RESURGENT

+

I can see the artist bite the end of his pencil and frown when it comes +to drawing his Easter picture; for his legitimate pictorial conceptions +of figures pertinent to the festival are but four in number.

+ +

First comes Easter, pagan goddess of spring. Here his fancy may have +free play. A beautiful maiden with decorative hair and the proper number +of toes will fill the bill. Miss Clarice St. Vavasour, the well-known +model, will pose for it in the "Lethergogallagher," or whatever it was +that Trilby called it.

+ +

Second—the melancholy lady with upturned eyes in a framework of lilies. +This is magazine-covery, but reliable.

+ +

Third—Miss Manhattan in the Fifth Avenue Easter Sunday parade.

+ +

Fourth—Maggie Murphy with a new red feather in her old straw hat, happy +and self-conscious, in the Grand Street turnout.

+ +

Of course, the rabbits do not count. Nor the Easter eggs, since the +higher criticism has hard-boiled them.

+ +

The limited field of its pictorial possibilities proves that Easter, of +all our festival days, is the most vague and shifting in our conception. +It belongs to all religions, although the pagans invented it. Going back +still further to the first spring, we can see Eve choosing with pride a +new green leaf from the tree ficus carica.

+ +

Now, the object of this critical and learned preamble is to set forth +the theorem that Easter is neither a date, a season, a festival, a +holiday nor an occasion. What it is you shall find out if you follow in +the footsteps of Danny McCree.

+ +

Easter Sunday dawned as it should, bright and early, in its place on the +calendar between Saturday and Monday. At 5.24 the sun rose, and at 10.30 +Danny followed its example. He went into the kitchen and washed his +face at the sink. His mother was frying bacon. She looked at his hard, +smooth, knowing countenance as he juggled with the round cake of soap, +and thought of his father when she first saw him stopping a hot grounder +between second and third twenty-two years before on a vacant lot in +Harlem, where the La Paloma apartment house now stands. In the front +room of the flat Danny's father sat by an open window smoking his pipe, +with his dishevelled gray hair tossed about by the breeze. He still +clung to his pipe, although his sight had been taken from him two years +before by a precocious blast of giant powder that went off without +permission. Very few blind men care for smoking, for the reason that +they cannot see the smoke. Now, could you enjoy having the news read to +you from an evening newspaper unless you could see the colors of the +headlines?

+ +

"'Tis Easter Day," said Mrs. McCree.

+ +

"Scramble mine," said Danny.

+ +

After breakfast he dressed himself in the Sabbath morning costume of +the Canal Street importing house dray chauffeur—frock coat, striped +trousers, patent leathers, gilded trace chain across front of vest, +and wing collar, rolled-brim derby and butterfly bow from Schonstein's +(between Fourteenth Street and Tony's fruit stand) Saturday night sale.

+ +

"You'll be goin' out this day, of course, Danny," said old man McCree, +a little wistfully. "'Tis a kind of holiday, they say. Well, it's fine +spring weather. I can feel it in the air."

+ +

"Why should I not be going out?" demanded Danny in his grumpiest chest +tones. "Should I stay in? Am I as good as a horse? One day of rest my +team has a week. Who earns the money for the rent and the breakfast +you've just eat, I'd like to know? Answer me that!"

+ +

"All right, lad," said the old man. "I'm not complainin'. While me two +eyes was good there was nothin' better to my mind than a Sunday out. +There's a smell of turf and burnin' brush comin' in the windy. I have me +tobaccy. A good fine day and rist to ye, lad. Times I wish your mother +had larned to read, so I might hear the rest about the hippopotamus—but +let that be."

+ +

"Now, what is this foolishness he talks of hippopotamuses?" asked Danny +of his mother, as he passed through the kitchen. "Have you been taking +him to the Zoo? And for what?"

+ +

"I have not," said Mrs. McCree. "He sets by the windy all day. 'Tis +little recreation a blind man among the poor gets at all. I'm thinkin' +they wander in their minds at times. One day he talks of grease without +stoppin' for the most of an hour. I looks to see if there's lard burnin' +in the fryin' pan. There is not. He says I do not understand. 'Tis weary +days, Sundays, and holidays and all, for a blind man, Danny. There was +no better nor stronger than him when he had his two eyes. 'Tis a fine +day, son. Injoy yeself ag'inst the morning. There will be cold supper at +six."

+ +

"Have you heard any talk of a hippopotamus?" asked Danny of Mike, the +janitor, as he went out the door downstairs.

+ +

"I have not," said Mike, pulling his shirtsleeves higher. "But 'tis the +only subject in the animal, natural and illegal lists of outrages that +I've not been complained to about these two days. See the landlord. Or +else move out if ye like. Have ye hippopotamuses in the lease? No, +then?"

+ +

"It was the old man who spoke of it," said Danny. "Likely there's +nothing in it."

+ +

Danny walked up the street to the Avenue and then struck northward into +the heart of the district where Easter—modern Easter, in new, bright +raiment—leads the pascal march. Out of towering brown churches came the +blithe music of anthems from the choirs. The broad sidewalks were moving +parterres of living flowers—so it seemed when your eye looked upon the +Easter girl.

+ +

Gentlemen, frock-coated, silk-hatted, gardeniaed, sustained the +background of the tradition. Children carried lilies in their hands. The +windows of the brownstone mansions were packed with the most opulent +creations of Flora, the sister of the Lady of the Lilies.

+ +

Around a corner, white-gloved, pink-gilled and tightly buttoned, walked +Corrigan, the cop, shield to the curb. Danny knew him.

+ +

"Why, Corrigan," he asked, "is Easter? I know it comes the first time +you're full after the moon rises on the seventeenth of March—but why? Is +it a proper and religious ceremony, or does the Governor appoint it out of +politics?"

+ +

"'Tis an annual celebration," said Corrigan, with the judicial air of +the Third Deputy Police Commissioner, "peculiar to New York. It extends +up to Harlem. Sometimes they has the reserves out at One Hundred and +Twenty-fifth Street. In my opinion 'tis not political."

+ +

"Thanks," said Danny. "And say—did you ever hear a man complain of +hippopotamuses? When not specially in drink, I mean."

+ +

"Nothing larger than sea turtles," said Corrigan, reflecting, "and there +was wood alcohol in that."

+ +

Danny wandered. The double, heavy incumbency of enjoying simultaneously +a Sunday and a festival day was his.

+ +

The sorrows of the hand-toiler fit him easily. They are worn so often +that they hang with the picturesque lines of the best tailor-made +garments. That is why well-fed artists of pencil and pen find in the +griefs of the common people their most striking models. But when the +Philistine would disport himself, the grimness of Melpomene, herself, +attends upon his capers. Therefore, Danny set his jaw hard at Easter, +and took his pleasure sadly.

+ +

The family entrance of Dugan's café was feasible; so Danny yielded to +the vernal season as far as a glass of bock. Seated in a dark, +linoleumed, humid back room, his heart and mind still groped after the +mysterious meaning of the springtime jubilee.

+ +

"Say, Tim," he said to the waiter, "why do they have Easter?"

+ +

"Skiddoo!" said Tim, closing a sophisticated eye. "Is that a new one? +All right. Tony Pastor's for you last night, I guess. I give it up. +What's the answer—two apples or a yard and a half?"

+ +

From Dugan's Danny turned back eastward. The April sun seemed to stir in +him a vague feeling that he could not construe. He made a wrong +diagnosis and decided that it was Katy Conlon.

+ +

A block from her house on Avenue A he met her going to church. They +pumped hands on the corner.

+ +

"Gee! but you look dumpish and dressed up," said Katy. "What's wrong? +Come away with me to church and be cheerful."

+ +

"What's doing at church?" asked Danny.

+ +

"Why, it's Easter Sunday. Silly! I waited till after eleven expectin' +you might come around to go."

+ +

"What does this Easter stand for, Katy," asked Danny gloomily. "Nobody +seems to know."

+ +

"Nobody as blind as you," said Katy with spirit. "You haven't even +looked at my new hat. And skirt. Why, it's when all the girls put on new +spring clothes. Silly! Are you coming to church with me?"

+ +

"I will," said Danny. "If this Easter is pulled off there, they ought to +be able to give some excuse for it. Not that the hat ain't a beauty. The +green roses are great."

+ +

At church the preacher did some expounding with no pounding. He spoke +rapidly, for he was in a hurry to get home to his early Sabbath dinner; +but he knew his business. There was one word that controlled his +theme—resurrection. Not a new creation; but a new life arising out of +the old. The congregation had heard it often before. But there was a +wonderful hat, a combination of sweet peas and lavender, in the sixth +pew from the pulpit. It attracted much attention.

+ +

After church Danny lingered on a corner while Katy waited, with pique in +her sky-blue eyes.

+ +

"Are you coming along to the house?" she asked. "But don't mind me. I'll +get there all right. You seem to be studyin' a lot about something. All +right. Will I see you at any time specially, Mr. McCree?"

+ +

"I'll be around Wednesday night as usual," said Danny, turning and +crossing the street.

+ +

Katy walked away with the green roses dangling indignantly. Danny +stopped two blocks away. He stood still with his hands in his pockets, +at the curb on the corner. His face was that of a graven image. Deep +in his soul something stirred so small, so fine, so keen and leavening +that his hard fibres did not recognize it. It was something more tender +than the April day, more subtle than the call of the senses, purer and +deeper-rooted than the love of woman—for had he not turned away from +green roses and eyes that had kept him chained for a year? And Danny +did not know what it was. The preacher, who was in a hurry to go to his +dinner, had told him, but Danny had had no libretto with which to follow +the drowsy intonation. But the preacher spoke the truth.

+ +

Suddenly Danny slapped his leg and gave forth a hoarse yell of delight.

+ +

"Hippopotamus!" he shouted to an elevated road pillar. "Well, how is +that for a bum guess? Why, blast my skylights! I know what he was +driving at now.

+ +

"Hippopotamus! Wouldn't that send you to the Bronx! It's been a year +since he heard it; and he didn't miss it so very far. We quit at 469 +B. C., and this comes next. Well, a wooden man wouldn't have guessed +what he was trying to get out of him."

+ +

Danny caught a crosstown car and went up to the rear flat that his labor +supported.

+ +

Old man McCree was still sitting by the window. His extinct pipe lay on +the sill.

+ +

"Will that be you, lad?" he asked.

+ +

Danny flared into the rage of a strong man who is surprised at the +outset of committing a good deed.

+ +

"Who pays the rent and buys the food that is eaten in this house?" he +snapped, viciously. "Have I no right to come in?"

+ +

"Ye're a faithful lad," said old man McCree, with a sigh. "Is it evening +yet?"

+ +

Danny reached up on a shelf and took down a thick book labeled in gilt +letters, "The History of Greece." Dust was on it half an inch thick. He +laid it on the table and found a place in it marked by a strip of paper. +And then he gave a short roar at the top of his voice, and said:

+ +

"Was it the hippopotamus you wanted to be read to about then?"

+ +

"Did I hear ye open the book?" said old man McCree. "Many and weary be +the months since my lad has read it to me. I dinno; but I took a great +likings to them Greeks. Ye left off at a place. 'Tis a fine day outside, +lad. Be out and take rest from your work. I have gotten used to me chair +by the windy and me pipe."

+ +

"Pel-Peloponnesus was the place where we left off, and not +hippopotamus," said Danny. "The war began there. It kept something doing +for thirty years. The headlines says that a guy named Philip of Macedon, +in 338 B. C., got to be boss of Greece by getting the decision at the +battle of Cher-Cheronoea. I'll read it."

+ +

With his hand to his ear, rapt in the Peloponnesian War, old man McCree +sat for an hour, listening.

+ +

Then he got up and felt his way to the door of the kitchen. Mrs. McCree +was slicing cold meat. She looked up. Tears were running from old man +McCree's eyes.

+ +

"Do you hear our lad readin' to me?" he said. "There is none finer in +the land. My two eyes have come back to me again."

+ +

After supper he said to Danny: "'Tis a happy day, this Easter. And now +ye will be off to see Katy in the evening. Well enough."

+ +

"Who pays the rent and buys the food that is eaten in this house?" said +Danny, angrily. "Have I no right to stay in it? After supper there is +yet to come the reading of the battle of Corinth, 146 B. C., when the +kingdom, as they say, became an in-integral portion of the Roman Empire. +Am I nothing in this house?" +

THE FIFTH WHEEL

+

The ranks of the Bed Line moved closer together; for it was cold. They +were alluvial deposit of the stream of life lodged in the delta of Fifth +Avenue and Broadway. The Bed Liners stamped their freezing feet, looked +at the empty benches in Madison Square whence Jack Frost had evicted +them, and muttered to one another in a confusion of tongues. The +Flatiron Building, with its impious, cloud-piercing architecture looming +mistily above them on the opposite delta, might well have stood for the +tower of Babel, whence these polyglot idlers had been called by the +winged walking delegate of the Lord.

+ +

Standing on a pine box a head higher than his flock of goats, the +Preacher exhorted whatever transient and shifting audience the north +wind doled out to him. It was a slave market. Fifteen cents bought you a +man. You deeded him to Morpheus; and the recording angel gave you +credit.

+ +

The preacher was incredibly earnest and unwearied. He had looked over +the list of things one may do for one's fellow man, and had assumed for +himself the task of putting to bed all who might apply at his soap box +on the nights of Wednesday and Sunday. That left but five nights for +other philanthropists to handle; and had they done their part as well, +this wicked city might have become a vast Arcadian dormitory where all +might snooze and snore the happy hours away, letting problem plays and +the rent man and business go to the deuce.

+ +

The hour of eight was but a little while past; sightseers in a small, +dark mass of pay ore were gathered in the shadow of General Worth's +monument. Now and then, shyly, ostentatiously, carelessly, or with +conscientious exactness one would step forward and bestow upon the +Preacher small bills or silver. Then a lieutenant of Scandinavian +coloring and enthusiasm would march away to a lodging house with a squad +of the redeemed. All the while the Preacher exhorted the crowd in terms +beautifully devoid of eloquence—splendid with the deadly, accusative +monotony of truth. Before the picture of the Bed Liners fades you must +hear one phrase of the Preacher's—the one that formed his theme that +night. It is worthy of being stenciled on all the white ribbons in the +world.

+ +

"No man ever learned to be a drunkard on five-cent whisky."

+ +

Think of it, tippler. It covers the ground from the sprouting rye to the +Potter's Field.

+ +

A clean-profiled, erect young man in the rear rank of the bedless +emulated the terrapin, drawing his head far down into the shell of his +coat collar. It was a well-cut tweed coat; and the trousers still showed +signs of having flattened themselves beneath the compelling goose. But, +conscientiously, I must warn the milliner's apprentice who reads this, +expecting a Reginald Montressor in straits, to peruse no further. The +young man was no other than Thomas McQuade, ex-coachman, discharged for +drunkenness one month before, and now reduced to the grimy ranks of the +one-night bed seekers.

+ +

If you live in smaller New York you must know the Van Smuythe family +carriage, drawn by the two 1,500-pound, 100 to 1-shot bays. The carriage +is shaped like a bath-tub. In each end of it reclines an old lady Van +Smuythe holding a black sunshade the size of a New Year's Eve feather +tickler. Before his downfall Thomas McQuade drove the Van Smuythe bays +and was himself driven by Annie, the Van Smuythe lady's maid. But it is +one of the saddest things about romance that a tight shoe or an empty +commissary or an aching tooth will make a temporary heretic of any +Cupid-worshiper. And Thomas's physical troubles were not few. Therefore, +his soul was less vexed with thoughts of his lost lady's maid than it +was by the fancied presence of certain non-existent things that his +racked nerves almost convinced him were flying, dancing, crawling, and +wriggling on the asphalt and in the air above and around the dismal +campus of the Bed Line army. Nearly four weeks of straight whisky and +a diet limited to crackers, bologna, and pickles often guarantees a +psycho-zoological sequel. Thus desperate, freezing, angry, beset by +phantoms as he was, he felt the need of human sympathy and intercourse.

+ +

The Bed Liner standing at his right was a young man of about his own +age, shabby but neat.

+ +

"What's the diagnosis of your case, Freddy?" asked Thomas, with the +freemasonic familiarity of the damned—"Booze? That's mine. You don't +look like a panhandler. Neither am I. A month ago I was pushing the +lines over the backs of the finest team of Percheron buffaloes that ever +made their mile down Fifth Avenue in 2.85. And look at me now! Say; how +do you come to be at this bed bargain-counter rummage sale."

+ +

The other young man seemed to welcome the advances of the airy +ex-coachman.

+ +

"No," said he, "mine isn't exactly a case of drink. Unless we allow that +Cupid is a bartender. I married unwisely, according to the opinion of my +unforgiving relatives. I've been out of work for a year because I don't +know how to work; and I've been sick in Bellevue and other hospitals for +months. My wife and kid had to go back to her mother. I was turned out +of the hospital yesterday. And I haven't a cent. That's my tale of woe."

+ +

"Tough luck," said Thomas. "A man alone can pull through all right. But +I hate to see the women and kids get the worst of it."

+ +

Just then there hummed up Fifth Avenue a motor car so splendid, so red, +so smoothly running, so craftily demolishing the speed regulations that +it drew the attention even of the listless Bed Liners. Suspended and +pinioned on its left side was an extra tire.

+ +

When opposite the unfortunate company the fastenings of this tire became +loosed. It fell to the asphalt, bounded and rolled rapidly in the wake +of the flying car.

+ +

Thomas McQuade, scenting an opportunity, darted from his place among the +Preacher's goats. In thirty seconds he had caught the rolling tire, +swung it over his shoulder, and was trotting smartly after the car. On +both sides of the avenue people were shouting, whistling, and waving +canes at the red car, pointing to the enterprising Thomas coming up with +the lost tire.

+ +

One dollar, Thomas had estimated, was the smallest guerdon that so grand +an automobilist could offer for the service he had rendered, and save +his pride.

+ +

Two blocks away the car had stopped. There was a little, brown, muffled +chauffeur driving, and an imposing gentleman wearing a magnificent +sealskin coat and a silk hat on a rear seat.

+ +

Thomas proffered the captured tire with his best ex-coachman manner +and a look in the brighter of his reddened eyes that was meant to be +suggestive to the extent of a silver coin or two and receptive up to +higher denominations.

+ +

But the look was not so construed. The sealskinned gentleman received +the tire, placed it inside the car, gazed intently at the ex-coachman, +and muttered to himself inscrutable words.

+ +

"Strange—strange!" said he. "Once or twice even I, myself, have fancied +that the Chaldean Chiroscope has availed. Could it be possible?"

+ +

Then he addressed less mysterious words to the waiting and hopeful +Thomas.

+ +

"Sir, I thank you for your kind rescue of my tire. And I would ask you, +if I may, a question. Do you know the family of Van Smuythes living in +Washington Square North?"

+ +

"Oughtn't I to?" replied Thomas. "I lived there. Wish I did yet."

+ +

The sealskinned gentleman opened a door of the car.

+ +

"Step in please," he said. "You have been expected."

+ +

Thomas McQuade obeyed with surprise but without hesitation. A seat in a +motor car seemed better than standing room in the Bed Line. But after +the lap-robe had been tucked about him and the auto had sped on its +course, the peculiarity of the invitation lingered in his mind.

+ +

"Maybe the guy hasn't got any change," was his diagnosis. "Lots of these +swell rounders don't lug about any ready money. Guess he'll dump me out +when he gets to some joint where he can get cash on his mug. Anyhow, +it's a cinch that I've got that open-air bed convention beat to a +finish."

+ +

Submerged in his greatcoat, the mysterious automobilist seemed, himself, +to marvel at the surprises of life. "Wonderful! amazing! strange!" he +repeated to himself constantly.

+ +

When the car had well entered the crosstown Seventies it swung eastward +a half block and stopped before a row of high-stooped, brownstone-front +houses.

+ +

"Be kind enough to enter my house with me," said the sealskinned +gentleman when they had alighted. "He's going to dig up, sure," +reflected Thomas, following him inside.

+ +

There was a dim light in the hall. His host conducted him through a door +to the left, closing it after him and leaving them in absolute darkness. +Suddenly a luminous globe, strangely decorated, shone faintly in +the centre of an immense room that seemed to Thomas more splendidly +appointed than any he had ever seen on the stage or read of in fairy +tales.

+ +

The walls were hidden by gorgeous red hangings embroidered with +fantastic gold figures. At the rear end of the room were draped +portières of dull gold spangled with silver crescents and stars. The +furniture was of the costliest and rarest styles. The ex-coachman's feet +sank into rugs as fleecy and deep as snowdrifts. There were three or +four oddly shaped stands or tables covered with black velvet drapery.

+ +

Thomas McQuade took in the splendors of this palatial apartment with one +eye. With the other he looked for his imposing conductor—to find that +he had disappeared.

+ +

"B'gee!" muttered Thomas, "this listens like a spook shop. Shouldn't +wonder if it ain't one of these Moravian Nights' adventures that you +read about. Wonder what became of the furry guy."

+ +

Suddenly a stuffed owl that stood on an ebony perch near the illuminated +globe slowly raised his wings and emitted from his eyes a brilliant +electric glow.

+ +

With a fright-born imprecation, Thomas seized a bronze statuette of +Hebe from a cabinet near by and hurled it with all his might at the +terrifying and impossible fowl. The owl and his perch went over with a +crash. With the sound there was a click, and the room was flooded with +light from a dozen frosted globes along the walls and ceiling. The gold +portières parted and closed, and the mysterious automobilist entered the +room. He was tall and wore evening dress of perfect cut and accurate +taste. A Vandyke beard of glossy, golden brown, rather long and wavy +hair, smoothly parted, and large, magnetic, orientally occult eyes gave +him a most impressive and striking appearance. If you can conceive +a Russian Grand Duke in a Rajah's throne-room advancing to greet a +visiting Emperor, you will gather something of the majesty of his +manner. But Thomas McQuade was too near his d t's to be mindful of his +p's and q's. When he viewed this silken, polished, and somewhat +terrifying host he thought vaguely of dentists.

+ +

"Say, doc," said he resentfully, "that's a hot bird you keep on tap. +I hope I didn't break anything. But I've nearly got the williwalloos, +and when he threw them 32-candle-power lamps of his on me, I took a +snap-shot at him with that little brass Flatiron Girl that stood on the +sideboard."

+ +

"That is merely a mechanical toy," said the gentleman with a wave of his +hand. "May I ask you to be seated while I explain why I brought you to +my house. Perhaps you would not understand nor be in sympathy with the +psychological prompting that caused me to do so. So I will come to the +point at once by venturing to refer to your admission that you know the +Van Smuythe family, of Washington Square North."

+ +

"Any silver missing?" asked Thomas tartly. "Any joolry displaced? Of +course I know 'em. Any of the old ladies' sunshades disappeared? Well, +I know 'em. And then what?"

+ +

The Grand Duke rubbed his white hands together softly.

+ +

"Wonderful!" he murmured. "Wonderful! Shall I come to believe in the +Chaldean Chiroscope myself? Let me assure you," he continued, "that +there is nothing for you to fear. Instead, I think I can promise you +that very good fortune awaits you. We will see."

+ +

"Do they want me back?" asked Thomas, with something of his old +professional pride in his voice. "I'll promise to cut out the booze and +do the right thing if they'll try me again. But how did you get wise, +doc? B'gee, it's the swellest employment agency I was ever in, with its +flashlight owls and so forth."

+ +

With an indulgent smile the gracious host begged to be excused for two +minutes. He went out to the sidewalk and gave an order to the chauffeur, +who still waited with the car. Returning to the mysterious apartment, +he sat by his guest and began to entertain him so well by his witty and +genial converse that the poor Bed Liner almost forgot the cold streets +from which he had been so recently and so singularly rescued. A servant +brought some tender cold fowl and tea biscuits and a glass of miraculous +wine; and Thomas felt the glamour of Arabia envelop him. Thus half an +hour sped quickly; and then the honk of the returned motor car at the +door suddenly drew the Grand Duke to his feet, with another soft +petition for a brief absence.

+ +

Two women, well muffled against the cold, were admitted at the front +door and suavely conducted by the master of the house down the hall +through another door to the left and into a smaller room, which was +screened and segregated from the larger front room by heavy, double +portières. Here the furnishings were even more elegant and exquisitely +tasteful than in the other. On a gold-inlaid rosewood table were +scattered sheets of white paper and a queer, triangular instrument or +toy, apparently of gold, standing on little wheels.

+ +

The taller woman threw back her black veil and loosened her cloak. She +was fifty, with a wrinkled and sad face. The other, young and plump, +took a chair a little distance away and to the rear as a servant or an +attendant might have done.

+ +

"You sent for me, Professor Cherubusco," said the elder woman, wearily. +"I hope you have something more definite than usual to say. I've about +lost the little faith I had in your art. I would not have responded to +your call this evening if my sister had not insisted upon it."

+ +

"Madam," said the professor, with his princeliest smile, "the true Art +cannot fail. To find the true psychic and potential branch sometimes +requires time. We have not succeeded, I admit, with the cards, the +crystal, the stars, the magic formulæ of Zarazin, nor the Oracle of +Po. But we have at last discovered the true psychic route. The Chaldean +Chiroscope has been successful in our search."

+ +

The professor's voice had a ring that seemed to proclaim his belief in +his own words. The elderly lady looked at him with a little more +interest.

+ +

"Why, there was no sense in those words that it wrote with my hands on +it," she said. "What do you mean?"

+ +

"The words were these," said Professor Cherubusco, rising to his full +magnificent height: "'By the fifth wheel of the chariot he shall come.'"

+ +

"I haven't seen many chariots," said the lady, "but I never saw one with +five wheels."

+ +

"Progress," said the professor—"progress in science and mechanics has +accomplished it—though, to be exact, we may speak of it only as an +extra tire. Progress in occult art has advanced in proportion. Madam, I +repeat that the Chaldean Chiroscope has succeeded. I can not only answer +the question that you have propounded, but I can produce before your +eyes the proof thereof."

+ +

And now the lady was disturbed both in her disbelief and in her poise.

+ +

"O professor!" she cried anxiously—"When?—where? Has he been found? Do +not keep me in suspense."

+ +

"I beg you will excuse me for a very few minutes," said Professor +Cherubusco, "and I think I can demonstrate to you the efficacy of the +true Art."

+ +

Thomas was contentedly munching the last crumbs of the bread and fowl +when the enchanter appeared suddenly at his side.

+ +

"Are you willing to return to your old home if you are assured of a +welcome and restoration to favor?" he asked, with his courteous, royal +smile.

+ +

"Do I look bughouse?" answered Thomas. "Enough of the footback life for +me. But will they have me again? The old lady is as fixed in her ways as +a nut on a new axle."

+ +

"My dear young man," said the other, "she has been searching for you +everywhere."

+ +

"Great!" said Thomas. "I'm on the job. That team of dropsical +dromedaries they call horses is a handicap for a first-class coachman +like myself; but I'll take the job back, sure, doc. They're good people +to be with."

+ +

And now a change came o'er the suave countenance of the Caliph of +Bagdad. He looked keenly and suspiciously at the ex-coachman.

+ +

"May I ask what your name is?" he said shortly.

+ +

"You've been looking for me," said Thomas, "and don't know my name? +You're a funny kind of sleuth. You must be one of the Central Office +gumshoers. I'm Thomas McQuade, of course; and I've been chauffeur of +the Van Smuythe elephant team for a year. They fired me a month ago +for—well, doc, you saw what I did to your old owl. I went broke on +booze, and when I saw the tire drop off your whiz wagon I was standing +in that squad of hoboes at the Worth monument waiting for a free bed. +Now, what's the prize for the best answer to all this?"

+ +

To his intense surprise Thomas felt himself lifted by the collar and +dragged, without a word of explanation, to the front door. This was +opened, and he was kicked forcibly down the steps with one heavy, +disillusionizing, humiliating impact of the stupendous Arabian's shoe.

+ +

As soon as the ex-coachman had recovered his feet and his wits he +hastened as fast as he could eastward toward Broadway.

+ +

"Crazy guy," was his estimate of the mysterious automobilist. "Just +wanted to have some fun kiddin', I guess. He might have dug up a dollar, +anyhow. Now I've got to hurry up and get back to that gang of bum bed +hunters before they all get preached to sleep."

+ +

When Thomas reached the end of his two-mile walk he found the ranks of +the homeless reduced to a squad of perhaps eight or ten. He took the +proper place of a newcomer at the left end of the rear rank. In a file +in front of him was the young man who had spoken to him of hospitals and +something of a wife and child.

+ +

"Sorry to see you back again," said the young man, turning to speak to +him. "I hoped you had struck something better than this."

+ +

"Me?" said Thomas. "Oh, I just took a run around the block to keep warm! +I see the public ain't lending to the Lord very fast to-night."

+ +

"In this kind of weather," said the young man, "charity avails itself of +the proverb, and both begins and ends at home."

+ +

And the Preacher and his vehement lieutenant struck up a last hymn of +petition to Providence and man. Those of the Bed Liners whose windpipes +still registered above 32 degrees hopelessly and tunelessly joined in.

+ +

In the middle of the second verse Thomas saw a sturdy girl with +wind-tossed drapery battling against the breeze and coming straight +toward him from the opposite sidewalk. "Annie!" he yelled, and ran +toward her.

+ +

"You fool, you fool!" she cried, weeping and laughing, and hanging upon +his neck, "why did you do it?"

+ +

"The Stuff," explained Thomas briefly. "You know. But subsequently nit. +Not a drop." He led her to the curb. "How did you happen to see me?"

+ +

"I came to find you," said Annie, holding tight to his sleeve. "Oh, you +big fool! Professor Cherubusco told us that we might find you here."

+ +

"Professor Ch–––– Don't know the guy. What saloon does he work in?"

+ +

"He's a clairvoyant, Thomas; the greatest in the world. He found you +with the Chaldean telescope, he said."

+ +

"He's a liar," said Thomas. "I never had it. He never saw me have +anybody's telescope."

+ +

"And he said you came in a chariot with five wheels or something."

+ +

"Annie," said Thoms solicitously, "you're giving me the wheels now. If +I had a chariot I'd have gone to bed in it long ago. And without any +singing and preaching for a nightcap, either."

+ +

"Listen, you big fool. The Missis says she'll take you back. I begged +her to. But you must behave. And you can go up to the house to-night; +and your old room over the stable is ready."

+ +

"Great!" said Thomas earnestly. "You are It, Annie. But when did these +stunts happen?"

+ +

"To-night at Professor Cherubusco's. He sent his automobile for the +Missis, and she took me along. I've been there with her before."

+ +

"What's the professor's line?"

+ +

"He's a clearvoyant and a witch. The Missis consults him. He knows +everything. But he hasn't done the Missis any good yet, though she's +paid him hundreds of dollars. But he told us that the stars told him we +could find you here."

+ +

"What's the old lady want this cherry-buster to do?"

+ +

"That's a family secret," said Annie. "And now you've asked enough +questions. Come on home, you big fool."

+ +

They had moved but a little way up the street when Thomas stopped.

+ +

"Got any dough with you, Annie?" he asked.

+ +

Annie looked at him sharply.

+ +

"Oh, I know what that look means," said Thomas. "You're wrong. Not +another drop. But there's a guy that was standing next to me in the bed +line over there that's in bad shape. He's the right kind, and he's got +wives or kids or something, and he's on the sick list. No booze. If you +could dig up half a dollar for him so he could get a decent bed I'd like +it."

+ +

Annie's fingers began to wiggle in her purse.

+ +

"Sure, I've got money," said she. "Lots of it. Twelve dollars." And then +she added, with woman's ineradicable suspicion of vicarious benevolence: +"Bring him here and let me see him first."

+ +

Thomas went on his mission. The wan Bed Liner came readily enough. As +the two drew near, Annie looked up from her purse and screamed:

+ +

"Mr. Walter— Oh—Mr. Walter!

+ +

"Is that you, Annie?" said the young man meekly.

+ +

"Oh, Mr. Walter!—and the Missis hunting high and low for you!"

+ +

"Does mother want to see me?" he asked, with a flush coming out on his +pale cheek.

+ +

"She's been hunting for you high and low. Sure, she wants to see you. +She wants you to come home. She's tried police and morgues and lawyers +and advertising and detectives and rewards and everything. And then she +took up clearvoyants. You'll go right home, won't you, Mr. Walter?"

+ +

"Gladly, if she wants me," said the young man. "Three years is a long +time. I suppose I'll have to walk up, though, unless the street cars are +giving free rides. I used to walk and beat that old plug team of bays we +used to drive to the carriage. Have they got them yet?"

+ +

"They have," said Thomas, feelingly. "And they'll have 'em ten years +from now. The life of the royal elephantibus truckhorseibus is one +hundred and forty-nine years. I'm the coachman. Just got my +reappointment five minutes ago. Let's all ride up in a surface car—that +is—er—if Annie will pay the fares."

+ +

On the Broadway car Annie handed each one of the prodigals a nickel to +pay the conductor.

+ +

"Seems to me you are mighty reckless the way you throw large sums of +money around," said Thomas sarcastically.

+ +

"In that purse," said Annie decidedly, "is exactly $11.85. I shall take +every cent of it to-morrow and give it to professor Cherubusco, the +greatest man in the world."

+ +

"Well," said Thomas, "I guess he must be a pretty fly guy to pipe off +things the way he does. I'm glad his spooks told him where you could +find me. If you'll give me his address, some day I'll go up there, +myself, and shake his hand."

+ +

Presently Thomas moved tentatively in his seat, and thoughtfully felt an +abrasion or two on his knees and his elbows.

+ +

"Say, Annie," said he confidentially, maybe it's one of the last dreams +of booze, but I've a kind of a recollection of riding in an automobile with +a swell guy that took me to a house full of eagles and arc lights. He +fed me on biscuits and hot air, and then kicked me down the front steps. +If it was the d t's, why am I so sore?"

+ +

"Shut up, you fool," said Annie.

+ +

"If I could find that funny guy's house," said Thomas, in conclusion, +"I'd go up there some day and punch his nose for him." +

THE POET AND THE PEASANT

+

The other day a poet friend of mine, who has lived in close communion +with nature all his life, wrote a poem and took it to an editor.

+ +

It was a living pastoral, full of the genuine breath of the fields, the +song of birds, and the pleasant chatter of trickling streams.

+ +

When the poet called again to see about it, with hopes of a beefsteak +dinner in his heart, it was handed back to him with the comment:

+ +

"Too artificial."

+ +

Several of us met over spaghetti and Dutchess County chianti, and +swallowed indignation with slippery forkfuls.

+ +

And there we dug a pit for the editor. With us was Conant, a +well-arrived writer of fiction—a man who had trod on asphalt all his +life, and who had never looked upon bucolic scenes except with +sensations of disgust from the windows of express trains.

+ +

Conant wrote a poem and called it "The Doe and the Brook." It was a +fine specimen of the kind of work you would expect from a poet who had +strayed with Amaryllis only as far as the florist's windows, and whose +sole ornithological discussion had been carried on with a waiter. Conant +signed this poem, and we sent it to the same editor.

+ +

But this has very little to do with the story.

+ +

Just as the editor was reading the first line of the poem, on the next +morning, a being stumbled off the West Shore ferryboat, and loped slowly +up Forty-second Street.

+ +

The invader was a young man with light blue eyes, a hanging lip and +hair the exact color of the little orphan's (afterward discovered to be +the earl's daughter) in one of Mr. Blaney's plays. His trousers were +corduroy, his coat short-sleeved, with buttons in the middle of his +back. One bootleg was outside the corduroys. You looked expectantly, +though in vain, at his straw hat for ear holes, its shape inaugurating +the suspicion that it had been ravaged from a former equine possessor. +In his hand was a valise—description of it is an impossible task; a +Boston man would not have carried his lunch and law books to his office +in it. And above one ear, in his hair, was a wisp of hay—the rustic's +letter of credit, his badge of innocence, the last clinging touch of the +Garden of Eden lingering to shame the gold-brick men.

+ +

Knowingly, smilingly, the city crowds passed him by. They saw the raw +stranger stand in the gutter and stretch his neck at the tall buildings. +At this they ceased to smile, and even to look at him. It had been +done so often. A few glanced at the antique valise to see what Coney +"attraction" or brand of chewing gum he might be thus dinning into his +memory. But for the most part he was ignored. Even the newsboys looked +bored when he scampered like a circus clown out of the way of cabs and +street cars.

+ +

At Eighth Avenue stood "Bunco Harry," with his dyed mustache and shiny, +good-natured eyes. Harry was too good an artist not to be pained at the +sight of an actor overdoing his part. He edged up to the countryman, who +had stopped to open his mouth at a jewelry store window, and shook his +head.

+ +

"Too thick, pal," he said, critically—"too thick by a couple of inches. +I don't know what your lay is; but you've got the properties too thick. +That hay, now—why, they don't even allow that on Proctor's circuit any +more."

+ +

"I don't understand you, mister," said the green one. "I'm not lookin' +for any circus. I've just run down from Ulster County to look at the +town, bein' that the hayin's over with. Gosh! but it's a whopper. I +thought Poughkeepsie was some punkins; but this here town is five times +as big."

+ +

"Oh, well," said "Bunco Harry," raising his eyebrows, "I didn't mean +to butt in. You don't have to tell. I thought you ought to tone down +a little, so I tried to put you wise. Wish you success at your graft, +whatever it is. Come and have a drink, anyhow."

+ +

"I wouldn't mind having a glass of lager beer," acknowledged the other.

+ +

They went to a café frequented by men with smooth faces and shifty eyes, +and sat at their drinks.

+ +

"I'm glad I come across you, mister," said Haylocks. "How'd you like to +play a game or two of seven-up? I've got the keerds."

+ +

He fished them out of Noah's valise—a rare, inimitable deck, greasy +with bacon suppers and grimy with the soil of cornfields.

+ +

"Bunco Harry" laughed loud and briefly.

+ +

"Not for me, sport," he said, firmly. "I don't go against that make-up +of yours for a cent. But I still say you've overdone it. The Reubs +haven't dressed like that since '79. I doubt if you could work Brooklyn +for a key-winding watch with that layout."

+ +

"Oh, you needn't think I ain't got the money," boasted Haylocks. He drew +forth a tightly rolled mass of bills as large as a teacup, and laid it +on the table.

+ +

"Got that for my share of grandmother's farm," he announced. "There's +$950 in that roll. Thought I'd come to the city and look around for a +likely business to go into."

+ +

"Bunco Harry" took up the roll of money and looked at it with almost +respect in his smiling eyes.

+ +

"I've seen worse," he said, critically. "But you'll never do it in them +clothes. You want to get light tan shoes and a black suit and a straw +hat with a colored band, and talk a good deal about Pittsburg and +freight differentials, and drink sherry for breakfast in order to work +off phony stuff like that."

+ +

"What's his line?" asked two or three shifty-eyed men of "Bunco Harry" +after Haylocks had gathered up his impugned money and departed.

+ +

"The queer, I guess," said Harry. "Or else he's one of Jerome's men. +Or some guy with a new graft. He's too much hayseed. Maybe that his—I +wonder now—oh, no, it couldn't have been real money."

+ +

Haylocks wandered on. Thirst probably assailed him again, for he dived +into a dark groggery on a side street and bought beer. At first sight +of him their eyes brightened; but when his insistent and exaggerated +rusticity became apparent their expressions changed to wary suspicion.

+ +

Haylocks swung his valise across the bar.

+ +

"Keep that a while for me, mister," he said, chewing at the end of a +virulent claybank cigar. "I'll be back after I knock around a spell. And +keep your eye on it, for there's $950 inside of it, though maybe you +wouldn't think so to look at me."

+ +

Somewhere outside a phonograph struck up a band piece, and Haylocks was +off for it, his coat-tail buttons flopping in the middle of his back.

+ +

"Divvy, Mike," said the men hanging upon the bar, winking openly at one +another.

+ +

"Honest, now," said the bartender, kicking the valise to one side. "You +don't think I'd fall to that, do you? Anybody can see he ain't no jay. +One of McAdoo's come-on squad, I guess. He's a shine if he made himself +up. There ain't no parts of the country now where they dress like that +since they run rural free delivery to Providence, Rhode Island. If he's +got nine-fifty in that valise it's a ninety-eight cent Waterbury that's +stopped at ten minutes to ten."

+ +

When Haylocks had exhausted the resources of Mr. Edison to amuse he +returned for his valise. And then down Broadway he gallivanted, culling +the sights with his eager blue eyes. But still and evermore Broadway +rejected him with curt glances and sardonic smiles. He was the oldest of +the "gags" that the city must endure. He was so flagrantly impossible, +so ultra rustic, so exaggerated beyond the most freakish products of the +barnyard, the hayfield and the vaudeville stage, that he excited only +weariness and suspicion. And the wisp of hay in his hair was so genuine, +so fresh and redolent of the meadows, so clamorously rural that even a +shell-game man would have put up his peas and folded his table at the +sight of it.

+ +

Haylocks seated himself upon a flight of stone steps and once more +exhumed his roll of yellow-backs from the valise. The outer one, a +twenty, he shucked off and beckoned to a newsboy.

+ +

"Son," said he, "run somewhere and get this changed for me. I'm mighty +nigh out of chicken feed. I guess you'll get a nickel if you'll hurry +up."

+ +

A hurt look appeared through the dirt on the newsy's face.

+ +

"Aw, watchert'ink! G'wan and get yer funny bill changed yerself. Dey +ain't no farm clothes yer got on. G'wan wit yer stage money."

+ +

On a corner lounged a keen-eyed steerer for a gambling-house. He saw +Haylocks, and his expression suddenly grew cold and virtuous.

+ +

"Mister," said the rural one. "I've heard of places in this here town +where a fellow could have a good game of old sledge or peg a card at +keno. I got $950 in this valise, and I come down from old Ulster to see +the sights. Know where a fellow could get action on about $9 or $10? I'm +goin' to have some sport, and then maybe I'll buy out a business of some +kind."

+ +

The steerer looked pained, and investigated a white speck on his left +forefinger nail.

+ +

"Cheese it, old man," he murmured, reproachfully. "The Central Office +must be bughouse to send you out looking like such a gillie. You +couldn't get within two blocks of a sidewalk crap game in them Tony +Pastor props. The recent Mr. Scotty from Death Valley has got you beat +a crosstown block in the way of Elizabethan scenery and mechanical +accessories. Let it be skiddoo for yours. Nay, I know of no gilded halls +where one may bet a patrol wagon on the ace."

+ +

Rebuffed once again by the great city that is so swift to detect +artificialities, Haylocks sat upon the curb and presented his thoughts +to hold a conference.

+ +

"It's my clothes," said he; "durned if it ain't. They think I'm a +hayseed and won't have nothin' to do with me. Nobody never made fun of +this hat in Ulster County. I guess if you want folks to notice you in +New York you must dress up like they do."

+ +

So Haylocks went shopping in the bazaars where men spake through their +noses and rubbed their hands and ran the tape line ecstatically over the +bulge in his inside pocket where reposed a red nubbin of corn with an +even number of rows. And messengers bearing parcels and boxes streamed +to his hotel on Broadway within the lights of Long Acre.

+ +

At 9 o'clock in the evening one descended to the sidewalk whom Ulster +County would have foresworn. Bright tan were his shoes; his hat the +latest block. His light gray trousers were deeply creased; a gay blue +silk handkerchief flapped from the breast pocket of his elegant English +walking coat. His collar might have graced a laundry window; his blond +hair was trimmed close; the wisp of hay was gone.

+ +

For an instant he stood, resplendent, with the leisurely air of a +boulevardier concocting in his mind the route for his evening pleasures. +And then he turned down the gay, bright street with the easy and +graceful tread of a millionaire.

+ +

But in the instant that he had paused the wisest and keenest eyes in the +city had enveloped him in their field of vision. A stout man with gray +eyes picked two of his friends with a lift of his eyebrows from the row +of loungers in front of the hotel.

+ +

"The juiciest jay I've seen in six months," said the man with gray eyes. +"Come along."

+ +

It was half-past eleven when a man galloped into the West Forty-seventh +Street Police Station with the story of his wrongs.

+ +

"Nine hundred and fifty dollars," he gasped, "all my share of +grandmother's farm."

+ +

The desk sergeant wrung from him the name Jabez Bulltongue, of Locust +Valley farm, Ulster County, and then began to take descriptions of the +strong-arm gentlemen.

+ +

When Conant went to see the editor about the fate of his poem, he was +received over the head of the office boy into the inner office that is +decorated with the statuettes by Rodin and J. G. Brown.

+ +

"When I read the first line of 'The Doe and the Brook,'" said the +editor, "I knew it to be the work of one whose life has been heart to +heart with Nature. The finished art of the line did not blind me to that +fact. To use a somewhat homely comparison, it was as if a wild, free +child of the woods and fields were to don the garb of fashion and walk +down Broadway. Beneath the apparel the man would show."

+ +

"Thanks," said Conant. "I suppose the check will be round on Thursday, +as usual."

+ +

The morals of this story have somehow gotten mixed. You can take your +choice of "Stay on the Farm" or "Don't Write Poetry." +

THE ROBE OF PEACE

+

Mysteries follow one another so closely in a great city that the reading +public and the friends of Johnny Bellchambers have ceased to marvel +at his sudden and unexplained disappearance nearly a year ago. This +particular mystery has now been cleared up, but the solution is so +strange and incredible to the mind of the average man that only a select +few who were in close touch with Bellchambers will give it full +credence.

+ +

Johnny Bellchambers, as is well known, belonged to the intrinsically +inner circle of the élite. Without any of the ostentation of the +fashionable ones who endeavor to attract notice by eccentric display of +wealth and show he still was au fait in everything that gave deserved +lustre to his high position in the ranks of society.

+ +

Especially did he shine in the matter of dress. In this he was the +despair of imitators. Always correct, exquisitely groomed, and possessed +of an unlimited wardrobe, he was conceded to be the best-dressed man in +New York, and, therefore, in America. There was not a tailor in Gotham +who would not have deemed it a precious boon to have been granted the +privilege of making Bellchambers' clothes without a cent of pay. As he +wore them, they would have been a priceless advertisement. Trousers +were his especial passion. Here nothing but perfection would he notice. +He would have worn a patch as quickly as he would have overlooked a +wrinkle. He kept a man in his apartments always busy pressing his ample +supply. His friends said that three hours was the limit of time that he +would wear these garments without exchanging.

+ +

Bellchambers disappeared very suddenly. For three days his absence +brought no alarm to his friends, and then they began to operate the +usual methods of inquiry. All of them failed. He had left absolutely no +trace behind. Then the search for a motive was instituted, but none was +found. He had no enemies, he had no debts, there was no woman. There +were several thousand dollars in his bank to his credit. He had never +showed any tendency toward mental eccentricity; in fact, he was of a +particularly calm and well-balanced temperament. Every means of tracing +the vanished man was made use of, but without avail. It was one of those +cases—more numerous in late years—where men seem to have gone out like +the flame of a candle, leaving not even a trail of smoke as a witness.

+ +

In May, Tom Eyres and Lancelot Gilliam, two of Bellchambers' old +friends, went for a little run on the other side. While pottering around +in Italy and Switzerland, they happened, one day, to hear of a monastery +in the Swiss Alps that promised something outside of the ordinary +tourist-beguiling attractions. The monastery was almost inaccessible to +the average sightseer, being on an extremely rugged and precipitous spur +of the mountains. The attractions it possessed but did not advertise +were, first, an exclusive and divine cordial made by the monks that was +said to far surpass benedictine and chartreuse. Next a huge brass bell +so purely and accurately cast that it had not ceased sounding since it +was first rung three hundred years ago. Finally, it was asserted that no +Englishman had ever set foot within its walls. Eyres and Gilliam decided +that these three reports called for investigation.

+ +

It took them two days with the aid of two guides to reach the monastery +of St. Gondrau. It stood upon a frozen, wind-swept crag with the snow +piled about it in treacherous, drifting masses. They were hospitably +received by the brothers whose duty it was to entertain the infrequent +guest. They drank of the precious cordial, finding it rarely potent and +reviving. They listened to the great, ever-echoing bell, and learned +that they were pioneer travelers, in those gray stone walls, over the +Englishman whose restless feet have trodden nearly every corner of the +earth.

+ +

At three o'clock on the afternoon they arrived, the two young Gothamites +stood with good Brother Cristofer in the great, cold hallway of the +monastery to watch the monks march past on their way to the refectory. +They came slowly, pacing by twos, with their heads bowed, treading +noiselessly with sandaled feet upon the rough stone flags. As the +procession slowly filed past, Eyres suddenly gripped Gilliam by the arm. +"Look," he whispered, eagerly, "at the one just opposite you now—the +one on this side, with his hand at his waist—if that isn't Johnny +Bellchambers then I never saw him!"

+ +

Gilliam saw and recognized the lost glass of fashion.

+ +

"What the deuce," said he, wonderingly, "is old Bell doing here? Tommy, +it surely can't be he! Never heard of Bell having a turn for the +religious. Fact is, I've heard him say things when a four-in-hand didn't +seem to tie up just right that would bring him up for court-martial +before any church."

+ +

"It's Bell, without a doubt," said Eyres, firmly, "or I'm pretty badly +in need of an oculist. But think of Johnny Bellchambers, the Royal High +Chancellor of swell togs and the Mahatma of pink teas, up here in cold +storage doing penance in a snuff-colored bathrobe! I can't get it +straight in my mind. Let's ask the jolly old boy that's doing the honors."

+ +

Brother Cristofer was appealed to for information. By that time the +monks had passed into the refectory. He could not tell to which one they +referred. Bellchambers? Ah, the brothers of St. Gondrau abandoned their +worldly names when they took the vows. Did the gentlemen wish to speak +with one of the brothers? If they would come to the refectory and +indicate the one they wished to see, the reverend abbot in authority +would, doubtless, permit it.

+ +

Eyres and Gilliam went into the dining hall and pointed out to Brother +Cristofer the man they had seen. Yes, it was Johnny Bellchambers. They +saw his face plainly now, as he sat among the dingy brothers, never +looking up, eating broth from a coarse, brown bowl.

+ +

Permission to speak to one of the brothers was granted to the two +travelers by the abbot, and they waited in a reception room for him to +come. When he did come, treading softly in his sandals, both Eyres and +Gilliam looked at him in perplexity and astonishment. It was Johnny +Bellchambers, but he had a different look. Upon his smooth-shaven face +was an expression of ineffable peace, of rapturous attainment, of +perfect and complete happiness. His form was proudly erect, his eyes +shone with a serene and gracious light. He was as neat and well-groomed +as in the old New York days, but how differently was he clad! Now he +seemed clothed in but a single garment—a long robe of rough brown +cloth, gathered by a cord at the waist, and falling in straight, loose +folds nearly to his feet. He shook hands with his visitors with his old +ease and grace of manner. If there was any embarrassment in that meeting +it was not manifested by Johnny Bellchambers. The room had no seats; +they stood to converse.

+ +

"Glad to see you, old man," said Eyres, somewhat awkwardly. "Wasn't +expecting to find you up here. Not a bad idea though, after all. +Society's an awful sham. Must be a relief to shake the giddy whirl and +retire to—er—contemplation and—er—prayer and hymns, and those +things.

+ +

"Oh, cut that, Tommy," said Bellchambers, cheerfully. "Don't be afraid +that I'll pass around the plate. I go through these thing-um-bobs with +the rest of these old boys because they are the rules. I'm Brother +Ambrose here, you know. I'm given just ten minutes to talk to you +fellows. That's rather a new design in waistcoats you have on, isn't it, +Gilliam? Are they wearing those things on Broadway now?"

+ +

"It's the same old Johnny," said Gilliam, joyfully. "What the devil—I +mean why— Oh, confound it! what did you do it for, old man?"

+ +

"Peel the bathrobe," pleaded Eyres, almost tearfully, "and go back with +us. The old crowd'll go wild to see you. This isn't in your line, Bell. +I know half a dozen girls that wore the willow on the quiet when you +shook us in that unaccountable way. Hand in your resignation, or get a +dispensation, or whatever you have to do to get a release from this ice +factory. You'll get catarrh here, Johnny—and— My God! you haven't any +socks on!"

+ +

Bellchambers looked down at his sandaled feet and smiled.

+ +

"You fellows don't understand," he said, soothingly. "It's nice of you +to want me to go back, but the old life will never know me again. I +have reached here the goal of all my ambitions. I am entirely happy +and contented. Here I shall remain for the remainder of my days. You +see this robe that I wear?" Bellchambers caressingly touched the +straight-hanging garment: "At last I have found something that will not +bag at the knees. I have attained—"

+ +

At that moment the deep boom of the great brass bell reverberated +through the monastery. It must have been a summons to immediate +devotions, for Brother Ambrose bowed his head, turned and left the +chamber without another word. A slight wave of his hand as he passed +through the stone doorway seemed to say a farewell to his old friends. +They left the monastery without seeing him again.

+ +

And this is the story that Tommy Eyres and Lancelot Gilliam brought back +with them from their latest European tour. +

THE GIRL AND THE GRAFT

+

The other day I ran across my old friend Ferguson Pogue. Pogue is +a conscientious grafter of the highest type. His headquarters is +the Western Hemisphere, and his line of business is anything from +speculating in town lots on the Great Staked Plains to selling wooden +toys in Connecticut, made by hydraulic pressure from nutmegs ground to a +pulp.

+ +

Now and then when Pogue has made a good haul he comes to New York for +a rest. He says the jug of wine and loaf of bread and Thou in the +wilderness business is about as much rest and pleasure to him as sliding +down the bumps at Coney would be to President Taft. "Give me," says +Pogue, "a big city for my vacation. Especially New York. I'm not much +fond of New Yorkers, and Manhattan is about the only place on the globe +where I don't find any."

+ +

While in the metropolis Pogue can always be found at one of two places. +One is a little second-hand book-shop on Fourth Avenue, where he reads +books about his hobbies, Mahometanism and taxidermy. I found him at +the other—his hall bedroom in Eighteenth Street—where he sat in his +stocking feet trying to pluck "The Banks of the Wabash" out of a small +zither. Four years he has practised this tune without arriving near +enough to cast the longest trout line to the water's edge. On the +dresser lay a blued-steel Colt's forty-five and a tight roll of tens and +twenties large enough around to belong to the spring rattlesnake-story +class. A chambermaid with a room-cleaning air fluttered nearby in the +hall, unable to enter or to flee, scandalized by the stocking feet, +aghast at the Colt's, yet powerless, with her metropolitan instincts, +to remove herself beyond the magic influence of the yellow-hued roll.

+ +

I sat on his trunk while Ferguson Pogue talked. No one could be franker +or more candid in his conversation. Beside his expression the cry of +Henry James for lacteal nourishment at the age of one month would have +seemed like a Chaldean cryptogram. He told me stories of his profession +with pride, for he considered it an art. And I was curious enough to ask +him whether he had known any women who followed it.

+ +

"Ladies?" said Pogue, with Western chivalry. "Well, not to any great +extent. They don't amount to much in special lines of graft, because +they're all so busy in general lines. What? Why, they have to. Who's got +the money in the world? The men. Did you ever know a man to give a woman +a dollar without any consideration? A man will shell out his dust to +another man free and easy and gratis. But if he drops a penny in one of +the machines run by the Madam Eve's Daughters' Amalgamated Association +and the pineapple chewing gum don't fall out when he pulls the lever you +can hear him kick to the superintendent four blocks away. Man is the +hardest proposition a woman has to go up against. He's the low-grade +one, and she has to work overtime to make him pay. Two times out of +five she's salted. She can't put in crushers and costly machinery. He'd +notice 'em and be onto the game. They have to pan out what they get, and +it hurts their tender hands. Some of 'em are natural sluice troughs and +can carry out $1,000 to the ton. The dry-eyed ones have to depend on +signed letters, false hair, sympathy, the kangaroo walk, cowhide whips, +ability to cook, sentimental juries, conversational powers, silk +underskirts, ancestry, rouge, anonymous letters, violet sachet powders, +witnesses, revolvers, pneumatic forms, carbolic acid, moonlight, cold +cream and the evening newspapers."

+ +

"You are outrageous, Ferg," I said. "Surely there is none of this +'graft' as you call it, in a perfect and harmonious matrimonial union!"

+ +

"Well," said Pogue, "nothing that would justify you every time in +calling Police Headquarters and ordering out the reserves and a +vaudeville manager on a dead run. But it's this way: Suppose you're a +Fifth Avenue millionaire, soaring high, on the right side of copper and +cappers.

+ +

"You come home at night and bring a $9,000,000 diamond brooch to the +lady who's staked you for a claim. You hand it over. She says, 'Oh, +George!' and looks to see if it's backed. She comes up and kisses you. +You've waited for it. You get it. All right. It's graft.

+ +

"But I'm telling you about Artemisia Blye. She was from Kansas and she +suggested corn in all of its phases. Her hair was as yellow as the silk; +her form was as tall and graceful as a stalk in the low grounds during a +wet summer; her eyes were as big and startling as bunions, and green was +her favorite color.

+ +

"On my last trip into the cool recesses of your sequestered city I met a +human named Vaucross. He was worth—that is, he had a million. He told +me he was in business on the street. 'A sidewalk merchant?' says I, +sarcastic. 'Exactly,' says he, 'Senior partner of a paving concern.'

+ +

"I kind of took to him. For this reason, I met him on Broadway one night +when I was out of heart, luck, tobacco and place. He was all silk hat, +diamonds and front. He was all front. If you had gone behind him you +would have only looked yourself in the face. I looked like a cross +between Count Tolstoy and a June lobster. I was out of luck. I had—but +let me lay my eyes on that dealer again.

+ +

"Vaucross stopped and talked to me a few minutes and then he took me to +a high-toned restaurant to eat dinner. There was music, and then some +Beethoven, and Bordelaise sauce, and cussing in French, and frangipangi, +and some hauteur and cigarettes. When I am flush I know them places.

+ +

"I declare, I must have looked as bad as a magazine artist sitting there +without any money and my hair all rumpled like I was booked to read a +chapter from 'Elsie's School Days' at a Brooklyn Bohemian smoker. But +Vaucross treated me like a bear hunter's guide. He wasn't afraid of +hurting the waiter's feelings.

+ +

"'Mr. Pogue,' he explains to me, 'I am using you.'

+ +

"'Go on,' says I; 'I hope you don't wake up.'

+ +

"And then he tells me, you know, the kind of man he was. He was a +New Yorker. His whole ambition was to be noticed. He wanted to be +conspicuous. He wanted people to point him out and bow to him, and tell +others who he was. He said it had been the desire of his life always. He +didn't have but a million, so he couldn't attract attention by spending +money. He said he tried to get into public notice one time by planting +a little public square on the east side with garlic for free use of +the poor; but Carnegie heard of it, and covered it over at once with a +library in the Gaelic language. Three times he had jumped in the way of +automobiles; but the only result was five broken ribs and a notice in +the papers that an unknown man, five feet ten, with four amalgam-filled +teeth, supposed to be the last of the famous Red Leary gang had been run +over.

+ +

"'Ever try the reporters,' I asked him.

+ +

"'Last month,' says Mr. Vaucross, 'my expenditure for lunches to +reporters was $124.80.'

+ +

"'Get anything out of that?' I asks.

+ +

"'That reminds me,' says he; 'add $8.50 for pepsin. Yes, I got +indigestion.'

+ +

"'How am I supposed to push along your scramble for prominence?' I +inquires. 'Contrast?'

+ +

"'Something of that sort to-night,' says Vaucross. 'It grieves me; but +I am forced to resort to eccentricity.' And here he drops his napkin in +his soup and rises up and bows to a gent who is devastating a potato +under a palm across the room.

+ +

"'The Police Commissioner,' says my climber, gratified. 'Friend', says +I, in a hurry, 'have ambitions but don't kick a rung out of your ladder. +When you use me as a stepping stone to salute the police you spoil my +appetite on the grounds that I may be degraded and incriminated. Be +thoughtful.'

+ +

"At the Quaker City squab en casserole the idea about Artemisia Blye +comes to me.

+ +

"'Suppose I can manage to get you in the papers,' says I—'a column or +two every day in all of 'em and your picture in most of 'em for a week. +How much would it be worth to you?'

+ +

"'Ten thousand dollars,' says Vaucross, warm in a minute. 'But no +murder,' says he; 'and I won't wear pink pants at a cotillon.'

+ +

"'I wouldn't ask you to,' says I. 'This is honorable, stylish and +uneffeminate. Tell the waiter to bring a demi tasse and some other +beans, and I will disclose to you the opus moderandi.'

+ +

"We closed the deal an hour later in the rococo rouge et noise room. I +telegraphed that night to Miss Artemisia in Salina. She took a couple +of photographs and an autograph letter to an elder in the Fourth +Presbyterian Church in the morning, and got some transportation and $80. +She stopped in Topeka long enough to trade a flashlight interior and a +valentine to the vice-president of a trust company for a mileage book +and a package of five-dollar notes with $250 scrawled on the band.

+ +

"The fifth evening after she got my wire she was waiting, all décolletée +and dressed up, for me and Vaucross to take her to dinner in one of +these New York feminine apartment houses where a man can't get in unless +he plays bezique and smokes depilatory powder cigarettes.

+ +

"'She's a stunner,' says Vaucross when he saw her. 'They'll give her a +two-column cut sure.'

+ +

"This was the scheme the three of us concocted. It was business straight +through. Vaucross was to rush Miss Blye with all the style and display +and emotion he could for a month. Of course, that amounted to nothing as +far as his ambitions were concerned. The sight of a man in a white tie +and patent leather pumps pouring greenbacks through the large end of +a cornucopia to purchase nutriment and heartsease for tall, willowy +blondes in New York is as common a sight as blue turtles in delirium +tremens. But he was to write her love letters—the worst kind of love +letters, such as your wife publishes after you are dead—every day. At +the end of the month he was to drop her, and she would bring suit for +$100,000 for breach of promise.

+ +

"Miss Artemisia was to get $10,000. If she won the suit that was all; +and if she lost she was to get it anyhow. There was a signed contract to +that effect.

+ +

"Sometimes they had me out with 'em, but not often. I couldn't keep up +to their style. She used to pull out his notes and criticize them like +bills of lading.

+ +

"'Say, you!' she'd say. 'What do you call this—letter to a Hardware +Merchant from His Nephew on Learning that His Aunt Has Nettlerash? You +Eastern duffers know as much about writing love letters as a Kansas +grasshopper does about tugboats. "My dear Miss Blye!"—wouldn't that put +pink icing and a little red sugar bird on your bridal cake? How long do +you expect to hold an audience in a court-room with that kind of stuff? +You want to get down to business, and call me "Tweedlums Babe" and +"Honeysuckle," and sign yourself "Mama's Own Big Bad Puggy Wuggy Boy" if +you want any limelight to concentrate upon your sparse gray hairs. Get +sappy.'

+ +

"After that Vaucross dipped his pen in the indelible tabasco. His notes +read like something or other in the original. I could see a jury +sitting up, and women tearing one another's hats to hear 'em read. And I +could see piling up for Mr. Vaucross as much notoriousness as Archbishop +Cranmer or the Brooklyn Bridge or cheese-on-salad ever enjoyed. He +seemed mighty pleased at the prospects.

+ +

"They agreed on a night; and I stood on Fifth Avenue outside a solemn +restaurant and watched 'em. A process-server walked in and handed +Vaucross the papers at his table. Everybody looked at 'em; and he +looked as proud as Cicero. I went back to my room and lit a five-cent +cigar, for I knew the $10,000 was as good as ours.

+ +

"About two hours later somebody knocked at my door. There stood Vaucross +and Miss Artemisia, and she was clinging—yes, sir, clinging—to his +arm. And they tells me they'd been out and got married. And they +articulated some trivial cadences about love and such. And they laid +down a bundle on the table and said 'Good night' and left.

+ +

"And that's why I say," concluded Ferguson Pogue, "that a woman is too +busy occupied with her natural vocation and instinct of graft such as is +given her for self-preservation and amusement to make any great success +in special lines."

+ +

"What was in the bundle that they left?" I asked, with my usual +curiosity.

+ +

"Why," said Ferguson, "there was a scalper's railroad ticket as far as +Kansas City and two pairs of Mr. Vaucross's old pants." +

THE CALL OF THE TAME

+

When the inauguration was accomplished—the proceedings were made smooth +by the presence of the Rough Riders—it is well known that a herd of +those competent and loyal ex-warriors paid a visit to the big city. The +newspaper reporters dug out of their trunks the old broad-brimmed hats +and leather belts that they wear to North Beach fish fries, and mixed +with the visitors. No damage was done beyond the employment of the +wonderful plural "tenderfeet" in each of the scribe's stories. The +Westerners mildly contemplated the skyscrapers as high as the third +story, yawned at Broadway, hunched down in the big chairs in hotel +corridors, and altogether looked as bored and dejected as a member of Ye +Ancient and Honorable Artillery separated during a sham battle from his +valet.

+ +

Out of this sightseeing delegations of good King Teddy's Gentlemen of +the Royal Bear-hounds dropped one Greenbrier Nye, of Pin Feather, Ariz.

+ +

The daily cyclone of Sixth Avenue's rush hour swept him away from the +company of his pardners true. The dust from a thousand rustling skirts +filled his eyes. The mighty roar of trains rushing across the sky +deafened him. The lightning-flash of twice ten hundred beaming eyes +confused his vision.

+ +

The storm was so sudden and tremendous that Greenbrier's first impulse +was to lie down and grab a root. And then he remembered that the +disturbance was human, and not elemental; and he backed out of it with +a grin into a doorway.

+ +

The reporters had written that but for the wide-brimmed hats the West +was not visible upon these gauchos of the North. Heaven sharpen their +eyes! The suit of black diagonal, wrinkled in impossible places; the +bright blue four-in-hand, factory tied; the low, turned-down collar, +pattern of the days of Seymour and Blair, white glazed as the letters +on the window of the open-day-and-night-except-Sunday restaurants; the +out-curve at the knees from the saddle grip; the peculiar spread of +the half-closed right thumb and fingers from the stiff hold upon the +circling lasso; the deeply absorbed weather tan that the hottest +sun of Cape May can never equal; the seldom-winking blue eyes that +unconsciously divided the rushing crowds into fours, as though they were +being counted out of a corral; the segregated loneliness and solemnity +of expression, as of an Emperor or of one whose horizons have not +intruded upon him nearer than a day's ride—these brands of the West +were set upon Greenbrier Nye. Oh, yes; he wore a broad-brimmed hat, +gentle reader—just like those the Madison Square Post Office mail +carriers wear when they go up to Bronx Park on Sunday afternoons.

+ +

Suddenly Greenbrier Nye jumped into the drifting herd of metropolitan +cattle, seized upon a man, dragged him out of the stream and gave him +a buffet upon his collar-bone that sent him reeling against a wall.

+ +

The victim recovered his hat, with the angry look of a New Yorker who +has suffered an outrage and intends to write to the Trib. about it. But +he looked at his assailant, and knew that the blow was in consideration +of love and affection after the manner of the West, which greets its +friends with contumely and uproar and pounding fists, and receives its +enemies in decorum and order, such as the judicious placing of the +welcoming bullet demands.

+ +

"God in the mountains!" cried Greenbrier, holding fast to the foreleg of +his cull. "Can this be Longhorn Merritt?"

+ +

The other man was—oh, look on Broadway any day for the +pattern—business man—latest rolled-brim derby—good barber, business, +digestion and tailor.

+ +

"Greenbrier Nye!" he exclaimed, grasping the hand that had smitten him. +"My dear fellow! So glad to see you! How did you come to—oh, to be +sure—the inaugural ceremonies—I remember you joined the Rough Riders. +You must come and have luncheon with me, of course."

+ +

Greenbrier pinned him sadly but firmly to the wall with a hand the size, +shape and color of a McClellan saddle.

+ +

"Longy," he said, in a melancholy voice that disturbed traffic, "what +have they been doing to you? You act just like a citizen. They done made +you into an inmate of the city directory. You never made no such Johnny +Branch execration of yourself as that out on the Gila. 'Come and have +lunching with me!' You never defined grub by any such terms of reproach +in them days."

+ +

"I've been living in New York seven years," said Merritt. "It's been +eight since we punched cows together in Old Man Garcia's outfit. Well, +let's go to a café, anyhow. It sounds good to hear it called 'grub' +again."

+ +

They picked their way through the crowd to a hotel, and drifted, as by +a natural law, to the bar.

+ +

"Speak up," invited Greenbrier.

+ +

"A dry Martini," said Merritt.

+ +

"Oh, Lord!" cried Greenbrier; "and yet me and you once saw the same pink +Gila monsters crawling up the walls of the same hotel in Cañon Diablo! A +dry—but let that pass. Whiskey straight—and they're on you."

+ +

Merritt smiled, and paid.

+ +

They lunched in a small extension of the dining room that connected with +the café. Merritt dexterously diverted his friend's choice, that hovered +over ham and eggs, to a purée of celery, a salmon cutlet, a partridge +pie and a desirable salad.

+ +

"On the day," said Greenbrier, grieved and thunderous, "when I can't +hold but one drink before eating when I meet a friend I ain't seen in +eight years at a 2 by 4 table in a thirty-cent town at 1 o'clock on the +third day of the week, I want nine broncos to kick me forty times over a +640-acre section of land. Get them statistics?"

+ +

"Right, old man," laughed Merritt. "Waiter, bring an absinthe frappé +and—what's yours, Greenbrier?"

+ +

"Whiskey straight," mourned Nye. "Out of the neck of a bottle you used +to take it, Longy—straight out of the neck of a bottle on a galloping +pony—Arizona redeye, not this ab—oh, what's the use? They're on you."

+ +

Merritt slipped the wine card under his glass.

+ +

"All right. I suppose you think I'm spoiled by the city. I'm as good a +Westerner as you are, Greenbrier; but, somehow, I can't make up my mind +to go back out there. New York is comfortable—comfortable. I make a +good living, and I live it. No more wet blankets and riding herd in +snowstorms, and bacon and cold coffee, and blowouts once in six months +for me. I reckon I'll hang out here in the future. We'll take in the +theatre to-night, Greenbrier, and after that we'll dine at—"

+ +

"I'll tell you what you are, Merritt," said Greenbrier, laying one elbow +in his salad and the other in his butter. "You are a concentrated, +effete, unconditional, short-sleeved, gotch-eared Miss Sally Walker. God +made you perpendicular and suitable to ride straddle and use cuss words +in the original. Wherefore you have suffered his handiwork to elapse +by removing yourself to New York and putting on little shoes tied with +strings, and making faces when you talk. I've seen you rope and tie a +steer in 42½. If you was to see one now you'd write to the Police +Commissioner about it. And these flapdoodle drinks that you inoculate +your system with—these little essences of cowslip with acorns in 'em, +and paregoric flip—they ain't anyways in assent with the cordiality of +manhood. I hate to see you this way."

+ +

"Well, Mr. Greenbrier," said Merritt, with apology in his tone, "in a +way you are right. Sometimes I do feel like I was being raised on the +bottle. But, I tell you, New York is comfortable—comfortable. There's +something about it—the sights and the crowds, and the way it changes +every day, and the very air of it that seems to tie a one-mile-long +stake rope around a man's neck, with the other end fastened somewhere +about Thirty-fourth Street. I don't know what it is."

+ +

"God knows," said Greenbrier sadly, "and I know. The East has gobbled +you up. You was venison, and now you're veal. You put me in mind of a +japonica in a window. You've been signed, sealed and diskivered. +Requiescat in hoc signo. You make me thirsty."

+ +

"A green chartreuse here," said Merritt to the waiter.

+ +

"Whiskey straight," sighed Greenbrier, "and they're on you, you renegade +of the round-ups."

+ +

"Guilty, with an application for mercy," said Merritt. "You don't know +how it is, Greenbrier. It's so comfortable here that—"

+ +

"Please loan me your smelling salts," pleaded Greenbrier. "If I hadn't +seen you once bluff three bluffers from Mazatzal City with an empty gun +in Phoenix—"

+ +

Greenbrier's voice died away in pure grief.

+ +

"Cigars!" he called harshly to the waiter, to hide his emotion.

+ +

"A pack of Turkish cigarettes for mine," said Merritt.

+ +

"They're on you," chanted Greenbrier, struggling to conceal his +contempt.

+ +

At seven they dined in the Where-to-Dine-Well column.

+ +

That evening a galaxy had assembled there. Bright shone the lights o'er +fair women and br—let it go, anyhow—brave men. The orchestra played +charmingly. Hardly had a tip from a diner been placed in its hands by a +waiter when it would burst forth into soniferousness. The more beer you +contributed to it the more Meyerbeer it gave you. Which is reciprocity.

+ +

Merritt put forth exertions on the dinner. Greenbrier was his old +friend, and he liked him. He persuaded him to drink a cocktail.

+ +

"I take the horehound tea," said Greenbrier, "for old times' sake. But +I'd prefer whiskey straight. They're on you."

+ +

"Right!" said Merritt. "Now, run your eye down that bill of fare and see +if it seems to hitch on any of these items."

+ +

"Lay me on my lava bed!" said Greenbrier, with bulging eyes. "All these +specimens of nutriment in the grub wagon! What's this? Horse with the +heaves? I pass. But look along! Here's truck for twenty round-ups all +spelled out in different directions. Wait till I see."

+ +

The viands ordered, Merritt turned to the wine list.

+ +

"This Medoc isn't bad," he suggested.

+ +

"You're the doc," said Greenbrier. "I'd rather have whiskey straight. +It's on you."

+ +

Greenbrier looked around the room. The waiter brought things and took +dishes away. He was observing. He saw a New York restaurant crowd +enjoying itself.

+ +

"How was the range when you left the Gila?" asked Merritt.

+ +

"Fine," said Greenbrier. "You see that lady in the red speckled silk at +that table. Well, she could warm over her beans at my campfire. Yes, the +range was good. She looks as nice as a white mustang I see once on Black +River."

+ +

When the coffee came, Greenbrier put one foot on the seat of the chair +next to him.

+ +

"You said it was a comfortable town, Longy," he said, meditatively. +"Yes, it's a comfortable town. It's different from the plains in a blue +norther. What did you call that mess in the crock with the handle, +Longy? Oh, yes, squabs in a cash roll. They're worth the roll. That +white mustang had just such a way of turning his head and shaking his +mane—look at her, Longy. If I thought I could sell out my ranch at a +fair price, I believe I'd—

+ +

"Gyar—song!" he suddenly cried, in a voice that paralyzed every knife +and fork in the restaurant.

+ +

The waiter dived toward the table.

+ +

"Two more of them cocktail drinks," ordered Greenbrier.

+ +

Merritt looked at him and smiled significantly.

+ +

"They're on me," said Greenbrier, blowing a puff of smoke to the +ceiling. +

THE UNKNOWN QUANTITY

+

The poet Longfellow—or was it Confucius, the inventor of +wisdom?—remarked:

+
+

"Life is real, life is earnest;
And things are not what they seem."

+

+ +

As mathematics are—or is: thanks, old subscriber!—the only just rule +by which questions of life can be measured, let us, by all means, +adjust our theme to the straight edge and the balanced column of the +great goddess Two-and-Two-Makes-Four. Figures—unassailable sums in +addition—shall be set over against whatever opposing element there +may be.

+ +

A mathematician, after scanning the above two lines of poetry, would +say: "Ahem! young gentlemen, if we assume that X plus—that is, that +life is real—then things (all of which life includes) are real. +Anything that is real is what it seems. Then if we consider the +proposition that 'things are not what they seem,' why—"

+ +

But this is heresy, and not poesy. We woo the sweet nymph Algebra; we +would conduct you into the presence of the elusive, seductive, pursued, +satisfying, mysterious X.

+ +

Not long before the beginning of this century, Septimus Kinsolving, an +old New Yorker, invented an idea. He originated the discovery that bread +is made from flour and not from wheat futures. Perceiving that the flour +crop was short, and that the Stock Exchange was having no perceptible +effect on the growing wheat, Mr. Kinsolving cornered the flour market.

+ +

The result was that when you or my landlady (before the war she never +had to turn her hand to anything; Southerners accommodated) bought a +five-cent loaf of bread you laid down an additional two cents, which +went to Mr. Kinsolving as a testimonial to his perspicacity.

+ +

A second result was that Mr. Kinsolving quit the game with $2,000,000 +prof—er—rake-off.

+ +

Mr. Kinsolving's son Dan was at college when the mathematical experiment +in breadstuffs was made. Dan came home during vacation, and found the +old gentleman in a red dressing-gown reading "Little Dorrit" on the +porch of his estimable red brick mansion in Washington Square. He had +retired from business with enough extra two-cent pieces from bread +buyers to reach, if laid side by side, fifteen times around the earth +and lap as far as the public debt of Paraguay.

+ +

Dan shook hands with his father, and hurried over to Greenwich Village +to see his old high-school friend, Kenwitz. Dan had always admired +Kenwitz. Kenwitz was pale, curly-haired, intense, serious, mathematical, +studious, altruistic, socialistic, and the natural foe of oligarchies. +Kenwitz had foregone college, and was learning watch-making in his +father's jewelry store. Dan was smiling, jovial, easy-tempered and +tolerant alike of kings and ragpickers. The two foregathered joyously, +being opposites. And then Dan went back to college, and Kenwitz to his +mainsprings—and to his private library in the rear of the jewelry shop.

+ +

Four years later Dan came back to Washington Square with the +accumulations of B. A. and two years of Europe thick upon him. He took a +filial look at Septimus Kinsolving's elaborate tombstone in Greenwood +and a tedious excursion through typewritten documents with the family +lawyer; and then, feeling himself a lonely and hopeless millionaire, +hurried down to the old jewelry store across Sixth Avenue.

+ +

Kenwitz unscrewed a magnifying glass from his eye, routed out his parent +from a dingy rear room, and abandoned the interior of watches for +outdoors. He went with Dan, and they sat on a bench in Washington +Square. Dan had not changed much; he was stalwart, and had a dignity +that was inclined to relax into a grin. Kenwitz was more serious, more +intense, more learned, philosophical and socialistic.

+ +

"I know about it now," said Dan, finally. "I pumped it out of the +eminent legal lights that turned over to me poor old dad's collections +of bonds and boodle. It amounts to $2,000,000, Ken. And I am told that +he squeezed it out of the chaps that pay their pennies for loaves of +bread at little bakeries around the corner. You've studied economics, +Dan, and you know all about monopolies, and the masses, and octopuses, +and the rights of laboring people. I never thought about those things +before. Football and trying to be white to my fellow-man were about the +extent of my college curriculum.

+ +

"But since I came back and found out how dad made his money I've been +thinking. I'd like awfully well to pay back those chaps who had to give +up too much money for bread. I know it would buck the line of my income +for a good many yards; but I'd like to make it square with 'em. Is there +any way it can be done, old Ways and Means?"

+ +

Kenwitz's big black eyes glowed fierily. His thin, intellectual face +took on almost a sardonic cast. He caught Dan's arm with the grip of a +friend and a judge.

+ +

"You can't do it!" he said, emphatically. "One of the chief punishments +of you men of ill-gotten wealth is that when you do repent you find that +you have lost the power to make reparation or restitution. I admire +your good intentions, Dan, but you can't do anything. Those people were +robbed of their precious pennies. It's too late to remedy the evil. You +can't pay them back"

+ +

"Of course," said Dan, lighting his pipe, "we couldn't hunt up every one +of the duffers and hand 'em back the right change. There's an awful lot +of 'em buying bread all the time. Funny taste they have—I never cared +for bread especially, except for a toasted cracker with the Roquefort. +But we might find a few of 'em and chuck some of dad's cash back where +it came from. I'd feel better if I could. It seems tough for people to be +held up for a soggy thing like bread. One wouldn't mind standing a rise +in broiled lobsters or deviled crabs. Get to work and think, Ken. I want +to pay back all of that money I can."

+ +

"There are plenty of charities," said Kenwitz, mechanically.

+ +

"Easy enough," said Dan, in a cloud of smoke. "I suppose I could give +the city a park, or endow an asparagus bed in a hospital. But I don't +want Paul to get away with the proceeds of the gold brick we sold Peter. +It's the bread shorts I want to cover, Ken."

+ +

The thin fingers of Kenwitz moved rapidly.

+ +

"Do you know how much money it would take to pay back the losses of +consumers during that corner in flour?" he asked.

+ +

"I do not." said Dan, stoutly. "My lawyer tells me that I have two +millions."

+ +

"If you had a hundred millions," said Kenwitz, vehemently, "you couldn't +repair a thousandth part of the damage that has been done. You cannot +conceive of the accumulated evils produced by misapplied wealth. +Each penny that was wrung from the lean purses of the poor reacted a +thousandfold to their harm. You do not understand. You do not see how +hopeless is your desire to make restitution. Not in a single instance +can it be done."

+ +

"Back up, philosopher!" said Dan. "The penny has no sorrow that the +dollar cannot heal."

+ +

"Not in one instance," repeated Kenwitz. "I will give you one, and let +us see. Thomas Boyne had a little bakery over there in Varick Street. +He sold bread to the poorest people. When the price of flour went up he +had to raise the price of bread. His customers were too poor to pay it, +Boyne's business failed and he lost his $1,000 capital—all he had in +the world."

+ +

Dan Kinsolving struck the park bench a mighty blow with his fist.

+ +

"I accept the instance," he cried. "Take me to Boyne. I will repay his +thousand dollars and buy him a new bakery."

+ +

"Write your check," said Kenwitz, without moving, "and then begin to +write checks in payment of the train of consequences. Draw the next one +for $50,000. Boyne went insane after his failure and set fire to the +building from which he was about to be evicted. The loss amounted to +that much. Boyne died in an asylum."

+ +

"Stick to the instance," said Dan. "I haven't noticed any insurance +companies on my charity list."

+ +

"Draw your next check for $100,000," went on Kenwitz. "Boyne's son fell +into bad ways after the bakery closed, and was accused of murder. He was +acquitted last week after a three years' legal battle, and the state +draws upon taxpayers for that much expense."

+ +

"Back to the bakery!" exclaimed Dan, impatiently. "The Government +doesn't need to stand in the bread line."

+ +

"The last item of the instance is—come and I will show you," said +Kenwitz, rising.

+ +

The Socialistic watchmaker was happy. He was a millionaire-baiter by +nature and a pessimist by trade. Kenwitz would assure you in one breath +that money was but evil and corruption, and that your brand-new watch +needed cleaning and a new ratchet-wheel.

+ +

He conducted Kinsolving southward out of the square and into ragged, +poverty-haunted Varick Street. Up the narrow stairway of a squalid brick +tenement he led the penitent offspring of the Octopus. He knocked on a +door, and a clear voice called to them to enter.

+ +

In that almost bare room a young woman sat sewing at a machine. She +nodded to Kenwitz as to a familiar acquaintance. One little stream of +sunlight through the dingy window burnished her heavy hair to the color +of an ancient Tuscan's shield. She flashed a rippling smile at Kenwitz +and a look of somewhat flustered inquiry.

+ +

Kinsolving stood regarding her clear and pathetic beauty in +heart-throbbing silence. Thus they came into the presence of the last +item of the Instance.

+ +

"How many this week, Miss Mary?" asked the watchmaker. A mountain of +coarse gray shirts lay upon the floor.

+ +

"Nearly thirty dozen," said the young woman cheerfully. "I've made +almost $4. I'm improving, Mr. Kenwitz. I hardly know what to do with so +much money." Her eyes turned, brightly soft, in the direction of Dan. A +little pink spot came out on her round, pale cheek.

+ +

Kenwitz chuckled like a diabolic raven.

+ +

"Miss Boyne," he said, "let me present Mr. Kinsolving, the son of the +man who put bread up five years ago. He thinks he would like to do +something to aid those who where inconvenienced by that act."

+ +

The smile left the young woman's face. She rose and pointed her +forefinger toward the door. This time she looked Kinsolving straight in +the eye, but it was not a look that gave delight.

+ +

The two men went down Varick Street. Kenwitz, letting all his pessimism +and rancor and hatred of the Octopus come to the surface, gibed at the +moneyed side of his friend in an acrid torrent of words. Dan appeared to +be listening, and then turned to Kenwitz and shook hands with him +warmly.

+ +

"I'm obliged to you, Ken, old man," he said, vaguely—"a thousand times +obliged."

+ +

"Mein Gott! you are crazy!" cried the watchmaker, dropping his +spectacles for the first time in years.

+ +

Two months afterward Kenwitz went into a large bakery on lower Broadway +with a pair of gold-rimmed eyeglasses that he had mended for the +proprietor.

+ +

A lady was giving an order to a clerk as Kenwitz passed her.

+ +

"These loaves are ten cents," said the clerk.

+ +

"I always get them at eight cents uptown," said the lady. "You need not +fill the order. I will drive by there on my way home."

+ +

The voice was familiar. The watchmaker paused.

+ +

"Mr. Kenwitz!" cried the lady, heartily. "How do you do?"

+ +

Kenwitz was trying to train his socialistic and economic comprehension +on her wonderful fur boa and the carriage waiting outside.

+ +

"Why, Miss Boyne!" he began.

+ +

"Mrs. Kinsolving," she corrected. "Dan and I were married a month ago." +

THE THING'S THE PLAY

+

Being acquainted with a newspaper reporter who had a couple of free +passes, I got to see the performance a few nights ago at one of the +popular vaudeville houses.

+ +

One of the numbers was a violin solo by a striking-looking man not much +past forty, but with very gray thick hair. Not being afflicted with a +taste for music, I let the system of noises drift past my ears while I +regarded the man.

+ +

"There was a story about that chap a month or two ago," said the +reporter. "They gave me the assignment. It was to run a column and was +to be on the extremely light and joking order. The old man seems to like +the funny touch I give to local happenings. Oh, yes, I'm working on +a farce comedy now. Well, I went down to the house and got all the +details; but I certainly fell down on that job. I went back and turned +in a comic write-up of an east side funeral instead. Why? Oh, I couldn't +seem to get hold of it with my funny hooks, somehow. Maybe you could +make a one-act tragedy out of it for a curtain-raiser. I'll give you the +details."

+ +

After the performance my friend, the reporter, recited to me the facts +over the Würzburger.

+ +

"I see no reason," said I, when he had concluded, "why that shouldn't +make a rattling good funny story. Those three people couldn't have acted +in a more absurd and preposterous manner if they had been real actors in +a real theatre. I'm really afraid that all the stage is a world, anyhow, +and all the players men and women. 'The thing's the play,' is the way I +quote Mr. Shakespeare."

+ +

"Try it," said the reporter.

+ +

"I will," said I; and I did, to show him how he could have made a +humorous column of it for his paper. + +


+

There stands a house near Abingdon Square. On the ground floor there has +been for twenty-five years a little store where toys and notions and +stationery are sold.

+ +

One night twenty years ago there was a wedding in the rooms above the +store. The Widow Mayo owned the house and store. Her daughter Helen was +married to Frank Barry. John Delaney was best man. Helen was eighteen, +and her picture had been printed in a morning paper next to the +headlines of a "Wholesale Female Murderess" story from Butte, Mont. But +after your eye and intelligence had rejected the connection, you seized +your magnifying glass and read beneath the portrait her description as +one of a series of Prominent Beauties and Belles of the lower west side.

+ +

Frank Barry and John Delaney were "prominent" young beaux of the same +side, and bosom friends, whom you expected to turn upon each other every +time the curtain went up. One who pays his money for orchestra seats and +fiction expects this. That is the first funny idea that has turned up in +the story yet. Both had made a great race for Helen's hand. When Frank +won, John shook his hand and congratulated him—honestly, he did.

+ +

After the ceremony Helen ran upstairs to put on her hat. She was +getting married in a traveling dress. She and Frank were going to Old +Point Comfort for a week. Downstairs the usual horde of gibbering +cave-dwellers were waiting with their hands full of old Congress gaiters +and paper bags of hominy.

+ +

Then there was a rattle of the fire-escape, and into her room jumps the +mad and infatuated John Delaney, with a damp curl drooping upon his +forehead, and made violent and reprehensible love to his lost one, +entreating her to flee or fly with him to the Riviera, or the Bronx, or +any old place where there are Italian skies and dolce far niente.

+ +

It would have carried Blaney off his feet to see Helen repulse him. With +blazing and scornful eyes she fairly withered him by demanding whatever +he meant by speaking to respectable people that way.

+ +

In a few moments she had him going. The manliness that had possessed him +departed. He bowed low, and said something about "irresistible impulse" +and "forever carry in his heart the memory of"—and she suggested that +he catch the first fire-escape going down.

+ +

"I will away," said John Delaney, "to the furthermost parts of the +earth. I cannot remain near you and know that you are another's. I will +to Africa, and there amid other scenes strive to for—"

+ +

"For goodness sake, get out," said Helen. "Somebody might come in."

+ +

He knelt upon one knee, and she extended him one white hand that he +might give it a farewell kiss.

+ +

Girls, was this choice boon of the great little god Cupid ever +vouchsafed you—to have the fellow you want hard and fast, and have the +one you don't want come with a damp curl on his forehead and kneel to +you and babble of Africa and love which, in spite of everything, shall +forever bloom, an amaranth, in his heart? To know your power, and to +feel the sweet security of your own happy state; to send the unlucky +one, broken-hearted, to foreign climes, while you congratulate yourself +as he presses his last kiss upon your knuckles, that your nails are well +manicured—say, girls, it's galluptious—don't ever let it get by you.

+ +

And then, of course—how did you guess it?—the door opened and in +stalked the bridegroom, jealous of slow-tying bonnet strings.

+ +

The farewell kiss was imprinted upon Helen's hand, and out of the window +and down the fire-escape sprang John Delaney, Africa bound.

+ +

A little slow music, if you please—faint violin, just a breath in the +clarinet and a touch of the 'cello. Imagine the scene. Frank, white-hot, +with the cry of a man wounded to death bursting from him. Helen, rushing +and clinging to him, trying to explain. He catches her wrists and tears +them from his shoulders—once, twice, thrice he sways her this way and +that—the stage manager will show you how—and throws her from him to +the floor a huddled, crushed, moaning thing. Never, he cries, will he +look upon her face again, and rushes from the house through the staring +groups of astonished guests.

+ +

And, now because it is the Thing instead of the Play, the audience must +stroll out into the real lobby of the world and marry, die, grow gray, +rich, poor, happy or sad during the intermission of twenty years which +must precede the rising of the curtain again.

+ +

Mrs. Barry inherited the shop and the house. At thirty-eight she could +have bested many an eighteen-year-old at a beauty show on points and +general results. Only a few people remembered her wedding comedy, but +she made of it no secret. She did not pack it in lavender or moth balls, +nor did she sell it to a magazine.

+ +

One day a middle-aged money-making lawyer, who bought his legal cap and +ink of her, asked her across the counter to marry him.

+ +

"I'm really much obliged to you," said Helen, cheerfully, "but I married +another man twenty years ago. He was more a goose than a man, but I +think I love him yet. I have never seen him since about half an hour +after the ceremony. Was it copying ink that you wanted or just writing +fluid?"

+ +

The lawyer bowed over the counter with old-time grace and left a +respectful kiss on the back of her hand. Helen sighed. Parting salutes, +however romantic, may be overdone. Here she was at thirty-eight, +beautiful and admired; and all that she seemed to have got from her +lovers were approaches and adieus. Worse still, in the last one she had +lost a customer, too.

+ +

Business languished, and she hung out a Room to Let card. Two large +rooms on the third floor were prepared for desirable tenants. Roomers +came, and went regretfully, for the house of Mrs. Barry was the abode +of neatness, comfort and taste.

+ +

One day came Ramonti, the violinist, and engaged the front room above. +The discord and clatter uptown offended his nice ear; so a friend had +sent him to this oasis in the desert of noise.

+ +

Ramonti, with his still youthful face, his dark eyebrows, his short, +pointed, foreign, brown beard, his distinguished head of gray hair, and +his artist's temperament—revealed in his light, gay and sympathetic +manner—was a welcome tenant in the old house near Abingdon Square.

+ +

Helen lived on the floor above the store. The architecture of it was +singular and quaint. The hall was large and almost square. Up one side +of it, and then across the end of it ascended an open stairway to the +floor above. This hall space she had furnished as a sitting room and +office combined. There she kept her desk and wrote her business letters; +and there she sat of evenings by a warm fire and a bright red light and +sewed or read. Ramonti found the atmosphere so agreeable that he spent +much time there, describing to Mrs. Barry the wonders of Paris, where he +had studied with a particularly notorious and noisy fiddler.

+ +

Next comes lodger No. 2, a handsome, melancholy man in the early 40's, +with a brown, mysterious beard, and strangely pleading, haunting eyes. +He, too, found the society of Helen a desirable thing. With the eyes of +Romeo and Othello's tongue, he charmed her with tales of distant climes +and wooed her by respectful innuendo.

+ +

From the first Helen felt a marvelous and compelling thrill in the +presence of this man. His voice somehow took her swiftly back to the +days of her youth's romance. This feeling grew, and she gave way to +it, and it led her to an instinctive belief that he had been a factor +in that romance. And then with a woman's reasoning (oh, yes, they do, +sometimes) she leaped over common syllogisms and theory, and logic, and +was sure that her husband had come back to her. For she saw in his eyes +love, which no woman can mistake, and a thousand tons of regret and +remorse, which aroused pity, which is perilously near to love requited, +which is the sine qua non in the house that Jack built.

+ +

But she made no sign. A husband who steps around the corner for twenty +years and then drops in again should not expect to find his slippers +laid out too conveniently near nor a match ready lighted for his cigar. +There must be expiation, explanation, and possibly execration. A little +purgatory, and then, maybe, if he were properly humble, he might be +trusted with a harp and crown. And so she made no sign that she knew or +suspected.

+ +

And my friend, the reporter, could see nothing funny in this! Sent out +on an assignment to write up a roaring, hilarious, brilliant joshing +story of—but I will not knock a brother—let us go on with the story.

+ +

One evening Ramonti stopped in Helen's hall-office-reception-room and +told his love with the tenderness and ardor of the enraptured artist. +His words were a bright flame of the divine fire that glows in the heart +of a man who is a dreamer and doer combined.

+ +

"But before you give me an answer," he went on, before she could accuse +him of suddenness, "I must tell you that 'Ramonti' is the only name I +have to offer you. My manager gave me that. I do not know who I am or +where I came from. My first recollection is of opening my eyes in a +hospital. I was a young man, and I had been there for weeks. My life +before that is a blank to me. They told me that I was found lying in the +street with a wound on my head and was brought there in an ambulance. +They thought I must have fallen and struck my head upon the stones. +There was nothing to show who I was. I have never been able to remember. +After I was discharged from the hospital, I took up the violin. I have +had success. Mrs. Barry—I do not know your name except that—I love +you; the first time I saw you I realized that you were the one woman in +the world for me—and"—oh, a lot of stuff like that.

+ +

Helen felt young again. First a wave of pride and a sweet little thrill +of vanity went all over her; and then she looked Ramonti in the eyes, +and a tremendous throb went through her heart. She hadn't expected that +throb. It took her by surprise. The musician had become a big factor in +her life, and she hadn't been aware of it.

+ +

"Mr. Ramonti," she said sorrowfully (this was not on the stage, +remember; it was in the old home near Abingdon Square), "I'm awfully +sorry, but I'm a married woman."

+ +

And then she told him the sad story of her life, as a heroine must do, +sooner or later, either to a theatrical manager or to a reporter.

+ +

Ramonti took her hand, bowed low and kissed it, and went up to his room.

+ +

Helen sat down and looked mournfully at her hand. Well she might. Three +suitors had kissed it, mounted their red roan steeds and ridden away.

+ +

In an hour entered the mysterious stranger with the haunting eyes. Helen +was in the willow rocker, knitting a useless thing in cotton-wool. He +ricocheted from the stairs and stopped for a chat. Sitting across the +table from her, he also poured out his narrative of love. And then he +said: "Helen, do you not remember me? I think I have seen it in your +eyes. Can you forgive the past and remember the love that has lasted +for twenty years? I wronged you deeply—I was afraid to come back to +you—but my love overpowered my reason. Can you, will you, forgive me?"

+ +

Helen stood up. The mysterious stranger held one of her hands in a +strong and trembling clasp.

+ +

There she stood, and I pity the stage that it has not acquired a scene +like that and her emotions to portray.

+ +

For she stood with a divided heart. The fresh, unforgettable, virginal +love for her bridegroom was hers; the treasured, sacred, honored memory +of her first choice filled half her soul. She leaned to that pure +feeling. Honor and faith and sweet, abiding romance bound her to it. But +the other half of her heart and soul was filled with something else—a +later, fuller, nearer influence. And so the old fought against the new.

+ +

And while she hesitated, from the room above came the soft, racking, +petitionary music of a violin. The hag, music, bewitches some of the +noblest. The daws may peck upon one's sleeve without injury, but whoever +wears his heart upon his tympanum gets it not far from the neck.

+ +

This music and the musician called her, and at her side honor and the +old love held her back.

+ +

"Forgive me," he pleaded.

+ +

"Twenty years is a long time to remain away from the one you say you +love," she declared, with a purgatorial touch.

+ +

"How could I tell?" he begged. "I will conceal nothing from you. That +night when he left I followed him. I was mad with jealousy. On a dark +street I struck him down. He did not rise. I examined him. His head had +struck a stone. I did not intend to kill him. I was mad with love and +jealousy. I hid near by and saw an ambulance take him away. Although you +married him, Helen—"

+ +

"Who Are You?" cried the woman, with wide-open eyes, snatching her +hand away.

+ +

"Don't you remember me, Helen—the one who has always loved you best? I +am John Delaney. If you can forgive—"

+ +

But she was gone, leaping, stumbling, hurrying, flying up the stairs +toward the music and him who had forgotten, but who had known her for +his in each of his two existences, and as she climbed up she sobbed, +cried and sang: "Frank! Frank! Frank!"

+ +

Three mortals thus juggling with years as though they were billiard +balls, and my friend, the reporter, couldn't see anything funny in it! +

A RAMBLE IN APHASIA

+

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. Court-room, +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 some one, 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 rôle.

+ +

"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 toll-gate 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 high-born life and delicate +restraint, in which to dine. Again I would go down to the waterways in +steamers packed with vociferous, bedecked, unchecked love-making 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."

+ +

"Good-by, 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. Some one 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!" +

A MUNICIPAL REPORT

+
+

The cities are full of pride,
Challenging each to each—
This from her mountainside,
That from her burthened beach.

+

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 P.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 moth-ball 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.

+ +

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 side-stepped 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 re-echoed. 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 +(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 Cæsar. 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 water-works 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 to-night, 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."

+ +

Some one 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 to-morrow, Mr. Baker +will be able to supply me."

+ +

I was sure that Impy had not had time to leave the house. I inquired +concerning street-car lines and took my leave. After I was well on +my way I remembered that I had not learned Azalea Adair's name. But +to-morrow 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 to-morrow 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 clew 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 Cæsar," 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 Cæsar 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 Cæsar, 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 Cæsar's grandfather was a king in Congo. +Cæsar himself has royal ways, as you may have observed."

+ +

As the doctor was moving off I heard Uncle Cæsar's voice inside: "Did +he get bofe of dem two dollars from you, Mis' Zalea?"

+ +

"Yes, Cæsar," 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 Cæsar 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 Cæsar 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 Cæsar!

+ +

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! +

PSYCHE AND THE PSKYSCRAPER

+

If you are a philosopher you can do this thing: you can go to the top +of a high building, look down upon your fellow-men 300 feet below, and +despise them as insects. Like the irresponsible black waterbugs on +summer ponds, they crawl and circle and hustle about idiotically without +aim or purpose. They do not even move with the admirable intelligence +of ants, for ants always know when they are going home. The ant is of +a lowly station, but he will often reach home and get his slippers on +while you are left at your elevated station.

+ +

Man, then, to the housetopped philosopher, appears to be but a creeping, +contemptible beetle. Brokers, poets, millionaires, bootblacks, beauties, +hod-carriers and politicians become little black specks dodging bigger +black specks in streets no wider than your thumb.

+ +

From this high view the city itself becomes degraded to an +unintelligible mass of distorted buildings and impossible perspectives; +the revered ocean is a duck pond; the earth itself a lost golf ball. All +the minutiae of life are gone. The philosopher gazes into the infinite +heavens above him, and allows his soul to expand to the influence of +his new view. He feels that he is the heir to Eternity and the child of +Time. Space, too, should be his by the right of his immortal heritage, +and he thrills at the thought that some day his kind shall traverse +those mysterious aerial roads between planet and planet. The tiny world +beneath his feet upon which this towering structure of steel rests as a +speck of dust upon a Himalayan mountain—it is but one of a countless +number of such whirling atoms. What are the ambitions, the achievements, +the paltry conquests and loves of those restless black insects below +compared with the serene and awful immensity of the universe that lies +above and around their insignificant city?

+ +

It is guaranteed that the philosopher will have these thoughts. They +have been expressly compiled from the philosophies of the world and set +down with the proper interrogation point at the end of them to represent +the invariable musings of deep thinkers on high places. And when the +philosopher takes the elevator down his mind is broader, his heart is at +peace, and his conception of the cosmogony of creation is as wide as the +buckle of Orion's summer belt.

+ +

But if your name happened to be Daisy, and you worked in an Eighth +Avenue candy store and lived in a little cold hall bedroom, five feet +by eight, and earned $6 per week, and ate ten-cent lunches and were +nineteen years old, and got up at 6.30 and worked till 9, and never had +studied philosophy, maybe things wouldn't look that way to you from the +top of a skyscraper.

+ +

Two sighed for the hand of Daisy, the unphilosophical. One was Joe, who +kept the smallest store in New York. It was about the size of a tool-box +of the D. P. W., and was stuck like a swallow's nest against a corner +of a down-town skyscraper. Its stock consisted of fruit, candies, +newspapers, song books, cigarettes, and lemonade in season. When stern +winter shook his congealed locks and Joe had to move himself and the +fruit inside, there was exactly room in the store for the proprietor, +his wares, a stove the size of a vinegar cruet, and one customer.

+ +

Joe was not of the nation that keeps us forever in a furore with fugues +and fruit. He was a capable American youth who was laying by money, and +wanted Daisy to help him spend it. Three times he had asked her.

+ +

"I got money saved up, Daisy," was his love song; "and you know how bad +I want you. That store of mine ain't very big, but—"

+ +

"Oh, ain't it?" would be the antiphony of the unphilosophical one. "Why, +I heard Wanamaker's was trying to get you to sublet part of your floor +space to them for next year."

+ +

Daisy passed Joe's corner every morning and evening.

+ +

"Hello, Two-by-Four!" was her usual greeting. "Seems to me your store +looks emptier. You must have sold a pack of chewing gum."

+ +

"Ain't much room in here, sure," Joe would answer, with his slow grin, +"except for you, Daise. Me and the store are waitin' for you whenever +you'll take us. Don't you think you might before long?"

+ +

"Store!"—a fine scorn was expressed by Daisy's uptilted nose—"sardine +box! Waitin' for me, you say? Gee! you'd have to throw out about a +hundred pounds of candy before I could get inside of it, Joe."

+ +

"I wouldn't mind an even swap like that," said Joe, complimentary.

+ +

Daisy's existence was limited in every way. She had to walk sideways +between the counter and the shelves in the candy store. In her own hall +bedroom coziness had been carried close to cohesiveness. The walls were +so near to one another that the paper on them made a perfect Babel of +noise. She could light the gas with one hand and close the door with the +other without taking her eyes off the reflection of her brown pompadour +in the mirror. She had Joe's picture in a gilt frame on the dresser, and +sometimes—but her next thought would always be of Joe's funny little +store tacked like a soap box to the corner of that great building, and +away would go her sentiment in a breeze of laughter.

+ +

Daisy's other suitor followed Joe by several months. He came to board +in the house where she lived. His name was Dabster, and he was a +philosopher. Though young, attainments stood out upon him like +continental labels on a Passaic (N. J.) suit-case. Knowledge he had +kidnapped from cyclopedias and handbooks of useful information; but as +for wisdom, when she passed he was left sniffling in the road without +so much as the number of her motor car. He could and would tell you the +proportion of water and muscle-making properties of peas and veal, the +shortest verse in the Bible, the number of pounds of shingle nails +required to fasten 256 shingles laid four inches to the weather, the +population of Kankakee, Ill., the theories of Spinoza, the name of Mr. +H. McKay Twombly's second hall footman, the length of the Hoosac Tunnel, +the best time to set a hen, the salary of the railway post-office +messenger between Driftwood and Red Bank Furnace, Pa., and the number +of bones in the foreleg of a cat.

+ +

The weight of learning was no handicap to Dabster. His statistics were +the sprigs of parsley with which he garnished the feast of small talk +that he would set before you if he conceived that to be your taste. And +again he used them as breastworks in foraging at the boardinghouse. +Firing at you a volley of figures concerning the weight of a lineal +foot of bar-iron 5 × 2¾ inches, and the average annual rainfall at +Fort Snelling, Minn., he would transfix with his fork the best piece of +chicken on the dish while you were trying to rally sufficiently to ask +him weakly why does a hen cross the road.

+ +

Thus, brightly armed, and further equipped with a measure of good looks, +of a hair-oily, shopping-district-at-three-in-the-afternoon kind, it +seems that Joe, of the Lilliputian emporium, had a rival worthy of his +steel. But Joe carried no steel. There wouldn't have been room in his store +to draw it if he had.

+ +

One Saturday afternoon, about four o'clock, Daisy and Mr. Dabster +stopped before Joe's booth. Dabster wore a silk hat, and—well, Daisy +was a woman, and that hat had no chance to get back in its box until Joe +had seen it. A stick of pineapple chewing gum was the ostensible object +of the call. Joe supplied it through the open side of his store. He did +not pale or falter at sight of the hat.

+ +

"Mr. Dabster's going to take me on top of the building to observe the +view," said Daisy, after she had introduced her admirers. "I never was +on a skyscraper. I guess it must be awfully nice and funny up there."

+ +

"H'm!" said Joe.

+ +

"The panorama," said Mr. Dabster, "exposed to the gaze from the top of +a lofty building is not only sublime, but instructive. Miss Daisy has +a decided pleasure in store for her."

+ +

"It's windy up there, too, as well as here," said Joe. "Are you dressed +warm enough, Daise?"

+ +

"Sure thing! I'm all lined," said Daisy, smiling slyly at his clouded +brow. "You look just like a mummy in a case, Joe. Ain't you just put in +an invoice of a pint of peanuts or another apple? Your stock looks awful +over-stocked."

+ +

Daisy giggled at her favorite joke; and Joe had to smile with her.

+ +

"Your quarters are somewhat limited, Mr.—er—er," remarked Dabster, +"in comparison with the size of this building. I understand the area +of its side to be about 340 by 100 feet. That would make you occupy +a proportionate space as if half of Beloochistan were placed upon a +territory as large as the United States east of the Rocky Mountains, +with the Province of Ontario and Belgium added."

+ +

"Is that so, sport?" said Joe, genially. "You are Weisenheimer on +figures, all right. How many square pounds of baled hay do you think +a jackass could eat if he stopped brayin' long enough to keep still a +minute and five eighths?"

+ +

A few minutes later Daisy and Mr. Dabster stepped from an elevator to +the top floor of the skyscraper. Then up a short, steep stairway and out +upon the roof. Dabster led her to the parapet so she could look down at +the black dots moving in the street below.

+ +

"What are they?" she asked, trembling. She had never been on a +height like this before.

+ +

And then Dabster must needs play the philosopher on the tower, and +conduct her soul forth to meet the immensity of space.

+ +

"Bipeds," he said, solemnly. "See what they become even at the small +elevation of 340 feet—mere crawling insects going to and fro at +random."

+ +

"Oh, they ain't anything of the kind," exclaimed Daisy, +suddenly—"they're folks! I saw an automobile. Oh, gee! are we that +high up?"

+ +

"Walk over this way," said Dabster.

+ +

He showed her the great city lying like an orderly array of toys far +below, starred here and there, early as it was, by the first beacon +lights of the winter afternoon. And then the bay and sea to the south +and east vanishing mysteriously into the sky.

+ +

"I don't like it," declared Daisy, with troubled blue eyes. "Say we go +down."

+ +

But the philosopher was not to be denied his opportunity. He would let +her behold the grandeur of his mind, the half-nelson he had on the +infinite, and the memory he had for statistics. And then she would +nevermore be content to buy chewing gum at the smallest store in New +York. And so he began to prate of the smallness of human affairs, and +how that even so slight a removal from earth made man and his works look +like one tenth part of a dollar thrice computed. And that one should +consider the sidereal system and the maxims of Epictetus and be +comforted.

+ +

"You don't carry me with you," said Daisy. "Say, I think it's awful to +be up so high that folks look like fleas. One of them we saw might have +been Joe. Why, Jiminy! we might as well be in New Jersey! Say, I'm +afraid up here!"

+ +

The philosopher smiled fatuously.

+ +

"The earth," said he, "is itself only as a grain of wheat in space. Look +up there."

+ +

Daisy gazed upward apprehensively. The short day was spent and the stars +were coming out above.

+ +

"Yonder star," said Dabster, "is Venus, the evening star. She is +66,000,000 miles from the sun."

+ +

"Fudge!" said Daisy, with a brief flash of spirit, "where do you think +I come from—Brooklyn? Susie Price, in our store—her brother sent her +a ticket to go to San Francisco—that's only three thousand miles."

+ +

The philosopher smiled indulgently.

+ +

"Our world," he said, "is 91,000,000 miles from the sun. There are +eighteen stars of the first magnitude that are 211,000 times further +from us than the sun is. If one of them should be extinguished it would +be three years before we would see its light go out. There are six +thousand stars of the sixth magnitude. It takes thirty-six years for the +light of one of them to reach the earth. With an eighteen-foot telescope +we can see 43,000,000 stars, including those of the thirteenth +magnitude, whose light takes 2,700 years to reach us. Each of these +stars—"

+ +

"You're lyin'," cried Daisy, angrily. "You're tryin' to scare me. And +you have; I want to go down!"

+ +

She stamped her foot.

+ +

"Arcturus—" began the philosopher, soothingly, but he was interrupted +by a demonstration out of the vastness of the nature that he was +endeavoring to portray with his memory instead of his heart. For to the +heart-expounder of nature the stars were set in the firmament expressly +to give soft light to lovers wandering happily beneath them; and if you +stand tiptoe some September night with your sweetheart on your arm you +can almost touch them with your hand. Three years for their light to +reach us, indeed!

+ +

Out of the west leaped a meteor, lighting the roof of the skyscraper +almost to midday. Its fiery parabola was limned against the sky toward +the east. It hissed as it went, and Daisy screamed.

+ +

"Take me down," she cried, vehemently, "you—you mental arithmetic!"

+ +

Dabster got her to the elevator, and inside of it. She was wild-eyed, +and she shuddered when the express made its debilitating drop.

+ +

Outside the revolving door of the skyscraper the philosopher lost her. +She vanished; and he stood, bewildered, without figures or statistics +to aid him.

+ +

Joe had a lull in trade, and by squirming among his stock succeeded in +lighting a cigarette and getting one cold foot against the attenuated +stove.

+ +

The door was burst open, and Daisy, laughing, crying, scattering fruit +and candies, tumbled into his arms.

+ +

"Oh, Joe, I've been up on the skyscraper. Ain't it cozy and warm and +homelike in here! I'm ready for you, Joe, whenever you want me." +

A BIRD OF BAGDAD

+

Without a doubt much of the spirit and genius of the Caliph Harun Al +Rashid descended to the Margrave August Michael von Paulsen Quigg.

+ +

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.

+ +

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 high-born 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 mediaeval solitude. On each side are shops devoted +to "Antiques."

+ +

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 inclosed by these mortuary relics, and trod +by these spectral citizens in whose sunken hearts scarce one good whoop +or tra-la-la remained?

+ +

Not Fourth Avenue. Not after the tinsel but enlivening glories of the +Little Rialto—not after the echoing drum-beats 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.

+ +

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 red-brick 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."

+ +

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.

+ +

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.

+ +

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.

+ +

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.

+ +

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.

+ +

"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?"

+ +

Still deeply seized by some inward grief, but tractable, he allowed +Quigg to lead him away and down the street to a little park.

+ +

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.

+ +

"I was doing the Monte Cristo act as adapted by Pompton, N. J., wasn't +I?" asked the young man.

+ +

"You were throwing small coins into the street for the people to +scramble after," said the Margrave.

+ +

"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!"

+ +

"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?"

+ +

"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."

+ +

"If I could hear your story," said the Margrave, with his lofty, serious +smile.

+ +

"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." + +
+
+

+THE STORY OF THE YOUNG MAN
+ AND THE HARNESS MAKER'S RIDDLE +

+ +

"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.

+ +

"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!

+ +

"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 to-night. That was on +account of Laura. I was spiflicated, Your Highness, and I wot not of +what I wouldst.

+ +

"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 to-morrow +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.

+ +

"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?"

+ +

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:

+ +

"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—"

+ +

"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. To-morrow 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."

+ +

The Margrave, still with a gloomy air, held out his hand.

+ +

"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—"

+ +

"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."

+ +

From habit the Margrave began to fumble in his pockets. He drew forth +a card and handed it to the young man.

+ +

"Do me the favor to accept this, anyhow," he said. "The time may come +when it might be of use to you."

+ +

"Thanks!" said the young man, pocketing it carelessly. "My name is +Simmons." + +

+

+*         +*         +*         +*         +*        * +

+ +

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.

+ +

Hildebrant's 200 pounds reposed on a bench, silver-buckling a raw +leather martingale.

+ +

Bill Watson came in first.

+ +

"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?'"

+ +

"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?"

+ +

"Nein!" said Hildebrant, shaking his head violently. "You haf not +guessed der answer."

+ +

Bill passed on and donned a bed-tick apron and bachelorhood.

+ +

In came the young man of the Arabian Night's fiasco—pale, melancholy, +hopeless.

+ +

"Vell," said Hildebrant, "haf you guessed him? 'Vat kind of a hen lays +der longest?'"

+ +

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.

+ +

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."

+ +

Simmons looked up with a flashing eye.

+ +

"A dead one!" said he.

+ +

"Goot!" roared Hildebrant, rocking the table with giant glee. "Dot is +right! You gome at mine house at 8 o'clock to der party." +

COMPLIMENTS OF THE SEASON

+

There are no more Christmas stories to write. Fiction is exhausted; +and newspaper items, the next best, are manufactured by clever young +journalists who have married early and have an engagingly pessimistic +view of life. Therefore, for seasonable diversion, we are reduced +to very questionable sources—facts and philosophy. We will begin +with—whichever you choose to call it.

+ +

Children are pestilential little animals with which we have to cope +under a bewildering variety of conditions. Especially when childish +sorrows overwhelm them are we put to our wits' end. We exhaust our +paltry store of consolation; and then beat them, sobbing, to sleep. Then +we grovel in the dust of a million years, and ask God why. Thus we call +out of the rat-trap. As for the children, no one understands them except +old maids, hunchbacks, and shepherd dogs.

+ +

Now comes the facts in the case of the Rag-Doll, the Tatterdemalion, +and the Twenty-fifth of December.

+ +

On the tenth of that month the Child of the Millionaire lost her +rag-doll. There were many servants in the Millionaire's palace on the +Hudson, and these ransacked the house and grounds, but without finding +the lost treasure. The child was a girl of five, and one of those +perverse little beasts that often wound the sensibilities of wealthy +parents by fixing their affections upon some vulgar, inexpensive toy +instead of upon diamond-studded automobiles and pony phaetons.

+ +

The Child grieved sorely and truly, a thing inexplicable to the +Millionaire, to whom the rag-doll market was about as interesting as Bay +State Gas; and to the Lady, the Child's mother, who was all form—that +is, nearly all, as you shall see.

+ +

The Child cried inconsolably, and grew hollow-eyed, knock-kneed, +spindling, and corykilverty in many other respects. The Millionaire +smiled and tapped his coffers confidently. The pick of the output of +the French and German toymakers was rushed by special delivery to the +mansion; but Rachel refused to be comforted. She was weeping for her +rag child, and was for a high protective tariff against all foreign +foolishness. Then doctors with the finest bedside manners and +stop-watches were called in. One by one they chattered futilely about +peptomanganate of iron and sea voyages and hypophosphites until their +stop-watches showed that Bill Rendered was under the wire for show or +place. Then, as men, they advised that the rag-doll be found as soon +as possible and restored to its mourning parent. The Child sniffed at +therapeutics, chewed a thumb, and wailed for her Betsy. And all this +time cablegrams were coming from Santa Claus saying that he would soon +be here and enjoining us to show a true Christian spirit and let up on +the pool-rooms and tontine policies and platoon systems long enough to +give him a welcome. Everywhere the spirit of Christmas was diffusing +itself. The banks were refusing loans, the pawn-brokers had doubled +their gang of helpers, people bumped your shins on the streets with red +sleds, Thomas and Jeremiah bubbled before you on the bars while you +waited on one foot, holly-wreaths of hospitality were hung in windows of +the stores, they who had 'em were getting their furs. You hardly knew +which was the best bet in balls—three, high, moth, or snow. It was no +time at which to lose the rag-doll or your heart.

+ +

If Doctor Watson's investigating friend had been called in to solve this +mysterious disappearance he might have observed on the Millionaire's +wall a copy of "The Vampire." That would have quickly suggested, by +induction, "A rag and a bone and a hank of hair." "Flip," a Scotch +terrier, next to the rag-doll in the Child's heart, frisked through the +halls. The hank of hair! Aha! X, the unfound quantity, represented the +rag-doll. But, the bone? Well, when dogs find bones they—Done! It were +an easy and a fruitful task to examine Flip's forefeet. Look, Watson! +Earth—dried earth between the toes. Of course, the dog—but Sherlock +was not there. Therefore it devolves. But topography and architecture +must intervene.

+ +

The Millionaire's palace occupied a lordly space. In front of it was a +lawn close-mowed as a South Ireland man's face two days after a shave. +At one side of it, and fronting on another street was a pleasaunce +trimmed to a leaf, and the garage and stables. The Scotch pup had +ravished the rag-doll from the nursery, dragged it to a corner of +the lawn, dug a hole, and buried it after the manner of careless +undertakers. There you have the mystery solved, and no checks to write +for the hypodermical wizard or fi'-pun notes to toss to the sergeant. +Then let's get down to the heart of the thing, tiresome readers—the +Christmas heart of the thing.

+ +

Fuzzy was drunk—not riotously or helplessly or loquaciously, as you or +I might get, but decently, appropriately, and inoffensively, as becomes +a gentleman down on his luck.

+ +

Fuzzy was a soldier of misfortune. The road, the haystack, the +park bench, the kitchen door, the bitter round of eleemosynary +beds-with-shower-bath-attachment, the petty pickings and ignobly +garnered largesse of great cities—these formed the chapters of his +history.

+ +

Fuzzy walked toward the river, down the street that bounded one side of +the Millionaire's house and grounds. He saw a leg of Betsy, the lost +rag-doll, protruding, like the clue to a Lilliputian murder mystery, +from its untimely grave in a corner of the fence. He dragged forth the +maltreated infant, tucked it under his arm, and went on his way crooning +a road song of his brethren that no doll that has been brought up to the +sheltered life should hear. Well for Betsy that she had no ears. And +well that she had no eyes save unseeing circles of black; for the faces +of Fuzzy and the Scotch terrier were those of brothers, and the heart of +no rag-doll could withstand twice to become the prey of such fearsome +monsters.

+ +

Though you may not know it, Grogan's saloon stands near the river and +near the foot of the street down which Fuzzy traveled. In Grogan's, +Christmas cheer was already rampant.

+ +

Fuzzy entered with his doll. He fancied that as a mummer at the feast of +Saturn he might earn a few drops from the wassail cup.

+ +

He set Betsy on the bar and addressed her loudly and humorously, +seasoning his speech with exaggerated compliments and endearments, as +one entertaining his lady friend. The loafers and bibbers around caught +the farce of it, and roared. The bartender gave Fuzzy a drink. Oh, many +of us carry rag-dolls.

+ +

"One for the lady?" suggested Fuzzy impudently, and tucked another +contribution to Art beneath his waistcoat.

+ +

He began to see possibilities in Betsy. His first-night had been a +success. Visions of a vaudeville circuit about town dawned upon him.

+ +

In a group near the stove sat "Pigeon" McCarthy, Black Riley, and +"One-ear" Mike, well and unfavorably known in the tough shoestring +district that blackened the left bank of the river. They passed a +newspaper back and forth among themselves. The item that each solid and +blunt forefinger pointed out was an advertisement headed "One Hundred +Dollars Reward." To earn it one must return the rag-doll lost, strayed, +or stolen from the Millionaire's mansion. It seemed that grief still +ravaged, unchecked, in the bosom of the too faithful Child. Flip, the +terrier, capered and shook his absurd whisker before her, powerless to +distract. She wailed for her Betsy in the faces of walking, talking, +mama-ing, and eye-closing French Mabelles and Violettes. The +advertisement was a last resort.

+ +

Black Riley came from behind the stove and approached Fuzzy in his +one-sided parabolic way.

+ +

The Christmas mummer, flushed with success, had tucked Betsy under his +arm, and was about to depart to the filling of impromptu dates +elsewhere.

+ +

"Say, 'Bo," said Black Riley to him, "where did you cop out dat doll?"

+ +

"This doll?" asked Fuzzy, touching Betsy with his forefinger to be sure +that she was the one referred to. Why, this doll was presented to me by +the Emperor of Beloochistan. I have seven hundred others in my country +home in Newport. This doll—"

+ +

"Cheese the funny business," said Riley. "You swiped it or picked it up +at de house on de hill where—but never mind dat. You want to take fifty +cents for de rags, and take it quick. Me brother's kid at home might be +wantin' to play wid it. Hey—what?"

+ +

He produced the coin.

+ +

Fuzzy laughed a gurgling, insolent, alcoholic laugh in his face. Go to +the office of Sarah Bernhardt's manager and propose to him that she be +released from a night's performance to entertain the Tackytown Lyceum +and Literary Coterie. You will hear the duplicate of Fuzzy's laugh.

+ +

Black Riley gauged Fuzzy quickly with his blueberry eye as a wrestler +does. His hand was itching to play the Roman and wrest the rag Sabine +from the extemporaneous merry-andrew who was entertaining an angel +unaware. But he refrained. Fuzzy was fat and solid and big. Three inches +of well-nourished corporeity, defended from the winter winds by dingy +linen, intervened between his vest and trousers. Countless small, +circular wrinkles running around his coat-sleeves and knees guaranteed +the quality of his bone and muscle. His small, blue eyes, bathed in the +moisture of altruism and wooziness, looked upon you kindly, yet without +abashment. He was whiskerly, whiskyly, fleshily formidable. So, Black +Riley temporized.

+ +

"Wot'll you take for it, den?" he asked.

+ +

"Money," said Fuzzy, with husky firmness, "cannot buy her."

+ +

He was intoxicated with the artist's first sweet cup of attainment. +To set a faded-blue, earth-stained rag-doll on a bar, to hold mimic +converse with it, and to find his heart leaping with the sense of +plaudits earned and his throat scorching with free libations poured in +his honor—could base coin buy him from such achievements? You will +perceive that Fuzzy had the temperament.

+ +

Fuzzy walked out with the gait of a trained sea-lion in search of other +cafés to conquer.

+ +

Though the dusk of twilight was hardly yet apparent, lights were +beginning to spangle the city like pop-corn bursting in a deep skillet. +Christmas Eve, impatiently expected, was peeping over the brink of the +hour. Millions had prepared for its celebration. Towns would be painted +red. You, yourself, have heard the horns and dodged the capers of the +Saturnalians.

+ +

"Pigeon" McCarthy, Black Riley, and "One-ear" Mike held a hasty converse +outside Grogan's. They were narrow-chested, pallid striplings, not +fighters in the open, but more dangerous in their ways of warfare than +the most terrible of Turks. Fuzzy, in a pitched battle, could have eaten +the three of them. In a go-as-you-please encounter he was already +doomed.

+ +

They overtook him just as he and Betsy were entering Costigan's Casino. +They deflected him, and shoved the newspaper under his nose. Fuzzy could +read—and more.

+ +

"Boys," said he, "you are certainly damn true friends. Give me a week to +think it over."

+ +

The soul of a real artist is quenched with difficulty.

+ +

The boys carefully pointed out to him that advertisements were soulless, +and that the deficiencies of the day might not be supplied by the +morrow.

+ +

"A cool hundred," said Fuzzy thoughtfully and mushily.

+ +

"Boys," said he, "you are true friends. I'll go up and claim the reward. +The show business is not what it used to be."

+ +

Night was falling more surely. The three tagged at his sides to the foot +of the rise on which stood the Millionaire's house. There Fuzzy turned +upon them acrimoniously.

+ +

"You are a pack of putty-faced beagle-hounds," he roared. "Go away."

+ +

They went away—a little way.

+ +

In "Pigeon" McCarthy's pocket was a section of one-inch gas-pipe eight +inches long. In one end of it and in the middle of it was a lead plug. +One-half of it was packed tight with solder. Black Riley carried a +slung-shot, being a conventional thug. "One-ear" Mike relied upon a +pair of brass knucks—an heirloom in the family.

+ +

"Why fetch and carry," said Black Riley, "when some one will do it for +ye? Let him bring it out to us. Hey—what?"

+ +

"We can chuck him in the river," said "Pigeon" McCarthy, "with a stone +tied to his feet."

+ +

"Youse guys make me tired," said "One-ear" Mike sadly. "Ain't progress +ever appealed to none of yez? Sprinkle a little gasoline on 'im, and +drop 'im on the Drive—well?"

+ +

Fuzzy entered the Millionaire's gate and zigzagged toward the softly +glowing entrance of the mansion. The three goblins came up to the gate +and lingered—one on each side of it, one beyond the roadway. They +fingered their cold metal and leather, confident.

+ +

Fuzzy rang the door-bell, smiling foolishly and dreamily. An atavistic +instinct prompted him to reach for the button of his right glove. But he +wore no gloves; so his left hand dropped, embarrassed.

+ +

The particular menial whose duty it was to open doors to silks and laces +shied at first sight of Fuzzy. But a second glance took in his passport, +his card of admission, his surety of welcome—the lost rag-doll of the +daughter of the house dangling under his arm.

+ +

Fuzzy was admitted into a great hall, dim with the glow from unseen +lights. The hireling went away and returned with a maid and the Child. +The doll was restored to the mourning one. She clasped her lost darling +to her breast; and then, with the inordinate selfishness and candor of +childhood, stamped her foot and whined hatred and fear of the odious +being who had rescued her from the depths of sorrow and despair. Fuzzy +wriggled himself into an ingratiatory attitude and essayed the idiotic +smile and blattering small talk that is supposed to charm the budding +intellect of the young. The Child bawled, and was dragged away, hugging +her Betsy close.

+ +

There came the Secretary, pale, poised, polished, gliding in pumps, and +worshipping pomp and ceremony. He counted out into Fuzzy's hand ten +ten-dollar bills; then dropped his eye upon the door, transferred it to +James, its custodian, indicated the obnoxious earner of the reward with +the other, and allowed his pumps to waft him away to secretarial +regions.

+ +

James gathered Fuzzy with his own commanding optic and swept him as far +as the front door.

+ +

When the money touched fuzzy's dingy palm his first instinct was to take +to his heels; but a second thought restrained him from that blunder +of etiquette. It was his; it had been given him. It—and, oh, what an +elysium it opened to the gaze of his mind's eye! He had tumbled to the +foot of the ladder; he was hungry, homeless, friendless, ragged, cold, +drifting; and he held in his hand the key to a paradise of the mud-honey +that he craved. The fairy doll had waved a wand with her rag-stuffed +hand; and now wherever he might go the enchanted palaces with shining +foot-rests and magic red fluids in gleaming glassware would be open to +him.

+ +

He followed James to the door.

+ +

He paused there as the flunky drew open the great mahogany portal for +him to pass into the vestibule.

+ +

Beyond the wrought-iron gates in the dark highway Black Riley and his +two pals casually strolled, fingering under their coats the inevitably +fatal weapons that were to make the reward of the rag-doll theirs.

+ +

Fuzzy stopped at the Millionaire's door and bethought himself. Like +little sprigs of mistletoe on a dead tree, certain living green thoughts +and memories began to decorate his confused mind. He was quite drunk, +mind you, and the present was beginning to fade. Those wreaths and +festoons of holly with their scarlet berries making the great hall +gay—where had he seen such things before? Somewhere he had known +polished floors and odors of fresh flowers in winter, and—and some one +was singing a song in the house that he thought he had heard before. +Some one singing and playing a harp. Of course, it was Christmas—Fuzzy +though he must have been pretty drunk to have overlooked that.

+ +

And then he went out of the present, and there came back to him out of +some impossible, vanished, and irrevocable past a little, pure-white, +transient, forgotten ghost—the spirit of noblesse oblige. Upon a +gentleman certain things devolve.

+ +

James opened the outer door. A stream of light went down the graveled +walk to the iron gate. Black Riley, McCarthy, and "One-ear" Mike saw, +and carelessly drew their sinister cordon closer about the gate.

+ +

With a more imperious gesture than James's master had ever used or could +ever use, Fuzzy compelled the menial to close the door. Upon a gentleman +certain things devolve. Especially at the Christmas season.

+ +

"It is cust—customary," he said to James, the flustered, "when a +gentleman calls on Christmas Eve to pass the compliments of the season +with the lady of the house. You und'stand? I shall not move shtep till +I pass compl'ments season with lady the house. Und'stand?"

+ +

There was an argument. James lost. Fuzzy raised his voice and sent it +through the house unpleasantly. I did not say he was a gentleman. He was +simply a tramp being visited by a ghost.

+ +

A sterling silver bell rang. James went back to answer it, leaving Fuzzy +in the hall. James explained somewhere to some one.

+ +

Then he came and conducted Fuzzy into the library.

+ +

The lady entered a moment later. She was more beautiful and holy than +any picture that Fuzzy had seen. She smiled, and said something about a +doll. Fuzzy didn't understand that; he remembered nothing about a doll.

+ +

A footman brought in two small glasses of sparkling wine on a stamped +sterling-silver waiter. The Lady took one. The other was handed to +Fuzzy.

+ +

As his fingers closed on the slender glass stem his disabilities dropped +from him for one brief moment. He straightened himself; and Time, so +disobliging to most of us, turned backward to accommodate Fuzzy.

+ +

Forgotten Christmas ghosts whiter than the false beards of the most +opulent Kris Kringle were rising in the fumes of Grogan's whisky. What +had the Millionaire's mansion to do with a long, wainscoted Virginia +hall, where the riders were grouped around a silver punch-bowl, drinking +the ancient toast of the House? And why should the patter of the cab +horses' hoofs on the frozen street be in any wise related to the sound +of the saddled hunters stamping under the shelter of the west veranda? +And what had Fuzzy to do with any of it?

+ +

The Lady, looking at him over her glass, let her condescending smile +fade away like a false dawn. Her eyes turned serious. She saw something +beneath the rags and Scotch terrier whiskers that she did not +understand. But it did not matter.

+ +

Fuzzy lifted his glass and smiled vacantly.

+ +

"P-pardon, lady," he said, "but couldn't leave without exchangin' +comp'ments sheason with lady th' house. 'Gainst princ'ples gen'leman do +sho."

+ +

And then he began the ancient salutation that was a tradition in the +House when men wore lace ruffles and powder.

+ +

"The blessings of another year—"

+ +

Fuzzy's memory failed him. The Lady prompted:

+ +

"—Be upon this hearth."

+ +

"—The guest—" stammered Fuzzy.

+ +

"—And upon her who—" continued the Lady, with a leading smile.

+ +

"Oh, cut it out," said Fuzzy, ill-manneredly. "I can't remember. Drink +hearty."

+ +

Fuzzy had shot his arrow. They drank. The Lady smiled again the smile of +her caste. James enveloped and re-conducted him toward the front door. +The harp music still softly drifted through the house.

+ +

Outside, Black Riley breathed on his cold hands and hugged the gate.

+ +

"I wonder," said the Lady to herself, musing, "who—but there were so +many who came. I wonder whether memory is a curse or a blessing to them +after they have fallen so low."

+ +

Fuzzy and his escort were nearly at the door. The Lady called: "James!"

+ +

James stalked back obsequiously, leaving Fuzzy waiting unsteadily, with +his brief spark of the divine fire gone.

+ +

Outside, Black Riley stamped his cold feet and got a firmer grip on his +section of gas-pipe.

+ +

"You will conduct this gentleman," said the lady, "Downstairs. Then tell +Louis to get out the Mercedes and take him to whatever place he wishes +to go." +

A NIGHT IN NEW ARABIA

+

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 +Tolstoi, 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 to-morrow."

+ +

"In foro conscientiæ," 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 stomach-ache 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 rough-housing de soda-water stands and dem rubber-neck +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 boarding-houses; 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 sha'n'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 ferry-boat of the +Charon line.

+ +

"I'll be around to-morrow 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 by-laws 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-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 lattice-work 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 +to-morrow 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 +post-card 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 to-day," 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 to-night. 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 to-night, Tommy, +if you say so."

+ +

Old Jacob Spraggins came home at 9:30 P. 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 per cent. 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. +

THE GIRL AND THE HABIT

+
+Habit—a tendency or aptitude +acquired by custom or frequent repetition. +
+ +
+

The critics have assailed every source of inspiration save one. To that +one we are driven for our moral theme. When we levied upon the masters +of old they gleefully dug up the parallels to our columns. When we +strove to set forth real life they reproached us for trying to imitate +Henry George, George Washington, Washington Irving, and Irving +Bacheller. We wrote of the West and the East, and they accused us +of both Jesse and Henry James. We wrote from our heart—and they +said something about a disordered liver. We took a text from Matthew +or—er—yes, Deuteronomy, but the preachers were hammering away at the +inspiration idea before we could get into type. So, driven to the wall, +we go for our subject-matter to the reliable, old, moral, unassailable +vade mecum—the unabridged dictionary.

+ +

Miss Merriam was cashier at Hinkle's. Hinkle's is one of the big +downtown restaurants. It is in what the papers call the "financial +district." Each day from 12 o'clock to 2 Hinkle's was full of hungry +customers—messenger boys, stenographers, brokers, owners of mining +stock, promoters, inventors with patents pending—and also people with +money.

+ +

The cashiership at Hinkle's was no sinecure. Hinkle egged and toasted +and griddle-caked and coffeed a good many customers; and he lunched +(as good a word as "dined") many more. It might be said that Hinkle's +breakfast crowd was a contingent, but his luncheon patronage amounted +to a horde.

+ +

Miss Merriam sat on a stool at a desk inclosed on three sides by a +strong, high fencing of woven brass wire. Through an arched opening at +the bottom you thrust your waiter's check and the money, while your +heart went pit-a-pat.

+ +

For Miss Merriam was lovely and capable. She could take 45 cents out of +a $2 bill and refuse an offer of marriage before you could—Next!—lost +your chance—please don't shove. She could keep cool and collected while +she collected your check, give you the correct change, win your heart, +indicate the toothpick stand, and rate you to a quarter of a cent better +than Bradstreet could to a thousand in less time than it takes to pepper +an egg with one of Hinkle's casters.

+ +

There is an old and dignified allusion to the "fierce light that beats +upon a throne." The light that beats upon the young lady cashier's cage +is also something fierce. The other fellow is responsible for the slang.

+ +

Every male patron of Hinkle's, from the A. D. T. boys up to the curbstone +brokers, adored Miss Merriam. When they paid their checks they wooed her +with every wile known to Cupid's art. Between the meshes of the brass +railing went smiles, winks, compliments, tender vows, invitations to +dinner, sighs, languishing looks and merry banter that was wafted +pointedly back by the gifted Miss Merriam.

+ +

There is no coign of vantage more effective than the position of young +lady cashier. She sits there, easily queen of the court of commerce; she +is duchess of dollars and devoirs, countess of compliments and coin, +leading lady of love and luncheon. You take from her a smile and a +Canadian dime, and you go your way uncomplaining. You count the cheery +word or two that she tosses you as misers count their treasures; and +you pocket the change for a five uncomputed. Perhaps the brass-bound +inaccessibility multiplies her charms—anyhow, she is a shirt-waisted +angel, immaculate, trim, manicured, seductive, bright-eyed, ready, +alert—Psyche, Circe, and Ate in one, separating you from your +circulating medium after your sirloin medium.

+ +

The young men who broke bread at Hinkle's never settled with the cashier +without an exchange of badinage and open compliment. Many of them went +to greater lengths and dropped promissory hints of theatre tickets +and chocolates. The older men spoke plainly of orange blossoms, generally +withering the tentative petals by after-allusions to Harlem flats. One +broker, who had been squeezed by copper proposed to Miss Merriam more +regularly than he ate.

+ +

During a brisk luncheon hour Miss Merriam's conversation, while she took +money for checks, would run something like this:

+ +

"Good morning, Mr. Haskins—sir?—it's natural, thank you—don't be +quite so fresh . . . Hello, Johnny—ten, fifteen, twenty—chase along +now or they'll take the letters off your cap . . . Beg pardon—count +it again, please—Oh, don't mention it . . . Vaudeville?—thanks; +not on your moving picture—I was to see Carter in Hedda Gabler on +Wednesday night with Mr. Simmons . . . 'Scuse me, I thought that +was a quarter . . . Twenty-five and seventy-five's a dollar—got +that ham-and-cabbage habit yet. I see, Billy . . . Who are you +addressing?—say—you'll get all that's coming to you in a +minute . . . Oh, fudge! Mr. Bassett—you're always fooling—no—? +Well, maybe I'll marry you some day—three, four and sixty-five +is five . . . Kindly keep them remarks to yourself, if you +please . . . Ten cents?—'scuse me; the check calls for seventy—well, +maybe it is a one instead of a seven . . . Oh, do you like it that +way, Mr. Saunders?—some prefer a pomp; but they say this Cleo de +Merody does suit refined features . . . and ten is fifty . . . Hike +along there, buddy; don't take this for a Coney Island ticket +booth . . . Huh?—why, Macy's—don't it fit nice? Oh, no, it isn't too +cool—these light-weight fabrics is all the go this season . . . Come +again, please—that's the third time you've tried to—what?—forget +it—that lead quarter is an old friend of mine . . . Sixty-five?—must +have had your salary raised, Mr. Wilson . . . I seen you on Sixth +Avenue Tuesday afternoon, Mr. De Forest—swell?—oh, my!—who +is she? . . . What's the matter with it?—why, it ain't +money—what?—Columbian half?—well, this ain't South +America . . . Yes, I like the mixed best—Friday?—awfully +sorry, but I take my jiu-jitsu lesson on Friday—Thursday, +then . . . Thanks—that's sixteen times I've been told that this +morning—I guess I must be beautiful . . . Cut that out, please—who +do you think I am? . . . Why, Mr. Westbrook—do you really think +so?—the idea!—one—eighty and twenty's a dollar—thank you ever so +much, but I don't ever go automobile riding with gentlemen—your +aunt?—well, that's different—perhaps . . . Please don't get +fresh—your check was fifteen cents, I believe—kindly step aside and +let . . . Hello, Ben—coming around Thursday evening?—there's a +gentleman going to send around a box of chocolates, and . . . forty +and sixty is a dollar, and one is two . . ."

+ +

About the middle of one afternoon the dizzy goddess Vertigo—whose other +name is Fortune—suddenly smote an old, wealthy and eccentric banker +while he was walking past Hinkle's, on his way to a street car. A +wealthy and eccentric banker who rides in street cars is—move up, +please; there are others.

+ +

A Samaritan, a Pharisee, a man and a policeman who were first on the +spot lifted Banker McRamsey and carried him into Hinkle's restaurant. +When the aged but indestructible banker opened his eyes he saw a +beautiful vision bending over him with a pitiful, tender smile, bathing +his forehead with beef tea and chafing his hands with something frappé +out of a chafing-dish. Mr. McRamsey sighed, lost a vest button, gazed +with deep gratitude upon his fair preserveress, and then recovered +consciousness.

+ +

To the Seaside Library all who are anticipating a romance! Banker +McRamsey had an aged and respected wife, and his sentiments toward +Miss Merriam were fatherly. He talked to her for half an hour with +interest—not the kind that went with his talks during business hours. +The next day he brought Mrs. McRamsey down to see her. The old couple +were childless—they had only a married daughter living in Brooklyn.

+ +

To make a short story shorter, the beautiful cashier won the hearts +of the good old couple. They came to Hinkle's again and again; they +invited her to their old-fashioned but splendid home in one of the East +Seventies. Miss Merriam's winning loveliness, her sweet frankness and +impulsive heart took them by storm. They said a hundred times that Miss +Merriam reminded them so much of their lost daughter. The Brooklyn +matron, née Ramsey, had the figure of Buddha and a face like the ideal +of an art photographer. Miss Merriam was a combination of curves, +smiles, rose leaves, pearls, satin and hair-tonic posters. Enough of the +fatuity of parents.

+ +

A month after the worthy couple became acquainted with Miss Merriam, she +stood before Hinkle one afternoon and resigned her cashiership.

+ +

"They're going to adopt me," she told the bereft restaurateur. "They're +funny old people, but regular dears. And the swell home they have got! +Say, Hinkle, there isn't any use of talking—I'm on the à la carte to +wear brown duds and goggles in a whiz wagon, or marry a duke at least. +Still, I somehow hate to break out of the old cage. I've been cashiering +so long I feel funny doing anything else. I'll miss joshing the fellows +awfully when they line up to pay for the buckwheats and. But I can't let +this chance slide. And they're awfully good, Hinkle; I know I'll have a +swell time. You owe me nine-sixty-two and a half for the week. Cut out +the half if it hurts you, Hinkle."

+ +

And they did. Miss Merriam became Miss Rosa McRamsey. And she graced the +transition. Beauty is only skin-deep, but the nerves lie very near to +the skin. Nerve—but just here will you oblige by perusing again the +quotation with which this story begins?

+ +

The McRamseys poured out money like domestic champagne to polish their +adopted one. Milliners, dancing masters and private tutors got it. +Miss—er—McRamsey was grateful, loving, and tried to forget Hinkle's. +To give ample credit to the adaptability of the American girl, Hinkle's +did fade from her memory and speech most of the time.

+ +

Not every one will remember when the Earl of Hitesbury came to East +Seventy–––– Street, America. He was only a fair-to-medium earl, without +debts, and he created little excitement. But you will surely remember +the evening when the Daughters of Benevolence held their bazaar in the +W––––f-A––––a Hotel. For you were there, and you wrote a note to Fannie +on the hotel paper, and mailed it, just to show her that—you did not? +Very well; that was the evening the baby was sick, of course.

+ +

At the bazaar the McRamseys were prominent. Miss Mer—er—McRamsey was +exquisitely beautiful. The Earl of Hitesbury had been very attentive to +her since he dropped in to have a look at America. At the charity bazaar +the affair was supposed to be going to be pulled off to a finish. An +earl is as good as a duke. Better. His standing may be lower, but his +outstanding accounts are also lower.

+ +

Our ex-young-lady-cashier was assigned to a booth. She was expected to +sell worthless articles to nobs and snobs at exorbitant prices. The +proceeds of the bazaar were to be used for giving the poor children of +the slums a Christmas din––––Say! did you ever +wonder where they get the other 364?

+ +

Miss McRamsey—beautiful, palpitating, excited, charming, +radiant—fluttered about in her booth. An imitation brass network, with +a little arched opening, fenced her in.

+ +

Along came the Earl, assured, delicate, accurate, admiring—admiring +greatly, and faced the open wicket.

+ +

"You look chawming, you know—'pon my word you do—my deah," he said, +beguilingly.

+ +

Miss McRamsey whirled around.

+ +

"Cut that joshing out," she said, coolly and briskly. "Who do you think +you are talking to? Your check, please. Oh, Lordy!—"

+ +

Patrons of the bazaar became aware of a commotion and pressed around a +certain booth. The Earl of Hitesbury stood near by pulling a pale blond +and puzzled whisker.

+ +

"Miss McRamsey has fainted," some one explained. +

PROOF OF THE PUDDING

+

Spring winked a vitreous optic at Editor Westbrook of the Minerva +Magazine, and deflected him from his course. He had lunched in his +favorite corner of a Broadway hotel, and was returning to his office +when his feet became entangled in the lure of the vernal coquette. Which +is by way of saying that he turned eastward in Twenty-sixth Street, +safely forded the spring freshet of vehicles in Fifth Avenue, and +meandered along the walks of budding Madison Square.

+ +

The lenient air and the settings of the little park almost formed a +pastoral; the color motif was green—the presiding shade at the creation +of man and vegetation.

+ +

The callow grass between the walks was the color of verdigris, a +poisonous green, reminiscent of the horde of derelict humans that had +breathed upon the soil during the summer and autumn. The bursting tree +buds looked strangely familiar to those who had botanized among the +garnishings of the fish course of a forty-cent dinner. The sky above +was of that pale aquamarine tint that ballroom poets rhyme with "true" +and "Sue" and "coo." The one natural and frank color visible was the +ostensible green of the newly painted benches—a shade between the color +of a pickled cucumber and that of a last year's fast-black cravenette +raincoat. But, to the city-bred eye of Editor Westbrook, the landscape +appeared a masterpiece.

+ +

And now, whether you are of those who rush in, or of the gentle +concourse that fears to tread, you must follow in a brief invasion of +the editor's mind.

+ +

Editor Westbrook's spirit was contented and serene. The April number of +the Minerva had sold its entire edition before the tenth day of the +month—a newsdealer in Keokuk had written that he could have sold fifty +copies more if he had 'em. The owners of the magazine had raised his +(the editor's) salary; he had just installed in his home a jewel of a +recently imported cook who was afraid of policemen; and the morning +papers had published in full a speech he had made at a publishers' +banquet. Also there were echoing in his mind the jubilant notes of a +splendid song that his charming young wife had sung to him before he +left his up-town apartment that morning. She was taking enthusiastic +interest in her music of late, practising early and diligently. When +he had complimented her on the improvement in her voice she had fairly +hugged him for joy at his praise. He felt, too, the benign, tonic +medicament of the trained nurse, Spring, tripping softly adown the wards +of the convalescent city.

+ +

While Editor Westbrook was sauntering between the rows of park benches +(already filling with vagrants and the guardians of lawless childhood) +he felt his sleeve grasped and held. Suspecting that he was about to be +panhandled, he turned a cold and unprofitable face, and saw that his +captor was—Dawe—Shackleford Dawe, dingy, almost ragged, the genteel +scarcely visible in him through the deeper lines of the shabby.

+ +

While the editor is pulling himself out of his surprise, a flashlight +biography of Dawe is offered.

+ +

He was a fiction writer, and one of Westbrook's old acquaintances. +At one time they might have called each other old friends. Dawe had +some money in those days, and lived in a decent apartment house near +Westbrook's. The two families often went to theatres and dinners +together. Mrs. Dawe and Mrs. Westbrook became "dearest" friends. +Then one day a little tentacle of the octopus, just to amuse itself, +ingurgitated Dawe's capital, and he moved to the Gramercy Park +neighborhood where one, for a few groats per week, may sit upon one's +trunk under eight-branched chandeliers and opposite Carrara marble +mantels and watch the mice play upon the floor. Dawe thought to live +by writing fiction. Now and then he sold a story. He submitted many +to Westbrook. The Minerva printed one or two of them; the rest were +returned. Westbrook sent a careful and conscientious personal letter +with each rejected manuscript, pointing out in detail his reasons +for considering it unavailable. Editor Westbrook had his own clear +conception of what constituted good fiction. So had Dawe. Mrs. Dawe was +mainly concerned about the constituents of the scanty dishes of food +that she managed to scrape together. One day Dawe had been spouting to +her about the excellencies of certain French writers. At dinner they sat +down to a dish that a hungry schoolboy could have encompassed at a gulp. +Dawe commented.

+ +

"It's Maupassant hash," said Mrs. Dawe. "It may not be art, but I do +wish you would do a five-course Marion Crawford serial with an Ella +Wheeler Wilcox sonnet for dessert. I'm hungry."

+ +

As far as this from success was Shackleford Dawe when he plucked Editor +Westbrook's sleeve in Madison Square. That was the first time the editor +had seen Dawe in several months.

+ +

"Why, Shack, is this you?" said Westbrook, somewhat awkwardly, for the +form of his phrase seemed to touch upon the other's changed appearance.

+ +

"Sit down for a minute," said Dawe, tugging at his sleeve. "This is my +office. I can't come to yours, looking as I do. Oh, sit down—you won't +be disgraced. Those half-plucked birds on the other benches will take +you for a swell porch-climber. They won't know you are only an editor."

+ +

"Smoke, Shack?" said Editor Westbrook, sinking cautiously upon the +virulent green bench. He always yielded gracefully when he did yield.

+ +

Dawe snapped at the cigar as a kingfisher darts at a sunperch, or a girl +pecks at a chocolate cream.

+ +

"I have just—" began the editor.

+ +

"Oh, I know; don't finish," said Dawe. "Give me a match. You have just +ten minutes to spare. How did you manage to get past my office-boy and +invade my sanctum? There he goes now, throwing his club at a dog that +couldn't read the 'Keep off the Grass' signs."

+ +

"How goes the writing?" asked the editor. + +"Look at me," said Dawe, "for your answer. Now don't put on that +embarrassed, friendly-but-honest look and ask me why I don't get a job +as a wine agent or a cab driver. I'm in the fight to a finish. I know I +can write good fiction and I'll force you fellows to admit it yet. I'll +make you change the spelling of 'regrets' to 'c-h-e-q-u-e' before I'm +done with you."

+ +

Editor Westbrook gazed through his nose-glasses with a sweetly +sorrowful, omniscient, sympathetic, skeptical expression—the +copyrighted expression of the editor beleagured by the unavailable +contributor.

+ +

"Have you read the last story I sent you—'The Alarum of the Soul'?" +asked Dawe.

+ +

"Carefully. I hesitated over that story, Shack, really I did. It had +some good points. I was writing you a letter to send with it when it +goes back to you. I regret—"

+ +

"Never mind the regrets," said Dawe, grimly. "There's neither salve nor +sting in 'em any more. What I want to know is why. Come now; out with +the good points first."

+ +

"The story," said Westbrook, deliberately, after a suppressed sigh, "is +written around an almost original plot. Characterization—the best you +have done. Construction—almost as good, except for a few weak joints +which might be strengthened by a few changes and touches. It was a good +story, except—"

+ +

"I can write English, can't I?" interrupted Dawe.

+ +

"I have always told you," said the editor, "that you had a style."

+ +

"Then the trouble is—"

+ +

"Same old thing," said Editor Westbrook. "You work up to your climax +like an artist. And then you turn yourself into a photographer. I don't +know what form of obstinate madness possesses you, but that is what you +do with everything that you write. No, I will retract the comparison +with the photographer. Now and then photography, in spite of its +impossible perspective, manages to record a fleeting glimpse of truth. +But you spoil every dénouement by those flat, drab, obliterating strokes +of your brush that I have so often complained of. If you would rise to +the literary pinnacle of your dramatic senses, and paint them in the +high colors that art requires, the postman would leave fewer bulky, +self-addressed envelopes at your door."

+ +

"Oh, fiddles and footlights!" cried Dawe, derisively. "You've got that +old sawmill drama kink in your brain yet. When the man with the black +mustache kidnaps golden-haired Bessie you are bound to have the mother +kneel and raise her hands in the spotlight and say: 'May high heaven +witness that I will rest neither night nor day till the heartless +villain that has stolen me child feels the weight of another's +vengeance!'"

+ +

Editor Westbrook conceded a smile of impervious complacency.

+ +

"I think," said he, "that in real life the woman would express herself +in those words or in very similar ones."

+ +

"Not in a six hundred nights' run anywhere but on the stage," said Dawe +hotly. "I'll tell you what she'd say in real life. She'd say: 'What! +Bessie led away by a strange man? Good Lord! It's one trouble after +another! Get my other hat, I must hurry around to the police-station. +Why wasn't somebody looking after her, I'd like to know? For God's sake, +get out of my way or I'll never get ready. Not that hat—the brown one +with the velvet bows. Bessie must have been crazy; she's usually shy of +strangers. Is that too much powder? Lordy! How I'm upset!'

+ +

"That's the way she'd talk," continued Dawe. "People in real life don't +fly into heroics and blank verse at emotional crises. They simply can't +do it. If they talk at all on such occasions they draw from the same +vocabulary that they use every day, and muddle up their words and ideas +a little more, that's all."

+ +

"Shack," said Editor Westbrook impressively, "did you ever pick up the +mangled and lifeless form of a child from under the fender of a street +car, and carry it in your arms and lay it down before the distracted +mother? Did you ever do that and listen to the words of grief and +despair as they flowed spontaneously from her lips?"

+ +

"I never did," said Dawe. "Did you?"

+ +

"Well, no," said Editor Westbrook, with a slight frown. "But I can well +imagine what she would say."

+ +

"So can I," said Dawe.

+ +

And now the fitting time had come for Editor Westbrook to play the +oracle and silence his opinionated contributor. It was not for an +unarrived fictionist to dictate words to be uttered by the heroes and +heroines of the Minerva Magazine, contrary to the theories of the +editor thereof.

+ +

"My dear Shack," said he, "if I know anything of life I know that every +sudden, deep and tragic emotion in the human heart calls forth an +apposite, concordant, conformable and proportionate expression of +feeling. How much of this inevitable accord between expression and +feeling should be attributed to nature, and how much to the influence of +art, it would be difficult to say. The sublimely terrible roar of the +lioness that has been deprived of her cubs is dramatically as far above +her customary whine and purr as the kingly and transcendent utterances +of Lear are above the level of his senile vaporings. But it is also true +that all men and women have what may be called a sub-conscious dramatic +sense that is awakened by a sufficiently deep and powerful emotion—a +sense unconsciously acquired from literature and the stage that prompts +them to express those emotions in language befitting their importance +and histrionic value."

+ +

"And in the name of the seven sacred saddle-blankets of Sagittarius, +where did the stage and literature get the stunt?" asked Dawe.

+ +

"From life," answered the editor, triumphantly.

+ +

The story writer rose from the bench and gesticulated eloquently but +dumbly. He was beggared for words with which to formulate adequately his +dissent.

+ +

On a bench nearby a frowzy loafer opened his red eyes and perceived that +his moral support was due a downtrodden brother.

+ +

"Punch him one, Jack," he called hoarsely to Dawe. "W'at's he come +makin' a noise like a penny arcade for amongst gen'lemen that comes in +the square to set and think?"

+ +

Editor Westbrook looked at his watch with an affected show of leisure.

+ +

"Tell me," asked Dawe, with truculent anxiety, "what especial faults in +'The Alarum of the Soul' caused you to throw it down?"

+ +

"When Gabriel Murray," said Westbrook, "goes to his telephone and is +told that his fiancée has been shot by a burglar, he says—I do not +recall the exact words, but—"

+ +

"I do," said Dawe. "He says: 'Damn Central; she always cuts me off.' +(And then to his friend) 'Say, Tommy, does a thirty-two bullet make a +big hole? It's kind of hard luck, ain't it? Could you get me a drink +from the sideboard, Tommy? No; straight; nothing on the side.'"

+ +

"And again," continued the editor, without pausing for argument, "when +Berenice opens the letter from her husband informing her that he has +fled with the manicure girl, her words are—let me see—"

+ +

"She says," interposed the author: "'Well, what do you think of that!'"

+ +

"Absurdly inappropriate words," said Westbrook, "presenting an +anti-climax—plunging the story into hopeless bathos. Worse yet; they +mirror life falsely. No human being ever uttered banal colloquialisms +when confronted by sudden tragedy."

+ +

"Wrong," said Dawe, closing his unshaven jaws doggedly. "I say no man +or woman ever spouts 'high-falutin' talk when they go up against a real +climax. They talk naturally and a little worse."

+ +

The editor rose from the bench with his air of indulgence and inside +information.

+ +

"Say, Westbrook," said Dawe, pinning him by the lapel, "would you have +accepted 'The Alarum of the Soul' if you had believed that the actions +and words of the characters were true to life in the parts of the story +that we discussed?"

+ +

"It is very likely that I would, if I believed that way," said the +editor. "But I have explained to you that I do not."

+ +

"If I could prove to you that I am right?"

+ +

"I'm sorry, Shack, but I'm afraid I haven't time to argue any further +just now."

+ +

"I don't want to argue," said Dawe. "I want to demonstrate to you from +life itself that my view is the correct one."

+ +

"How could you do that?" asked Westbrook, in a surprised tone.

+ +

"Listen," said the writer, seriously. "I have thought of a way. It is +important to me that my theory of true-to-life fiction be recognized as +correct by the magazines. I've fought for it for three years, and I'm +down to my last dollar, with two months' rent due."

+ +

"I have applied the opposite of your theory," said the editor, "in +selecting the fiction for the Minerva Magazine. The circulation has +gone up from ninety thousand to—"

+ +

"Four hundred thousand," said Dawe. "Whereas it should have been boosted +to a million."

+ +

"You said something to me just now about demonstrating your pet theory."

+ +

"I will. If you'll give me about half an hour of your time I'll prove to +you that I am right. I'll prove it by Louise."

+ +

"Your wife!" exclaimed Westbrook. "How?"

+ +

"Well, not exactly by her, but with her," said Dawe. "Now, you know +how devoted and loving Louise has always been. She thinks I'm the only +genuine preparation on the market that bears the old doctor's signature. +She's been fonder and more faithful than ever, since I've been cast for +the neglected genius part."

+ +

"Indeed, she is a charming and admirable life companion," agreed the +editor. "I remember what inseparable friends she and Mrs. Westbrook once +were. We are both lucky chaps, Shack, to have such wives. You must bring +Mrs. Dawe up some evening soon, and we'll have one of those informal +chafing-dish suppers that we used to enjoy so much."

+ +

"Later," said Dawe. "When I get another shirt. And now I'll tell you my +scheme. When I was about to leave home after breakfast—if you can call +tea and oatmeal breakfast—Louise told me she was going to visit her +aunt in Eighty-ninth Street. She said she would return at three o'clock. +She is always on time to a minute. It is now—"

+ +

Dawe glanced toward the editor's watch pocket.

+ +

"Twenty-seven minutes to three," said Westbrook, scanning his +time-piece.

+ +

"We have just enough time," said Dawe. "We will go to my flat at once. I +will write a note, address it to her and leave it on the table where she +will see it as she enters the door. You and I will be in the dining-room +concealed by the portières. In that note I'll say that I have fled from +her forever with an affinity who understands the needs of my artistic +soul as she never did. When she reads it we will observe her actions and +hear her words. Then we will know which theory is the correct one—yours +or mine."

+ +

"Oh, never!" exclaimed the editor, shaking his head. "That would be +inexcusably cruel. I could not consent to have Mrs. Dawe's feelings +played upon in such a manner."

+ +

"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."

+ +

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.

+ +

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. Sic transit gloria urbis.

+ +

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 latch-key into the door +of one of the front flats.

+ +

When the door opened Editor Westbrook saw, with feelings of pity, how +meanly and meagerly the rooms were furnished.

+ +

"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."

+ +

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: + +


+

+"Dear Shackleford:
+
+      "By the time you get this I will be about a hundred miles away and +still a-going. I've got a place in the chorus of the Occidental Opera +Co., and we start on the road to-day at twelve o'clock. I didn't want to +starve to death, and so I decided to make my own living. I'm not coming +back. Mrs. Westbrook is going with me. She said she was tired of living +with a combination phonograph, iceberg and dictionary, and she's not +coming back, either. We've been practising the songs and dances for two +months on the quiet. I hope you will be successful, and get along all +right! Good-bye.
+
+             +             +             +             +             +"Louise." +
+ +
+

Dawe dropped the letter, covered his face with his trembling hands, and +cried out in a deep, vibrating voice:

+ +

"My God, why hast thou given me this cup to drink? Since she is false, +then let Thy Heaven's fairest gifts, faith and love, become the jesting +by-words of traitors and fiends!"

+ +

Editor Westbrook's glasses fell to the floor. The fingers of one hand +fumbled with a button on his coat as he blurted between his pale lips:

+ +

"Say, Shack, ain't that a hell of a note? Wouldn't that knock you off +your perch, Shack? Ain't it hell, now, Shack—ain't it?" +

PAST ONE AT ROONEY'S

+

Only on the lower East Side of New York do the houses of Capulet and +Montagu survive. There they do not fight by the book of arithmetic. If +you but bite your thumb at an upholder of your opposing house you have +work cut out for your steel. On Broadway you may drag your man along a +dozen blocks by his nose, and he will only bawl for the watch; but in +the domain of the East Side Tybalts and Mercutios you must observe the +niceties of deportment to the wink of any eyelash and to an inch of +elbow room at the bar when its patrons include foes of your house and +kin.

+ +

So, when Eddie McManus, known to the Capulets as Cork McManus, drifted +into Dutch Mike's for a stein of beer, and came upon a bunch of +Montagus making merry with the suds, he began to observe the strictest +parliamentary rules. Courtesy forbade his leaving the saloon with his +thirst unslaked; caution steered him to a place at the bar where the +mirror supplied the cognizance of the enemy's movements that his +indifferent gaze seemed to disdain; experience whispered to him that the +finger of trouble would be busy among the chattering steins at Dutch +Mike's that night. Close by his side drew Brick Cleary, his Mercutio, +companion of his perambulations. Thus they stood, four of the Mulberry +Hill Gang and two of the Dry Dock Gang, minding their P's and Q's so +solicitously that Dutch Mike kept one eye on his customers and the other +on an open space beneath his bar in which it was his custom to seek +safety whenever the ominous politeness of the rival associations +congealed into the shapes of bullets and cold steel.

+ +

But we have not to do with the wars of the Mulberry Hills and the Dry +Docks. We must to Rooney's, where, on the most blighted dead branch of +the tree of life, a little pale orchid shall bloom.

+ +

Overstrained etiquette at last gave way. It is not known who first +overstepped the bounds of punctilio; but the consequences were +immediate. Buck Malone, of the Mulberry Hills, with a Dewey-like +swiftness, got an eight-inch gun swung round from his hurricane deck. +But McManus's simile must be the torpedo. He glided in under the guns +and slipped a scant three inches of knife blade between the ribs of the +Mulberry Hill cruiser. Meanwhile Brick Cleary, a devotee to strategy, +had skimmed across the lunch counter and thrown the switch of the +electrics, leaving the combat to be waged by the light of gunfire alone. +Dutch Mike crawled from his haven and ran into the street crying for the +watch instead of for a Shakespeare to immortalize the Cimmerian shindy.

+ +

The cop came, and found a prostrate, bleeding Montagu supported by three +distrait and reticent followers of the House. Faithful to the ethics of +the gangs, no one knew whence the hurt came. There was no Capulet to be +seen.

+ +

"Raus mit der interrogatories," said Buck Malone to the officer. "Sure I +know who done it. I always manages to get a bird's eye view of any guy +that comes up an' makes a show case for a hardware store out of me. No. +I'm not telling you his name. I'll settle with um meself. Wow—ouch! +Easy, boys! Yes, I'll attend to his case meself. I'm not making any +complaint."

+ +

At midnight McManus strolled around a pile of lumber near an East Side +dock, and lingered in the vicinity of a certain water plug. Brick Cleary +drifted casually to the trysting place ten minutes later. "He'll maybe +not croak," said Brick; "and he won't tell, of course. But Dutch Mike +did. He told the police he was tired of having his place shot up. It's +unhandy just now, because Tim Corrigan's in Europe for a week's end with +Kings. He'll be back on the Kaiser Williams next Friday. You'll have +to duck out of sight till then. Tim'll fix it up all right for us when +he comes back."

+ +

This goes to explain why Cork McManus went into Rooney's one night and +there looked upon the bright, stranger face of Romance for the first +time in his precarious career.

+ +

Until Tim Corrigan should return from his jaunt among Kings and Princes +and hold up his big white finger in private offices, it was unsafe for +Cork in any of the old haunts of his gang. So he lay, perdu, in the high +rear room of a Capulet, reading pink sporting sheets and cursing the +slow paddle wheels of the Kaiser Wilhelm.

+ +

It was on Thursday evening that Cork's seclusion became intolerable to +him. Never a hart panted for water fountain as he did for the cool touch +of a drifting stein, for the firm security of a foot-rail in the hollow +of his shoe and the quiet, hearty challenges of friendship and repartee +along and across the shining bars. But he must avoid the district where +he was known. The cops were looking for him everywhere, for news was +scarce, and the newspapers were harping again on the failure of the +police to suppress the gangs. If they got him before Corrigan came back, +the big white finger could not be uplifted; it would be too late then. +But Corrigan would be home the next day, so he felt sure there would be +small danger in a little excursion that night among the crass pleasures +that represented life to him.

+ +

At half-past twelve McManus stood in a darkish cross-town street looking +up at the name "Rooney's," picked out by incandescent lights against +a signboard over a second-story window. He had heard of the place +as a tough "hang-out"; with its frequenters and its locality he was +unfamiliar. Guided by certain unerring indications common to all such +resorts, he ascended the stairs and entered the large room over the +café.

+ +

Here were some twenty or thirty tables, at this time about half-filled +with Rooney's guests. Waiters served drinks. At one end a human +pianola with drugged eyes hammered the keys with automatic and furious +unprecision. At merciful intervals a waiter would roar or squeak a +song—songs full of "Mr. Johnsons" and "babes" and "coons"—historical +word guaranties of the genuineness of African melodies composed by red +waistcoated young gentlemen, natives of the cotton fields and rice +swamps of West Twenty-eighth Street.

+ +

For one brief moment you must admire Rooney with me as he receives, +seats, manipulates, and chaffs his guests. He is twenty-nine. He +has Wellington's nose, Dante's chin, the cheek-bones of an Iroquois, +the smile of Talleyrand, Corbett's foot work, and the poise of an +eleven-year-old East Side Central Park Queen of the May. He is assisted +by a lieutenant known as Frank, a pudgy, easy chap, swell-dressed, who +goes among the tables seeing that dull care does not intrude. Now, +what is there about Rooney's to inspire all this pother? It is more +respectable by daylight; stout ladies with children and mittens and +bundles and unpedigreed dogs drop up of afternoons for a stein and a +chat. Even by gaslight the diversions are melancholy i' the mouth—drink +and rag-time, and an occasional surprise when the waiter swabs the suds +from under your sticky glass. There is an answer. Transmigration! The +soul of Sir Walter Raleigh has traveled from beneath his slashed doublet +to a kindred home under Rooney's visible plaid waistcoat. Rooney's is +twenty years ahead of the times. Rooney has removed the embargo. Rooney +has spread his cloak upon the soggy crossing of public opinion, and any +Elizabeth who treads upon it is as much a queen as another. Attend to +the revelation of the secret. In Rooney's ladies may smoke!

+ +

McManus sat down at a vacant table. He paid for the glass of beer +that he ordered, tilted his narrow-brimmed derby to the back of his +brick-dust head, twined his feet among the rungs of his chair, and +heaved a sigh of contentment from the breathing spaces of his innermost +soul; for this mud honey was clarified sweetness to his taste. The sham +gaiety, the hectic glow of counterfeit hospitality, the self-conscious, +joyless laughter, the wine-born warmth, the loud music retrieving the +hour from frequent whiles of awful and corroding silence, the presence +of well-clothed and frank-eyed beneficiaries of Rooney's removal of the +restrictions laid upon the weed, the familiar blended odors of soaked +lemon peel, flat beer, and peau d'Espagne—all these were manna to +Cork McManus, hungry for his week in the desert of the Capulet's high +rear room.

+ +

A girl, alone, entered Rooney's, glanced around with leisurely +swiftness, and sat opposite McManus at his table. Her eyes rested upon +him for two seconds in the look with which woman reconnoitres all men +whom she for the first time confronts. In that space of time she will +decide upon one of two things—either to scream for the police, or that +she may marry him later on.

+ +

Her brief inspection concluded, the girl laid on the table a worn red +morocco shopping bag with the inevitable top-gallant sail of frayed lace +handkerchief flying from a corner of it. After she had ordered a small +beer from the immediate waiter she took from her bag a box of cigarettes +and lighted one with slightly exaggerated ease of manner. Then she +looked again in the eyes of Cork McManus and smiled.

+ +

Instantly the doom of each was sealed.

+ +

The unqualified desire of a man to buy clothes and build fires for a +woman for a whole lifetime at first sight of her is not uncommon among +that humble portion of humanity that does not care for Bradstreet or +coats-of-arms or Shaw's plays. Love at first sight has occurred a time +or two in high life; but, as a rule, the extempore mania is to be found +among unsophisticated creatures such as the dove, the blue-tailed +dingbat, and the ten-dollar-a-week clerk. Poets, subscribers to all +fiction magazines, and schatchens, take notice.

+ +

With the exchange of the mysterious magnetic current came to each of +them the instant desire to lie, pretend, dazzle and deceive, which is +the worst thing about the hypocritical disorder known as love.

+ +

"Have another beer?" suggested Cork. In his circle the phrase was +considered to be a card, accompanied by a letter of introduction and +references.

+ +

"No, thanks," said the girl, raising her eyebrows and choosing her +conventional words carefully. "I—merely dropped in for—a slight +refreshment." The cigarette between her fingers seemed to require +explanation. "My aunt is a Russian lady," she concluded, "and we often +have a post perannual cigarette after dinner at home."

+ +

"Cheese it!" said Cork, whom society airs oppressed. "Your fingers are +as yellow as mine."

+ +

"Say," said the girl, blazing upon him with low-voiced indignation, +"what do you think I am? Say, who do you think you are talking to? +What?"

+ +

She was pretty to look at. Her eyes were big, brown, intrepid and +bright. Under her flat sailor hat, planted jauntily on one side, her +crinkly, tawny hair parted and was drawn back, low and massy, in a +thick, pendant knot behind. The roundness of girlhood still lingered in +her chin and neck, but her cheeks and fingers were thinning slightly. +She looked upon the world with defiance, suspicion, and sullen wonder. +Her smart, short tan coat was soiled and expensive. Two inches below her +black dress dropped the lowest flounce of a heliotrope silk underskirt.

+ +

"Beg your pardon," said Cork, looking at her admiringly. "I didn't mean +anything. Sure, it's no harm to smoke, Maudy."

+ +

"Rooney's," said the girl, softened at once by his amends, "is the only +place I know where a lady can smoke. Maybe it ain't a nice habit, but +aunty lets us at home. And my name ain't Maudy, if you please; it's Ruby +Delamere."

+ +

"That's a swell handle," said Cork approvingly. "Mine's +McManus—Cor—er—Eddie McManus."

+ +

"Oh, you can't help that," laughed Ruby. "Don't apologize."

+ +

Cork looked seriously at the big clock on Rooney's wall. The girl's +ubiquitous eyes took in the movement.

+ +

"I know it's late," she said, reaching for her bag; "but you know how +you want a smoke when you want one. Ain't Rooney's all right? I never +saw anything wrong here. This is twice I've been in. I work in a +bookbindery on Third Avenue. A lot of us girls have been working +overtime three nights a week. They won't let you smoke there, of course. +I just dropped in here on my way home for a puff. Ain't it all right in +here? If it ain't, I won't come any more."

+ +

"It's a little bit late for you to be out alone anywhere," said Cork. +"I'm not wise to this particular joint; but anyhow you don't want to +have your picture taken in it for a present to your Sunday School +teacher. Have one more beer, and then say I take you home."

+ +

"But I don't know you," said the girl, with fine scrupulosity. "I don't +accept the company of gentlemen I ain't acquainted with. My aunt never +would allow that."

+ +

"Why," said Cork McManus, pulling his ear, "I'm the latest thing in +suitings with side vents and bell skirt when it comes to escortin' a +lady. You bet you'll find me all right, Ruby. And I'll give you a tip as +to who I am. My governor is one of the hottest cross-buns of the Wall +Street push. Morgan's cab horse casts a shoe every time the old man +sticks his head out the window. Me! Well, I'm in trainin' down the +Street. The old man's goin' to put a seat on the Stock Exchange in my +stockin' my next birthday. But it all sounds like a lemon to me. What I +like is golf and yachtin' and—er—well, say a corkin' fast ten-round +bout between welter-weights with walkin' gloves."

+ +

"I guess you can walk to the door with me," said the girl hesitatingly, +but with a certain pleased flutter. "Still I never heard anything extra +good about Wall Street brokers, or sports who go to prize fights, either. +Ain't you got any other recommendations?"

+ +

"I think you're the swellest looker I've had my lamps on in little old +New York," said Cork impressively.

+ +

"That'll be about enough of that, now. Ain't you the kidder!" She +modified her chiding words by a deep, long, beaming, smile-embellished +look at her cavalier. "We'll drink our beer before we go, ha?"

+ +

A waiter sang. The tobacco smoke grew denser, drifting and rising in +spirals, waves, tilted layers, cumulus clouds, cataracts and suspended +fogs like some fifth element created from the ribs of the ancient four. +Laughter and chat grew louder, stimulated by Rooney's liquids and +Rooney's gallant hospitality to Lady Nicotine.

+ +

One o'clock struck. Down-stairs there was a sound of closing and +locking doors. Frank pulled down the green shades of the front windows +carefully. Rooney went below in the dark hall and stood at the front +door, his cigarette cached in the hollow of his hand. Thenceforth +whoever might seek admittance must present a countenance familiar to +Rooney's hawk's eye—the countenance of a true sport.

+ +

Cork McManus and the bookbindery girl conversed absorbedly, with their +elbows on the table. Their glasses of beer were pushed to one side, +scarcely touched, with the foam on them sunken to a thin white scum. +Since the stroke of one the stale pleasures of Rooney's had become +renovated and spiced; not by any addition to the list of distractions, +but because from that moment the sweets became stolen ones. The flattest +glass of beer acquired the tang of illegality; the mildest claret punch +struck a knockout blow at law and order; the harmless and genial company +became outlaws, defying authority and rule. For after the stroke of one +in such places as Rooney's, where neither bed nor board is to be had, +drink may not be set before the thirsty of the city of the four million. +It is the law.

+ +

"Say," said Cork McManus, almost covering the table with his eloquent +chest and elbows, "was that dead straight about you workin' in the +bookbindery and livin' at home—and just happenin' in here—and—and +all that spiel you gave me?"

+ +

"Sure it was," answered the girl with spirit. "Why, what do you think? +Do you suppose I'd lie to you? Go down to the shop and ask 'em. I handed +it to you on the level."

+ +

"On the dead level?" said Cork. "That's the way I want it; because—"

+ +

"Because what?"

+ +

"I throw up my hands," said Cork. "You've got me goin'. You're the girl +I've been lookin' for. Will you keep company with me, Ruby?"

+ +

"Would you like me to—Eddie?"

+ +

"Surest thing. But I wanted a straight story about—about yourself, you +know. When a fellow had a girl—a steady girl—she's got to be all +right, you know. She's got to be straight goods."

+ +

"You'll find I'll be straight goods, Eddie."

+ +

"Of course you will. I believe what you told me. But you can't blame me +for wantin' to find out. You don't see many girls smokin' cigarettes in +places like Rooney's after midnight that are like you."

+ +

The girl flushed a little and lowered her eyes. "I see that now," she +said meekly. "I didn't know how bad it looked. But I won't do it any +more. And I'll go straight home every night and stay there. And I'll +give up cigarettes if you say so, Eddie—I'll cut 'em out from this +minute on."

+ +

Cork's air became judicial, proprietary, condemnatory, yet sympathetic. +"A lady can smoke," he decided, slowly, "at times and places. Why? +Because it's bein' a lady that helps her pull it off."

+ +

"I'm going to quit. There's nothing to it," said the girl. She flicked +the stub of her cigarette to the floor.

+ +

"At times and places," repeated Cork. "When I call round for you of +evenin's we'll hunt out a dark bench in Stuyvesant Square and have a +puff or two. But no more Rooney's at one o'clock—see?"

+ +

"Eddie, do you really like me?" The girl searched his hard but frank +features eagerly with anxious eyes.

+ +

"On the dead level."

+ +

"When are you coming to see me—where I live?"

+ +

"Thursday—day after to-morrow evenin'. That suit you?"

+ +

"Fine. I'll be ready for you. Come about seven. Walk to the door with me +to-night and I'll show you where I live. Don't forget, now. And don't +you go to see any other girls before then, mister! I bet you will, +though."

+ +

"On the dead level," said Cork, "you make 'em all look like rag-dolls to +me. Honest, you do. I know when I'm suited. On the dead level, I do."

+ +

Against the front door down-stairs repeated heavy blows were delivered. +The loud crashes resounded in the room above. Only a trip-hammer or a +policeman's foot could have been the author of those sounds. Rooney +jumped like a bullfrog to a corner of the room, turned off the electric +lights and hurried swiftly below. The room was left utterly dark except +for the winking red glow of cigars and cigarettes. A second volley of +crashes came up from the assaulted door. A little, rustling, murmuring +panic moved among the besieged guests. Frank, cool, smooth, reassuring, +could be seen in the rosy glow of the burning tobacco, going from table +to table.

+ +

"All keep still!" was his caution. "Don't talk or make any noise! +Everything will be all right. Now, don't feel the slightest alarm. We'll +take care of you all."

+ +

Ruby felt across the table until Cork's firm hand closed upon hers. "Are +you afraid, Eddie?" she whispered. "Are you afraid you'll get a free +ride?"

+ +

"Nothin' doin' in the teeth-chatterin' line," said Cork. "I guess +Rooney's been slow with his envelope. Don't you worry, girly; I'll look +out for you all right."

+ +

Yet Mr. McManus's ease was only skin- and muscle-deep. With the police +looking everywhere for Buck Malone's assailant, and with Corrigan still +on the ocean wave, he felt that to be caught in a police raid would mean +an ended career for him. He wished he had remained in the high rear room +of the true Capulet reading the pink extras.

+ +

Rooney seemed to have opened the front door below and engaged the police +in conference in the dark hall. The wordless low growl of their voices +came up the stairway. Frank made a wireless news station of himself at +the upper door. Suddenly he closed the door, hurried to the extreme rear +of the room and lighted a dim gas jet.

+ +

"This way, everybody!" he called sharply. "In a hurry; but no noise, +please!"

+ +

The guests crowded in confusion to the rear. Rooney's lieutenant swung +open a panel in the wall, overlooking the back yard, revealing a ladder +already placed for the escape.

+ +

"Down and out, everybody!" he commanded. "Ladies first! Less talking, +please! Don't crowd! There's no danger."

+ +

Among the last, Cork and Ruby waited their turn at the open panel. +Suddenly she swept him aside and clung to his arm fiercely.

+ +

"Before we go out," she whispered in his ear—"before anything happens, +tell me again, Eddie, do you l—do you really like me?"

+ +

"On the dead level," said Cork, holding her close with one arm, "when it +comes to you, I'm all in."

+ +

When they turned they found they were lost and in darkness. The last of +the fleeing customers had descended. Half way across the yard they bore +the ladder, stumbling, giggling, hurrying to place it against an adjoining +low building over the roof of which their only route to safety.

+ +

"We may as well sit down," said Cork grimly. "Maybe Rooney will stand +the cops off, anyhow."

+ +

They sat at a table; and their hands came together again.

+ +

A number of men then entered the dark room, feeling their way about. One +of them, Rooney himself, found the switch and turned on the electric +light. The other man was a cop of the old régime—a big cop, a thick +cop, a fuming, abrupt cop—not a pretty cop. He went up to the pair at +the table and sneered familiarly at the girl.

+ +

"What are youse doin' in here?" he asked.

+ +

"Dropped in for a smoke," said Cork mildly.

+ +

"Had any drinks?"

+ +

"Not later than one o'clock."

+ +

"Get out—quick!" ordered the cop. Then, "Sit down!" he countermanded.

+ +

He took off Cork's hat roughly and scrutinized him shrewdly. "Your +name's McManus."

+ +

"Bad guess," said Cork. "It's Peterson."

+ +

"Cork McManus, or something like that," said the cop. "You put a knife +into a man in Dutch Mike's saloon a week ago."

+ +

"Aw, forget it!" said Cork, who perceived a shade of doubt in the +officer's tones. "You've got my mug mixed with somebody else's."

+ +

"Have I? Well, you'll come to the station with me, anyhow, and be looked +over. The description fits you all right." The cop twisted his fingers +under Cork's collar. "Come on!" he ordered roughly.

+ +

Cork glanced at Ruby. She was pale, and her thin nostrils quivered. +Her quick eye danced from one man's face to the other as they spoke or +moved. What hard luck! Cork was thinking—Corrigan on the briny; and +Ruby met and lost almost within an hour! Somebody at the police station +would recognize him, without a doubt. Hard luck!

+ +

But suddenly the girl sprang up and hurled herself with both arms +extended against the cop. His hold on Cork's collar was loosened and he +stumbled back two or three paces.

+ +

"Don't go so fast, Maguire!" she cried in shrill fury. "Keep your hands +off my man! You know me, and you know I'm givin' you good advice. Don't +you touch him again! He's not the guy you are lookin' for—I'll stand +for that."

+ +

"See here, Fanny," said the Cop, red and angry, "I'll take you, too, if +you don't look out! How do you know this ain't the man I want? What are +you doing in here with him?"

+ +

"How do I know?" said the girl, flaming red and white by turns. "Because +I've known him a year. He's mine. Oughtn't I to know? And what am I +doin' here with him? That's easy."

+ +

She stooped low and reached down somewhere into a swirl of flirted +draperies, heliotrope and black. An elastic snapped, she threw on the +table toward Cork a folded wad of bills. The money slowly straightened +itself with little leisurely jerks.

+ +

"Take that, Jimmy, and let's go," said the girl. "I'm declarin' the +usual dividends, Maguire," she said to the officer. "You had your usual +five-dollar graft at the usual corner at ten."

+ +

"A lie!" said the cop, turning purple. "You go on my beat again and I'll +arrest you every time I see you."

+ +

"No, you won't," said the girl. "And I'll tell you why. Witnesses saw me +give you the money to-night, and last week, too. I've been getting fixed +for you."

+ +

Cork put the wad of money carefully into his pocket, and said: "Come on, +Fanny; let's have some chop suey before we go home."

+ +

"Clear out, quick, both of you, or I'll—"

+ +

The cop's bluster trailed away into inconsequentiality.

+ +

At the corner of the street the two halted. Cork handed back the +money without a word. The girl took it and slipped it slowly into her +hand-bag. Her expression was the same she had worn when she entered +Rooney's that night—she looked upon the world with defiance, suspicion +and sullen wonder.

+ +

"I guess I might as well say good-bye here," she said dully. "You won't +want to see me again, of course. Will you—shake hands—Mr. McManus."

+ +

"I mightn't have got wise if you hadn't give the snap away," said Cork. +"Why did you do it?"

+ +

"You'd have been pinched if I hadn't. That's why. Ain't that reason +enough?" Then she began to cry. "Honest, Eddie, I was goin' to be the +best girl in the world. I hated to be what I am; I hated men; I was +ready almost to die when I saw you. And you seemed different from +everybody else. And when I found you liked me, too, why, I thought I'd +make you believe I was good, and I was goin' to be good. When you asked +to come to my house and see me, why, I'd have died rather than do +anything wrong after that. But what's the use of talking about it? I'll +say good-by, if you will, Mr. McManus."

+ +

Cork was pulling at his ear. "I knifed Malone," said he. "I was the one +the cop wanted."

+ +

"Oh, that's all right," said the girl listlessly. "It didn't make any +difference about that."

+ +

"That was all hot air about Wall Street. I don't do nothin' but hang out +with a tough gang on the East Side."

+ +

"That was all right, too," repeated the girl. "It didn't make any +difference."

+ +

Cork straightened himself, and pulled his hat down low. "I could get a +job at O'Brien's," he said aloud, but to himself.

+ +

"Good-by," said the girl.

+ +

"Come on," said Cork, taking her arm. "I know a place."

+ +

Two blocks away he turned with her up the steps of a red brick house +facing a little park.

+ +

"What house is this?" she asked, drawing back. "Why are you going in +there?"

+ +

A street lamp shone brightly in front. There was a brass nameplate at +one side of the closed front doors. Cork drew her firmly up the steps. +"Read that," said he.

+ +

She looked at the name on the plate, and gave a cry between a moan and a +scream. "No, no, no, Eddie! Oh, my God, no! I won't let you do that—not +now! Let me go! You shan't do that! You can't—you mus'n't! Not after +you know! No, no! Come away quick! Oh, my God! Please, Eddie, come!"

+ +

Half fainting, she reeled, and was caught in the bend of his arm. Cork's +right hand felt for the electric button and pressed it long.

+ +

Another cop—how quickly they scent trouble when trouble is on the +wing!—came along, saw them, and ran up the steps. "Here! What are you +doing with that girl?" he called gruffly.

+ +

"She'll be all right in a minute," said Cork. "It's a straight deal."

+ +

"Reverend Jeremiah Jones," read the cop from the door-plate with true +detective cunning.

+ +

"Correct," said Cork. "On the dead level, we're goin' to get married." +

THE VENTURERS

+

Let the story wreck itself on the spreading rails of the Non Sequitur +Limited, if it will; first you must take your seat in the observation +car "Raison d'être" for one moment. It is for no longer than to +consider a brief essay on the subject—let us call it: "What's Around +the Corner."

+ +

Omne mundus in duas partes divisum est—men who wear rubbers and pay +poll-taxes, and men who discover new continents. There are no more +continents to discover; but by the time overshoes are out of date and +the poll has developed into an income tax, the other half will be +paralleling the canals of Mars with radium railways.

+ +

Fortune, Chance, and Adventure are given as synonymous in the +dictionaries. To the knowing each has a different meaning. Fortune is a +prize to be won. Adventure is the road to it. Chance is what may lurk +in the shadows at the roadside. The face of Fortune is radiant and +alluring; that of Adventure is flushed and heroic. The face of Chance is +the beautiful countenance—perfect because vague and dream-born—that we +see in our tea-cups at breakfast while we growl over our chops and +toast.

+ +

The Venturer is one who keeps his +eye on the hedgerows and wayside +groves and meadows while he travels the road to Fortune. That is the +difference between him and the Adventurer. Eating the forbidden fruit +was the best record ever made by a Venturer. Trying to prove that it +happened is the highest work of the Adventuresome. To be either is +disturbing to the cosmogony of creation. So, as bracket-sawed and +city-directoried citizens, let us light our pipes, chide the children +and the cat, arrange ourselves in the willow rocker under the flickering +gas jet at the coolest window and scan this little tale of two modern +followers of Chance. + +


+

"Did you ever hear that story about the man from the West?" asked +Billinger, in the little dark-oak room to your left as you penetrate +the interior of the Powhatan Club.

+ +

"Doubtless," said John Reginald Forster, rising and leaving the room.

+ +

Forster got his straw hat (straws will be in and maybe out again long +before this is printed) from the checkroom boy, and walked out of the +air (as Hamlet says). Billinger was used to having his stories insulted +and would not mind. Forster was in his favorite mood and wanted to go +away from anywhere. A man, in order to get on good terms with himself, +must have his opinions corroborated and his moods matched by some one +else. (I had written that "somebody"; but an A. D. T. boy who once took +a telegram for me pointed out that I could save money by using the +compound word. This is a vice versa case.)

+ +

Forster's favorite mood was that of greatly desiring to be a follower of +Chance. He was a Venturer by nature, but convention, birth, tradition +and the narrowing influences of the tribe of Manhattan had denied him +full privilege. He had trodden all the main-traveled thoroughfares and +many of the side roads that are supposed to relieve the tedium of life. +But none had sufficed. The reason was that he knew what was to be found +at the end of every street. He knew from experience and logic almost +precisely to what end each digression from routine must lead. He found a +depressing monotony in all the variations that the music of his sphere +had grafted upon the tune of life. He had not learned that, although the +world was made round, the circle has been squared, and that it's true +interest is to be in "What's Around the Corner."

+ +

Forster walked abroad aimlessly from the Powhatan, trying not to tax +either his judgment or his desire as to what streets he traveled. He +would have been glad to lose his way if it were possible; but he had no +hope of that. Adventure and Fortune move at your beck and call in the +Greater City; but Chance is oriental. She is a veiled lady in a sedan +chair, protected by a special traffic squad of dragonians. Crosstown, +uptown, and downtown you may move without seeing her.

+ +

At the end of an hour's stroll, Forster stood on a corner of a broad, +smooth avenue, looking disconsolately across it at a picturesque old +hotel softly but brilliantly lit. Disconsolately, because he knew that +he must dine; and dining in that hotel was no venture. It was one of his +favorite caravansaries, and so silent and swift would be the service and +so delicately choice the food, that he regretted the hunger that must be +appeased by the "dead perfection" of the place's cuisine. Even the music +there seemed to be always playing da capo.

+ +

Fancy came to him that he would dine at some cheap, even dubious, +restaurant lower down in the city, where the erratic chefs from all +countries of the world spread their national cookery for the omnivorous +American. Something might happen there out of the routine—he might come +upon a subject without a predicate, a road without an end, a question +without an answer, a cause without an effect, a gulf stream in life's +salt ocean. He had not dressed for evening; he wore a dark business suit +that would not be questioned even where the waiters served the spaghetti +in their shirt sleeves.

+ +

So John Reginald Forster began to search his clothes for money; because +the more cheaply you dine, the more surely must you pay. All of the +thirteen pockets, large and small, of his business suit he explored +carefully and found not a penny. His bank book showed a balance of five +figures to his credit in the Old Ironsides Trust Company, but—

+ +

Forster became aware of a man nearby at his left hand who was really +regarding him with some amusement. He looked like any business man of +thirty or so, neatly dressed and standing in the attitude of one waiting +for a street car. But there was no car line on that avenue. So his +proximity and unconcealed curiosity seemed to Forster to partake of the +nature of a personal intrusion. But, as he was a consistent seeker after +"What's Around the Corner," instead of manifesting resentment he only +turned a half-embarrassed smile upon the other's grin of amusement.

+ +

"All in?" asked the intruder, drawing nearer.

+ +

"Seems so," said Forster. "Now, I thought there was a dollar in—"

+ +

"Oh, I know," said the other man, with a laugh. "But there wasn't. I've +just been through the same process myself, as I was coming around the +corner. I found in an upper vest pocket—I don't know how they got +there—exactly two pennies. You know what kind of a dinner exactly two +pennies will buy!"

+ +

"You haven't dined, then?" asked Forster.

+ +

"I have not. But I would like to. Now, I'll make you a proposition. +You look like a man who would take up one. Your clothes look neat and +respectable. Excuse personalities. I think mine will pass the scrutiny +of a head waiter, also. Suppose we go over to that hotel and dine +together. We will choose from the menu like millionaires—or, if you +prefer, like gentlemen in moderate circumstances dining extravagantly +for once. When we have finished we will match with my two pennies to +see which of us will stand the brunt of the house's displeasure and +vengeance. My name is Ives. I think we have lived in the same station +of life—before our money took wings."

+ +

"You're on," said Forster, joyfully.

+ +

Here was a venture at least within the borders of the mysterious country +of Chance—anyhow, it promised something better than the stale +infestivity of a table d'hôte.

+ +

The two were soon seated at a corner table in the hotel dining room. +Ives chucked one of his pennies across the table to Forster.

+ +

"Match for which of us gives the order," he said.

+ +

Forster lost.

+ +

Ives laughed and began to name liquids and viands to the waiter with the +absorbed but calm deliberation of one who was to the menu born. Forster, +listening, gave his admiring approval of the order.

+ +

"I am a man," said Ives, during the oysters, "Who has made a lifetime +search after the to-be-continued-in-our-next. I am not like the ordinary +adventurer who strikes for a coveted prize. Nor yet am I like a gambler +who knows he is either to win or lose a certain set stake. What I want +is to encounter an adventure to which I can predict no conclusion. +It is the breath of existence to me to dare Fate in its blindest +manifestations. The world has come to run so much by rote and +gravitation that you can enter upon hardly any footpath of chance in +which you do not find signboards informing you of what you may expect +at its end. I am like the clerk in the Circumlocution Office who always +complained bitterly when any one came in to ask information. 'He wanted +to know, you know!' was the kick he made to his fellow-clerks. Well, +I don't want to know, I don't want to reason, I don't want to guess—I +want to bet my hand without seeing it."

+ +

"I understand," said Forster delightedly. "I've often wanted the way I +feel put into words. You've done it. I want to take chances on what's +coming. Suppose we have a bottle of Moselle with the next course."

+ +

"Agreed," said Ives. "I'm glad you catch my idea. It will increase the +animosity of the house toward the loser. If it does not weary you, we +will pursue the theme. Only a few times have I met a true venturer—one +who does not ask a schedule and map from Fate when he begins a journey. +But, as the world becomes more civilized and wiser, the more difficult +it is to come upon an adventure the end of which you cannot foresee. In +the Elizabethan days you could assault the watch, wring knockers from +doors and have a jolly set-to with the blades in any convenient angle of +a wall and 'get away with it.' Nowadays, if you speak disrespectfully to +a policeman, all that is left to the most romantic fancy is to +conjecture in what particular police station he will land you."

+ +

"I know—I know," said Forster, nodding approval.

+ +

"I returned to New York to-day," continued Ives, "from a three years' +ramble around the globe. Things are not much better abroad than they are +at home. The whole world seems to be overrun by conclusions. The only +thing that interests me greatly is a premise. I've tried shooting big +game in Africa. I know what an express rifle will do at so many yards; +and when an elephant or a rhinoceros falls to the bullet, I enjoy it +about as much as I did when I was kept in after school to do a sum in +long division on the blackboard."

+ +

"I know—I know," said Forster.

+ +

"There might be something in aeroplanes," went on Ives, reflectively. +"I've tried ballooning; but it seems to be merely a cut-and-dried affair +of wind and ballast."

+ +

"Women," suggested Forster, with a smile.

+ +

"Three months ago," said Ives. "I was pottering around in one of the +bazaars in Constantinople. I noticed a lady, veiled, of course, but with +a pair of especially fine eyes visible, who was examining some amber and +pearl ornaments at one of the booths. With her was an attendant—a big +Nubian, as black as coal. After a while the attendant drew nearer to me +by degrees and slipped a scrap of paper into my hand. I looked at it +when I got a chance. On it was scrawled hastily in pencil: 'The arched +gate of the Nightingale Garden at nine to-night.' Does that appear to +you to be an interesting premise, Mr. Forster?"

+ +

"I made inquiries and learned that the Nightingale Garden was the +property of an old Turk—a grand vizier, or something of the sort. Of +course I prospected for the arched gate and was there at nine. The same +Nubian attendant opened the gate promptly on time, and I went inside and +sat on a bench by a perfumed fountain with the veiled lady. We had quite +an extended chat. She was Myrtle Thompson, a lady journalist, who was +writing up the Turkish harems for a Chicago newspaper. She said she +noticed the New York cut of my clothes in the bazaar and wondered if +I couldn't work something into the metropolitan papers about it."

+ +

"I see," said Forster. "I see."

+ +

"I've canoed through Canada," said Ives, "down many rapids and over many +falls. But I didn't seem to get what I wanted out of it because I knew +there were only two possible outcomes—I would either go to the bottom +or arrive at the sea level. I've played all games at cards; but the +mathematicians have spoiled that sport by computing the percentages. +I've made acquaintances on trains, I've answered advertisements, I've +rung strange door-bells, I've taken every chance that presented itself; +but there has always been the conventional ending—the logical +conclusion to the premise."

+ +

"I know," repeated Forster. "I've felt it all. But I've had few +chances to take my chance at chances. Is there any life so devoid of +impossibilities as life in this city? There seems to be a myriad of +opportunities for testing the undeterminable; but not one in a thousand +fails to land you where you expected it to stop. I wish the subways and +street cars disappointed one as seldom."

+ +

"The sun has risen," said Ives, "on the Arabian nights. There are +no more caliphs. The fisherman's vase is turned to a vacuum bottle, +warranted to keep any genie boiling or frozen for forty-eight hours. +Life moves by rote. Science has killed adventure. There are no more +opportunities such as Columbus and the man who ate the first oyster had. +The only certain thing is that there is nothing uncertain."

+ +

"Well," said Forster, "my experience has been the limited one of a city +man. I haven't seen the world as you have; but it seems that we view +it with the same opinion. But, I tell you I am grateful for even this +little venture of ours into the borders of the haphazard. There may +be at least one breathless moment when the bill for the dinner is +presented. Perhaps, after all, the pilgrims who traveled without scrip +or purse found a keener taste to life than did the knights of the Round +Table who rode abroad with a retinue and King Arthur's certified checks +in the lining of their helmets. And now, if you've finished your coffee, +suppose we match one of your insufficient coins for the impending blow +of Fate. What have I up?"

+ +

"Heads," called Ives.

+ +

"Heads it is," said Forster, lifting his hand. "I lose. We forgot to +agree upon a plan for the winner to escape. I suggest that when the +waiter comes you make a remark about telephoning to a friend. I will +hold the fort and the dinner check long enough for you to get your hat +and be off. I thank you for an evening out of the ordinary, Mr. Ives, +and wish we might have others."

+ +

"If my memory is not at fault," said Ives, laughing, "the nearest police +station is in MacDougal Street. I have enjoyed the dinner, too, let me +assure you."

+ +

Forster crooked his finger for the waiter. Victor, with a locomotive +effort that seemed to owe more to pneumatics than to pedestrianism, +glided to the table and laid the card, face downward, by the loser's +cup. Forster took it up and added the figures with deliberate care. Ives +leaned back comfortably in his chair.

+ +

"Excuse me," said Forster; "but I thought you were going to ring Grimes +about that theatre party for Thursday night. Had you forgotten about +it?"

+ +

"Oh," said Ives, settling himself more comfortably, "I can do that later +on. Get me a glass of water, waiter."

+ +

"Want to be in at the death, do you?" asked Forster.

+ +

"I hope you don't object," said Ives, pleadingly. "Never in my life have +I seen a gentleman arrested in a public restaurant for swindling it out +of a dinner."

+ +

"All right," said Forster, calmly. "You are entitled to see a Christian +die in the arena as your pousse-café."

+ +

Victor came with the glass of water and remained, with the disengaged +air of an inexorable collector.

+ +

Forster hesitated for fifteen seconds, and then took a pencil from his +pocket and scribbled his name on the dinner check. The waiter bowed and +took it away.

+ +

"The fact is," said Forster, with a little embarrassed laugh, "I doubt +whether I'm what they call a 'game sport,' which means the same as a +'soldier of Fortune.' I'll have to make a confession. I've been dining +at this hotel two or three times a week for more than a year. I always +sign my checks." And then, with a note of appreciation in his voice: "It +was first-rate of you to stay to see me through with it when you knew I +had no money, and that you might be scooped in, too."

+ +

"I guess I'll confess, too," said Ives, with a grin. "I own the hotel. +I don't run it, of course, but I always keep a suite on the third floor +for my use when I happen to stray into town."

+ +

He called a waiter and said: "Is Mr. Gilmore still behind the desk? All +right. Tell him that Mr. Ives is here, and ask him to have my rooms made +ready and aired."

+ +

"Another venture cut short by the inevitable," said Forster. "Is there +a conundrum without an answer in the next number? But let's hold to our +subject just for a minute or two, if you will. It isn't often that I +meet a man who understands the flaws I pick in existence. I am engaged +to be married a month from to-day."

+ +

"I reserve comment," said Ives.

+ +

"Right; I am going to add to the assertion. I am devotedly fond of +the lady; but I can't decide whether to show up at the church or +make a sneak for Alaska. It's the same idea, you know, that we were +discussing—it does for a fellow as far as possibilities are concerned. +Everybody knows the routine—you get a kiss flavored with Ceylon tea +after breakfast; you go to the office; you come back home and dress for +dinner—theatre twice a week—bills—moping around most evenings trying +to make conversation—a little quarrel occasionally—maybe sometimes a +big one, and a separation—or else a settling down into a middle-aged +contentment, which is worst of all."

+ +

"I know," said Ives, nodding wisely.

+ +

"It's the dead certainty of the thing," went on Forster, "that keeps me +in doubt. There'll nevermore be anything around the corner."

+ +

"Nothing after the 'Little Church,'" said Ives. "I know."

+ +

"Understand," said Forster, "that I am in no doubt as to my feelings +toward the lady. I may say that I love her truly and deeply. But there +is something in the current that runs through my veins that cries out +against any form of the calculable. I do not know what I want; but I +know that I want it. I'm talking like an idiot, I suppose, but I'm sure +of what I mean."

+ +

"I understand you," said Ives, with a slow smile. "Well, I think I will +be going up to my rooms now. If you would dine with me here one evening +soon, Mr. Forster, I'd be glad."

+ +

"Thursday?" suggested Forster.

+ +

"At seven, if it's convenient," answered Ives.

+ +

"Seven goes," assented Forster.

+ +

At half-past eight Ives got into a cab and was driven to a number in one +of the correct West Seventies. His card admitted him to the reception +room of an old-fashioned house into which the spirits of Fortune, Chance +and Adventure had never dared to enter. On the walls were the Whistler +etchings, the steel engravings by Oh-what's-his-name?, the still-life +paintings of the grapes and garden truck with the watermelon seeds +spilled on the table as natural as life, and the Greuze head. It was +a household. There was even brass andirons. On a table was an album, +half-morocco, with oxidized-silver protections on the corners of the +lids. A clock on the mantel ticked loudly, with a warning click at five +minutes to nine. Ives looked at it curiously, remembering a time-piece +in his grandmother's home that gave such a warning.

+ +

And then down the stairs and into the room came Mary Marsden. She was +twenty-four, and I leave her to your imagination. But I must say this +much—youth and health and simplicity and courage and greenish-violet +eyes are beautiful, and she had all these. She gave Ives her hand with +the sweet cordiality of an old friendship.

+ +

"You can't think what a pleasure it is," she said, "to have you drop in +once every three years or so."

+ +

For half an hour they talked. I confess that I cannot repeat the +conversation. You will find it in books in the circulating library. When +that part of it was over, Mary said:

+ +

"And did you find what you wanted while you were abroad?"

+ +

"What I wanted?" said Ives.

+ +

"Yes. You know you were always queer. Even as a boy you wouldn't play +marbles or baseball or any game with rules. You wanted to dive in water +where you didn't know whether it was ten inches or ten feet deep. And +when you grew up you were just the same. We've often talked about your +peculiar ways."

+ +

"I suppose I am an incorrigible," said Ives. "I am opposed to the +doctrine of predestination, to the rule of three, gravitation, taxation, +and everything of the kind. Life has always seemed to me something like +a serial story would be if they printed above each instalment a synopsis +of succeeding chapters."

+ +

Mary laughed merrily.

+ +

"Bob Ames told us once," she said, "of a funny thing you did. It was +when you and he were on a train in the South, and you got off at a town +where you hadn't intended to stop just because the brakeman hung up a +sign in the end of the car with the name of the next station on it."

+ +

"I remember," said Ives. "That 'next station' has been the thing I've +always tried to get away from."

+ +

"I know it," said Mary. "And you've been very foolish. I hope you didn't +find what you wanted not to find, or get off at the station where there +wasn't any, or whatever it was you expected wouldn't happen to you +during the three years you've been away."

+ +

"There was something I wanted before I went away," said Ives.

+ +

Mary looked in his eyes clearly, with a slight, but perfectly sweet +smile.

+ +

"There was," she said. "You wanted me. And you could have had me, as you +very well know."

+ +

Without replying, Ives let his gaze wander slowly about the room. There +had been no change in it since last he had been in it, three years +before. He vividly recalled the thoughts that had been in his mind then. +The contents of that room were as fixed, in their way, as the everlasting +hills. No change would ever come there except the inevitable ones +wrought by time and decay. That silver-mounted album would occupy that +corner of that table, those pictures would hang on the walls, those +chairs be found in their same places every morn and noon and night while +the household hung together. The brass andirons were monuments to order +and stability. Here and there were relics of a hundred years ago which +were still living mementos and would be for many years to come. One +going from and coming back to that house would never need to forecast or +doubt. He would find what he left, and leave what he found. The veiled +lady, Chance, would never lift her hand to the knocker on the outer +door.

+ +

And before him sat the lady who belonged in the room. Cool and sweet +and unchangeable she was. She offered no surprises. If one should pass +his life with her, though she might grow white-haired and wrinkled, he +would never perceive the change. Three years he had been away from her, +and she was still waiting for him as established and constant as the +house itself. He was sure that she had once cared for him. It was the +knowledge that she would always do so that had driven him away. Thus +his thoughts ran.

+ +

"I am going to be married soon," said Mary.

+ +

On the next Thursday afternoon Forster came hurriedly to Ive's hotel.

+ +

"Old man," said he, "we'll have to put that dinner off for a year or so; +I'm going abroad. The steamer sails at four. That was a great talk we +had the other night, and it decided me. I'm going to knock around the +world and get rid of that incubus that has been weighing on both you and +me—the terrible dread of knowing what's going to happen. I've done one +thing that hurts my conscience a little; but I know it's best for both +of us. I've written to the lady to whom I was engaged and explained +everything—told her plainly why I was leaving—that the monotony of +matrimony would never do for me. Don't you think I was right?"

+ +

"It is not for me to say," answered Ives. "Go ahead and shoot elephants +if you think it will bring the element of chance into your life. We've +got to decide these things for ourselves. But I tell you one thing, +Forster, I've found the way. I've found out the biggest hazard in the +world—a game of chance that never is concluded, a venture that may end +in the highest heaven or the blackest pit. It will keep a man on edge +until the clods fall on his coffin, because he will never know—not +until his last day, and not then will he know. It is a voyage without +a rudder or compass, and you must be captain and crew and keep watch, +every day and night, yourself, with no one to relieve you. I have found +the Venture. Don't bother yourself about +leaving Mary Marsden, Forster. I married her yesterday at noon." +

THE DUEL

+

The gods, lying beside their nectar on 'Lympus and peeping over the edge +of the cliff, perceive a difference in cities. Although it would seem +that to their vision towns must appear as large or small ant-hills +without special characteristics, yet it is not so. Studying the habits +of ants from so great a height should be but a mild diversion when +coupled with the soft drink that mythology tells us is their only +solace. But doubtless they have amused themselves by the comparison of +villages and towns; and it will be no news to them (nor, perhaps, to +many mortals), that in one particularity New York stands unique among +the cities of the world. This shall be the theme of a little story +addressed to the man who sits smoking with his Sabbath-slippered feet +on another chair, and to the woman who snatches the paper for a moment +while boiling greens or a narcotized baby leaves her free. With these I +love to sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of Kings.

+ +

New York City is inhabited by 4,000,000 mysterious strangers; thus +beating Bird Centre by three millions and half a dozen nine's. They +came here in various ways and for many reasons—Hendrik Hudson, the art +schools, green goods, the stork, the annual dressmakers' convention, the +Pennsylvania Railroad, love of money, the stage, cheap excursion rates, +brains, personal column ads., heavy walking shoes, ambition, freight +trains—all these have had a hand in making up the population.

+ +

But every man Jack when he first sets foot on the stones of Manhattan +has got to fight. He has got to fight at once until either he or his +adversary wins. There is no resting between rounds, for there are no +rounds. It is slugging from the first. It is a fight to a finish.

+ +

Your opponent is the City. You must do battle with it from the time the +ferry-boat lands you on the island until either it is yours or it has +conquered you. It is the same whether you have a million in your pocket +or only the price of a week's lodging.

+ +

The battle is to decide whether you shall become a New Yorker or turn +the rankest outlander and Philistine. You must be one or the other. You +cannot remain neutral. You must be for or against—lover or enemy—bosom +friend or outcast. And, oh, the city is a general in the ring. Not only +by blows does it seek to subdue you. It woos you to its heart with the +subtlety of a siren. It is a combination of Delilah, green Chartreuse, +Beethoven, chloral and John L. in his best days.

+ +

In other cities you may wander and abide as a stranger man as long +as you please. You may live in Chicago until your hair whitens, and +be a citizen and still prate of beans if Boston mothered you, and +without rebuke. You may become a civic pillar in any other town but +Knickerbocker's, and all the time publicly sneering at its buildings, +comparing them with the architecture of Colonel Telfair's residence in +Jackson, Miss., whence you hail, and you will not be set upon. But in +New York you must be either a New Yorker or an invader of a modern Troy, +concealed in the wooden horse of your conceited provincialism. And this +dreary preamble is only to introduce to you the unimportant figures of +William and Jack.

+ +

They came out of the West together, where they had been friends. They +came to dig their fortunes out of the big city.

+ +

Father Knickerbocker met them at the ferry, giving one a right-hander on +the nose and the other an upper-cut with his left, just to let them know +that the fight was on.

+ +

William was for business; Jack was for Art. Both were young and +ambitious; so they countered and clinched. I think they were from +Nebraska or possibly Missouri or Minnesota. Anyhow, they were out for +success and scraps and scads, and they tackled the city like two +Lochinvars with brass knucks and a pull at the City Hall.

+ +

Four years afterward William and Jack met at luncheon. The business man +blew in like a March wind, hurled his silk hat at a waiter, dropped into +the chair that was pushed under him, seized the bill of fare, and had +ordered as far as cheese before the artist had time to do more than nod. +After the nod a humorous smile came into his eyes.

+ +

"Billy," he said, "you're done for. The city has gobbled you up. It has +taken you and cut you to its pattern and stamped you with its brand. You +are so nearly like ten thousand men I have seen to-day that you couldn't +be picked out from them if it weren't for your laundry marks."

+ +

"Camembert," finished William. "What's that? Oh, you've still +got your hammer out for New York, have you? Well, little old +Noisyville-on-the-Subway is good enough for me. It's giving me mine. +And, say, I used to think the West was the whole round world—only +slightly flattened at the poles whenever Bryan ran. I used to yell +myself hoarse about the free expense, and hang my hat on the horizon, +and say cutting things in the grocery to little soap drummers from +the East. But I'd never seen New York, then, Jack. Me for it from the +rathskellers up. Sixth Avenue is the West to me now. Have you heard this +fellow Crusoe sing? The desert isle for him, I say, but my wife made me +go. Give me May Irwin or E. S. Willard any time."

+ +

"Poor Billy," said the artist, delicately fingering a cigarette. "You +remember, when we were on our way to the East how we talked about this +great, wonderful city, and how we meant to conquer it and never let it +get the best of us? We were going to be just the same fellows we had +always been, and never let it master us. It has downed you, old man. You +have changed from a maverick into a butterick."

+ +

"Don't see exactly what you are driving at," said William. "I don't wear +an alpaca coat with blue trousers and a seersucker vest on dress +occasions, like I used to do at home. You talk about being cut to a +pattern—well, ain't the pattern all right? When you're in Rome you've +got to do as the Dagoes do. This town seems to me to have other alleged +metropolises skinned to flag stations. According to the railroad +schedule I've got in mind, Chicago and Saint Jo and Paris, France, are +asterisk stops—which means you wave a red flag and get on every other +Tuesday. I like this little suburb of Tarrytown-on-the-Hudson. There's +something or somebody doing all the time. I'm clearing $8,000 a year +selling automatic pumps, and I'm living like kings-up. Why, yesterday, I +was introduced to John W. Gates. I took an auto ride with a wine agent's +sister. I saw two men run over by a street car, and I seen Edna May +play in the evening. Talk about the West, why, the other night I woke +everybody up in the hotel hollering. I dreamed I was walking on a board +sidewalk in Oshkosh. What have you got against this town, Jack? There's +only one thing in it that I don't care for, and that's a ferryboat."

+ +

The artist gazed dreamily at the cartridge paper on the wall. "This +town," said he, "is a leech. It drains the blood of the country. Whoever +comes to it accepts a challenge to a duel. Abandoning the figure of the +leech, it is a juggernaut, a Moloch, a monster to which the innocence, +the genius, and the beauty of the land must pay tribute. Hand to hand +every newcomer must struggle with the leviathan. You've lost, Billy. It +shall never conquer me. I hate it as one hates sin or pestilence or—the +color work in a ten-cent magazine. I despise its very vastness and +power. It has the poorest millionaires, the littlest great men, the +lowest skyscrapers, the dolefulest pleasures of any town I ever saw. It +has caught you, old man, but I will never run beside its chariot wheels. +It glosses itself as the Chinaman glosses his collars. Give me the +domestic finish. I could stand a town ruled by wealth or one ruled by +an aristocracy; but this is one controlled by its lowest ingredients. +Claiming culture, it is the crudest; asseverating its pre-eminence, +it is the basest; denying all outside values and virtue, it is the +narrowest. Give me the pure and the open heart of the West country. +I would go back there to-morrow if I could."

+ +

"Don't you like this filet mignon?" said William. "Shucks, now, what's +the use to knock the town! It's the greatest ever. I couldn't sell +one automatic pump between Harrisburg and Tommy O'Keefe's saloon, in +Sacramento, where I sell twenty here. And have you seen Sara Bernhardt +in 'Andrew Mack' yet?"

+ +

"The town's got you, Billy," said Jack.

+ +

"All right," said William. "I'm going to buy a cottage on Lake +Ronkonkoma next summer."

+ +

At midnight Jack raised his window and sat close to it. He caught his +breath at what he saw, though he had seen and felt it a hundred times.

+ +

Far below and around lay the city like a ragged purple dream. The +irregular houses were like the broken exteriors of cliffs lining deep +gulches and winding streams. Some were mountainous; some lay in long, +desert cañons. Such was the background of the wonderful, cruel, +enchanting, bewildering, fatal, great city. But into this background +were cut myriads of brilliant parallelograms and circles and squares +through which glowed many colored lights. And out of the violet and +purple depths ascended like the city's soul sounds and odors and +thrills that make up the civic body. There arose the breath of gaiety +unrestrained, of love, of hate, of all the passions that man can know. +There below him lay all things, good or bad, that can be brought from +the four corners of the earth to instruct, please, thrill, enrich, +despoil, elevate, cast down, nurture or kill. Thus the flavor of it came +up to him and went into his blood.

+ +

There was a knock on his door. A telegram had come for him. It came from +the West, and these were its words: + +


+

+"Come back and the answer will be yes.
+
+             +             +             +             + "Dolly."
+
+ +
+

He kept the boy waiting ten minutes, and then wrote the reply: +"Impossible to leave here at present." Then he sat at the window again +and let the city put its cup of mandragora to his lips again.

+ +

After all it isn't a story; but I wanted to know which one of the heroes +won the battle against the city. So I went to a very learned friend and +laid the case before him. What he said was: "Please don't bother me; I +have Christmas presents to buy."

+ +

So there it rests; and you will have to decide for yourself. +

"WHAT YOU WANT"

+

Night had fallen on that great and beautiful city known as +Bagdad-on-the-Subway. And with the night came the enchanted glamour +that belongs not to Arabia alone. In different masquerade the streets, +bazaars and walled houses of the occidental city of romance were filled +with the same kind of folk that so much interested our interesting old +friend, the late Mr. H. A. Rashid. They wore clothes eleven hundred +years nearer to the latest styles than H. A. saw in old Bagdad; but they +were about the same people underneath. With the eye of faith, you could +have seen the Little Hunchback, Sinbad the Sailor, Fitbad the Tailor, +the Beautiful Persian, the one-eyed Calenders, Ali Baba and Forty +Robbers on every block, and the Barber and his Six Brothers, and all the +old Arabian gang easily.

+ +

But let us revenue to our lamb chops.

+ +

Old Tom Crowley was a caliph. He had $42,000,000 in preferred stocks and +bonds with solid gold edges. In these times, to be called a caliph you +must have money. The old-style caliph business as conducted by Mr. +Rashid is not safe. If you hold up a person nowadays in a bazaar or a +Turkish bath or a side street, and inquire into his private and personal +affairs, the police court'll get you.

+ +

Old Tom was tired of clubs, theatres, dinners, friends, music, money +and everything. That's what makes a caliph—you must get to despise +everything that money can buy, and then go out and try to want something +that you can't pay for.

+ +

"I'll take a little trot around town all by myself," thought old Tom, +"and try if I can stir up anything new. Let's see—it seems I've read +about a king or a Cardiff giant or something in old times who used to go +about with false whiskers on, making Persian dates with folks he hadn't +been introduced to. That don't listen like a bad idea. I certainly have +got a case of humdrumness and fatigue on for the ones I do know. That +old Cardiff used to pick up cases of trouble as he ran upon 'em and give +'em gold—sequins, I think it was—and make 'em marry or got 'em good +Government jobs. Now, I'd like something of that sort. My money is as +good as his was even if the magazines do ask me every month where I got +it. Yes, I guess I'll do a little Cardiff business to-night, and see how +it goes."

+ +

Plainly dressed, old Tom Crowley left his Madison Avenue palace, and +walked westward and then south. As he stepped to the sidewalk, Fate, +who holds the ends of the strings in the central offices of all the +enchanted cities pulled a thread, and a young man twenty blocks away +looked at a wall clock, and then put on his coat.

+ +

James Turner worked in one of those little hat-cleaning establishments +on Sixth Avenue in which a fire alarm rings when you push the door +open, and where they clean your hat while you wait—two days. James +stood all day at an electric machine that turned hats around faster than +the best brands of champagne ever could have done. Overlooking your mild +impertinence in feeling a curiosity about the personal appearance of a +stranger, I will give you a modified description of him. Weight, 118; +complexion, hair and brain, light; height, five feet six; age, about +twenty-three; dressed in a $10 suit of greenish-blue serge; pockets +containing two keys and sixty-three cents in change.

+ +

But do not misconjecture because this description sounds like a General +Alarm that James was either lost or a dead one.

+ +

Allons!

+ +

James stood all day at his work. His feet were tender and extremely +susceptible to impositions being put upon or below them. All day long +they burned and smarted, causing him much suffering and inconvenience. +But he was earning twelve dollars per week, which he needed to support +his feet whether his feet would support him or not.

+ +

James Turner had his own conception of what happiness was, just as you +and I have ours. Your delight is to gad about the world in yachts and +motor-cars and to hurl ducats at wild fowl. Mine is to smoke a pipe at +evenfall and watch a badger, a rattlesnake, and an owl go into their +common prairie home one by one.

+ +

James Turner's idea of bliss was different; but it was his. He would go +directly to his boarding-house when his day's work was done. After his +supper of small steak, Bessemer potatoes, stooed (not stewed) apples and +infusion of chicory, he would ascend to his fifth-floor-back hall room. +Then he would take off his shoes and socks, place the soles of his +burning feet against the cold bars of his iron bed, and read Clark +Russell's sea yarns. The delicious relief of the cool metal applied to +his smarting soles was his nightly joy. His favorite novels never palled +upon him; the sea and the adventures of its navigators were his sole +intellectual passion. No millionaire was ever happier than James Turner +taking his ease.

+ +

When James left the hat-cleaning shop he walked three blocks out of +his way home to look over the goods of a second-hand bookstall. On the +sidewalk stands he had more than once picked up a paper-covered volume +of Clark Russell at half price.

+ +

While he was bending with a scholarly stoop over the marked-down +miscellany of cast-off literature, old Tom the caliph sauntered by. His +discerning eye, made keen by twenty years' experience in the manufacture +of laundry soap (save the wrappers!) recognized instantly the poor +and discerning scholar, a worthy object of his caliphanous mood. He +descended the two shallow stone steps that led from the sidewalk, and +addressed without hesitation the object of his designed munificence. His +first words were no worse than salutatory and tentative.

+ +

James Turner looked up coldly, with "Sartor Resartus" in one hand and +"A Mad Marriage" in the other.

+ +

"Beat it," said he. "I don't want to buy any coat hangers or town lots +in Hankipoo, New Jersey. Run along, now, and play with your Teddy bear."

+ +

"Young man," said the caliph, ignoring the flippancy of the hat cleaner, +"I observe that you are of a studious disposition. Learning is one of +the finest things in the world. I never had any of it worth mentioning, +but I admire to see it in others. I come from the West, where we imagine +nothing but facts. Maybe I couldn't understand the poetry and allusions +in them books you are picking over, but I like to see somebody else seem +to know what they mean. I'm worth about $40,000,000, and I'm getting +richer every day. I made the height of it manufacturing Aunt Patty's +Silver Soap. I invented the art of making it. I experimented for three +years before I got just the right quantity of chloride of sodium +solution and caustic potash mixture to curdle properly. And after I had +taken some $9,000,000 out of the soap business I made the rest in corn +and wheat futures. Now, you seem to have the literary and scholarly +turn of character; and I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll pay for your +education at the finest college in the world. I'll pay the expense of +your rummaging over Europe and the art galleries, and finally set you up +in a good business. You needn't make it soap if you have any objections. +I see by your clothes and frazzled necktie that you are mighty poor; and +you can't afford to turn down the offer. Well, when do you want to +begin?"

+ +

The hat cleaner turned upon old Tom the eye of the Big City, which is an +eye expressive of cold and justifiable suspicion, of judgment suspended +as high as Haman was hung, of self-preservation, of challenge, +curiosity, defiance, cynicism, and, strange as you may think it, of a +childlike yearning for friendliness and fellowship that must be hidden +when one walks among the "stranger bands." For in New Bagdad one, in +order to survive, must suspect whosoever sits, dwells, drinks, rides, +walks or sleeps in the adjacent chair, house, booth, seat, path or room.

+ +

"Say, Mike," said James Turner, "what's your line, anyway—shoe laces? +I'm not buying anything. You better put an egg in your shoe and beat it +before incidents occur to you. You can't work off any fountain pens, +gold spectacles you found on the street, or trust company certificate +house clearings on me. Say, do I look like I'd climbed down one of them +missing fire-escapes at Helicon Hall? What's vitiating you, anyhow?"

+ +

"Son," said the caliph, in his most Harunish tones, "as I said, I'm +worth $40,000,000. I don't want to have it all put in my coffin when I +die. I want to do some good with it. I seen you handling over these +here volumes of literature, and I thought I'd keep you. I've give the +missionary societies $2,000,000, but what did I get out of it? Nothing +but a receipt from the secretary. Now, you are just the kind of young +man I'd like to take up and see what money could make of him."

+ +

Volumes of Clark Russell were hard to find that evening at the Old +Book Shop. And James Turner's smarting and aching feet did not tend to +improve his temper. Humble hat cleaner though he was, he had a spirit +equal to any caliph's.

+ +

"Say, you old faker," he said, angrily, "be on your way. I don't know +what your game is, unless you want change for a bogus $40,000,000 bill. +Well, I don't carry that much around with me. But I do carry a pretty +fair left-handed punch that you'll get if you don't move on."

+ +

"You are a blamed impudent little gutter pup," said the caliph.

+ +

Then James delivered his self-praised punch; old Tom seized him by the +collar and kicked him thrice; the hat cleaner rallied and clinched; two +bookstands were overturned, and the books sent flying. A copy came up, +took an arm of each, and marched them to the nearest station house. +"Fighting and disorderly conduct," said the cop to the sergeant.

+ +

"Three hundred dollars bail," said the sergeant at once, asseveratingly +and inquiringly.

+ +

"Sixty-three cents," said James Turner with a harsh laugh.

+ +

The caliph searched his pockets and collected small bills and change +amounting to four dollars.

+ +

"I am worth," he said, "forty million dollars, but—"

+ +

"Lock 'em up," ordered the sergeant.

+ +

In his cell, James Turner laid himself on his cot, ruminating. "Maybe +he's got the money, and maybe he ain't. But if he has or he ain't, what +does he want to go 'round butting into other folks's business for? When +a man knows what he wants, and can get it, it's the same as $40,000,000 +to him."

+ +

Then an idea came to him that brought a pleased look to his face.

+ +

He removed his socks, drew his cot close to the door, stretched himself +out luxuriously, and placed his tortured feet against the cold bars +of the cell door. Something hard and bulky under the blankets of his +cot gave one shoulder discomfort. He reached under, and drew out a +paper-covered volume by Clark Russell called "A Sailor's Sweetheart." +He gave a great sigh of contentment.

+ +

Presently, to his cell came the doorman and said:

+ +

"Say, kid, that old gazabo that was pinched with you for scrapping seems +to have been the goods after all. He 'phoned to his friends, and he's +out at the desk now with a roll of yellowbacks as big as a Pullman car +pillow. He wants to bail you, and for you to come out and see him."

+ +

"Tell him I ain't in," said James Turner.

diff --git a/src/epub/text/colophon.xhtml b/src/epub/text/colophon.xhtml new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2295002 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/epub/text/colophon.xhtml @@ -0,0 +1,42 @@ + + + + Colophon + + + + +
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